The Contortions' Buy LP is pure noise funk genius but even better are the band's tracks on No New York. Dude's sax playing is off the hook:



The James White albums are also very underrated IMO. What say you?

Those No New York tracks are mind blowing uber-shockers: you imagine, in a music nerd way, about some hybrid of James Brown and punk rock, and there it is: 4 songs that live up to the promise!

The albums that follow are good but somewhat undone by concept heavy posing (Off White is great once - severe diminishing returns once the joke wears off).

Kinda like the Pop Group where the records don't quite live up to the hype and are kinda too messy and sporadic to really LOVE

But I still say N.C

The No New York stuff is some of the best rock music around. Punk, noise, and funk w/wayward sax somewhere between free jazz and (accidentally) North African music. Plus a violent, nihilistic edge that doesn't swamp the sense of humor. Both the razor-sharp rhythm section and the guitarists have as much character as the frontman.

The Buy LP is similar but infinitely tamer, which still makes it pretty fucking good. Ditto Off White, at least the instrumental half of it, which stands up better than the mutant-disco, showbiz-style vocal half (in which Chance seems to be channeling his inner Kid Creole). There's also a very rare Japanese live CD (issued only w/the Asian edition of Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's book about no wave) recorded before NNY w/an earlier, more "rock" lineup (James Nares still on guitar, Chiko Hige from the Tokyo band Friction on drums), and that ranks, as well.

The '80s albums all have their moments, along w/some cheese that's either overproduced, overplayed, or too smacked-out. That said, I still think of them fondly. What I've heard of the subsequent albums from the '90s and more recently has left me a little cold, though.

An American original. Not crap, a squawky waffle or two.

100 percent not crap