James White and the Blacks “Sax Maniac”

(okay, so I’m pretty sure that this week is just going to be devoted to videos. probably quite a bit more to come.)

The New York art-punk scene of the early 1980s was as incestuous as it was stylistically diverse, and James White (ne Chance) is as good an example as any of both descriptions. He played with Lydia Lunch in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, did his own thing with the Contortions, and eventually, thankfully, decided upon this particular musical iteration.

The clip here is of “Sax Maniac” (m4v), and comes from the oft-cited, spotty scene film Downtown 81, which ostensibly revolved around the life and times of (not misunderstood but overrated and who definitely looks like Tracy Morgan) Jean-Michel Basquiat, but was in truth nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to work in live performances from all sorts of NYC bands of the era, and thank goodness for that. While the probably improvised acting and what passes for narrative in the film is worse than the Clash’s Rude Boy, the performances themselves are amazing, with The Plastics, DNA, and Kid Creole and the Coconuts also making appearances. Nothing beats the stage-filling soulful skronky art-funk JC and the B’s,–the best part of a bizarre but must-see visual document of a short-lived scene.

Filed under: Basquiat  James Chance  James White and the Blacks  No Wave