![]() ![]() ![]() “I don’t know how anybody could not be political.” “There was a complete downhill spiral, the country was really suffering,” says Sley. At a time when New York was on the verge of bankruptcy, Ronald Reagan was coming into power and Aids was emerging, they found that music was a way to be outspoken about social issues to a broad audience. While they made highly infectious music to let loose to, their output was also pointed and contrarian, with jabs at misogyny and conservative politics. “How we wove in and out of each other, creating space for things to breathe and move.” “We were looking at the music visually,” Sley explains. As a self-described “egalitarian band”, the songwriting process was collaborative and influenced by their respective art school backgrounds. ![]() They released a handful of singles and one EP via DIY imprints such as 99, Fetish and Stiff Records, with angular riffs spun from pawn shop guitars (carried in bin bags because Place couldn’t afford a case) and rudimentary percussion made from foraged children’s toys. “When we found out about that, I was like: oh my God, there go the brain cells I’m desperately hanging on to!” “It was not glamorous,” Sley laughs, recalling mattresses piled around instruments and an ongoing gas leak. Broke and unable to afford “high-end drugs”, their extended rehearsal sessions were fuelled by beer, weed and a diet of instant ramen and Snickers. The band practised five days a week in a studio that doubled up as Sley’s living space. ‘We had no idea what we were doing’ … Bush Tetras in their heyday, from left: Dee Pop, Laura Kennedy, Place and Sley. It’s a very dadaistic form of music, it’s very nihilistic.” “It was like: OK, we have no genres or rules, song structure doesn’t exist. “It was just a big fuck you to all music that had come before,” says Place. The band drew on the no wave spirit and welded funk, punk, dub and jazz into punchy dancefloor numbers that were as freakish as they were catchy. The lack of formal training, paired with the cheap rent and flurrying creativity in the city, forged innovation. “We were basically just art students picking up instruments. “We had no idea what we were doing,” she says. Place had been playing with the Contortions since 1978 but, other than Pop, none of the group were trained musicians. ![]() Sley was making outfits for Lydia Lunch when she was approached to replace Bertei on vocals. “We kinda had free rein of downtown,” says Place. The Lower East Side was packed full of artists, directors and dancers, and venues including CBGBs and the Mudd Club were in their heyday. The band, originally made up of Place, Pop, Laura Kennedy and Adele Bertei, met in New York during the height of no wave. But the new lineup, which features Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums and Cáit “Rocky” O’Riordan of the Pogues on bass, makes sense to them. “We didn’t even know if it was gonna be possible to replace him and keep it going as Bush Tetras,” says Place, who likens Pop to a brother. The band first reformed in 1995 and after numerous rotations of the rhythm section since, Bush Tetras have just marked their return with They Live in My Head, the first full-length recorded since the 1990s, and the first release without their original drummer Dee Pop, who died in 2021. “But I never thought it would really go anywhere.” Within months though, the group went from performing in front of 40 people to filling rowdy 1,000-cap venues, and that first single – its discordant groove and steely attitude bolstered by Cynthia Sley’s indifferent speak-sing delivery – even reached the Billboard club charts. “Downtown New York was a little rough, so the lyrics were definitely something people would relate to,” Place explains. Fed up with passersby harassing her or firing unsolicited comments about her outlandish appearance while selling tickets, she jotted down the refrain in a matter of minutes: “I just don’t wanna go out in the streets no more…” The resultant track released later that year became a “downtown anthem”, she says, and shuttled her band Bush Tetras toward cult acclaim in the city. In 1980, Pat Place was working in the box office of a cinema on New York’s Bleecker Street when she wrote the lyrics to Too Many Creeps – soon one of the funkiest numbers from the whole post-punk movement – amid a spell of procrastination. ![]()
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