Lydia Lunch Benefit Press Release

 MEDIA ALERT 30 April 2013 HOWL! Arts and Some Serious Business Present an Evening of Spoken Word in the Raw Who: When: Tickets: LYDIA LUNCH Hosts DON’T HIDE THE MADNESS With cohorts Bob Bert, Nicole Blackman, Bibbe Hansen, Zachary Lipez, Edgar Oliver, Tony O'Neill, Phantom Family Halo, and surprise guests. DJ: Linda Rizzo Thursday, May 30, 2013 / 7–10 PM $10 in advance / $15 at the door / Cash only the evening of the show Tickets available in advance through Brown Paper Tickets http://m.bpt.me/event/378639 What: Where: A Benefit for HOWL! Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P.) *100% of the proceeds from the door go to H.E.L.P. Pyramid Cocktail Lounge 101 Ave A (between 6th & 7th Streets), East Village, NYC East Village—Kicking off the HOWL! Festival weekend in Tompkins Square Park (May 31, June 1–2), Lydia and friends bring their brutal, hilarious, heartbreaking, true tales from America's dark side to the scene of one of Lydia’s first spoken word performances—the quintessential anything-­‐goes Queen of 80s clubdom in the East Village—The Pyramid Cocktail Lounge. Hecklers Welcome. For information visit howlfestival.com. In the spirit of the Festival’s namesake Allen Ginsberg, this evening of spoken word and music is a benefit for HOWL! Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P.), an emergency assistance and health fund providing free healthcare and counseling services for the current and past EV/LES arts community administered by the Actors Fund. HOWL! H.E.L.P. [insert hot link to: http://www.actorsfund.org/services-­‐and-­‐programs/howl-­‐emergency-­‐life-­‐project] Produced for HOWL! Arts by Hattie Hathaway and Susan Martin. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Lydia Lunch Lydia Lunch is passionate, confrontational and bold. Whether attacking the patriarchy and their pornographic war mongering, turning the sexual into the political or whispering a love song to the broken hearted, her fierce energy and rapid fire delivery lend testament to her warrior nature. She has released too many musical projects to tally, has been on tour for decades, has published dozens of articles, half a dozen books and simply refuses to just shut up. Brooklyn’s own Akashic Books have published her recent anthology Will Work For Drugs, as well as her outrageous memoir of sexual insanity Paradoxia, A Predator's Diary, which has been translated into seven languages. Ms. Lunch has contributed to their just released The Heroin Chronicles edited by Jerry Stahl. In 2012 Rizzoli released her sassy, sexy cookbook The Need To Feed, proving that even food in the right hands can be a dangerous thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Lunch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFjQ1fKMxNw&wide=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fPnnkeXq8 Bob Bert Bert initially came to prominence as drummer for the experimental rock band Sonic Youth during the early to mid-­‐1980s. Bert played on the Sonic Youth releases Confusion Is Sex, Kill Yr Idols Ep, Sonic Death, and Bad Moon Rising. After Bad Moon Rising, Bert quit the group. Sonic Youth replaced Bert with drummer Steve Shelley. Bert contributed during the last half of the 1980s as percussionist for noise band Pussy Galore. At the same time had his own fronted experimental band Bewitched. In the early 1990s, Bert drummed for the Chrome Cranks, and later joined forces with guitarist Kid Congo in the rootsy New York City band Knoxville Girls. During the late 1990s, Bert (with his wife, artist Linda Wolfe (RIP) began publishing BBGun, a zine that primarily covers the world of underground music & art. In 1998, Bert contributed the liner notes and interviewed Suicide for the reissue of the band's eponymous second album. turned-­‐ In 2011 Thick Syrup Records released the compilation CD: Bewitched -­‐ Bob Bert Presents: The Worst Poetry Of 1986 – 1993. He is currently drumming for RETROVIRUS, Lydia Lunch’s all-­‐star cast of sonic brutarians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Bert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMDXl-­‐nk3xY Nicole Blackman Nicole Blackman s involved in the North American goth, spoken word and transgressive literature scenes. Blackman self-­‐published three now out-­‐of-­‐print chapbooks: Pretty, Sweet, and Nice were collected in Akashic Books' Blood Sugar. Her work as a performance artist include "Bloodwork" performed at The Kitchen/NYC in 2000, where she debuted her blood performance (and shook hands with the audience, bloodying them too), slipped secret messages into the audience's coat pockets, projected text on the street and created audio visual installations. Since then she has performed "Courtesan Tales" at PS122 art space in New York City, at The Andy Warhol Museum/Pittsburgh, and for three years at the Fierce Festival in Birmingham England. The "Courtesan Tales" are performances in which a blindfolded audience of one has a five minute story whispered into their ear. She debuted "Harm's Way" (a multi-­‐media performance of her email diary of working at Ground Zero) as a work in progress in New York. After being commissioned for an audio work, "Stay Away from Lonely Places," by the British Arts Council for the UK's Art & Architecture Week in July 2006, she was again commissioned by the BAC to create a new work for the Fierce Festival—an audio tour of the Deritend neighborhood of Birmingham. Blackman also created the piece Beloved, commissioned by the Fierce Festival and British Arts Council as a site-­‐specific performance and installation. The piece was created expressly for the Compton Verney Museum in the British West Midlands in April 2007. She is also a voice-­‐over performer, and has been used in campaigns for Chrysler, Ford, Blockbuster, Lysol, and Verizon, and channels including Turner Classic Movies, Discovery Health Channel, Cartoon Network, Court TV, PBS and Cinemax https://twitter.com/nicoleblackman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Blackman http://www.levity.com/corduroy/blackman.htm Bibbe Hansen Bibbe Hansen, born in New York City, 1953, to Fluxus artist Al Hansen and actress Audrey Hansen, began performing professionally at age eleven playing leading child and ingénue roles in prestigious east coast summer stock companies. In New York City, concurrently, she regularly performed in her father's avant-­‐garde theater pieces called "Happenings" A chance meeting with a record producer at age 13, led to her recording a single for Laurie records with her friends Janet Kerouac (daughter of Jack) and Charlotte Rosenthal. They were called “The Whippets” and their hastily recorded single hit the pop charts in Canada. After a stint as a delinquent street kid, runaway and truant she became a “guest” of the State of New York at the infamous Spofford Street Youth House and several other NY institutions for child criminals where she was able to refine her survival skills and work on her freestyle group dancing techniques. Directly following her release, Bibbe met Andy Warhol who suggested they collaborate on a film about her recent experiences. The film was called Prison and stars Bibbe Hansen, Marie Mencken and Edie Sedgwick. Bibbe also made three other films with Warhol and danced briefly with the Velvet Underground. A random late-­‐60’s sojourn brought Bibbe to Los Angeles where she founded a theater company, acted in "B" movies and participated in the local punk scene as musician, and documenteur. The café became the center of a multicultural renaissance in downtown Los Angeles. Bibbe was born into a creative life and has surrounded herself with artists of every genre which no doubt helped to influence the creative tendencies of her son the musician Beck. Today Bibbe creates artwork and is represented by Envoy Gallery in New York City. She recently completed the first draft of her memoirs about life in Greenwich Village in the sixties, from Beat baby to prison inmate with Andy Warhol’s Factory as a pit stop. She lectures frequently on art and the creative process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibbe_Hansen Zachary Lipez Zachary Lipez writes the "Adult Problems" column for Noisey/VICE. He is the co-­‐author (along with Nick Zinner and Stacy Wakefield) of Please Take Me Off The Guestlist (Akashic Books), No Seats On The Party Car, and Slept in Beds (Both: Evil Twin Publications). Zachary also writes about music and whatever catches his fancy for MySpace, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and Hazlitt. He used to sing for the NYC band, Freshkills, until they broke the fuck up. His essay on that failure and heartache is forthcoming on Michael Azerrad's new site, The Talkhouse. Zachary Lipez tends bar at 124 Rabbit Club. http://zackcelebration.tumblr.com/ https://twitter.com/ZacharyLipez Edgar Oliver A true Lower East Side icon, Edgar Oliver began his performance career in the mid-­‐1980s at the Pyramid Club, and since then has appeared as an actor in both theater (A Glance At New York, 2007, Axis NYC and Edinburgh Festival Fringe; The Drowning Pages, 2000, La MaMa ETC) and film (Henry May Long, 2008; Gentlemen Broncos, 2009). Edgar has published numerous stories, as well as three collections of poetry of which The Man Who Loved Plants (2004 Panther Books) is the latest. He frequently contributes to many events sponsored by The Moth, a non-­‐profit NYC group dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Most recently, Oliver can be seen on television, hosting the Science Channel's documentary/reality program, Odd Folks Home, which began airing in late 2012. http://www.goodie.org/pantherbooks/oliver.html http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-­‐02-­‐04/voice-­‐choices/positively-­‐10th-­‐street/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Folks_Home Tony O’Neill Tony O’Neill is the author of several novels including Sick City, Down and Out on Murder Mile and Digging the Vein. As a musician he played alongside Marc Almond, Kenickie and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. His career in music was derailed by a chronic addiction to heroin, and this romance with the needle led to several years of homelessness and bouncing around between treatment centers, short let hotels, the streets and friends’ couches. When he washed ashore in London in the early 2000’s he wrote a book about his years as a heroin addict in Los Angeles entitled Digging the Vein. It was published in 2006 and feted by the likes of John Giorno, Dan Fante and Irvine Welsh. In his subsequent books Tony has explored themes of addiction, celebrity and the war on drugs. He has co-­‐
written the memoirs of Runaways singer Cherie Currie and heroin addicted NFL player Jason Peter. His books have been translated into many languages and found an enthusiastic readership in Europe. In all of this his favorite critical notice remains the anonymous amazon reviewer who wondered, “How was this rancid crap ever allowed to be published?” http://tonyoneill.net/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_O'Neill The Phantom Family Halo The Phantom Family Halo is an American indie rock band from Louisville in Kentucky notable for music described as having a "post-­‐metal state of ungodly loudness" while managing to achieve a "neat creepy B-­‐
movie horror feel. The six-­‐member band, currently based in Brooklyn, has performed with bands such as Black Angels, Black Mountain, Dead Meadow, USAisamonster, Hawkwind, Slint, Damo Suzuki, Acid Mothers Guru Guru, Stormtrippers, Russian Circles, Young Widows, Sapat, The For Carnation, and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The band signed a recording contract with Knitting Factory Records in 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Family_Halo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sWaj8P0myU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfIpVdakhcM&feature=player_embedded About HOWL! Arts, Inc. HOWL! Festival is a project of the nonprofit organization HOWL! Arts Inc. Like the neighborhood in which it was born, HOWL! Festival is a symbol of untamed creativity and a place to engage and build a strong global arts community. Inspired by the late poet–philosopher Allen Ginsberg, a lifelong spokesperson for peace, justice, and freedom of expression—
HOWL! Arts Inc. is the parent of all things HOWL! and embraces his iconoclastic and irreverent legacy as home to “the best minds” of successive generations to inspire and galvanize new artists and audiences. Presenting poetry, music, dance, theater, fine art, and intersections of popular culture, new technologies and artistic expression that defy easy categorization, HOWL! Arts aspires to give the public the tools to join in the creative process and to experience first hand the value of a creative life, the heritage of social justice, and the quality of contemporary culture which are the signatures of this vital community. HOWL! Arts salutes the downtown community whose original perspectives have altered the landscape of fashion, art, music, theater, poetry, and dance worldwide. Howl Arts’ programs are 100% free to the public, as are its services to area artists. For additional information visit howlfestival.com [hot link] HOWL! Arts signature events include: th
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HOWL FESTIVAL: 2013 marks the 10 Anniversary of this free three-­‐day festival of poetry, visual arts, music, dance, performance art, theater and Kids Carnival presented in Tompkins Square Park. •
HOWL! Arts Project: A month-­‐long program of poetry, theater, performance art, music, dance, puppetry and children’s performance to support HOWL! Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P) an emergency assistance and health fund for the EV/LES arts community administered by the Actors Fund. •
HOWL! H.E.L.P: An emergency assistance and health fund administered by the Actors Fund, providing free healthcare and counseling services to EV/LES Artists in crisis. •
Films in Tompkins: A free public film festival presented each summer on the great lawn in Tompkins Square Park, now in its third year. •
HOWL! Arts in partnership with the EVCC: September 2013 HOWL! launches its first annual Fall Fashion Show celebrating the couture of the EV/LES design community and fashion district. X X X X X For further information, interviews, and high resolution images, please contact: Susan Martin, MartinMPR, susan@martinmpr.com, 310 975 9970 Norma Kelly, MartinMPR, norma@martinmpr.com, 818 395 1342