James Chance and Judy Taylor at their house in New York, 2011 Her premature death robbed us of one of our most brilliant minds. I was friends with James and his genius girlfriend/manager/muse, Anya Phillips, who was one of the prime-movers and theorists of the scene. By the time he appeared in my film, Downtown 81, he was leading an all-black Blacks, as hot as any funk band in the world. But the fractured, almost satirical disco of “Contort Yourself” was a brilliant move. Then, to the horror of punks everywhere, he restyled himself as James White to front James White and The Blacks. But just when they were achieving international fame, he split up this original No Wave band, shifted gears, and went disco. So he took jazz back to the dance floor - and he did it with humor as black as its musical roots. James started out with the punkiest funk band ever, The Contortions. James knew what Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington knew: that jazz is supposed to connect the head to the crotch. Audiences just sat there nodding their heads. As a performer he combined the ideas of Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty - whether he’d read about it or not - with Rat Pack cool and the hoodoo spirit of jazz.Īt the time jazz had become listeners’ music.
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He was a white devil who took the juju of free jazz, put fire ants in its pants, and forced it to dance. He brought New Wave into No Wave, then took it beyond into unknown territory. James Brown called it “Doing it to Death.” And that’s what Chance has done, uncompromisingly, for three decades. But he is interested in amusing himself and he has high standards. James Chance is not particularly interested in commercial success.
When I first saw James perform I thought he was going to be bigger than Mick Jagger. James is still doing his thing, working with a French band and doing DJ gigs.
It was syncopated and aggravated, angry but chilled, and an all-out assault on convention and stupidity. James sped up funk like the Ramones sped up three-chord rock and roll. Our friend Debbie Harry once said, “Punk is a time signature.” And at the end of the 1970s, funk, as practiced by James Brown, Bootsy Collins, and George Clinton, was the most revolutionary and relevant musical form. When punk rock was jolting the world, James put the best parts of it into funk. James Chance, aka James White, nee James Siegfried, is one artist who never disappointed me.