Valley of the Trolley Dollies

I’m not looking back any more. Those end-of-year reviews? Not this year. It was a summer filled with fun and love and joy. I never wanted to be 40 (it’s ancient, really, isn’t it?), but the alternative seemed a little less palatable. And the summer - the garden party, the regattas, the dinners and the dressing up and the whole unmitigated joy and love (I said that already, didn’t I) was wonderful. As was the September trip to NY with my parents. I finally rediscovered how much I loved writing, and being around writers, and the two classes I took on my fiction writing have made me feel like this is something I NEED to do - not just would like to, or would enjoy daydreaming about: I NEED to write and get published. Not for the money; not for the validation - I know I’m a good writer - but because in some way, to do anything else feels almost like constant masturbation without orgasm - always straining towards something, and never really doing anything more than wanking in front of the computer.

But large swathes of the rest of 2008 have been pretty shit, to be honest. Deaths. Friends in legal trouble. Friends getting sick. Worry and fear and stress as the finanical carpet on which our lives rest  began to unravel beneath our feet. Culminating in the feeling that I simply couldn’t cope and a terrible depression that just felt like a big black wet rubber blanket being thrown over my head: No escape, no hope, nothing to be done.

Bollocks. So far this week: The heating packed up. The shower died. I heard strong rumours that my financial future may be severely affected by the current financial conditions in my industry.

It’s not gonna matter. I’m not gonna let it. Head up. You’re bigger and stronger than all of this. You have beautiful people and beautiful things around you, the voices say; and I have a decent brain and wit and some talents, and a huge amount of things to look forward to.

And that’s what I’m doing: looking forward. Letting go of an annus horibilis (no, not you Carlie). More of that to come…

For now, the one little bit of looking back is the list of musics from 08 that I am looking forward to blasting out of the speakers into ‘09.

In no particular order:

This is Alphabeat - Alphabeat (who, I’m told, have been dumped by their record co. WTF)

 

 

Discipline – Janet Jackson (her best pop album in a long time; shame it tanked)

Somewhere in the real world – Vanessa Amorosi (it just rocks)

Let it Go – Will Young (his best album, IMHO. Again, shame it seems to be tanking)

Way to Normal – Ben Folds (well, a third of it; the bit that’s not filled with bitterness and negativity)

 

Funhouse – Pink (cos it’s fun and raucous)

 

 

And Winter Came – Enya (Cos it’s Enya. And she’s not U - Fucking - 2!)

The Alesha Show – Alesha Dixon (Cos it’s nice to see a fresh(ish) face on the scene. And Xenomania have done the works with her - check out Cinderella Shoe)

Circus – Britney Spears (Cos she is loopy, isn’t she. Let’s see: Child star? Check. Biggest hit had her dressed up as a little girl? Check. Bad mother? Check. Drug fiend? Check? Boozehoud? Chec? Unsuitable / unstabel husband? Check? Bad relationship with at least one of her parents? Check. Liza Minelli’s mother? Oh, wait… Apart from that one, she’s bascially Judy fuckign Garland, isn;t she? Yay!)

The Circus - Take That (Because the inclusion of the definitve article makes for a very different album - one of their finest, frankly, if a little ‘grown up’ - and proves they are not crazed, drink-drug befuddled bad mothers with career trajectories like Lorna Luft’s old ma. Though Robbie may rejoin them next year…)

C’mon – Keith Anderson (’Cos Country can be wonderful, and Keith - of whom I know nothing other than I love his album from front to back, and he’s not too bad on the eys neither - is a prime example)

Metropolis: The Chase Suite – Janelle Monae (’Cos It’s Genius. Psycho-Bladerunner-Hey Ya Crazyness. Like Michael Jackson should be doing. She’s getting a UK launch next yr. Should be good.)

Backwoods Barbie – Dolly Parton (’Cos it’s Dollie. And it’s got lovely tunes, great lyrics, and a cover of “She drives me crazy” that almost improves on the original!)

Spotlights and Catfights – Sugababes (Never had a SB album. Never wanted one. Then this one came along - filled with hit after hit after hit. Except it’s tanking. Boo! The curse of Derek strikes again.)

Hurricane – Grace Jones (Cos It’s Grace. And because “Williams’ Blood” alone - lifting the veil on the aloof icon and showing her human side - is worth the cost fo the whole thing).

Alchemy: GST Reloaded – Ultra Nate. (For playing loudly through headphones whilst running. It CAN NOT be beaten!)

 

 

 

Grace Jones is a legend. It’s that simple, if not that pure. And like all legends, she is surrounded by gossip, myth, apocryphal stories. For instance, there’s the one about her rider consisting of first class air fares for her and her band from New York to London (when both her and her band actually lived London already; the tickets were cashed in, and the money pocketed, it’s said). Or the demand for Cases of Krug or Kilos of Coke to be delivered backstage or else the lady would not appear.

There’s the story that, in September 1998, Jones was banned from all Disney properties worldwide after baring her breasts in a concert at Walt Disney World.

I’ve seen her perform twice before. Once was a charity bash where she came on, did one song, and blew the whole of Wembley away. The first time was a concert at Brixton academy. Let’s just say it wasn’t one of her best performances.

Shambolic, quite frankly, was the word used at the time. She was three hours late, sang the songs and made little or no attempt to build any rapport with the audience, and spent much of the show lounging in an office chair being pushed around by two muscle Marys.

So I didn’t approach last night’s South Bank Centre show with a great deal of optimism. It was part of Meltdown, an annual season curated by various luminaries of the musical world. This years, being curated by the Bristolian Trip Hop Duo, was referred to all over the shop as Massive Attack’s Meltdown, prompting me to wonder whether we’d ever get something similar hosted by, say, Britney Spears, and D to respond that, surely, we’d already seen Britney Spears’ Meltdown. And her vagina. Frankly, I thought, if Grace Jones turns up, it’ll be a miracle.

I was so wrong. It was fanfuckingtstic. In D’s opinion (and believe me he’s (a) a huge concert goer, and (b) not one for hyperbole) it could very well be the best concert of the year. The Year. And it’s only June.

Miss Jones - Jones the Rhythm as she was once famously referred to - appeared half an hour later than scheduled. The show was due to run 80 minutes. It ran almost 240. With nary a pause between songs (although each song ended - and began - with long instrumental breaks, allowing Ms J time for the multitide of costume changes, and the audience time to appreciate one of the tightest bands I’ve heard in a long time).

She seemed invigorated. Her voice was infintiely better than I remembered it (one can forget, listening to the classic recordings nowadays, that what you’re hearing, by and large, is what was recorded. And in a world of pro-tools and auto tunes, that just increases the shock of hearing a live performance as good as - if not better than - the recording. Hello Mrs Ritchie, I’m talking about you). Her sense of the absurd was as sharp as ever (an opening number dress so tight that, although she appeared at the top of a huge flight of steps, she was incapable of actually walking down them, resorting, at the end of the song, to a practice my brother and I used to refer to as ‘bumming’ down them (or, as she said “This…… is how I descend (visible shudder) stairs. It’s called …. (Pintersque pause as she bums down two more steps) …. The Craaawl.”)

Lighting was a little odd. D asked, at one point, whether she always performs in a blacked out stage, as there seemed to be more lights on the audience. Not sure whether this was a deliberate ploy to pull the audience in, a theatrical manoeuver to highlight the anitcipation (possible, since as the show progressed, the lighting, by and large, improved drastically), or just a cack-handed lighting director (also possible as Grace’s disembodied voice, at one point, is heard calling “Hellooo. I’m over here,” before the follow spot slides stage right to find her).

Her sense of theatre is amazing. Four songs in, and “Not enough of you motherfuckers are up,” she decides, as the band loop into a funky groove - all pounding baselines and scratchy guitars. Sixteen bars in, and still unhappy with the level of ‘upness’ in the audience, she, quite literally stage dives into the crowd. Grace Jones is sixty. She has buns she can bounce a roll of quarters off, legs that go on forever and ever, a voice that has improved with age, she is wearing fishnet tights, nine inch heels, and a corset with a gusset consisting of dental floss. And she’s fucking crowd surfing. She’s a prettier Iggy, baby. And it works. Because, of course, when the act on stage leaves the stage, the only way for anyone in the audience beyond the first five rows to follow the action is by standing up and craning ones neck. Job done. The house is up, and, largely, remains that way for the rest of the night.

There was old stuff. New Stuff (surprisingly good; much better than some of her mid ’90’s product, and with a fantastic, hook ladedn, funky single “Keeping up with the Joneses” thats promising a whole new lease of live when the much awaited - in our house, at least - album comes out later this year). And banter with the audience, as when she announces, at the start of a new song, that she can’t actually remember the lyrics. Three minutes of the band grooving are punctuated with her increasingly paniced demands “Bring me my goddam lyrics! Why are you doing this to me, you motherfuckers?! I need a drink!!! Fuck it, I’ll have to improvise.” Before she blasts into some of the most lyrically complicated verses of her canon - part rapid rap, part languid Jamaican Grace, all in a song called ‘Life’. It’s obvious, by the end, that she not only knew the lyrics all along; she’s got them engraved on her heart.

“I was only fuckin’ with you,” she smiles at her adoring crowd.

And, as the penultimate song “Pull up to the Bumper” blasts out, she calls the crowd up on stage with her - a freak show of fats, femmes, muscle marys with ancient heads, arty gays, housewives, all grinding and bumping and, for a moment, it’s the mid seventies, it’s studio 54, everyone’s on something other than this planet, and there’s hope for a world where we can all get along, where talent doesn’t need to be packaged in glossy blonde smiley packages, talent show desperadoes  or misogynistic gnagsta rap, where 60 year olds can flash their tits at Mickey Mouse and crowd surf, and where hats, my dear, are a vital statement.

“I was only fuckin’ with you,” she said. Long may she fuck.

 

ABC are back with the album “Traffic.” A package filled with layered strings and their trademark rich arrangements. This is an album that sounds like it cost money to make. A lot. It feels like glass-walled studios overlooking bays in the Cap or the Cape were used, as though the team retired to glittering shimmering dancefloors in exclusive Ibiza clubs post recording, as though, in fact, nothing has changed.

 

Oh yes, ABC are back; they sound like they’ve never been away; and, once more, that puts them so far ahead of the herd that only their dust can be seen.

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