Almost black: James Chance and The Contortions

James Brown's influence as the founding musical text for his band Contortions is pinpointed by James Chance to a single track: 1970's "Super Bad, Pts 1 and 2". 'What really got me into JB was the sax solos on that single - real out-there playing like you'd get on an Ayler or Sun Ra record'.

James Brown - Super Bad, Pts 1 and 2 - 1970

Rhythmically and lyrically, James Brown songs like "Sex Machine" and "I Got Ants in My Pants" pointed towards a racked ecstasy of painful pleasure that was almost dehumanizing. Picking up on these hints, Chance imagined funk as voodoo possession and cold-fever delirium - the perfect vehicle for exploring themes of addiction, sexual bondage and morbid ossession.

James Brown - Sex Machine 1970


James Brown - I Got Ants in My Pants 1972

For the disco album Off White, the members of Contortions were hired as session musicians and the project was credited to James White and The Blacks.

"Stained Sheets" resembles a sordid S&M twist on Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby": it's a phone-sex duet between Chance and Lydia Lunch, juxtaposing his blasé sneer with her orgasmic whimpers and non-verbal desperation.

James White and The Blacks (feat. Lydia Lunch) - Stained Sheets 1979


Donna Summer - Love to Love You Baby 1975

Off White and its sister album Buy probed the darker corners of sexuality. Buy's cover featured Terry Sellers, author of The Corrected Sadist, scantily clad in panties and a strange, deconstructed bra designed by Chance's lover/manager Anya Philips.

Inside "I Don't Want to Be Happy" confessed that Chance's 'idea of fun' was 'being whipped on the back of the thighs', while in "Bedroom Athlete" he yelps, 'I won't be your slave unless you will be mine'.

James Chance and The Contortions - I Don't Want to Be Happy 1979


James Chance and The Contortions - Bedroom Athlete 1979

Off White, meanwhile, verged on a musical essay about racial tourism, with the track "Almost Black" representing the most dubious homage to blackness as sociopathology/virile primitivism since Norman Mailer's 1957 essay 'The White Negro'. The track features a white girl and a black girl bitterly disputing the attributes and defects of 'James White': 'Well, he's almost black', 'That nigger's white ', 'Well he's got some moves', 'But they ain't right'.

James White and The Blacks - Almost Black 1979

Appearing on both Buy and Off White in different versions, the anthem "Contort Yourself" evoked a sort of jaded Dionysian frenzy, the joyless flailing of empty souls trying to evacuate even more of their consciousness: 'Take out all the garbage that's in your brain ... Why don't you try being stupid instead of smart?'

James Chance and The Contortions - Contort Yourself 1979


James White and The Blacks - Contort Yourself 1979