Honeymoon In Red
Encyclopedia
Honeymoon In Red is a concept album
released in 1987 as a Lydia Lunch
album. Honeymoon In Red is sometimes referred to as a band or alternately as a collaboration between Lydia Lunch
and The Birthday Party
.
, No Wave
, sixties pop singer Jacques Brel
, American Underground, the use of a "varispeed" for atmospherics, a song by country pop
songwriter Lee Hazlewood
, dissonant piano
and guitar
and muscular bass guitar
and the darkly charismatic personas of Nick Cave
and Lydia Lunch
.
The album generally resembles the angular pop of The Birthday Party's Prayers On Fire
, although the song "Dead In The Head" recalls the strident guitar playing of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Unlike The Birthday Party, Honeymoon In Red emphasises vernacular
speech akin to 1970s American television and film, instead of emulating the Southern Gothic
literary genre. In a 1983 television interview, Lunch spoke of the experimental music as "religious music" that was "not rock".
"
movie poster, with cockfighting motifs. The liner notes from Lunch titled "THE TERRORTORY", comments on commercial and religious puritanical attitudes. It included an Annie Sprinkle
(Post-Porn Modernist) photograph of Lydia Lunch's body superimposed onto a rural roadmap, also a photograph by a Chris Stein of Lunch wearing a suicide-blonde wig and heavy make up, holding up a large pistol.
in June 1982, the tapes languished without a release. In 1987 Lunch readied the tapes for release on her own Widowspeak label, with added contributions by Thirlwell and Moore. Lunch had already fallen out with Cave and Harvey, and they insisted that their names not appear on the release, as they had no hand in the remix and overdubbing. Lunch subsequently used pseudonym
s for Cave and Harvey (including "A drunk cowboy junkie" and "Dick Strum", respectively) and obliquely criticized them in her liner notes as "tight asses" and "Sheep in wolf's clothing".
A 12" Single of "Done Dun" (a Cave/Lunch duet) was released on side B of the Lydia Lunch/Thurston Moore/Clint Ruin single "The Crumb", and referred to The Honeymoon In Red Orchestra.
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
released in 1987 as a Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
album. Honeymoon In Red is sometimes referred to as a band or alternately as a collaboration between Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
and The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
.
Music
It was musically eclectic, combining elements of BurlesqueBurlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
, No Wave
No Wave
No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...
, sixties pop singer Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...
, American Underground, the use of a "varispeed" for atmospherics, a song by country pop
Country pop
Country pop, with roots in both the countrypolitan sound and in soft rock, is a subgenre of country music that first emerged in the 1970s. Although the term first referred to country music songs and artists that crossed over to Top 40 radio, country pop acts are now more likely to cross over to...
songwriter Lee Hazlewood
Lee Hazlewood
Lee Hazlewood , born Barton Lee Hazlewood was an American country and pop singer, songwriter, and record producer, most widely known for his work with guitarist Duane Eddy during the late 1950s and singer Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s.Hazlewood had a distinctive baritone voice that added an ominous...
, dissonant piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
and muscular bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
and the darkly charismatic personas of Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
and Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
.
The album generally resembles the angular pop of The Birthday Party's Prayers On Fire
Prayers on Fire
Prayers on Fire, by Australian rock group The Birthday Party, was released in April 1981 on the 4AD label. This was the band's first full length release on an international record label . After leaving Australia to broaden horizons in England, the band returned to Melbourne to record this album...
, although the song "Dead In The Head" recalls the strident guitar playing of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Unlike The Birthday Party, Honeymoon In Red emphasises vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
speech akin to 1970s American television and film, instead of emulating the Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot...
literary genre. In a 1983 television interview, Lunch spoke of the experimental music as "religious music" that was "not rock".
1982 session
- Lydia LunchLydia LunchLydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
- vocals - Rowland S. HowardRowland S. HowardRowland Stuart Howard was an Australian rock musician, guitarist and songwriter, he played electric guitar in the post-punk group The Birthday Party. Howard died of liver cancer in December 2009, aged 50 years....
- guitar, vocals - Genevieve McGuckinGenevieve McGuckinGenevieve McGuckin is a musician and song-writer from Melbourne, Australia, she was a founder of These Immortal Souls and has collaborated with fellow founder Rowland S. Howard.-Biography:...
- piano, organ - Murray Mitchell - guitar
- Tracy PewTracy PewTracy Pew was an Australian musician, best known as the bass player for The Birthday Party.Born in Australia, Pew moved with his family to New Zealand in 1959, returning in May 1964...
- bass - Nick CaveNick CaveNicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
- vocals (credited only as "Her dead twin" and "A drunk cowboy junkie") - Mick HarveyMick HarveyMichael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...
- drums, piano (credited only as "Anonymous", "Scatman Cramden", "Howie Dewitt", "Dick Strum", "Ralf Bellow", "Spencer Turk", & "Frank Leer") - Steve Montgomery - mix
1987 remix session
- Thurston MooreThurston MooreThurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...
- guitar - J.G. Thirlwell AKA Clint Ruin - mix
- Martin BisiMartin bisiMartin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter.He is known for recording important records by Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn, Material, Bill Laswell, Helmet, Unsane, Cop Shoot Cop, White Zombie, Boredoms, Angels of Light and Herbie Hancock's Grammy-winning song Rockit,In 1979, Martin Bisi...
- mix
Bonus track
"Some Velvet MorningSome Velvet Morning
"Some Velvet Morning" is a psychedelic pop song written by Lee Hazlewood and originally recorded by Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra in late 1967. It first appeared on Sinatra's album Movin' with Nancy, the soundtrack to her 1967 television special of the same name. The song has been covered many times...
"
- Lydia Lunch - vocal
- Rowland S. Howard - vocal, guitar
- Genevieve McGuckin - piano
- Barry AdamsonBarry AdamsonBarry Adamson is a British rock musician who has worked with rock bands such as Magazine, Visage, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and the electronic musicians Pan sonic and Depeche Mode. Adamson created the seven-minute opus "Useless " remix for the latter band in 1997...
- bass - Mick Harvey - drums
- Peter Williams - engineer
Track listing
- "Come Fall" (Howard)
- "So Your Heart" (Lunch/Clint Ruin/Thurston MooreThurston MooreThurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...
) - "Dead River" (Lunch/Harvey)
- "Three Kings" (McGuckin)
- "Done Dun" (Lunch/Cave/Mitchell)
- "Still Burning" (Howard)
- "Fields of Fire" (Lunch/Howard)
- "Dead in the Head" (Lunch/Cave/Howard)
- "Some Velvet MorningSome Velvet Morning"Some Velvet Morning" is a psychedelic pop song written by Lee Hazlewood and originally recorded by Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra in late 1967. It first appeared on Sinatra's album Movin' with Nancy, the soundtrack to her 1967 television special of the same name. The song has been covered many times...
" (Lee Hazelwood) - CD bonus track
Album cover
The album's graphic design resembled a lurid 1950s Saul BassSaul Bass
Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....
movie poster, with cockfighting motifs. The liner notes from Lunch titled "THE TERRORTORY", comments on commercial and religious puritanical attitudes. It included an Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle
Annie M. Sprinkle is an American former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer...
(Post-Porn Modernist) photograph of Lydia Lunch's body superimposed onto a rural roadmap, also a photograph by a Chris Stein of Lunch wearing a suicide-blonde wig and heavy make up, holding up a large pistol.
Fallout and release
Mick Harvey has stated that the project was originally conceived as a new band; a collaboration between Lunch, Cave, Mitchell and Howard. After the initial recording sessions in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in June 1982, the tapes languished without a release. In 1987 Lunch readied the tapes for release on her own Widowspeak label, with added contributions by Thirlwell and Moore. Lunch had already fallen out with Cave and Harvey, and they insisted that their names not appear on the release, as they had no hand in the remix and overdubbing. Lunch subsequently used pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s for Cave and Harvey (including "A drunk cowboy junkie" and "Dick Strum", respectively) and obliquely criticized them in her liner notes as "tight asses" and "Sheep in wolf's clothing".
A 12" Single of "Done Dun" (a Cave/Lunch duet) was released on side B of the Lydia Lunch/Thurston Moore/Clint Ruin single "The Crumb", and referred to The Honeymoon In Red Orchestra.