James Chance & Contortions Reunite!

More skronkin' No Wave than you can shake Lydia Lunch's tailfeather at!

By Fred Mills

James Chance has put legendary No Wave combo the Contortions back together for a  gig in New York this weekend. On Saturday, Aug. 30, at 6pm at the PS1 Warm Up in Long Island City (www.ps1.org/warmup) Chance, Robert Aaron, Jody Harris, Pat Place and Don Christensen will do their first NYC-area show in over a decade.

This comes on the heels of the one-off Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (of which Chance was a founding member) reunion at the Knitting Factory in June. It's set to time with the 30th Anniversary of the classic Brian Eno-produced No New York album documenting the NYC No Wave scene; sharp-eyed readers will recall that the LP marked the Contortions' first recorded appearance. The band plans to perform all its old "hits" (term used loosely) along with new material being worked up for a forthcoming album.

In a statement, James Chance said that he "would like to dedicate this performance to guitarist Jerry Agony who died on July 29th. Jerry performed with James White + Blacks and The Contortions from 1981 - 1997." 

Interestingly, there's been quite a groundswell of attention of late for the No Wave scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s: no less than three books have been published in the last year, and you can read about them at the BLURT links below.

No Wave (by Marc Masters) and New York Noise (by Stuart Baker and Paula Court)

No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley)

[Original Contortions photo credit: Kate Simon]