James Chance to CONTORT NO HalloWAVE Animal Train Happening!
by Jonathan
Calling all Bedroom Athletes and Roving Eyes!
Animal Train Happening wouldn’t miss out on throwing a Halloween party - particularly because we’re all about dressing up and creeping people out anyway. So the party is once again at Glasslands (of course) on Saturday, October 27 and, while, as always, we have the most distinguished guest DJs and performers on the planet (subterranean legends and current phenomenons like Brian DeGraw, Ghost Exits, Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye (R.I.P. beautiful), Puddin’ Tang, Ian Svenonius, Kid Congo Powers, etc.), we’ve been holding out a bit on announcing the surprises that we have in store this time as a little Trick or Treat. But, we are too excited to contain everything and thought we’d indulge you first with the identity of our celebrity DJ - Mr. James Chance himself! That’s right, THEE James Chance, the central figure in No Wave (check out these cool photos), also one of the most important forces in the establishment of the dance punk genre (he pre-dated Gang of Four and made them look like Air Supply), the leader of The Contortions and James White and the Blacks, whose songs I spin more than perhaps any other artist (do any of you know that you’ve gotten down to three seperate studio versions of “Contort Yourself”?. This massive skyscraper in the skyline of subcultural music history (look at his discography!) will be hauling his legendary collection of get-down tunes from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s - super rare deep cut soul, funk, r&b, and other kinetic rough delights. He’ll also be assisted by noneother than Ron Ward, the drummer for loads of seminal Boston punk bands, best known in NYC for fronting the downtown institution better known as Speedball Baby in the 1990s and currently a the singer for new underground supergroup Five Dollar Priest (ex-Swans, Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, etc.).
Mighty Robot’s Eric Z, Golden Triangle’s Vashti, and New York Night Train’s Mr. Jonathan Toubin will be throwing down spooky Halloween-themed platters all night long, The Marmaladies, Raul, and Micky are the gogo dancers, Secret Project Robot is still in charge of the mindblowing projections, and the fine artistes of Live With Animals gallery are in charge of the decor….
Contort yourself one time! Contort yourself two times! Contort yourself three times!…
Here’s a short bio of James Chance lifted from Trouser Press:
James Chance arrived in New York from his native Milwaukee in the mid ’70s, hauling his saxophone and his given surname, Sigfried. He soon hooked up with Lydia Lunch and her crew of downtown adolescent artists/mischief-makers, playing briefly in the seminal Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, but he left in 1977 to form his own band, The Contortions. Maybe more than anyone else in the so-called No Wave set, Chance was fascinated with black music of the era, and with The Contortions, sought to integrate the horn-spiked stop-on-a-dime rhythms of funk and the heady freedom of Ornette Coleman’s sax playing with the confrontational and political theatricality of punk. A tight rhythm section provided the band’s funky skeleton, while open-tuned slide guitar, lurching organ, squawking sax, and all manner of groans and yells gave The Contortions their wild dissonance. Even today, with numerous bands in the post-punk renaissance acknowledging their indebtedness to No Wave in general and Chance in particular, The Contortions’ blend of organized twitchiness and raw anarchy sounds remarkably unique. But like the scene to which they were so central, The Contortions burned out quickly, releasing only one album, Buy the Contortions, along with the four songs they contributed to Brian Eno’s legendary No New York comp. Chance soon resurfaced as James White (in honor of James Brown) with a new band called The Whites which actually featured almost the same personnel as The Contortions. Part parody, part homage, part smirking catastrophe in action, James White and the Blacks moved away from the punk that had defined their earlier incarnation, and towards a fusion of the soul, funk, and free jazz with disco that ranks as one of the weirdest musical hybrids of its era. But like all of Chance’s endeavors, The Blacks’ one album, Off White, called into question in all sorts of interesting ways the meaning of “black” music and “white” music and the ways racial identity is inscribed in artistic creations of any sort.
