WHO ARE YOU CALLING PUNK?
t was a shotgun wedding heard ’round the world. Forty years ago, a game-changing album appeared that forced a volatile marriage between punk rock and free jazz, two genres that struck many at the time as worlds apart. The 1979 debut by James Chance and the Contortions, wryly titled , advanced a whole movement in sound, melding the blunt-force trauma of a band like the Ramones with the surreal freedom of an artist like Ornette Coleman. To create an instant family, Chance gave his sonic couple a child via a third element—funky beats à
