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While The B-52's took these rhythms, smoothed off the edges, and built an entire career around them, Chance never truly received his just rewards, so perhaps these reissues will rekindle an examination of his far-reaching influence, particularly on the New Wave dance scene and artists such as the Bush Tetras (formed by Place), Liquid Liquid, Medium Medium, and Killing Joke, to name but a few. Of course, it's easy to hear why these albums didn't find much of an audience beyond the No Wave cultists upon their initial release. I can't imagine anyone outside a Ritalin junkie being able to match the manic moves of "Contort Yourself" (different versions of which appear on most of these reissues) or keep time to the seriously deranged jam of "Roving Eye." Like Buster Poindexter fronting The Flames or James Brown teaching The Voidoids how to dance, this nasty funkfest is your ticket into the Elaine Benes School of Dance as seen in that classic Seinfeld episode. "Sweet fancy Moses!" (Note: This reissue appends three contemporary live tracks.) Later that year, Chance (whose surname is Siegfried) rechristened himself White and delivered his disco album, Off White which reinforced the obvious James Brown influences careening throughout. Reining in some of the angular rhythms of the debut, the renamed Contortions deliver a more dance-oriented set, beginning with the discofied "Contort Yourself" (the reissue adds a nonsensical, hootin'-and-hollerin' "August Darnell Remix"). You can skip the embarrassingly dated phone sex of "Stained Sheets" (courtesy Lydia Lunch, then also of Teenage Jesus & The Jerks who also one counted Chance a member), as it'll annoy anyone with an IQ higher than Beavis & Butthead's, and head straight to the arrangement of Irving Berlin's "Tropical Heat Wave," which illustrates the major role Chance played in David JoHansen's creation of his Buster Poindexter persona. I also found my booty boogying to the manic panic attack and headache-inducing sax skronk of the jammin' "White Savages." The anti-title track "Off Black" illustrates the dynamic in effect here, as White and Co. succeed in making, perhaps, the first disco album that no one can dance to. If possible, it's even more unsettling than the debut and is ultimately an interesting but failed experiment in creating a noisy dance album. {Note: Three bonus live tracks, including Brown's "Exercise The Funk," Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"(!), and the lump-of-coal medley, "Christmas With Satan" that'll do The Residents proud (and includes everything from "Havah Negilah" to "White Christmas") round out the package. The live album was recorded before an enthusiastic Parisian audience on May 13, 1980 and illustrates that James may have been even more unbridled in front of an audience. The covers-heavy show features contorted versions of Brown's "I Got You" and "King Heroin." Suitably unrecognizable versions of Buy's "My Infatuation" and "Contort Yourself," and Off White's "Almost Black" rub shoulders with interminable renditions of "I Danced With A Zombie" and the James Brown covers that'll have you twisting the night away. Fans of everyone from V. Majestic to Spaceheads (whose drummer Richard Harrison mans the kit here as well as on most of Chance/White's live recordings from the period and who, along with his trumpet-playing partner, Andy Diagram formed the contemporary, similar sounding Dislocation Dance) will love tracing their heroes' historic roots as they boogaloo down the Champs Elysees. Just don't invite any of your Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears fans over to the party. On the last of our four reissues, 1983's Flaming Demonics, White assembled a completely new band of co-conspirators, including guitarists Jerry Antonius and Chris Cunningham and a "saxy" horn section of Robert Aaron (tenor), Luther Thomas (baritone), and Bruse Purse (trumpet) to create his most dissonant (some might claim unlistenable) collection yet. These half-dozen epic skronkfests (the shortest track, a flat, uninspired recitation of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," is still over 7 minutes long) find White treading the same noisy ground. The No Wave movement he helped found had by this time essentially disintegrated around him, and there was really nothing left to prove, so White set about proving it. His piano playing was more prominent, adding to a ragtime-y vibe epitomized by his cacophonous solo on opener, "The Devil Made Me Do It." And if "Rantin' And Ravin'" doesn't have you doing the same halfway through its unsettling 9 minutes, then your noise threshold may see you through to the end long after even the most patient listener has abandoned ship. At least the syncopated, Morse-code rhythms of White's organ blasts make the "Caravan"/"It Don't Mean A Thing"/"Melt Yourself Down" medley a tolerable listening experience, and it's still shocking that the seemingly racist, misogynistic "Natives Are Restless" hasn't been banned by the overzealous, self-appointed guardians of moral taste and turpitude. Perhaps they see some "humor" that's totally missed by me, but this only goes to my point about all these censorious outbursts being little more than marketing ploys. But that's an argument for another day. For serious(ly deranged) diehard fans only. (Note: Among the three bonus tracks is a cover of "Town Without Pity" which sounds surprisingly like Robert Gordon during his Tuff Darts phase. It's quite strange, and the best thing on this collection.) Overall, these reissues reveal a challenging body of work from an artist who attempted to embrace the jazz, funk, disco, New Wave, and punk communities, and who in the process managed to create something for everyone while potentially alienating those same audiences.
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