Tuesday, 19 January 2016

The Drones - To Think That I Once Loved You


Kanye West ft. Kendrick Lamar - No More Parties in L.A.


Monday, 18 January 2016

J.G. Ballard - 'Super-Cannes' Book Reading (Blackwell's London 14/9/2000)


David Bowie in Bournemouth (1973)


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David Bowie Criticizes MTV for Not Playing Videos by Black Artists


...and remember Dr Dre would have been seventeen in eighty three!

Sunday, 17 January 2016

Saturday, 16 January 2016

Every Recording of Gymnopedie 1

Timestretched to the length of the longest recording

Friday, 15 January 2016

Giorgio Gomelsky: Recording the Yardbirds

James Chance & The Contortions - Live @Max's Kansas City (1978)


James Chance, Jody Harris, Pat Place, George Scott, and Don Christenson
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Contort Yourself @Max's Kansas City 1980
 
Contort Yourself @M-80 Festival, Minneapolis 23/9/79

James Chance, Patrick Geoffries, Kristian Hoffman, Melvin Gibbs, Ronnie Burrage, Joe Bowie, Byron Bowie, Steven Kramer & Bradley Field

William S. Burroughs Reads & Sings His Experimental Prose in a Big, Free 7-Hour Playlist

Giorgio Gomelsky R.I.P.

Wiki

James Chance: Ups And (Mostly) Downs Of A Funk Visionary (The Face 7/81)


Click to enlarge
Words by James Truman. Photo by Kate Simon
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James Chance & The Contortions - Live @Northcote Social Club Melbourne (14/1/16)



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So Dan from the Drones and the bassie and drummer (?) from Clairy Browne & the Bangin Rackettes only met James Chance yesterday. Damn if that was the first time playing together then tonight will be a killer. Three James Brown choons too...Superbad, King Heroin and Cold Sweat, done just the way I like them...raw and funky and NOT overcooked!

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Richard Hell on James Chance

It reminds me of the night James Chance - another crazy inspired musician of the period - was furious because the mob proprietors of some New York disco refused to pay him after a gig. Chance stalked around the huge, darkened dance floor in a fury, cursing. The room was empty except for a muscle-bound bouncer and James and me. When James started kicking beer bottles, the bouncer began to approach him. James picked up a bottle by the neck, smashed it against a pillar, and screamed at the guy, "You can't hurt me!" Then he jammed the broken bottle into his own chest.
It's a weird syndrome of the powerless saying to the powerful "You can't hurt me because I'm willing to hurt myself."
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Graphique par Bazooka

James Chance on Richard Hell

You’ve said that that “listening to Richard Hell, that’s when I knew I could sing.”
When I was in Catholic grade school, I was in a boy’s choir. My sister describes it as sounding like yowling cats. I never had any training as a singer. I didn’t do it when I was playing jazz, though I was a big fan of Billie Holiday. One time when I was 16, I was at the music conservatory, I was standing in the hall, singing a Billy Holiday song, I thought to myself and someone came out of a classroom and said in a nasally voice “ will you please stop that!” But when I started the Contortions I thought I would just sing some of the songs and I would have a girl singing half of the songs. Actually, before I was in Teenage Jesus with Lydia Lunch, we had a band that never got out of practice called the Scabs. It was me and Lydia and Jody Harris and Reck from Teenage Jesus. The idea was to do half my songs and half Lydia’s songs. That idea continued onto the Contortions.
Originally I had this girl; she was the girlfriend of Alan Vega. Ann something… she had this homemade synthesizer that had like two octaves. After she kind of dropped out, I had this little punkette girl, Debby, who worked at this punk clothing store on St. Mark's. They called her Debby Revenge. Had her singing for one or two rehearsals. She wasn’t really serious, so after that I decided “Enough of this.” I was just going to sing the songs and let the chips fall where they may. Because it was true, Richard Hell didn’t have anyone’s idea of what a trained voice would sound like. But all kinds of other people were doing the same thing! Nobody cared if you had any kind of training or voice…or even if you could carry a tune. As long as you could project yourself somehow
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