James Chance, born James Siegfried and sometimes also known as James White, died on June 18 2024 in New York. Chance was an enigmatic and sometimes brilliant musician; his passing was scarcely noted in the dance music scene other than scraping some text from Discogs with the usual curation of “devastated” tweets at the end. It’s a shabby and shitty way to acknowledge one of the most radically creative artists of the last generation. Chance was a pivotal figure in the late ’70s and early ’80s hot house environment of New York, an inspiration to wild-eyed musicians who dream of doing something different than what anyone in the audience or even on stage has ever heard before.
Chance fused funk and jazz together with what one chronicler called “punk rock aggression.” His musical influences were almost primitively revealed by the nature of his first two bands formed in his hometown of Milwaukee: the James Siegfried Quintet, which played jazz, and Death, which played covers of songs by the Stooges and the Velvet Underground.
Tracks like August DARNELL’s remix of ‘Contort Yourself’ embodied the concept later dubbed ‘disco not disco’ — music that smashed the boundaries between punk, pop & dance music.
Chance arrived in New York City in the mid-’70s, discovering that the grime and lurid crime stories masked an artistic swell that was ready to blow. James Chance wasn’t a product of that fabled eruption of punk, disco, no wave and hip hop at the end of the decade. He helped create it, and patched bits of it together in radical new ways that no one else thought possible, or even listenable. Tracks from his most famous band, James Chance and the Contortions, thrust jagged brass melodies into crank-induced punk rock rhythms. Chance’s live performances were often confrontational. He had been bored by jazz audiences that would stroll into venues, sit at dimly lit tables and remain seated during his set; he was outright hostile to an audience that would rather sit and watch than stand up and dance.
So were his encounters with the shady impresarios of New York City’s low-rent club scene. Richard Hell has described an encounter with Chance — “another crazy inspired musician of the period” — after the “mob proprietors of some New York disco” refused to pay him after a show:
Some of the best of Chance’s records were produced by August Darnell, better known as the namesake of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, who produced a huge number of records for no wave indie label Ze. Around the same time, Darnell would also co-write Machine’s disco classic “There But For The Grace Of God Go I.” Of particular note, Darnell would produce Chance’s 1979 Ze single “Contort Yourself.” Challenged by Michael Zilkha of Ze Records to “go disco,” Chance would name his new project James White and the Blacks, the album Off White and “Contort Yourself” was just about the only thing on it that even vaguely approached the kind of disco one might hear in 1979. It still wasn’t very close.
Darnell also produced a highly coveted remix of “Contort Yourself.” This remix would later appear on the third volume of the seminal ’00s compilation Disco Not Disco compiled by Bill Brewster and Quinton Scott. For many, Darnell’s remix of “Contort Yourself” embodied the whole concept of “disco not disco,” music that smashed the boundaries between punk, pop and dance music. Tim Lawrence, author of Love Saves The Day, likewise included it in the soundtrack for his book Life & Death On The New York Dance Floor as one of “a unique hybrid series of sounds” that fueled the scene — music somewhere between disco, house, pop and techno but which “never acquired a settled name.”
Darnell was not the last to tap into and harness the furious energy of Chance’s late ’70s recordings. When Chance was compiling Twist Your Soul: The Definitive Collection, a 2010 box set of his material, the label wanted something to put on vinyl as well. They reached out to DJ Spun. Having grown up as a punk rock kid “with an affection for anything weird and unusual,” as DJ Spun told me in a 2012 interview, he’d been a fan of James Chance since he was a teenager. The goal of the project was to “bridge the gap” between music made in the late ’70s and “the current dance punk sound,” he said.
Incorrigible, the 12″ released by Rong as part of the project, did that. Moreover — and this might be heresy — it made James Chance boogie even more than Kid Creole had. The mix from Liv Spencer and DJ Spun was a long-time favorite around here, introducing a spongy acid sound, motion-blurred background vocals and brought out what Sal Principato of Liquid Liquid once described as James Chance’s self-conscious punk rock imitation of James Brown.
There are multiple, serious compilations focusing on that late ’70s era in New York. There are several books and even a prestige TV show (Martin Scorsese’s doomed HBO series Vinyl) about that explosive moment when hip hop, punk and house — basically modern music — were born. Yet it all still feels undiscovered or inadequately documented. Maybe its because that history is still unwinding — nearly 50 years after the eruption, we’re still very much living between the aftershocks.
Photo: James White & The Contortions, 1981, Berlin: SO 36. Braunov, CC BY-SA 3.0
⚪️ TRACKS
James White & The Blacks
Contort Yourself (August Darnell Remix)
Ze Records, 1979
James Chance & The Contortions
Incorrigible
Rong Music, 2010
5 Mag Issue 215
Out August 2024
NEW FUTURISM: This was originally published in 5 Mag Issue #215 featuring Rick Wade on AI, art and the future of making music, Tilman, James Chance, Chicago house history, Cajmere and more. Become a member for $2/month and get every issue in your inbox right away!
