Lydia
Lunch, Absolute Poetry Festival
Samstag 07. Juni 2008, Monfalcone, Italy
The Absolute Poetry festival
is an international event that takes place every year in Monfalcone, a
city in the North East of Italy.
This year the final night was a performance of Lydia Lunch, a real underground
queen, a woman that has worked and collaborated with all the most important
directors and musicians…she is a part of the New York sound of the
80's (even if the real sound were the Swans!)
In the last years I have seen Lydia two times. One was a spoken-world
performance in Genoa, Italy, and was quite good, not very enthusiastic,
but interesting. She was very angry and all was about blood, war and women
with a translation in Italian in real time, maybe that's why a lot of
old people went away after five minutes. She said something that I still
remember, something like that the women during the menstruation lost a
lot of blood, so they know what it means, loosing blood. Men don't know
this, that's why they make war because they don't know have this relation
with the blood, so they like to "play" with this.
The other time was a concert in former Starclub (now Beatpol) in Dresden,
for the Smoke in the shadows tour and I remember there wasn't so much
people and the concert was a "normal" rock show, with a Lydia
always inviting the audience to stay near the stage and don't be afraid.
So after this two experience I haven't got a clear idea of the new Lydia
performance almost for my experiences. In the poetry festival she made
a mix of both things: a spoken world with music (guitar + drums). There
also was the real-time-translator and this time I was a bit upset because
sometimes it was useless and sometimes boring, because all the people
understoond very clearly what she wanted to say.
On the guitar was James Johnston, the is also the "boyfriend"
of Lydia in the real life and he is still playing with a band called Gallon
Drunk; some years ago they were also quite famous. Now a new album is
coming out, with a special Lydia appearance. The drummer, to be honest,
I don't know who he was, but he was playing very good. He worked as an
important part of the show with this very strong sound supporting the
voice. I don't remember how many sticks he had broken during the concert!
Everything was supported with a lot of visuals, very interesting, with
a lot of warm colours, mostly yellow and red. Great performance and great
drunk Lydia give us a good night…see you in the future!
review by DC
