Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

[WWWhatsup <joly AT dti.net>]

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>[reformatted for legibilty - thanks for transcription, Sharon]

[Linder] Sterling's own band Ludus are the great lost Manchester
band of the era. Their output for New Hormones - The Visit
(1980), Pickpocket (1981), The Seduction (1982), Danger Came
Smiling (1982), plus the singles 'Mother's Hour' and 'Anatomy Is
Not Destiny' - have been comprehensively reissued by, you
guessed it, LTM. The music ranges from gloriously poppy tumbles
frisked along by Linder's euphoric warble and Ian Devine's
radiant, sometimes Edge-like guitar, through jazzy suaveness, to
vocal noise freakouts like 'Mouthpiece' and 'Mistresspiece' which
bear comparison with such extremists of the human voice as Yoko
Ono, Annette Peacock, Cathy Berberian, and Norma Winstone (all
heroines of Linder's). The Damage (rec. 1979- 1983; LTM anthology,
2002) provides a good survey of the group's body of work and
includes the taboo-tweaking menstruation ditty 'My Cherry Is In
Sherry'. The group's finest hour might be a legendary November
1982 performance at The Hacienda: Linder appeared in a dress made
from cuts of meat and chicken giblets, which she whipped off
during the last song to reveal a gigantic black dildo; on each
table in the venue, Linder's accomplices the Crones had deposited
a plate with a bloody-red tampon on it. Linder's 'Cunt Power'
brand of feminism plus the idiosyncratic, schizo nature of the
music meant that Ludus didn't make much impact in their own time,
though. Feeling the Hacienda performance was hard to top, Sterling
gradually shifted away from music to concentrate on her career as
an artist and photographer.


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