One night a few years ago, I was record shopping at this store called Rocks In Your Head, which used to be on Prince Street in SoHo. My friend Jessica brought me there for the first time after I met her at her place of work (an upscale spa with an A-list clientele) around the corner. There was a cute girl that used to work behind the counter, and she introduced me to bands like Orange Juice, Psychic Ills, and The Contortions. Although technically I don’t think my asking, “What is this we’re listening to?” counts as having her introduce me to a band. Anyway, the point is, I discovered The Contortions at that store, then went home and miraculously won an eBay auction for the album Buy with a top bid of $1.04. It’s by far the greatest deal I’ve ever found while using the online auction house, and probably one of the best “steals” in my record collection. Actually, finding a copy of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space for $14.99 is probably — dollar-for-dollar — the best deal I’ve ever found on a record. Nevertheless, The Contortions will forever be remembered as the greatest record I ever purchased for a dollar and change. Or, at least until the next “greatest record” steal comes along…
“The name No-Wave was taken from a Brian Eno compilation of punk-based avant-garde bands that were immersed in the CBGB punk scene. While David Byrne was adding abstract ideas to pop music with the Talking Heads, Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori (along with their band DNA) were going about it the other way around. By constructing music that threw out melody and harmony, they in effect abolished the very ideas that new wave bands were attempting to generate in the process of bringing melody and harmony to punk’s nihilistic tendencies. But what makes no wave important to jazz is its footnote in the history of modern free and avant garde jazz. This freeform offering saw the rise of Lindsay and DNA, John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, Sonic Youth, Derek Bailey, John Zorn’s short-lived but hugely influential Locus Solus, and underground pop innovator Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos, whose first record featured Zorn, Lindsay, Bill Laswell and Fred Firth.
It is the originality of Buy — or Buy the Contortions — that makes this record a compelling find for fans of progressive free and avant-garde jazz.
The tracks have a popping groove that acid jazz would later copy, but it’s fronted by rash squeals and James Chance’s confrontational vocals. The most well known track of Chance’s arsenal is “Contort Yourself”, which along with “I Don’t Want to Be Happy” The Contortions lay down a funk/disco based groove with a four on the floor beat, askew organ riffs and an open tuned (all in the note of E minor it seems) slide guitar back the Ayleresque atonal rants. Through the anger and aggression Chance made a solid record that had a sound like nothing before or since. The man who would best represent, reconstruct, and deconstruct the ideas on this record is John Zorn. Though Laswell, Sharrock, Jackson and Brotzmann would come close to this sound with Last Exit, only Zorn would make more complex, trivial, and noisier records that branched into a variety of compositional ideas a million light years ahead of anyone else’s. Buy is still a great disc that sounds as original and cutting edge as when it was released. In the new millennium jazz has been stretched and twisted into a variety sounds and ideas. Though many will question the role of jazz on this record, Chance as a player is completely steeped in the tradition. During its evolution, many avenues of jazz moved along sideways and/or trivial paths, but James Chance and The Contortions took the genre toward an interesting frontier that many players are still exploring and experimenting with.” – All About Jazz
The Contortions
Buy
MediaFire Download Link
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Tracklist:
01. Design To Kill
02. My Infatuation
03. I Don’t Want To Be Happy
04. Anesthetic
05. Contort Yourself
06. Throw Me Away
07. Roving Eye
08. Twice Removed
09. Bedroom Athlete
10. Throw Me Away [Live]
11. Twice Removed [Live]
12. Jailhouse Rock [Live]
