At first I was going to title this post “The End of Technology” or “Technology Kills Art” or something equally ominous, but (obviously) decided against it. We’re living during what feels like the end of something, but I can’t quite place my finger on it. So I won’t.
There are many artists from the 80’s due to release albums/CDs/(whatever you call a thematic collection of songs now) this year. I’ll probably post either a series of reviews or a birds-eye view of many of them later this year. I mention the 80’s because that’s the decade when many artists became much more comfortable with using technology to create their art - especially musicians. Just imagine Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” without its famous synth line (discovered by Dave Stewart accidentally playing it backwards) or Prince with a real drummer and without a Linn drum machine. And what would the 80’s be without the advent of the promotional music video? I’ve been watching Grace Jones’ (and Jean-Paul Goude’s) masterpiece video “A One Man Show” on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) for the past week. (Yes, it’s been on my list of Videos That Should Be DVDs along with Prince’s “Sign ‘O’ The Times” for a while now.) You might also want to check out Miriam Kershaw’s article “Postcolonialism and Androgyny: The Performance Art of Grace Jones” for a more scholarly analysis of that period of Grace’s art.
Remember that girl with the big forehead who co-opted Victoria Beckham’s hairstyle (I guess to cut that sucker in half) and her video that made use of lots of computer graphics, close-ups that showcased her youthful beauty and that Caribbean affectation? (No, I’m not even going to mention her name, but since so many media outlets saw fit to attempt to connect her to Grace just because of that affectation, well, there you go.) She (well, her marketers) would really want to go somewhere and do some homework.
Waxing nostalgic? Not really. Okay, maybe a little, but not completely. Just consider for a moment that Grace actually performed “A One Man Show” before a live audience on tour and that its VHS release contained bits of her Drury Theater performance in New York interspersed with some of the first music videos and includes a moonwalk that predates Michael’s by a couple of years. And Mr. Stewart and Ms. Lennox should be eternally grateful. Did Sting really write a song called “Demolition Man” specifically for Grace - a woman? I’m not really sure, but she recorded it first for “Nightclubbing” - an album that continued to mine the style of her previous album so much that her record company re-released “Warm Leatherette” with new cover art. Yes, those are still frames from her live performance.
Name one artist that is either as visually or sonically exciting in popular music today that could command such attention.
Things happened and times changed. At the time, Island Records was transitioning from Chris Blackwell’s independent vision to become yet another jewel in the Polygram Music crown before it became yet another jewel in the Warner Music crown before it became yet another jewel in the Def Jam/Island/Universal Music crown. Even Mute Records, the tiny company that Daniel Miller initially created to release his own music (the original version of Warm Leatherette), became a conglomerate. Grace went from those spectacularly innovative moments of matching warm reggae rhythms with icy androgynous industrial-tinged dystopia to singing about “juicy-lipped passion” and splashing around like Esther Williams in sunglasses, landing a couple of movie roles along the way. Technology became more mobile and more accessible. It became socially acceptable (and expected) to stay connected through celphones and the Internet.
Grace (who turned 60 in May) performed many of her hits last month during Massive Attack’s Meltdown Festival, but she began by premiering the video of the first single from of her first album of new material since 1989’s “Bulletproof Heart” 20 years ago. This is a woman who launched her music career during disco with the declaration “I Need A Man” and through her artistry has been challenging our concepts and associations of race, sex and gender ever since. Grace Jones is her art and I doubt that will ever change. I’m crossing my fingers and am hoping for the best!
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