Lucy Monostone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucy Monostone, variously known as The Children of Lucy Monostone and COLM, is the name of a music and performance art group with a frequently-changing membership. The group's name is taken from the failed-musician-turned-terrorist character of the same name in MPD Psycho, a manga by Eiji Otsuka and Sho-u Tajima, later adapted as a live action TV miniseries by Japanese director Takashi Miike. The only permanent member of the group is the project's founder, who goes a number of different aliases; most frequently Thomas Covenant, the titular character in the series of fantasy novels by Stephen R. Donaldson.
The purpose of the project is not to create music as much as it is to create "controversy, anger, confusion, offense, and nausea", according to the Lucy Monostone manifesto. Members are recruited and accepted with little to no regard for actual musical ability, but more for their attitude, sense of humour, and willingness to engage in activities during performances which could lead to arrest on charges of public indecency and obscenity. Taking their cue primarily from the early-80s No-Wave scene, influences include Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, Richard Kern, and Lydia Lunch; and like their predecessors, they reject the stifling limitations of Fine Art. But unlike their influences, they also reject the conventions of Pop Art, Anti-Art, and similar categories as equally stifling; and seek to create a new category of Non-Art, so that they can be stifled on their own terms.
Themes common to their productions include violence, drugs, deviant sexual activities, ennui, mania, and meaningless nonsense. The sound ranges from a fast, strident hardcore punk to droning, repetitious and monotonous, to Noise, to avante-garde spoken word and completely silnce during their entire performance. Often all in the same composition. Their performances, musical and otherwise, are frequently characterized by what seems to be an overall disdain, contempt, or outright hostility toward their audience; and seem engineered to be as unpleasant and offensive as possible. At other times, they do not even acknowledge the existence of their audience, but behave as characters in a movie or television program, never breaking the fourth wall. The group's leader, Thomas Covenant, claims that, unlike their No Wave and Trensgressive influences the group isn't really interested in creating music or art per se, only in creating gimmicks. In fact, the entire project appears to have been conceived as a particularly tasteless practical joke.
