No New York A memoir of no wave and the women who shaped the scene

Musician Bertei (Universal Mother) recounts in this exhilarating memoir her role in the rise of "no-wave" music, a countercultural sound that mixed "punk, rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop, film, art, and outlaw sensibilities." In 1977, the author escaped a chaotic Cleveland upbringing for New York City, where she immersed herself in the flourishing punk scene at venues like CBGB. After an impromptu jam session in a friend's loft, she joined James Chance and the Contortions, a no-wave group that played a "freaky hybrid of jazz, noise, and punk." The author chronicles her brief tenure in the band, which was known for its high-energy, rowdy, and sometimes violent live shows (at one Max's Kansas City gig where a fight broke out between bandmate James Chance and a concertgoer, Bertei dove into the crowd and began "punching and wrestling" audience members). Also detailed are the personality clashes and payment conflicts that led to her 1978 departure, after which she founded the Bloods, an all-girl group. Bertei brings the era's music scene to life with colorful details, as when she recalls inviting a "haunted"-looking Sid Vicious in for tea after finding him slumped in front of her building, and celebrates the women who defined no wave music, among them Contortions bandmate Pat Place and punk pioneer Patti Smith. It's an eccentric and energetic tour through a vibrant chapter of New York City music history. (Mar.)

A Cleveland-born musician who came of age in the late-1970s New York underground art scene remembers the women who "lit the fuse" of the No Wave movement. Bertei arrived in New York City in 1977, a 22-year-old Midwestern queer woman who "took cover behind a boyish pose and swagger" and dreamed of joining a band. Her inspiration to leave Cleveland had come from photographer Nan Goldin, whom she had met in a gay bar. In this memoir, Bertei chronicles her experiences as a queer artist in a vibrant cultural underground that centered around the East Village, the Strand Bookstore, and clubs like Max's Kansas City and CBGB. From her first days in New York, the author was drawn into a No Wave musical scene that reveled in fluidity, the danger of living in a city that resembled "bombed out Beirut" and assaulted audiences with a kind of "Dada brutalism." Moving between female--and occasional male--lovers, Bertei mingled with underground cult singers like Lydia Lunch and more pop-oriented ones like Blondie and Madonna. At the same time, she drew inspiration from brilliant experimental filmmakers like Vivienne Dick and artists like Kiki Smith. Her own star rose in the years that followed. Starting out as a singer for the Contortions, Bertei moved on to work with the Bloods, a band that made history as the first out-of-the-closet, all-queer band and later recorded tracks with New Wave star Thomas Dolby. Interspersed with black-and-white photographs from an era defined by radical creativity but overshadowed by AIDS, drugs, and commercialization, Bertei's book offers a distinctively feminist twist to the gritty rise and fall of a groundbreaking movement. A love letter to a punk/post-punk era and the female creatives who transformed gender and genre defiance into art. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.