sielwolf's Journal: China Grrrlll

Exhibit A as to why AJAX stuff still needs a fucking wash: that if you browse off of a page and go back in your history, you lose everything. Fucking shit... *sigh* at least Gmail was smart enough to intermittently save your draft. So I was using this oh-so-bad-ass journalling tool on last.fm (with no preview BTW, a demotion from even the limited feature set of /.) and it killed my original review. So I spent a few minutes soul-searching, almost tempted to the limit of saying "fuck it" but I came back. Mostly because I haven't written anything of length or consequence in a few weeks. A part of that is your boy is moving into home ownership (with all the vast soul-crushing conspiracies available). But another is the deafening roar and soul crushing nature of irrelevance. Welcome to the rock. So the options were either write some shit or fall over, roll over, and die. I might try that last option later.

Anyway, Grace Jones has been on my radar (since my last purchases, where I'm still aiming at just over an album purchasing rate that would put me at around 28 albums this year... a bit down from the 70 or so last year) and I finally got out to buy her Private Life: the Compass Point Sessions double discer. This album is an odd conjunction of everything great and superfluous. Let me explain: as hard as the liner notes try, Grace Jones hasn't really stood up as a landmark figure in music at any scope. Hell, I mostly remember her from salad days of childhood latenight watching A View to a Kill where she, as Mayday, played a redux of Oddjob (albeit with smaller tits). Some might then remember her as something of a model (obvious from the eyes: the smooth sculpted shapes. The sort of aerodynamic bevel of her cheeks, full forehead. It was severe in a completely Golden Age Detroit motor car way. The kind of artistic severe sterility best for a decade of Patrick Nagel and Armani's suits). Grace's look, her presentation was extreme: the harsh androgeny, the mechanical edge of her flattop, the frozen look of manniquin on display. And like the musical dabbling of Warhol and McLauren this celebutante fashion world invariably overlapped with the world of music... and that both works for and against this album.

Behind Grace was formed a superteam of musicians. Shit, Sly & Robbie form her fucking rhythm section. Out of this they produced a genre-crossing combination of raggamuffin style, post-punk, and proto-club. The sound is profoundly futuristic in an absolutely early 80's way. Grace then used this as a vehicle to cover Roxy Music, The Pretenders, fucking "Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire", "Joy Division - She's Lost Control", The Police and the motherfucking the normal. I mean, that's a fucking progressive selector right there. It's the kind of thing a record store register jockey would conceive as an iTunes only exclusive from Neko Case (with probably obvious remixing by dfa). That these recordings are two decades old shows how fucking down with the get-down Grace was.

The problem: who took notice? Such perspective is that of NYC celebrity and egocentrism. Yeah, sure, you ran into Lou Reed when grabbing brunch at Nell's and he put John Cale in your roladex so you two could get bombed on absinthe and rerecord [track artist=Velvet Underground]Venus in Fur. These people move in different circles than you and me. And while progressive, their taste is also violently transcient: one wonders if even done five years later if how many of these covers would have made it. The music world prevails, citizen. We are just blessed that history found fit to remember this convergence of taste and talent. ...so what of the music? The covers are, though uneven, generally top-notch. "Love is a Drug" is done with Grace really low in the mix as she doesn't try to out do Bryan Ferry and just let's herself be propulsed along by a New Wavvy sort of guitar. Grace's "Nightclubbing" might actually outstrip the original with its unfucking believable break (sampled so often, probably the most familiar being Shyne and Foxy Brown's takes on it). Sly and Robbie show their fingerprints here with that unbelievable rubadub stomp and the left-right-left piano jangle. I must stop here and tip my hat to Grace's vocal range. Here she has a nice throaty overpronunciation that is seductive while maintaining that bombed china light club zombie vibe that Iggy and Bowie intended with the original. She's able to work a Jamaican patois with the triumvirate of "Feel Up", "My Jamaican Guy" and her wonderful reggae take of "Ring of Fire". Her "Warm Leatherette" is less post-punk and kind of calculated diva overdrive. Sadly, not all the covers hit: "She's Lost Control" is a bit too wacky for its own good. Grace goes at the lyrics and mistakenly tries to make it into a post-feminist anthem and it comes off as whiny and bratty as any Vagina Monologues, USA. Only when she croons on the chorus do you see the missed opportunity.

And likewise the album makes the mistake of filling itself with long and "dub" versions, which is just an excuse for long uninterrupted minutes of breaks which only are useful for the most leadthumbed DJs to crossfade over. It's excessive and probably would've been better spent on more original material. Grace's originals too stand shoulder with her covers though the resulting products feel much more dated than the classic material she covers. The later "Man Around the House" and "Slave to the Rhythm" sort of bridge that era between disco and techno-house club dominance. And listening to "Unlimited Capacity for Love" has the sleek metallic edges that reminded me of classic ABC ("...pounds-dollar-millionaire!!").

In the end, Private Life never is able to round up the material to justify its two and a half hour length. It always seems to be just at that edge of being truly great but seems to never make it to that next level of heavy rotation material. Still, it is great content. I recommend it to fill out any collection and make that mixtape to blow doors on folks who haven't heard the version of "She's Lost Control" off of Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures.

It was always your father
who had the taste
for music

My mother said this; driving, eyes on the road, as a matter of fact. I didn't know what to think. I don't know how much of my life is music, how much I enjoy it. I think I have a normal appetite (if veteran palette) and don't go bozo into the realm of mistaking talking music for being the sole discourse I have with other meat popcicles. And my mother doesn't listen to music much, not nearly as much as my dad. And I noticed that she was conscious of her voice, when she sang, and it wavered and was brittle but it is true like few things are. But on drives in old Chevelles with vinyl seats and metal buckles scarring into your skin, the dial would search and pause on some Willie Nelson and then she would sing only as much as someone who would to just themselves and with the distinct joy the song had for her. And so I thought the notion she had was, while rooted in some fact, was at punctuation, false.

And it was while driving that she would at times bring out The Persuasions We Came to Play. This young boy knew it was a non-standard experience. The standard issue might be Billy Joel, some Joni, Bruce or the like. But here was something so cutting and true of an experience. Really, a Brooklyn-born street corner acapella? Yeah, there's a pedigree here too, with the Grateful Dead and Zappa getting the word out... but what a strange thing to tie a ribbon to. The 80's might have been a bit colored with that post-flower child folk of Cat Stevens or Simon & Garfunkel: a sort of rosy optimism now shelved for a bit of suburban reality. And even now I just can't seem to get my head about it.

So the Persuasions are a gospel-schooled five-part harmony. And they tear (this is the correct verb: only one of the songs breaks the 2:55 barrier) through some wonderful renditions of classics: "Chain Gang" and a version of "Let it Be" that is fucking pentacostal in its implications. Serious, this blows fucking doors. The altos go up to a sweet falsetto and Jerry Lawson doesn't relent on the lead. The Persuasions might be best known for their collection of Beatles covers... but none of them really touch this one. The only true statement might be sweet exultation.

It fits perfectly to their church practiced form. So very natural and how fundamental as a pleasure of stripping off the layers of rock and R&B and return to the bedrock of what had been the American music experience. "The Sun" calls nostalgia for the pre-Spector era with its bass lead "In the Still of the Night" rhythm. A part of me was a bit mixed at listening to "Walk on the Wild Side" for the first time kind of hoping for some Lou Reed stomping. Still, the classic denounciation of sin with its onomatopoeia do-wahs have the sweet pleasure that they do when Ghostface filled out Ironman with their sort as interludes. The truest pleasure of the album though, is "Gypsy Woman". It fills the opening with these ominous harmonies leading to Jimmy Hayes giving a bit of greek chorus narrative before the song hits its aching passionate stride. It's spooky, seductive, and authentically spellbound by the anima. The pitch slowly comes up from sub-60 BPM to a full-on expression of ecstacy. It's the fucking jam...

so, goddamn it, why the hell did they release two albums in 71 (this and Street Corner Symphony) when they could've put them both together and created a modern R&B masterpiece instead of two sub-27 minute LPs? Fucking technology. You know if the guys would've come out now they'd have a 50 mp3 backlog of demo material floating out there before Def Jam Soul tried to snag them up. And the brevity stings. Before you know it, its over. A sudden lethal halt- to progress. Sure, the needle resets and you start back on track one... but why not more content?

*sigh* I guess these generations are only spoiled children. But mothers sang to them; maybe something they too can remember. The backroad lead from the East to the drooping afternoon sky. An airfield, a horse farm, overgrown grass where soon there would be developments and golf courses. The trees back there hid a river, tune in for more air conditioning, and she sings a little more.

Grace Jones Private Life: the Compass Point Sessions ****
The Persuasions We Came to Play ****

hey

[Mantorp]

Just wanted to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed the reviews. Keep'em coming, especially forgotten gems like these.

Re:hey

[sielwolf]

No prob. I just need to keep buying music. Otherwise it kind makes it hard to review :p