Grace Jones' Nightclubbing (1981) album turns 45

 

“Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing album was the hippest record of 1981 … a reinvention of Roxy Music’s too-much-too-soon ennui, with sublime reggae and funk rhythms from the rhythm section of the era, Jamaica’s Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare … Grace Jones, an intimidatingly androgynous and Amazonian New York model – born in Jamaica … looked like a sleek, purpose-built alien, and spoke-sang her lyrics with a  dominatrix-like authority, developing and transcending her early career as a gay-scene disco diva …”

/ From the 2002 book This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco by Gary Mulholland /

Released 45 years ago today (11 May 1981) by Island Records: Nightclubbing, the fifth studio album by everyone’s favourite post-punk freak diva / Afro-Dietrich / futuristic dominatrix from outer space Miss Grace Jones! Nightclubbing is the second (and most commercially successful) entry in the fierce fashion model-turned-New Wave chanteuse’s timeless bleeding-edge trilogy of albums recorded at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas (the other two are Warm Leatherette (1980) and Living My Life (1982). All three are essential!). 

The title track of course is courtesy of Iggy Pop’s 1977 The Idiot album. “Jones’ skill as a facilitator as well as pop cultural icon is exposed in the way the original song is converted from Krautrock-damaged, Suicide-aping sleaze fest into sophisticated, lightly-dub inflected, disco reggae,” criticJohn Doran argues. “The conceptual joke of the song is clear: Grace doesn’t hang around in the same horrible dives as Mr James Osterberg, but you can be sure that the experience is just as existential and soul-draining. She has just applied Pop’s lyrics to the cocaine-and-champagne instead of amphetamine-and-vodka lifestyle.” 

I love the dramatic accordion-laced “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)”, “Walking in the Rain” and “Demolition Man” but understandably most people remember Nightclubbing as the album featuring eternal dancefloor favourite “Pull Up to the Bumper”! I’d also argue that the confrontational cover image (a “painted photograph” entitled “Blue-Black in Black on Brown” by Jean-Paul Goude, Jones’ then-lover and artistic collaborator) is as impactful as Robert Mapplethorpe’s shot of Patti Smith on the cover of Horses.

/ Grace Jones photographed by Rob Verhorst onstage at the Carre Theatre in Amsterdam, September 1981 / 

Further reading:

Read my notes on Grace Jones’ concert at Royal Albert Hall in 2010 here. 

Read about Grace Jones' memorable book signing in London in 2015 here. 

Read my reflections on Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette (1980) album here. 

Reflections on ... Blood Ceremony (1973) aka The Legend of Blood Castle

Recently watched: Blood Ceremony (1973) aka Ceremonia sangrienta aka The Legend of Blood Castle. Tagline: “A Nightmare Tale of Depravity!” 

This lush Spanish / Italian co-production features the following Gothic horror staples: vampires. Castles. A gypsy woman making ominous prophesies. Superstitious peasants. A procession of townspeople wielding torches through the forest at night (led by a naked boy on horseback). Tavern wenches. Nature, red in tooth and claw (we see falcons tearing apart their prey in grisly close-up). A coffin lined in sumptuous purple silk. Close-ups of knives and forks digging into blood-oozing raw steaks. Guttering black candles. Pentagrams. Candelabras. A cursed medallion. Heaving bosoms. Girls in sheer nightgowns. The sound of a rooster crowing on the soundtrack to indicate daybreak. 

The narrative is loosely inspired by the legend of Hungary’s Countess Elizabeth Báthory (also the basis of Hammer’s more famous Countess Dracula (1971) starring Ingrid Pitt). But director Jorge Grau surprises by draining the action of sensationalism, opting for an art-y, deliberately slow and meditative pace, exquisitely composed shots and an emphasis on ceremonies, rituals and superstitions. (Blood Ceremony clearly boasted a decent budget: the costumes, locations and cinematography are spectacular). At the centre is the haughty Marqués and Marquesa. (Think of them as a gloomy, corrupt and dysfunctional Gomez and Morticia). Handsome bearded Karl Ziemmer (Espartaco Santoni) loves his murderous pet falcons and banging out a tune on the clavichord (sometimes with bloody hands). Countess Erzsebeth Bathory (Lucia Bosè) is his icily self-contained black-clad Lady Macbeth-like wife. Italian actress Bosè – with her alabaster complexion, raven hair and drained, anemic beauty – is particularly striking. Bosè, of course, made two notable films (Story of a Love Affair (1950) and The Lady without Camelias (1953)) with her then-lover, Michelangelo Antonioni early in her career. Interestingly, her presence, the lingering, austere pacing and the focus on rich peoples’ elegant ennui suggest a horror movie by Antonioni. Blood Ceremony is currently streaming on YouTube. Jump on it in case it gets deleted!

Reflections on ... Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

 

Recently watched: the flawed, fascinating Sylvia Scarlett (1935) by the dream trio of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and director George Cukor. (Hepburn and Grant, of course, would subsequently re-team in the more celebrated Bringing Up Baby (1938), Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940)).

Sylvia Scarlett remains one of the strangest films to emerge from 1930s Golden Age Hollywood and was a notorious mega-flop. (Its commercial failure would contribute to Hepburn being labelled “box office poison”). “A cult film now, and true delight for the adventurous, it set a new precedent for bomb in its day,” Ethan Mordden concludes in his 1983 book Movie Star: A Look at the Women Who Made Hollywood. Is Sylvia Scarlett a cult film? In an ideal world it would be!

Not that it’s a misunderstood classic: the factors critics and audiences disliked at the time - its whimsical, farcical and freewheeling lurches in tone - are still evident (as the Variety critic in 1935 complained “It is puzzling in its tangents and sudden jumps”). But this quality is also part of its quirky charm. Hepburn is the titular Sylvia. Fleeing her father’s gambling debts, she’s forced to crop her hair (today we’d call it “a Tilda Swinton cut”) and masquerade as a boy (“Sylvester”). In this screwball comedy about gender fluidity, androgynous Sylvester is irresistible to women and men alike, including a cockney con artist (Grant), a housemaid, a French socialite and a bohemian artist (Brian Aherne). The women overtly flirt with and try to kiss him; the men seem unusually keen to share beds with and undress in front of him. “I don’t know if you’re a boy dressed as a girl or a girl dressed as a boy!” one character exclaims to Sylvia / Sylvester and the thing is, Hepburn is so strikingly attractive in male drag the distinction hardly matters. (When Sylvia’s gender is eventually revealed, everyone is completely nonchalant). On a superficial level, both Grant and Hepburn are peerlessly elegant and wear clothes beautifully. And when we’re first introduced to Grant on the ferry to London, Cukor lights and photographs him as ravishingly as Sternberg did for Dietrich.