Lydia Lunch & special guests come together to mark the London launch of her most recent book, So Real It Hurts. An occasion for senseless celebration.
DOORS: 7.30PM
Admission £10
Ian White (Big Sexy Noise/ Gallon Drunk) solo project - BLYTH + readings from Lydia throughout the night + Cathi Unsworth + Louise Woodcock.
“So Real It Hurts is the perfect title for this collection. It’s a mission statement. A few bleeding slices straight from the butcher shop. A sampler from an enormous archive of work that will, no doubt, be pored over by grad students, book lovers, film historians, music nerds and straight-up perverts a hundred years from now.”
— Anthony Bourdain, from the Introduction
“Lydia Lunch turned 60 this year, but age has done little to dim this counterculture icon’s lust for life. Decades after her start as the nihilist 16-year-old frontwoman of 1970s no-wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, the New York-born “apocalyptician” is a revered veteran of the US underground: a writer, spoken-word performer, musician, actor and artist. Lunch’s style is raw and incendiary, all sex and death and taboo-busting feminist rage. And in 2019, the sexagenarian is as unapologetic and active as ever – still writing, touring, collaborating and performing. (…)
Lunch’s work is defiant, thrilling and unflinching. Her latest release, So Real It Hurts, is just so: an anthology of new and established writings that include everything from violent feminist revenge fantasies to diatribes on pollution and politics (and yes, Trump) in the Anthropocene epoch.”
_ The Guardian, Interview with Punk Hellraiser Lydia Lunch, 10/07/2019
About Cathi Unsworth:
Cathi Unsworth is a novelist, writer and editor who lives and works in London. She began her career on the legendary music weekly Sounds at the age of 19 and has worked as a writer and editor for many other music, film and arts magazines since, including The Guardian, Financial Times, Fortean Times, Bizarre, Melody Maker, Mojo, Uncut, Volume and Deadline.
Her first novel THE NOT KNOWING was published in 2005, followed the next year with the award-winning short story compendium LONDON NOIR, which she edited, and in 2007 with the punk noir novel THE SINGER. Her third novel, BAD PENNY BLUES, inspired by the unsolved 'Jack the Stripper' murders of 1959-65 was published in 2010 to great critical acclaim.
Her 2012 book WEIRDO, a tale of teenage trauma and female transgression set on the Norfolk coast was translated into seven languages, and her latest work Without The Moon, based on two true crimes that occurred during the dark days of February 1942, was longlisted for the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize and made The Times' Crime Book of the Month on publication.
About Louise Woodcock:
‘A film of my life would be a mix between Twin Peaks and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a spicy version of Bambi played by Divine as the lead’. Spirit worker, reiki master, performer/creator and avid non-musician, Louise Woodcock is something of a maverick - she appears in whichever guise suits her purpose and has no time for limitations. Woodcock is a lynchpin of Manchester’s experimental music and art scenes, is a seasoned performer and immersive theatre actor working in Gallery settings to glitzy bars like Albert’s Schloss, creating controversial characters including the infamous trashy glamour puss, Trish Dee. She’s agitated The Fall fans at the request of Mark E Smith and incited public walk-out’s from Manchester Gallery. She’s resident host of Fat Out’s Karaoke Dungeon at Yes who rejoice in her brand of warm antagonism.