No amount of emails to Grace Jones' PR lackeys sprung me to a dream interview with the lady. Guess invoking things like Vibe, Spin, Paste (jk), or The Believer (the thought of Charles Burns drawing her portrait made my editor and me giddy) don't mean a thing when you refuse to do US press. B-b-b-but Obama. Come back, Grace!
I haven't even heard her latest. Well, the delectable mathematics of Mrs. Jones plus Aeroplane has been heard and savored, though Mark E.'s edit of "La Vie en Rose" hasn't. (Anyone?) So instead I'll keep my musings about her genius to myself.
I do know that at least three of her records always have a permanent place in my heart crate. As I mentioned somewhere else, nothing allows you to make improbably broad leaps between funk, dub reggae, disco, or twitchy weird rock during a DJ set than Grace. And I do know that the woman remains a superlative interpreter of "the songbook" (which somehow includes The Normal, Bill Withers, Astor Piazzolla, Roxy Music, Tom Petty, Piaf, etc). And that the genius of her interpretation of Smokey Robinson's "The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game" lies in how her panther-muscled singing gives it another layer. And that her photo shoot with Chris Cunningham got me off of meat.
