• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Classics: Music / Teenage Jesus And The Jerks • Teenage Jesus And The Jerks

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks

★★★★★
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
9:15 min • Migraine Records • 1979
Walter Beck reviews
…………………………………………………………………………………………

One of the noisiest and most atonal groups to come out of the brief No Wave music scene of the ’70s, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks broke new ground on what was and wasn’t music. This was violent, abrasive, a primal scream in the face of the dying original punk scene and a fuck you to the artsy arrogant post-punk movement that was beginning to spawn.

Opening with the forty-two second ‘Freud in Flop’, a rolling instrumental from bassist Jim Sclavunos and drummer Bradley Field, the album gets off to a surprisingly rhythmic, if noisy start. The off-center mix, pushing Sclavunos’ high end with Field’s deep, steady thump, paints a grim picture of things to come.

The instrumentals continue with the next cut, the one-minute jaunt, ‘Race Mixing’. The violent noise is pushed to even further extremes as Sclavunos pushes his bass through the meanest distortion ever laid to tape, beating his strings down hard, until he drowns out Field’s drums completely.

Vocalist Lydia Lunch finally comes in on the third track ‘Baby Doll’, a track that seems to forecast the rise of sludge metal as she barks out her vocals savagely behind a slow, dragging wall of feedback, intermixed with an almost tribal sounding drum rhythm peppered throughout. The band’s mix of atonal noise really begins to shine through on this cut.

Picking up where the previous track left off, ‘Burning Rubber’ again features Lunch’s barked vocals over a slow, crawling assault of noise and feedback. The peak of this cut comes near the end as the chaos builds up speed into a thundering, speed demon explosion during the final ten seconds.

Speaking of speed, the twenty-one second ‘Red Alert’ is a pure burner; another instrumental exercise in sonic violence from Sclavunos and Field.

The two and a half minute ‘Orphans’, the longest cut on the record, is definitely the highlight as the band approaches something nearly anthem-like. Backed by a pounding and steady beat, vocalist Lunch strains her pipes in a thumping shout, you can almost envision the crowd at a gig stomping their feet along, working themselves into a frenzy as the band lays out their most concise musical exercise,

Little orphans running thru the bloody snow,
Little orphans running thru the bloody snow,
Little orphans running thru the blood, thru the blood, thru the blood –

what does that mean? Maybe nothing at all, but in Lunch’s barking vocals, the message is heard, whatever it’s truly reality is.

The record comes to a close with ‘Less of Me’, a track that takes the band in a different direction, albeit still noisy as hell. There’s a squealing saxophone throughout the song, mixed in with Lunch’s stomping, barking vocals and Field’s stop-start drumming. It’s not listed on the album who is playing the sax, but the effect is amazing, sounding almost like jazz from the dirtiest corners of America.

In seven tracks and nine minutes total, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks left their indelible mark on the American underground, bringing noise music to new frontiers and setting the stage for the powerhouse sludge scene that would emerge in the next decade. Black Flag may get credit for mixing punk and feedback noise with the second half of their album My War, but Teenage Jesus and the Jerks did it first and they did it meaner than anyone before or since.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies