About Teenage Jesus & The Jerks

Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were an influential post-punk group from New York City, New York, United States, who formed part of the city's no wave movement. Founded by one-time CBGBs waitress Lydia Lunch and saxophonist James Chance, the group was active from 1976 to 1979, releasing only a handful of singles. Chance eventually left to form The Contortions and pursue his own equally abrasive musical direction. Both groups were featured on the seminal "No New York" LP, a showcase of the early No Wave scene compiled and produced by Brian Eno. Infamous for playing ten-minute sets filled with thirty-second songs, they sought to take music beyond what Lunch saw as the traditionalism of punk rock. The group left behind little more than a dozen complete recorded songs with most of the surviving titles collected on the 18-minute career retrospective CD titled "Everything". However other studio versions of several songs exist alongside a few live recordings. Lunch and Chance both went on to become cult figures of the New York underground music scene and the group has been cited as a significant influence on subsequent post-punk groups such as Sonic Youth and The Istics. The band reunited in 2008 for a series of performances, with Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore. The band continued to perform without Moore throughout 2009, including dates in Canada.