Stephen Mejias

Lydia Lunch's 1980 album Queen of Siam (ZE Records ZEA 33006, LP) is so impressive—both sonically and musically—that, while listening, you might just find yourself compelled to send an enthusiastic, breathless text message to one of your friends.

"Dude," you might write, "do you have Lydia Lunch's 'Queen of Siam' on vinyl? Ooh, it's great fun on the hi-fi!"

And, if all is right with the world, you just might receive an equally enthusiastic and breathless message in return.

"You have to be kidding! I am listening to it right now. No joke. WTF!"

And then you'll be all, like: "No fucking way! Ha! Whoa, should we play the lottery or start a record label or something?"

At least, that's what happened to me last night at around 8:49pm, with a Victory Hop Devil at my side and a grin on my face. The dude on the other end of the line was my musical sensei, Michael Lavorgna. Turns out, he had only acquired the album a couple of days earlier. Same for me! It was his fourth or fifth time spinning it. My first. I purchased this one at a stoop sale on Jersey Avenue. It was the same Jersey Avenue stoop sale that intrigues me all throughout the spring and summer months: A bunch of interesting-looking 20- and 30-something punk rockers in threadbare t-shirts and torn jeans, combat boots, purple hair, and tattoos, selling thirty thousand pairs of winter gloves, VHS tapes, straw hats, kitchen utensils, and vinyl records.

Dude sees me bent over on the sidewalk, flipping through the LPs. "There's lots more inside," he tells me. So I walk into the beautiful, old red-brick row house, through a street-level wrought iron side door, down a long corridor, into the cluttered kitchen where four or five crates of LPs are set out on a central table. The atmosphere inside is that of a youth hostel. Random people are walking in and out—from upstairs, from the back yard, from all directions—speaking in several different languages; French, Spanish, English—they all float about easily, seamlessly, as if there are no boundaries, no separations. "Wanna beer?" Someone pulls a Labatt from the fridge. "Nah, I'm good. Thanks." I'm flipping eagerly through all sorts of classic punk and new wave—Descendants, Minutemen, Black Flag, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Psychedelic Furs—when someone screams out, "Who fucking pissed on the toilet seat?!"

It's about then that I found Queen of Siam. It's Lydia Lunch's solo debut, and features Jack Ruby on bass, Douglas Bowne on drums, and Pat Irwin on sax, piano, and everything else. The Billy Ver Planck Orchestra (Jazz For Playboys, Jazz For Playgirls) shows up on four rambunctious B-side tracks. The album was engineered by Bob Blank at his Blank Tapes Studios, the birthplace of records as varied and successful as Eddie Palmieri's "Sun of Latin Music," Kid Creole's "Stool Pigeon," Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House," Ashford and Simpson's "Solid As A Rock," and the Beach Boys' horrendous "Kokomo."

Queen of Siam begins with "Mechanical Flattery." Bass and drums come plodding in—heavily, maniacally—like some drunken giant, while Pat Irwin's sax just traipses along and Lydia Lunch, in her strange and somehow boyish voice, chants:

Fingers move fingers
My wrists made of satin
Don't be afraid of what's gonna happen
Elbows to ankles my fists out of place
I turn around backwards and off slides my face

The old, controversial "Gloomy Sunday" (also known as the "Hungarian Suicide Song," and made famous by Billie Holiday) never sounded this disconsolate, or content to be disconsolate. It's all saxophone screech, moan, and sigh, sweeping brushes against snare, cheerless piano comping, and Lydia Lunch. "Tied and Twist" is a sick nursery rhyme sung in a torture chamber by a bunch of really demented children. Awesome!

You can turn the volume way up on this album and enjoy the sonic textures, the light and shade, the three-dimensional images—all without incurring any distortion or painful edginess. And turn it way up is exactly what you'll do when "Spooky" comes around. In 1957, Mike Sharpe's "Spooky" hit number 57 on the US pop charts. Lydia Lunch's soulful, funked-out version, complete with backing chorus, tambourine, and sax boogie, may have never had such luck, but it sounds wonderful on the hi-fi.

There is some impressively limber and present Spanish guitar in "Los Banditos." So many notes blossom and twirl from the right channel while trance-inducing riffs play out from the left and trilling sax accompanies the heavy drums and bass at the center of the stage. "Atomic Bongos" kicks off the B side, harder and faster than anything we've heard so far, all No Wave drive—deep bass kick, snare, hi-hat, and jagged guitar. "Knives in the Drain" is a sort of dark cabaret that ends in reverse guitar drone and slides right into "Blood of Tin," which is similar to Liz Phair's "Flower," with its deadpan delivery and provocative imagery, but is so much more dramatic and penetrating.

It's perhaps important, or maybe interesting, to note that my copy of this record is on extremely flimsy vinyl—I can play it like some sort of idiophone—but it is one of the best-sounding LPs in my collection. And one of the sexiest. And, by far, the most cosmic.