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James Chance & the Contortions played Trans-Pecos with Ex Models & Dreamcrusher; Brian Eno gave John Peel Lecture

photos by P Squared

James Chance and The Contortions

How did you get involved with the Trans Pecos series?

[James Chance]: This Japanese friend of mine who was working on some gigs in Japan introduced him to me. I did a thing in June in the galleries in Chelsea, in one of those art supermarkets. They built this maze, and I played in the maze. I do this solo act where I use prerecorded mixes without the saxes and vocals, and I play over it. I throw in other obscure soul and funk records. I had this record of just Tito Puente doing percussion, and I played sax over it and walked through the maze. There were all these people in white outfits, they looked like fugitives from Devo but Devo wore yellow. So I did a similar thing at Trans Pecos. I couldn’t believe how far out it was. Forty bucks in a cab! I thought I was in the wrong place because there was no sign, but then I saw people coming out and they said, “Yeah this is the place.” Apparently there are a lot of young kids living out there. Eventually they’re going to be in the ocean or Nassau County. [Noisey]

Ridgewood, Queens venue Trans-Pecos hosted a series of afternoon shows every Sunday in September, which wrapped up yesterday (9/27) with no wave legend Arto Lindsay headlining, and support from Zs, Migo Hatori + Mayo Yamaguchi, and DJ Tygapaw. We caught the previous weekend’s show, which had a different no wave legend, James Chance and his band The Contortions. Opening that show was Ex Models, Dreamcrusher and DJ Dutch E Germ. Pictures and a video are in this post.

In related news, Brian Eno, who compiled the seminal 1978 album No New York that James Chance and Arto Lindsay’s music was both featured on, delivered this year’s John Peel Lecture over the weekend. It’s an annual lecture that “invites a notable figure from the music industry to shape a debate and create insight around music and music-related media.” The BBC have a stream of the hour-long lecture up at their website, and the description reads:

This year’s John Peel Lecture will examine the ecology of culture. Brian Eno will seek to demonstrate how the whole complex of individuals and institutions engaged in culture – artists, broadcasters, gallerists, promoters, DJs, managers, lawyers, fans – are symbiotically connected parts of a single huge organism which we call Culture. He will outline some of his thinking on this very unpredictable ecology and explore the interconnective relationships between the elements and components that combine to create our culture, and show how cultural processes confer essential and important benefits on society.

You can listen to the intro of the lecture, below.

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James Chance and The Contortions

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