1. The Year is Zero: A Critical Analysis of No Wave
In 1978, a number of musicians in New York City decided enough was enough and it was
time to hit the reset button on music. No Wave, a term derided by those in the scene, was born
out of the concrete wasteland that New York City had become. Punk and New Wave gave those
looking for an alternate musical form a chance to have their voices heard but the musicians,
poets and artists that made up the No Wave scene wanted something else that they could call
their own. No Wave burned bright and fast and only lasted from 1978 until 1982. While this
musical movement was short and fast like the songs produced by No Wave artists, it left a
lasting imprint on musical history that hasn’t been eroded with the passage of time. In my
analysis, I’mgoing to break up the various sections that I want to discuss and why each is
important in attempting to explain and examine this cultural phenomenon. In the first section,
I’m going to describe in detail this phenomenon and the history of No Wave. This particular
period of time in musical history has left an imprint that at times seems to be forgotten but is
still being felt. Since New York City was in such decay in the late 1970s and early 1980s, artists
were able to live for dirt cheap in apartments and lofts that now would command a large sum
of money. The economic struggles of New York City helped artists develop a sense of
camaraderie and this in turn led to musical creativity. In the second section, I’m going to talk
about what the goals of No Wave were and how the sound of the music was a reflection of the
poverty experienced by these musicians in New York City. In the final section, I’m going to
discuss how anyone and everyone could be a part of the No Wave scene and it encouraged
those that wouldn’t be considered musicians by popular standards to take part regardless of
class, sex and race.

2. By the late 1970s, New York was a wasteland and was a very gritty and desolate place to
live. Most places that would now be quite expensive to live were dirt cheap and a lot of artists
could rent large spaces and perform music, make films and paint. Crime in New York City was
really high and there were a lot of abandoned buildings. Sometimes the buildings would catch
on fire because of the few people that were living in them and since there was so much
garbage, some buildings would be used for the sake of storing garbage in them because there
was no other place to put it. “As the municipal deficit and a string of sweltering summers took
their toll on the city’s infrastructure, frequent power-cuts threw New York into total darkness,
while at the same time fires would burn for days in an L.E.S now all but abandoned by police
and fire services as landlords torched their properties for insurance pay-outs” (Calvert 2014).
Simon Reynolds writes that “the city’s official figures listed 360 abandoned buildings and 310
vacant lots in the area, with the condition of a quarter of the buildings declared poor to critical
(Reynolds 2006).” As a result of this economic downslide, the local population dropped 20
percent between 1970 and 1980. School enrollment plummeted as families with kids moved to
better neighborhoods or the suburbs (Reynolds 2006). The cheap rents allowed musicians to
barely have to work jobs and they could rent apartments for cheap depending on the quality of
the building and the area it was located in. Lydia Lunch stated that she was able to scrape
together enough cash to pay for her rent and spent only a few dollars per day on food. “Work?
Are you nuts? Please. $75 per month-- that was my rent when I got an apartment on
12 th Street. You could eat for two or three dollars a day. You begged, borrowed, stole, sold
drugs, worked a couple of days at a titty bar if you had to. I don't know how I got by, but it
didn't take much” (Masters 2008).The No Wave bands were greatly influenced by their

3. surroundings and the sound and style of the music was a result of their living conditions and
what they had to experience while living in a city that was rampant with crime, drugs and sex.
Although Lunch was already living in poverty and in a ghetto, she decided to move to one that
was even worse. Lydia Lunch said that, “But with two hundred bucks in my pocket tucked inside
a notebook full of misanthropic screed, a baby face that belied a hustler's instinct, and a killer
urge to create in order to destroy everything that had originally inspired me, I didn't give a
flying [expletive] if the Bowery smelled like dog [expletive]” (Moore and Cooley 2008). While
punk songs by bands like The Sex Pistols and The Ramones were short, fast and to the point, No
Wave bands like Mars, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks and DNA shortened the songs even more and
the music was a lot more experimental than punk. The music reflected the pain and nihilism
that was evident in New York City in the late 1970s and No Wave was very much anti any music
that had come before it. The spontaneity of an improvisational method further dissolved the
rules of rock in particular and music in general (Traber 2007). Unlike the progressive rock from
the 1970s, this did not result in 15-minute drum solos (Traber 2007). The immediacy of the
moment—an instance’s flash of inspiration that imploded—was more their style (Traber 2007).
The word “no” is a powerful one and symbolically represents how the artists and musicians in
the No Wave scene felt in regards to what was popular or cool at the time. The key to how such
a brief moment could create a lasting impression lies in a single word: 'No.'(Masters 2008). It
could hardly be smaller, yet, like the No Wave movement itself, it is remarkably potent, a
symbol of all the possibilities in rejection and resistance (Masters 2008). While many of the
prominent No Wave bands were featured on records like No New York, a physical product of
their music wasn’t the easiest thing to find. Since the movement was so quick and

4. instantaneous, the primary place to envelop one’s self in this music was at CBGB’s or Max’s
Kansas City. Since this music was so spontaneous, it would’ve been difficult for listeners to pick
out a lot of repetition in the recorded versions of these songs. For many listeners, repetition
raises expectations, and they may normalize interpretative features of a performance or even
mistakes (Katz 2004).
The music the No Wave bands were creating wasn’t necessarily made
with the concept of preservation in mind and these artists were using their experiences from
the rough and tough streets of the Lower East Side to create music that could be given back to
the streets and populace. Poverty and a downtrodden city proved to be quite influential on the
inhabitants that flocked there and it helped to give them an infinite amount of creativity. Lydia
Lunch described this period as one where artists had complete creative control of what they
were doing. “You painted, you were in a band, you made films, you wrote songs. It was just
all so interconnected. We were all friends and freak-by-nature outsider artists. I think it
was just the freak nature of our base elements that brought us together. To be in a band, at
least according to the rules of rock in the 1970s, one must know how to play an instrument. But
rather than waste time solving that problem, No Wavers ignored it. The point was simply to
make music, not to learn how first. As Glenn O'Brien put it, "It was a 'Gong Show' for geniuses”
(Masters 2008). The sound of No Wave reminds us that sound envelops us, pouring into us
whether we want it or not, including us and involving us (Douglas 2004). This music wasn’t
meant to be listened to in order to try to keep track of it and the specifics of it were flowing out
of these musicians in such a way that made it fresh and exciting. The desire to make a new
sound is actually the problem, as “deconstructed” music must be wary of overly relying on a

5. notion of originality to conceptualize itself (Traber 2007). The deconstruction label practically
dares people to locate the previous sources, even if they only sound faintly familiar (Traber
2007). The desire of the No Wave artists was to not only sound like nobody else in the history of
music but also to not copy what other No Wave groups sounded like. The pounding drums
heard in DNA or the screeching sound of Lydia Lunch’s guitar in the recordings of Teenage Jesus
& The Jerks was something new but almost animalistic in the approach. New York City bands
like Television, Blondie and The Ramones may have been approved of by the No Wave bands to
various degrees but all of those bands sounded like something before them. Those bands may
have given rock a kick in the ass when it so desperately needed it but the goal of the No Wave
groups was to annihilate all preceding music. The Sex Pistols seemed revolutionary to
mainstream music fans but they weren’t so original after all with their recycled Chuck Berry
licks played at a faster pace. “The other aspect of Punk and New Wave ripe for destruction was
the music itself. The bands that preceded No Wave obeyed the blues-based rock model that
had prevailed since the 1950s. Granted, it was often a sped-up or strangely-skewed version of
that tradition, but it was no radical break. The No Wavers chose not to modify rock convention,
but to discard it. Noise, lack of melody, technical naïveté, and anything else not considered
"musical" became the keys to tearing rock apart” (Masters 2008). Reduced listening, listening
that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, can certainly be applied when listening to No
Wave music (Chion 1994). What may sound like a saw may be the feedback from an electric
guitar or perhaps there’s some sort of ancient tribal rhythm pattern being smashed out by a
drummer. A singer may not “sing” in a traditional way but growl out the lyrics or create
instrumental sounds with their voice. The sounds that were produced by these No Wave artists

6. broke down the barriers of what music should sound like and what one should expect from
various instruments when listening to this music. Why should music have to sound a certain
way in order to be categorized or justified in the minds of mainstream listeners? No Wave gave
the middle finger to that question and broke down many doors that others are still climbing
through.
While it may not be discussed to a great extent, No Wave helped to continue to destroy
the old guard of whom could play music and what could be defined as music. Rock and roll has
quite a history of excluding women and some races from its ranks and was predominantly white
dominated for a long time. While punk came along with the notion that anyone could be a
musician, the game remained largely in control by white males. No Wave helped to take this
approach a step further and the most prominent No Wave bands all featured at least one
female member. Lydia Lunch, Ikue Mori, and China Burg were all prominent women in the
various No Wave bands. Ikue Mori was hired by Arto Lindsay to be part of DNA. Mori was from
Japan and it didn’t even matter that she was a minority, female and had no prior musical
experience. This is an example of how wide open the No Wave scene was and even someone
with no prior musical experience or ability could jump right in and begin playing the guitar or
drums. Lydia Lunch had no experience playing guitar before the creation of Teenage Jesus &
The Jerks and she took out her frustrations in her playing style and no preconceptions of how
the guitar should be played. “With structure, chords, melody and story arc an absolute Jerks
taboo, that Lunch & Co. – more than any other No Wave band – made no concessions to
anything remotely rock, was an act of hatred in itself: fueled by the utter contempt Lunch had
for both the bloated rock gods of the ’70s and the hippy generation’s moral self-assurance. In

7. the end, no No Wave act more enshrined the movement’s ‘Kill Your Idols’ ethos than The Jerks”
(Calvert 2014). The musicians that were involved in the No Wave scene prominently explored
their own habitus of listening without really thinking about it. Our habitus of listening is tacit,
unexamined, seemingly completely natural (Becker 2004). We listen in a particular way without
thinking about it, and without realizing that it even is a particular way of listening (Becker
2004). The way to listen and approach No Wave is to throw out any preconceived notions of
what music should sound like and what your ears may experience. These artists wanted to
break down the barriers by disregarding prior music by changing the way it sounded and
enveloping themselves in their own habitus of listening. Even though sexismand racism
seemed to vanish as far as the No Wave musicians went, it also helped to attract black listeners
which might surprise a lot of people. Arto Lindsay said that “We had a lot of black fans, and jazz
musicians respected us. And all through this period I was listening to Al Green and Curtis
Mayfield for my own pleasure” (Reynolds 2006). No Wave helped to attract fans of all shapes
and sizes and since the barriers of racismand sexismwere seemingly destroyed, it opened up
the possibility of a more diverse audience.
No Wave helped to break down a lot of the barriers that existed before in the musical
world. It helped to dismantle the notion of a rock star and who could be a musician. Just
because someone didn’t have years of training at a particular instrument didn’t mean that they
wouldn’t be able to be a musician. No Wave only lasted from 1978-1982 but the trail that it
blazed would be felt for many years to come. It’s impossible to imagine groups like Sonic Youth
existing if it weren’t for the No Wave scene that they crawled up from. New York City was damn
near bankrupt and the sounds from the streets were picked up by the musicians and thrown

8. back at the people that attended No Wave concerts. While a significant number of people left
New York during the economic decline that crippled the city in the 1970s, many artists and
musicians flocked there to blend in with likeminded individuals. They were able to pay dirt
cheap rent for facilities that now command sky high prices. The No Wave musicians and artists
truly had the city as their playground and were in charge of the artistic endeavors in New York
City. As New York City began to recover from the financial crisis it had gone through, that New
York was replaced by one that was family friendly, cleaner and more sterile. There has recently
been a great longing for the filthy, desolate and dangerous New York City of the 1970s and
1980s and I believe it’s because people know that city may never be in that sad state again. Out
of that negative atmosphere sprang a scene and movement that has continued to inspire and
open the minds of those that come into contact with it. The musicians of the No Wave era will
never again have the freedom to run certain sections of New York City that they did in the past
and we may never see another movement like the one that took shape in the spring of 1978.
Bibliography
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9. Chion, Michel. "Audio-vision: Sound on Screen." (1994)
Katz, Mark. "Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music." (2004)
Douglas, Susan. “Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination.” (2004)