LYDIA LUNCH & EXENE CERVENKA: FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

Lunch and Cervenka spiraled their dueling monologues into a cyclone of apocalyptic wrath, lamenting everything from sexism, rape, poverty, war, AIDS, "ecological genocide," and industry's Third World "Labor Camp" to the unpunished hubris of O.J., the religious right, and that evil succubus, Courtney Love. Righteous, indignant, and gloriously bitchy, they laid a ponderous chunk of blame on men -- though their fury cut a wide swath, hounding both genders. Women, they charged, must seize power by force: "Do you really think you're going to kick a hole in the glass ceiling with glass slippers?" Ranting like self-appointed twin Cassandras, they warned that the American Dream is an illusion at best. "In the scheme of things," Cervenka wailed, "we're all managed livestock, with everything sized into ownable chunks." Fixing the crowd with her icy blue stare, Lunch echoed in florid hyperbole. "Civilization is teetering on the brink of collapse!" (Are those the temples of Troy I smell burning?)

"Spoken word" is big news these days, but Lunch and Cervenka are hardly opportunistic neophytes. They cut their teeth in the early punk-rock/poetry scenes of New York and LA. Their collaboration dates back to Adulterers Anonymous, collected writings they published with Grove Press in 1982. Spoken-word invective also animates such late-'80s Lunch solo recordings such as Oral Fixation, The Uncensored Lydia Lunch, and Conspiracy of Women. Last week's performance owed as much to disciplined writing as to the artists' call-and-response delivery, which was free of distracting, explanatory banter. The material made frequent nods to a roguish clan of literary mentors, including Sade, Rimbaud, Sartre ("Hell is other people") and Yeats (Cervenka's quip that "slouching has nothing to do with Bethlehem"). Its verbal resonance stemmed from its wit, tough dialectic, and metaphor -- not from reliance on facile rhymes.

These pieces aren't song lyrics minus the music; they're composed for the unaccompanied, speaking voice. They amount to definitive spoken-word "rants" -- rhetorically akin to old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone preaching. (Lunch and Cervenka barely referred to the texts on their lecterns.) If ever two artists have a "message," theirs comes through loud and clear: "We start with sex and end with Armageddon . . . taxes to taxes, and dust to dust." They make no apologies and offer no solutions, their words morph into a cathartic, two-headed Hydra churning their psychic distress into raw, kinetic energy. Although I disliked the free-floating "they-noia" that tainted their perspective, assigning omnipotent, malicious conspiracies to every nook and cranny of society, the crowd's incessant chorus of "You go, girl!" told me I was outnumbered. Anyway, these two women make it clear they're impervious to criticism: as Lunch asserts in one especially virulent piece, if you don't like what they're doing, you can "get your own fuckin' gig!"

-- Catherine A. Salmons