Kill Your Idols is a film made by Scott Crary in 2004. It took the prize for Best Documentary at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival and gained a distribution deal with Palm Pictures.
Under the tag line “the New York No Wave scene and those who followed” it features appropriately grainy footage of gigs from the Hardcore heyday of the late 70s/early 80s . There are clips of the likes of DNA (a wonderfully geeky Arto Lindsay), Teenage Jesus & The Jerks (one of the best band names ever) and The Swans (Michael Gira in primal mode).
What struck me was the raw physicality of these performances. More than one interviewee states that the music was secondary – attitude was more important than technique. The driving force was giving vent to the sense of rage and resentment (society is to blame!). This is probably why so few of the records from that era really stand the test of time. As with the most obvious counterpart of British Punk in 1976/7 this was something to experience in the flesh. It was the antithesis of commodified culture. Eno’s ‘No New York’ of 1978 is the most cited album of this scene but the fact that it only includes 4 bands (Contortions, Teenage Jesus, DNA and Mars) make it an inadequate document. Not including anything of Glenn Branca’s ‘Theoretical Girls’ is the most glaring ommission.
In ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’, Simon Reynolds describes No Wave accurately as “a cultural spasm, an extremist gesture, that could only exhaust itself“.
Mercifully Crary’s film doesn’t set out to market the nostalgia factor but to examine the legacy. One of the main purposes of the film is to comment on the fact that such harsh, dissonant acts inspired and spawned a number of bands working today. As a result, equal weight is given to the art rock bands like Liars, Black Dice and Yeah Yeah Yeahs that drew inspiration from these post punk acts . Not surprising these are mostly regarded with disdain by the uncompromising Lydia Lunch.
A particularly tenuous link is that of Gogol Bordello. Their brand of Ucranian Gypsy Punk seems to me to have more in common with bands like The Pogues and Les Negresse Vertes than with Hardcore underground rock. The inclusion is forgiveable because Eugene Hütz is such a lively speaker.
I hadn’t previously heard of A.R.E Weapons and won’t be rushing out to buy/download their music on what I saw here. Lead vocalist Brain F. McPeck is a real poseur who bares his well toned torso and his equally ostentatious ego, coming across like the missing link between Jim Morrsion and Spinal Tap.
What is most evident is the massive debt owed to Sonic Youth in the way they took the energy of No Wave and mixed it with a Velvet Underground dynamic to create a crossover sound without selling out to mainstream taste. It’s no coincidence that it is they who coined the Kill Your Idols phrase of the title and that Thurston Moore is one the most articulate voices we hear in this film.
At the end of the film, however, even Moore, in common with other contributers, is lost for words when asked what the next big thing could be to match the cultural impact of the No Wavers.
However, I think it is significant that he and Michael Gira are now both heads of influential record labels (Ecstatic Peace and Young Gods respectively) that promote neo-folk and psych-noise of the New Weird America. This is to my ears at least one of the truest legacies of the diy spirit of Punk. It may be less overtly threatening and use more than three chords, but this is music which is its equal in terms of authenticity and sincerity.
