[Screaming Skull]

https://pitchfork.com/news/james-chance-dies-at-70/

[The Soup Nazi]

Goddammit.

[The Soup Nazi]

ETA: I screwed up the copypasting of the interview. Will fix it ASAP...


From New York Rocker, January 1979. Hysterical. In case you didn't follow JC through the years, I can tell you the guy eventually... "grew up". A bit. Nowadays nobody would get away with this shit, though. You've been warned.

1/4

Q: Why Interview James Chance? A: Because He's There

Roy Trakin (Who Really Wants to Know) Talks to James Chance (Who Isn't Telling)


The Introduction

THE FIRST cut on No New York is the Contortions' 'Dish It Out', and that it does, leaping out at you like a snake shedding its skin. The twisted, snarling rhythms owe at least as much to Albert Ayler, James Brown and Duke Ellington as they do to rock 'n' roll, and a quick glance at the James Chance record collection confirms this suspicion. Alongside Iggy, Nico, the Sonics and the Strangeloves, sit Voodoo Trance Music, Bohannon and Kool and the Gang.

When James Chance (nee Sigfried) first came to New York about two years ago, he gravitated to the nascent Soho loft scene, where avant-garde jazz was experiencing a rebirth of activity. Musicians who remember him from that time claim his saxophone playing sounded as if he had just picked up the instrument, though his assortment of squeaks and noises was uncannily effective. He subsequently joined Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, layering his patented, maniacal sax parts over the primal Lunch sturm und drang. Chance's frequent forays into the audience were too much for Ms. Lunch to bear, though, and James left to front the Contortions, featuring ace guitarists Pat Place and Jody Harris and the unique keyboard stylings of Adele Bertei. The result was a mixture of free-form jazz and punk rock, the swirling, intense, anarchic beat somehow managing to come together and form a murky, dangerous undertow that sucked in the listener. Chance himself continued to goad the audience with his outrageous behavior, and the whole spectacle was very entertaining.

The Contortions' personnel has undergone a series of shifts lately, with Adele leaving to form her own girl group. As for James, he is currently involved with a disco project for ZE records (formerly Rebel), and has recorded four songs under the nom de plume of James White and the Blacks. Two Contortions' tunes, 'Contort Yourself' and 'Almost Black', have been given disco treatments, while two hilarious originals, 'Stained Sheets' and 'Heatwave', are also in the can.

'Stained Sheets' is a new wave version of Donna Summer's seminal disco hit, 'Love to Love You', featuring Lydia Lunch as an obscene telephone caller, breathing heavily over a relentless beat. 'Almost Black' features the distinctive guitar work of the Voidoids' Bob Quine and the never-before-recorded vocals of Ms. Bertei. All told, the stuff I heard is wonderfully amusing and marvelously effective, a historic punk/disco fusion.

James Chance is certainly a talent, although my interview with him was not as informative as I would have liked. It is difficult to penetrate the Chance "no" facade of negativity and anti-intellectuality, just as it was with Lydia in my interview with her, but I still believe, if you read between the lines, you will get an accurate view of this young man. Rather, in typical blank fashion, what Mr. Chance doesn't say is much more revealing than what he ultimately does say.