Honestly, there’s really no way of discussing anyone from New York City’s original No Wave gang without lapsing laboriously into a viscous thicket of ponderously Christgauan rock-critic psychobabble. Before you know it, you’ll be brandishing words like “iconoclastic” and “skronk” and alienating whole swathes of your friends on social media by revealing yourself to be just the sort of insufferable music nerd that scrutinizes your purchases at record stores and asks you to name three songs when you dare to wear a band t-shirt. (Guilty as charged, your honor).
Suffice to say, No Wave proponents like the newly late James Chance (and Lydia Lunch and Arto Lyndsay and Glenn Branca, etc.) made bold, uncompromising music that made heretofore “iconoclastic” records by the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Ramones sound about as daring as The Partridge Family. To this day, albums like BUY by The Contortions, DNA on DNA by DNA and the hotly divisive No New York compilation (“produced” by Brian Eno) *STILL* sound jarringly, aggressively discordant, ugly and confrontational, .... whereas you’re now more than likely to hear Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols at your local Starbuck’s.
James Chance was an incredibly unique performer who harnessed the preternatural funk brilliance of James Brown and the unpredictably volatile pugnacity of the Stooges in one bugfuck-insane amalgam that was funky and scary and confusing and exhilarating. It was never easy listening and it’s assuredly not for everyone, but there was genuinely no one like him, and there never will be again.
So pour one out and contort yourself. A legend is dead.
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