No New York by Adele Bertei review – a vivid, vibrant musical coming of age

1970s and 80s New York are viscerally evoked in this potent memoir of the ‘no wave’ scene

You won’t necessarily have heard of Adele Bertei: she was a member of experimental jazz-punk band the Contortions from 1977 and recorded the pop-house single Build Me a Bridge. But her memoir is an essential slice of New York’s bohemian pizza pie, and works in part because she is a relative unknown, not weighed down by her own cultural baggage.

Following a troubled, itinerant upbringing, she arrives in Manhattan in 1977 to find a city on its knees. The big apple was in the red, both literally (fires were a regular occurrence) and monetarily (there was a municipal debt crisis). But pre-Aids and post-Warhol’s avant garde grip, it was also a place that was creatively open.