I had the good luck to interview punk idol James Chance for an item that will appear in the NYP’s Bash Compactor this week about a gig he and the Contortions played at PS 1 Saturday. One of the interesting things about chatting with him is that he’s a favorite character from one of my most treasured books, “Please Kill Me.” So, inevitably, I guess, our conversation came around to his old gang, which he doesn’t really see that much anymore, and his bygone downtown. Like many people lately, he expressed a sense of shock at how foreign the present is.
When I got off the phone with him I felt more down than ever about the state of New York and images of glorified seed and decrepitude floated through my consciousness; shopping for Keds at ramshackle Ritchie’s on Avenue A when I was little, waiting on a long line to score on 13th Street during the day and watching films projected on the wall across from 2A late into the night.
I was pained by the disconnect between the monochromatic late 70’s, when I was born, and the hyper colorful present -- there seems to be no bridge between then and the now, except for guys like Chance, holed up in reliquaries with their memories, walking down streets that have become unrecognizable to them.
Chance is luckier than many of his friends and contemporaries though – Anya Phillips, Nolan and Thunders, Quine, Dee-Dee, the marble index is long and depressing; kids that went on playing in the street far too long: more afraid of growing old than dying. They never knew they were doomed until it was too late. I envision their last days of innocence and wince.
Johnny, probably the toughest of those motherfuckers -- a street kid from Queens -- played until the end; in those last croony Japanese gigs, backed up only by a sax and drums, he’s bug-eyed and green, almost too weak to stand. As he cried out softly and plaintively during a late version of “So Alone” with Lure… “Oh, God.”
Then my generation descended on the still darkened wreckage of East Village bohemia in the 90's -- sniffers mostly -- appropriating punk tastes and habits but taking money from our parents too, eyeing both camps suspiciously all the while and having it both ways. We gave our older bros a pound and paid them to cop for us but turned them down when they needed a warm place to stay. Could you blame us for keeping safe?
I should leave JC out of this, but we’re both fortunate. Anyway, he has a new track out, “Incorrigible,” remixed by post-punk stalwarts Liquid Liquid. Check it out.
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