James Chance (1953 – 2024)

 

What pearl of wisdom, what prescient counsel, could possibly be more apropos of this moment than the ecstatic exhortation, “Contort yourself!”? As we meekly accept our sorting-hat reality, happy to enter whatever pen the algorithmic herding dogs designate, can we still cock a recalcitrant ear? Can we hear the distant voice compelling us to twist and wrench ourselves against the compliancy demanded of capital and “decent” democracy? It calls from the past and, as of this past Tuesday, from the great beyond, which is suddenly a little greater.

 

James Chance has wriggled out of his too-tight earthly container. He squeals now, amid the vibrations of the evermore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Chance, undated.
(Photographer unknown.)

 

With Lydia Lunch in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and with the Contortions, James Chance invented the sub- sub- genre known as “Skronk.” Rumor has it that the name came from the pen of rock scribe, Robert Christgau, who, for his troubles was tackled or body checked or pummeled by Chance at Artists Space in 1978. That’s what you get for trying to tell James Chance what he’s doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Christgau (black t-shirt) receiving a hip check
from James Chance (directly in front of Christgau),
Artists Space, NYC, 1978. (Photo: Julia Gorton.)

 

 

Late 70s New York needed Chance too. I suppose we always do, wherever, whenever. Contort yourself! Back then punk rock had painted itself into a White corner. Bands in the mold of the Sex Pistols had stripped rock down to a set of rudiments, eliding the stale aroma of Claptonian blues fealty and the temptations of the dance floor. Most of them were innocent of overt racial cleansing. But the overall effect was to cut off a nose to spite a face. (Never mind that the very fundaments to which the punks “returned” were set in place to begin with by Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Little Richard. History is irrational. Culture, quite fully mad.) So along comes Chance. (He knew what he was doing.) He busted a move, or two or three or four. Borrowing – with utter transparency – the transcendence of “the One” from James Brown, Chance stitched together funk and punk. He was an accomplished saxophonist (emphasis on the first “o” please.) His ear tilted toward the outer edges of his instrument: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton. Thus “The Twitch,” ostensibly a song promoting a style of dance – alá “The Twist,” “The Pony,” “The Watusi” – also descends / ascends into wild passages of atonal, barking sax and slide guitar. Note: “The Twist” this ain’t. Contort yourself! Chance had different, more desperate motivations. He recognized being alive as a temporary coffin, preceding the more permanent one. And he clawed and clamored against its confines like a cat in a well.

 

The Contortions who appear on the epochal No New York and on the debut LP, Buy, drew the blueprint. Pat Place and Jody Harris deliver assassinative dissonance and rhythm.  But later versions of the Contortions, and of James Black and the Whites, pursued the initial design with appropriately demonic devotion. Soul Exorcism Redux, on which “The Twitch” appears, is a live document of an audience being dragged, kicking and screaming, from their appointed lanes and out into the open air of true acceptance of their inevitable fate. You can feel the absurd atmosphere of punching the air for the mere pleasure of it. The air doesn’t stand a chance. Chance sucks it all into his lungs and expels it with futile fury through the bell of his horn and against the tissue of his cords. We’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Might as well dance the descent.

 

Solace is a con. As one of the slinky-funk tracks on Buy would have it “I Don’t Want to Be Happy.” Against a mechanical yet groovy bassline and piston-like hi-hat drive, Place slithers across the guitar strings and Chance flutters his signature sax skronks before he comes in with his declaration of impedence. “I said I like living a lie.” Shake your ass, your mind will follow, proclaimed George Clinton. He never said to where. Implciitly, James Chance provides the answer: nowhere, that's where. “I Don’t Want to Be Happy” goes out on the line, “I prefer the ridiculous to the sublime.” They should inscribe that on his tombstone. Or maybe just "Contort yourself!"