Punk-funk legends Bush Tetras: ‘We had no rules. Song structure didn’t exist. It was nihilistic’
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. 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.
“Downtown New York was a little rough, so the lyrics were definitely something people would relate to,” Place explains. “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.
But they baffled a buttoned-up music industry: “The sound was pretty dark and for labels that wasn’t palatable,” says Sley. “Guys could do that but girls doing that was too unsellable. We were too androgynous. Is that a boy or a girl? They couldn’t tell.” By 1982, the band were burnt out and parted ways before they had even released a full album.
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. “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. 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.
The band, originally made up of Place, Pop, Laura Kennedy and Adele Bertei, met in New York during the height of no wave. The Lower East Side was packed full of artists, directors and dancers, and venues including CBGBs and the Mudd Club were in their heyday. “We kinda had free rein of downtown,” says Place. “We all knew each other. It was a community.”
Sley was making outfits for Lydia Lunch when she was approached to replace Bertei on vocals. Place had been playing with the Contortions since 1978
but, other than Pop, none of the group were trained musicians. “We had no idea what we were doing,” she says. “We were basically just art students picking up instruments. And then we happened to get lucky.”
The lack of formal training, paired with the cheap rent and flurrying creativity in the city, forged innovation. 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. “It was just a big fuck you to all music that had come before,” says Place. “It was like: OK, we have no genres or rules, song structure doesn’t exist. It’s a very dadaistic form of music, it’s very nihilistic.”
The band practised five days a week in a studio that doubled up as Sley’s living space. 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. “It was not glamorous,” Sley laughs, recalling mattresses piled around instruments and an ongoing gas leak. “When we found out about that, I was like: oh my God, there go the brain cells I’m desperately hanging on to!”
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. As a self-described “egalitarian band”, the songwriting process was collaborative and influenced by their respective art school backgrounds. “We were looking at the music visually,” Sley explains. “How we wove in and out of each other, creating space for things to breathe and move.”
While they made highly infectious music to let loose to, their output was also pointed and contrarian, with jabs at misogyny and conservative politics. 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. “There was a complete downhill spiral, the country was really suffering,” says Sley. “I don’t know how anybody could not be political.”
Their success was both quick and unexpected, something Sley and Place retrospectively attribute to fanzines, as well as their fiery presence. “We wrote five songs, played one gig and then boom, it just took off,” Sley recalls. “We were all looking at each other like: what the hell?” Across those years, they played live in New York at least once a week and toured across Europe, befriending and performing alongside adjacent post-punk bands like Gang of Four, the Slits and Au Pairs. Their shows were rowdy affairs with wild dancing into the early hours, thanks in part to the booming drug culture, Place says: “Everyone was loaded. New York was the Babylon of the time.”
Sley initially suffered from stage fright – something she jokingly says made her appear more bored than petrified – and archive gig footage shows the band facing one another rather than the audience. But this close onstage interaction made them better live performers and more appealing, says Sley. “There was so much chemistry in the band. People pick up on that.”
Despite their cult-like following, Bush Tetras also encountered sexism as a band with three women up front. Venue staff wouldn’t take them seriously at soundchecks and Sley recalls a newspaper write-up that focused only on their appearance. “I had worn a dress for the first time on stage and that’s all they wrote about,” says Sley. “That was depressing.”
The band also failed to secure support from major labels. “They didn’t know what to do with us because we were women and we were doing what we wanted to do,” says Place. “We might’ve seemed too much like wild horses.” With their DIY attitude, would they have even wanted to sign to a major label? “We wanted to support ourselves as musicians so that would have been the next step,” says Sley. “But we weren’t willing to mould ourselves to fit into anything.”
Doing things on their own terms, as well as excessive gigging and too much “monkey business”, meant the group found little time to write new materialand they disbanded. “We were kids and really bratty,” says Sley. “Even if a manager came to us, we’d be like: ‘We don’t wanna give him 15%!’ We didn’t really have any foresight.”
In the meantime, each member found other bands or creative pursuits to follow. Bush Tetras went on to reform with different lineups across the subsequent decades and the advent of grunge nurtured a fuller rock sound. Now in their 60s, their latest record continues on that trajectory with a storm of distortion, big riffs and speaksing vocals. But it also takes a look back, reflecting on the pandemic and the band’s early days, with tributes to the relationships cut short along the way, by Aids or growing apart. “We lost so many people,” says Sley. “Amid the joy of playing together and everything else, there was a lot of hardship, a lot of heartbreak.”
The foundations of the album were laid remotely during lockdown, when Sley and Place would record ideas into their phones and exchange them over Zoom, before tying them together in the studio last year with some input from Shelley. Despite the initial distance, the connectedness was still there. “I don’t know if that happens with other people, but it definitely happens with us,” Sley says.“It feels kinda magical.”
In the four decades since they formed, Sley and Place’s lives have changed considerably. New York has become “a different universe” with its ever-increasing rent and venue closures; meanwhile, they’ve replaced their raucous club excursions with gallery openings. But they hope their music will continue to resonate. “I’d like to think that we’re not just like dinosaurs lumbering around with our gear,” Sley says, laughing. While she considers the ongoing attention and the growth of a younger fanbase a pleasant surprise, she thinks the band’s longevity makes sense. “We’re just so connected. I always knew that we would know each other forever.”
• They Live in My Head by Bush Tetras is out now on Wharf Cat Records