Teenage Jesus and the Jerks began to formulate their visionary brand of aural catharsis sometime during the first half of 1977, amidst the sordid ruins of a then fully down-and-out Lower Manhattan. The mastermind behind this juggernaut of sonic libertinage was a barely pubescent but world-weary runaway who called herself Lydia Lunch. Influenced strongly by the Marquis de Sade and Henry Miller, Lunch shrewdly decided to graft the existential horror of her own writing onto harsh, atonal music after being exposed to the room-clearing live output of other contemporary rock-music deconstructionists like Suicide and Mars. With an agenda of conjuring nightmarish intensity in lieu of technical instrumental ability, Teenage Jesus instantly made the supposedly 'nihilistic' and 'raw' current wave of so-called Punk acts sound like slick, good-timey pop music by comparison. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, transliterated into a blatant mockery of the increasingly tired, basic rock-band format.