In 1987, The New York Times’ chief popular music critic Robert Palmer — not to be confused with the British popular music singer Robert Palmer — wrote about rock ’n’ roller Lydia Lunch’s contributions to the late-’70s New York City music movement known as “no wave.” “Armed with an electric guitar which she did not so much play as strangle, Miss Lunch was the assassin of rock-and-roll, leading a succession of bands that seemed to deal in sheer anarchy,” wrote Palmer. “Even the bands’ names sounded dangerous: Teen-Age Jesus and the Jerks, Beirut Slump, Eight-Eyed Spy.” Indeed, Lunch’s contributions to no wave were more than significant, and she helped build a genre that embraced the theoretical building blocks of punk rock (nihilism, anarchy, confrontation) but rejected its musical influences (pop and blues, for instance) in favor of wild, noisy chaos. Lunch is still at it: The vocalist and poet just released a book by the name of So Real It Hurts and is currently touring with a group calling itself Lydia Lunch Verbal Burlesque. Featuring fellow no-wavers/noise musicians Weasel Walter and Tim Dahl, Verbal Burlesque is said to combine Lunch’s “dynamic spoken-word histrionics” with the “improvisational virtuosity” of Walter and Dahl. Local electronic experimentalist Eve Maret will open the show. 9 p.m. at The Basement, 1604 Eighth Ave. S. D. PATRICK RODGERS
