3 out of 5

Label: ZE

Producer: James Chance

So I’m not really cool enough to be familiar with the roots of the whole no-wave scene in New York, but after some digging, the names are familiar enough – James Chance, Lydia Lunch – as are my associations with it all being a little wonko/wankery due to seeing the types o’ chaps and chippas who’d pick it up when I was stocking racks at Tower Records.

Fast forward some years when I’m watching some videos of Skeleton Key’s Erik Sanko in preparation for seeing them live, and he mentions having gotten his bass from the guy who played for James Chance, and refers to Chancey’s music as classic New York oddball stuff.  I love Skeleton Key, and following influences / recommendations of our music loves is the original form of Pandora-style shopping, so off I went to investigate Chance.

Well – 1. Yes, I’m surprised as shit to hear this kind of angular stuff coming out of the 70s, and it casts a whole new light on a lot of groups who I thought whipped up their off-kilter noise out of post-rock Chicago stuff, when more than likely they’d listened to James Chance and his ilk.  And Sanko wasn’t just tossing out a reference – his bip bop slappy bass playing style is totally heard on ‘Buy’.  2. That being said, my wankery assumptions aren’t too far off.  Past the wow, I didn’t really feel like Chance spat out too many original songs – not in comparison to modern stuff, just on this one album.  After introducing the herky jerky horn and loosey-goosey guitar and funky bass, things get off to a head-nodding stomping start that totally would’ve had me heralding this as the new something or other if I had been dirty / non-stay-at-home-all-the-time / alive enough in ’79 to get out and spit on myself at Chance shows.  But by the third track the shtick starts to wear a bit thin, Chance’s half-spoken one-liners sort of (uh oh) reminding me of Atari Teenage Riot style lyrics where you choose a theme and then write ten or twelve lines about that theme and just shout them at random intervals.  For Chance, it’s about typical (of then, of now, of every anti scene) people are shit kinda stuff.  I’m not trying to smack this down too hard – the overall point doesn’t necessarily seem to be to get me to sit and ponder the depth of his words, but in part, it’s what every ‘movement’ has been about – just being different and new.  And so our classic herky-jerky track ‘Contort Yourself’ is a badass wiggly masterpiece of agitated elements.

‘Buy’ is a lot of fun.  It’s not too deep, but even by today’s standards it’s pretty out there, and totally feels like the baseline weirdness that tons of groups took and, sure, extrapolated into more accomplished sounds (which is why I’m rarely about claiming the original is the best… there should be growth, after all).  But you would’ve hated Chance, probably, and he would’ve hated you too, calling you a dumb fuck, true to that whole punk thing.  Time hasn’t really clarified how much of that stuff was shtick, but Chance has absolutely earned his place in music history.  And cast your Beefheart’s and Zappa’s aside – ‘Buy’s sound is pretty duffin’ quirky, and sounds legitimately inspired now as much as then.