When punk rock came around in the mid to late '70s it was a shot in the arm for a means of expression that had become moribund due to complacency and commercial considerations. With corporations in control, the bottom line became more important than anything else, and the music reflected the conservative attitude that this engendered.
Punk brought with it the ethos that anybody could make a record and produce it without the need for a record label's involvement. Records and tapes were sold at concerts and through word-of-mouth publicity, groups developed followings. Some of the bigger labels began to take chances on the new acts; EMI signed the Sex Pistols, with disastrous results. The punk attitude and corporate music were not the best of matches, as their motivations for producing music didn't necessarily mesh.
However, punk's biggest effect was on the role of women in rock and roll. Up to that point, with a few exceptions, women had been restricted to playing either secondary roles to men in bands as back up singers and eye candy, or strumming a guitar and singing folk music. With punk coinciding with the burgeoning women's rights movement of the '70s the timing was right for women to be able to redefine their place in rock music. They no longer felt compelled to make themselves the objects of men's fantasies by dressing in skimpy clothing or singing pretty passive songs that weren't in anyway threatening to male egos. Cindy Lauper, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hyde, Siouxsie of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagan, and even Madonna all redefined what a woman could do on stage and what was expected from her.
One of the first of these groundbreakers was also one of the most exciting and innovative performers to grace stages around Europe and later North America since the heyday of pre-World War II German cabaret. Pop music still hasn't recovered from the surprise of Lene Lovich bursting on to the music scene with her first signal "Lucky Number" in the late 1970's. Her vocals were like nothing anybody had ever heard before, and she dressed like... like... well let's just say with an originality that's difficult to define.
Opportunities to see Lene perform are few and far between, and up until now there have been no tapped performances available for sale. Thankfully that's all changed as MVD Visual has just released a DVD of a concert she gave in 1981. Live From New York At Studio 54 was one of the first live concerts at the former notorious disco in New York, and I can't think of any performer who is still alive that more appropriate than Lene Lovich for kicking off that series.
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