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No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene
An intimate insider's account of New York's most radical cultural revolution and the women who obliterated every barrier in their path
In 1975 a young lesbian singer from Cleveland meets Nan Goldin and joins her in New York's bombed-out downtown, where something unprecedented is brewing. At Max's Kansas City and CBGBs, in derelict lofts and underground clubs, a generation of visionary women artists is rewriting the rules of creativity, sexuality, and power.
Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion—she ignited it. As acetone organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she was at the epicenter when punk collided with post-punk, when Lydia Lunch screamed her first songs, when Kathy Acker was penning her transgressive novels, when Kathryn Bigelow was making her first films.
No New York reveals the untold story of the boundary-pushing women who made No Wave possible: Nan Goldin capturing flash-lit portraits of gender fluidity, Barbara Kruger deconstructing media, Kiki Smith exploring the body's mysteries, Lizzie Borden challenging cinema itself. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists created something fluid, fierce, and transgressive.
Raw and gripping, No New York takes readers deep into the artistic and sexual experimentation of an era when everyone read Jean Genet, quoted Antonin Artaud, and believed true expression mattered more than money or fame.
Includes 55 rarely seen images of iconic musicians and artists that capture the look and feel of the era. Images are from Bertei's personal collection as well as well-known artists and photographers like Nan Goldin, Richard Prince, Vivienne Dick, Michael Granros, Marcia Resnick, and Julia Gorton.
In 1975 a young lesbian singer from Cleveland meets Nan Goldin and joins her in New York's bombed-out downtown, where something unprecedented is brewing. At Max's Kansas City and CBGBs, in derelict lofts and underground clubs, a generation of visionary women artists is rewriting the rules of creativity, sexuality, and power.
Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion—she ignited it. As acetone organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she was at the epicenter when punk collided with post-punk, when Lydia Lunch screamed her first songs, when Kathy Acker was penning her transgressive novels, when Kathryn Bigelow was making her first films.
No New York reveals the untold story of the boundary-pushing women who made No Wave possible: Nan Goldin capturing flash-lit portraits of gender fluidity, Barbara Kruger deconstructing media, Kiki Smith exploring the body's mysteries, Lizzie Borden challenging cinema itself. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists created something fluid, fierce, and transgressive.
Raw and gripping, No New York takes readers deep into the artistic and sexual experimentation of an era when everyone read Jean Genet, quoted Antonin Artaud, and believed true expression mattered more than money or fame.
Includes 55 rarely seen images of iconic musicians and artists that capture the look and feel of the era. Images are from Bertei's personal collection as well as well-known artists and photographers like Nan Goldin, Richard Prince, Vivienne Dick, Michael Granros, Marcia Resnick, and Julia Gorton.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published March 31, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 25, 2026
An insightful adventure in the world of “No New York,” where danger is always around the corner. A really enjoyable read.
April 24, 2026
The book overall felt disjointed and without purpose. Though her stories and anecdotes were insightful and fun.
April 30, 2026
Adele Bertei boards a Greyhound from Cleveland in July 1977 carrying a burlap-wrapped Fender Duo-Sonic, two thrift-store suits, a hundred dollars, and a shorn head. The ideal punk curriculum vitae for the world's most aggressive job application.
Her first stop in New York City is St. Patrick's Cathedral, where she lights candles for her two great teachers: Peter Laughner, the doomed Cleveland rock polymath who handed her the guitar, and Nan Goldin, the photographer who seduced her, shot her, and expanded her entire vocabulary of desire. Below St. Michael's foot, Lucifer winks.
The city outside is a borough of amphetamine junkies and broken umbrellas rushing into drains. Bertei, twenty-two years old, a self-taught butch who spent her adolescence in a Cleveland reformatory called Blossom Hill and her early adulthood drinking in gay bars with drag queens, is about to devour it. She is carrying, she tells us, centuries of bottled-up female rage and the genetic memory of Irish women with absent fathers and Italian men who lost fingers to the mob's cookie jar.
Downtown, Bertei enters the orbit of the Contortions, the all-aggression, all-function James Brown tribute band from hell fronted by James Chance, a man whose principal compositional tool is slapping audience members. The scene around them is a magnificent disaster of talent: Anya Phillips, the dominatrix-manager whose sex work funds the avant-garde; Lydia Lunch, teenage fury in a schoolgirl dress; Kathy Acker, ransacking the canon for sexed-up sacrilege; Nan Goldin photographing everyone into mythology; and Diego Cortez, the social fulcrum who connects everyone to everything including, eventually, Brian Eno.
Eno produces the No New York compilation after witnessing a Contortions set so violent that Village Voice critic Robert Christgau is forced to physically sit on James Chance to stop the carnage. Bowie, watching from nearby, later appears on the cover of Lodger dressed in a rumpled suit with limbs askew, which may be an homage or a hostage photograph.
After the Contortions Bertei forms the Bloods, an all-lesbian band that plays the First International Women's Rock Festival in Berlin, spray-paints THE BLOODS RULE on the Berlin Wall, nearly dies from Dutch heroin of lethal purity, and eventually plays an opening set for Van Morrison in a different key from each other.
Amsterdam provides a lesbian commune, a poker table with switchblades on it, and a houseboat on the Prinsengracht directly across the canal from Anne Frank's hiding place, where Bertei reads Hannah Arendt and Benjamin and begins to ask whether she has been reckless.
The Bloods dissolve, their twenty-year-old roadie Bobby Battery dies of an overdose, and Bertei wraps a tourniquet around her heart. What comes after, in the corporate music world, is a different and considerably more expensive kind of violence.
Adele Bertei grew up without a floor beneath her. A mother lost to schizophrenia, a stepfather who lost his decency to cruelty, and an adolescence in a Cleveland reformatory where she learned to be a butch daddy before she learned to play guitar. She survived all of it, moved to New York, made serious noise, and then wrote the book to prove it happened.
The women of No Wave were the scene, and every prior chronicle had treated them as decoration on someone else's monument. Bertei makes the case with her body, her diary, and her considerable fury that women like Anya Phillips, Lydia Lunch, Kathy Acker, Nan Goldin, and Pat Place were generating the voltage while the men were getting the album credits.
Every creative industry still operates a quiet system of attribution drift, where women's contributions age into the margins while men's become mythology. Bertei's corrective arrives late and she is aware of it. This gives the book the charge, the irritation of the betrayed who watched history get written wrong and waited long enough to be absolutely certain of the facts.
The memoir is exhilarating and self-serving in equal measure, but that is what a good memoir ought to be.
❤️ 🇮🇱
Her first stop in New York City is St. Patrick's Cathedral, where she lights candles for her two great teachers: Peter Laughner, the doomed Cleveland rock polymath who handed her the guitar, and Nan Goldin, the photographer who seduced her, shot her, and expanded her entire vocabulary of desire. Below St. Michael's foot, Lucifer winks.
The city outside is a borough of amphetamine junkies and broken umbrellas rushing into drains. Bertei, twenty-two years old, a self-taught butch who spent her adolescence in a Cleveland reformatory called Blossom Hill and her early adulthood drinking in gay bars with drag queens, is about to devour it. She is carrying, she tells us, centuries of bottled-up female rage and the genetic memory of Irish women with absent fathers and Italian men who lost fingers to the mob's cookie jar.
Downtown, Bertei enters the orbit of the Contortions, the all-aggression, all-function James Brown tribute band from hell fronted by James Chance, a man whose principal compositional tool is slapping audience members. The scene around them is a magnificent disaster of talent: Anya Phillips, the dominatrix-manager whose sex work funds the avant-garde; Lydia Lunch, teenage fury in a schoolgirl dress; Kathy Acker, ransacking the canon for sexed-up sacrilege; Nan Goldin photographing everyone into mythology; and Diego Cortez, the social fulcrum who connects everyone to everything including, eventually, Brian Eno.
Eno produces the No New York compilation after witnessing a Contortions set so violent that Village Voice critic Robert Christgau is forced to physically sit on James Chance to stop the carnage. Bowie, watching from nearby, later appears on the cover of Lodger dressed in a rumpled suit with limbs askew, which may be an homage or a hostage photograph.
After the Contortions Bertei forms the Bloods, an all-lesbian band that plays the First International Women's Rock Festival in Berlin, spray-paints THE BLOODS RULE on the Berlin Wall, nearly dies from Dutch heroin of lethal purity, and eventually plays an opening set for Van Morrison in a different key from each other.
Amsterdam provides a lesbian commune, a poker table with switchblades on it, and a houseboat on the Prinsengracht directly across the canal from Anne Frank's hiding place, where Bertei reads Hannah Arendt and Benjamin and begins to ask whether she has been reckless.
The Bloods dissolve, their twenty-year-old roadie Bobby Battery dies of an overdose, and Bertei wraps a tourniquet around her heart. What comes after, in the corporate music world, is a different and considerably more expensive kind of violence.
Adele Bertei grew up without a floor beneath her. A mother lost to schizophrenia, a stepfather who lost his decency to cruelty, and an adolescence in a Cleveland reformatory where she learned to be a butch daddy before she learned to play guitar. She survived all of it, moved to New York, made serious noise, and then wrote the book to prove it happened.
The women of No Wave were the scene, and every prior chronicle had treated them as decoration on someone else's monument. Bertei makes the case with her body, her diary, and her considerable fury that women like Anya Phillips, Lydia Lunch, Kathy Acker, Nan Goldin, and Pat Place were generating the voltage while the men were getting the album credits.
Every creative industry still operates a quiet system of attribution drift, where women's contributions age into the margins while men's become mythology. Bertei's corrective arrives late and she is aware of it. This gives the book the charge, the irritation of the betrayed who watched history get written wrong and waited long enough to be absolutely certain of the facts.
The memoir is exhilarating and self-serving in equal measure, but that is what a good memoir ought to be.
❤️ 🇮🇱
April 15, 2026
3.5 stars. The end was too disjointed for a full 4.
April 18, 2026
I wish there was more about the No Wave movement and less about her personal life.
May 18, 2026
This memoir, a collection of anecdotes about the late seventies and early eighties in New York, is flush with nostalgia for the wide eyed enthusiasm that comes with being young artists. Adele’s crowd is much more appealing to me these days than the debauched cool of the punk crowd as it tended to be more cerebral, less macho, more inclusive, and more interested in art and dancing. This isn’t the end all be all story of no wave, or even early 80’s NYC, but it IS a fascinating perspective, and I particularly loved it’s focus on the importance of women in this particular scene. If you’re familiar with this crowd and the players, this is an easy and enjoyable read.
August 13, 2026
När skivan No New York kom splittrade den punkarna, de som tyckte den var bra eller i alla fall intressant gick vidare mot postpunk och artrock medan de som avfärdade den som oljud fortsatte lyssna på Sham 69.
Adele Bertei som var med The Contortions har nyligen kommit ut med boken just med titeln No New York, den har jag precis läst.
Hon var även med och satte tillsammans med producenten Brian Eno ihop samlingsskivan med samma namn.
Den scenen var ju ganska kortlivad men ändå ganska viktig för den dansscen som växte upp på nedre Manhattan i skarven av 70 & 80-talet.
Artrock scenen som Glenn Branca, Swans och Sonic Youth har såklart lyssnat på Lydia Lunch och tagit det vidare. Visserligen är boken om Adele Bertei liv men jag tycker bitarna om No Wave scenen är väl korta och i många stycken är det mest hennes missbruk och halvlyckade band som ältas. Visst kul att få reda på en massa som jag såklart inte visste , som deras hårdsatsande lesbiska rockband the Bloods, som givetvis föll isär,
Men i sista kapitlen blir det spännande igen då hon ska göra solokarriär, producerad av Thomas Dolby, i hård konkurrens med Madonna. Deras första singlar kom ut samtidigt och Adeles går bra. Roligt är att ingen av tjejerna får vara på omslaget för de ska inte synas att de är vita.
Med facit i hand så vet vi hur det gick men hon blev en anlitad körsångerska och låtskrivare.
Det var Trevlig läsning men jag hade nog förväntat mig lite mer
Adele Bertei som var med The Contortions har nyligen kommit ut med boken just med titeln No New York, den har jag precis läst.
Hon var även med och satte tillsammans med producenten Brian Eno ihop samlingsskivan med samma namn.
Den scenen var ju ganska kortlivad men ändå ganska viktig för den dansscen som växte upp på nedre Manhattan i skarven av 70 & 80-talet.
Artrock scenen som Glenn Branca, Swans och Sonic Youth har såklart lyssnat på Lydia Lunch och tagit det vidare. Visserligen är boken om Adele Bertei liv men jag tycker bitarna om No Wave scenen är väl korta och i många stycken är det mest hennes missbruk och halvlyckade band som ältas. Visst kul att få reda på en massa som jag såklart inte visste , som deras hårdsatsande lesbiska rockband the Bloods, som givetvis föll isär,
Men i sista kapitlen blir det spännande igen då hon ska göra solokarriär, producerad av Thomas Dolby, i hård konkurrens med Madonna. Deras första singlar kom ut samtidigt och Adeles går bra. Roligt är att ingen av tjejerna får vara på omslaget för de ska inte synas att de är vita.
Med facit i hand så vet vi hur det gick men hon blev en anlitad körsångerska och låtskrivare.
Det var Trevlig läsning men jag hade nog förväntat mig lite mer
April 21, 2026
The late 70s and early 80s were the time that this sort of music played a significant role in my life. It’s was more British than American, but still I found this of great interest.
July 17, 2026
3.75/5
paints a very personal but vivid picture of the no wave scene
an array of references worth checking out, some more obvious, some more obscure
however, very much dripping with nostalgia
paints a very personal but vivid picture of the no wave scene
an array of references worth checking out, some more obvious, some more obscure
however, very much dripping with nostalgia
August 19, 2026
...it was a different time, or was it?
May 27, 2026
Thank you Beacon Press for the gifted copy of No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene by Adele Bertei.
This book feels sweaty, chaotic, artistic, and a little dangerous in the way only 1970s and 80s New York stories can. It’s less a clean history lesson and more like being dropped directly into somebody’s memories while they’re flipping through old photos at 2 a.m.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What I loved most was the focus on the women behind the No Wave scene. So much music history gets filtered through the same male-centered stories over and over, and this felt different. Messier, more personal, more intimate. You really get the sense of artists creating things because they needed to, not because they were trying to become famous.
The atmosphere was probably my favorite part overall. The rundown clubs, the underground art scene, the weird experimental energy of downtown New York, it all felt vivid and alive. You can tell Bertei actually lived this, which gives the memoir this raw authenticity that makes even the smaller anecdotes interesting.
That said, it definitely reads more like a collection of memories than a tightly structured narrative. Sometimes it drifts, and if you’re hoping for a super focused deep-dive specifically into No Wave history, you might end up wanting more.
What I Loved
• The focus on women artists within the No Wave movement
• The gritty, immersive downtown NYC atmosphere
• The personal stories and insider perspective
• The mix of music, art, sexuality, and creative rebellion
• The nostalgic feeling of artists creating without caring about commercial success
What Didn’t Work for Me
• The structure can feel disjointed at times
• Some sections focus more on personal anecdotes than the movement itself
• It occasionally feels more reflective than cohesive
• Probably works best if you already have some interest in the scene or people involved
Overall, this felt like a fascinating snapshot of a very specific artistic moment and the women who helped shape it. It’s messy in places, but honestly that kind of fits the spirit of the story itself.
This book feels sweaty, chaotic, artistic, and a little dangerous in the way only 1970s and 80s New York stories can. It’s less a clean history lesson and more like being dropped directly into somebody’s memories while they’re flipping through old photos at 2 a.m.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What I loved most was the focus on the women behind the No Wave scene. So much music history gets filtered through the same male-centered stories over and over, and this felt different. Messier, more personal, more intimate. You really get the sense of artists creating things because they needed to, not because they were trying to become famous.
The atmosphere was probably my favorite part overall. The rundown clubs, the underground art scene, the weird experimental energy of downtown New York, it all felt vivid and alive. You can tell Bertei actually lived this, which gives the memoir this raw authenticity that makes even the smaller anecdotes interesting.
That said, it definitely reads more like a collection of memories than a tightly structured narrative. Sometimes it drifts, and if you’re hoping for a super focused deep-dive specifically into No Wave history, you might end up wanting more.
What I Loved
• The focus on women artists within the No Wave movement
• The gritty, immersive downtown NYC atmosphere
• The personal stories and insider perspective
• The mix of music, art, sexuality, and creative rebellion
• The nostalgic feeling of artists creating without caring about commercial success
What Didn’t Work for Me
• The structure can feel disjointed at times
• Some sections focus more on personal anecdotes than the movement itself
• It occasionally feels more reflective than cohesive
• Probably works best if you already have some interest in the scene or people involved
Overall, this felt like a fascinating snapshot of a very specific artistic moment and the women who helped shape it. It’s messy in places, but honestly that kind of fits the spirit of the story itself.
May 28, 2026
Beautiful and haunting and redemptive
Adele Bertei’s “No New York” is a glorious plunge into the mythical (and corporeal) world of late 1970s/1980s downtown New York, the bursting art scene of which Adele was a huge part - a brilliant singer, a magnificent writer, with an open hungry soul that glitters and glides and falls and soars in its quest for knowledge, for love, for survival. Her trajectory is fascinating, and her heart is laid bare to see the bruises and the need and the beauty. Such gorgeous prose and poetry - Adele Bertei is a treasure, a true artist and seeker, and I feel so much richer for having read this stunning work.
Adele Bertei’s “No New York” is a glorious plunge into the mythical (and corporeal) world of late 1970s/1980s downtown New York, the bursting art scene of which Adele was a huge part - a brilliant singer, a magnificent writer, with an open hungry soul that glitters and glides and falls and soars in its quest for knowledge, for love, for survival. Her trajectory is fascinating, and her heart is laid bare to see the bruises and the need and the beauty. Such gorgeous prose and poetry - Adele Bertei is a treasure, a true artist and seeker, and I feel so much richer for having read this stunning work.
July 22, 2026
This book was sent to me by my friend Julia Gorton who was a Seminole part of this scene. I loved getting the background stories and histories of so many people that she photographed back then, good night thought the Memoir was captivating from the beginning to the end. New York in the late seventies seemed like such a wild and magical place, CD while also intriguing. The travels that happen throughout bertels memoir are fascinating, and so well written. I really enjoyed this book from the beginning to the end.
Read
August 17, 2026i struggled with this one… the whole time i read, i could not get that line abt how the east village scene was basically all white, not bc of racism, but bc ppl just hung out with different ppl… out of my head, especially as we ran through a litany of racist / nazi behavior…. i think we all know why the black ppl didnt want to hang out…. even when the book returned to the issue/tried to take on race, it all just felt so self indulgent with little real self reflection. the nova convention left me green with jealousy tho and some of the stories were interesting
April 1, 2026
I was more into punk, new wave and "college rock" than No Wave, but I had tangential knowledge of it and the music. This helped flesh that out and I'm grateful to learn more about it from this author, who sounds like an amazing thoughtful and talented person. I found this copy in a record store in Manchester last December. Didn't even realize it was an advance copy, but I'm happy to have gotten a sneak peak. Definitely worth picking up when it comes out in a month or two.
May 12, 2026
It's a bit random-access-memoir, like Abel Ferrara's SCENE, but with female punk rock energy and passion, well-written and acutely observed by Adele Bertei. Includes Contortions, Basquiat, Susan Seidelman, John Lurie, Lizzie Borden, John Cale, Slava Tsukerman and much, much more. Requires perhaps a rough knowledge of and interest in the art circles in NYC in late 70s and early 80s, but pure catnip for those. Enjoyed it greatly.
May 15, 2026
I think Adele Bertei is very cool and has had very cool life experiences and I also think she could have written a better memoir. I felt like the end quarter of the book was the most moving and cut off very abruptly. I found myself feeling throughout the memoir that she was describing a series of events more than bringing us with her through her experiences and letting us feel those feelings with her. I want to hear more about her internal experiences during this time and what happened after.
Read
August 2, 2026You can tell Adele Bertei is endlessly curious about all that is unknown to her - inclusive of the past, present, and future - drawn to dark discomfort, reveling in the revulsion. So unapologetically herself during a time that indoctrinated shame, grittily making her pioneering mark on the movement. And that’s how her sui generis rolodex of stories and art came to be. How special it is to sit in that mindset, inhabiting memories I wasn’t there to experience..of people I admire and aspire to be more like. I hope I carry that curious, courageous, community-oriented spirit with me, at least more so than I was before.
July 15, 2026
A vivid document of a time when Lydia Lunch and Madonna were just around the corner from each other, culturally and geographically. And though the lapsed Catholic author may not admit it (or would she?) it’s practically a conversion arc.
July 11, 2026
Excellent and inspiring to create.
August 12, 2026
i knew nothing of this world and it was a pleasure to learn
August 14, 2026
Been there, done that. Maybe its more interesting if you didn't live through it.
June 14, 2026
Hip, and I have low self esteem but this book is hip
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews