Jonezing for Grace - Part 2

Ever since my Grace Jones post earlier this week, I've been on a bit of a Grace binge. I've been gobbling up her old music and reminiscing on that time of my life as the rhythms rush over me. Nothing like music brings you right back to where you were, like a soundtrack to your life...

I also bought a great Grace t-shirt on eBay and went Googling around on her fan sites. Found a great one called Fuck Yeah Grace Jones here. Anyway, I found a few more tributes to the Island Life album and thought I'd share them below, before moving on to another obsession.

Enjoy!

Here is an art piece I'd love on my walls.



And another one - LOVE THIS! It's made with Vanity Fair collage pieces!



Here's a pretty sad entry from Vince Volta (legend in his own mind?), from his own blog The Mannequin's Closet...



And what's a Grace Jones tribute wall without a rendition in clay? :)



Just don't know what to say about this one! LOL



Grace, gracing your walls - Interior design triumph!





And lastly an art project that went right. I like it.



Once I get my Grace t-shirt I think I'll be over the phase... except I just want to share a couple more from another great album cover, Slave to the Rhythm.


The kick ass original:



A couple excellent art pieces:





Electric Grace in the pink grass...



A couple album look-alikes:




And finally, a tribute in fruit!!! You gotta love it.

Work all day, as men who know,
Wheels must turn to keep, to keep the flow,

Build on up, don't break the chain,
Sparks will fly, when the whistle blows,

Never stop the action,
Keep it up, keep it up,

Work to the rhythm,
Live to the rhythm,
Love to the rhythm,
Slave to the rhythm...

Have a great weekend.

Grace Jones the tribute series - Tro tro to Lego

There is a grape-ice cream purple tro-tro** that whizzes around Accra on a daily basis, transporting it’s cramped passengers, sardine-tin style, from here to there. On the grimy back window, in bold white stick-on, it says: GRACE JONES.

I love this for so many reasons. As I caught a glimpse of it yesterday at a crowded round-a-bout, I grinned at the randomness that is my experience of Ghana. So many things are transported across cultures and time periods, that their significance is lost or warped to such a degree, it gains a new meaning altogether... Last week I saw a refuse disposal truck called ‘Annie Lennox’, but I digress.

Grace Jones was an icon to me in the 80’s, she represented a bold, defiant, androgenous beauty that spat in the face of the Farah Fawcett, Cheryl Tiegs ideal that we were fed in the media. Guys were somehow acceptable as the effeminate lace and make up wearing crooners, but women were largely in their box. Grace Jones sang off the wall music, and she was strikingly gorgeous in a scary, angular, aggressive way. I loved her.

So every time I see that old mini bus - so many years later, so far away, in such a different context, it makes me smile. I have to wonder what the driver’s inspiration was, in taking the time to paste those decals up there. I guess he thinks Grace is pretty cool too.

This all brought my mind back to Grace and her amazing, iconic album covers, which I looked up on Google in that nostalgic way. Her one album, Island Life, photographed and engineered by her partner Jean-Paul Goude, was my favourite. What I found, I thought worth sharing. It seems many others were so taken by the image, that they decided to do their own takes… with some um, interesting results ☺ Enjoy!

THE ORIGINAL - GRACE IS STRIKING WITH HER SINEWY DARK CHOCOLATE SHINING SKIN AND IMPOSSIBLY ELONGATED POSE. SHE IS ARTISTIC FORM. IT'S DEFINITELY A MEMORABLE COVER.



AND THEN CAME THE COPY CATS. I THINK THE FIRST TWO WERE ATTEMPTING THIS TO SHOW OFF THEIR FIT BODIES? BUT IT ALL JUST FALLS FLAT. THEY ARE NOT PULLING OFF THE ARTISTIC FORM...





THESE TWO... HAHAHAHA! GOTTA LOVE'EM



THIS ONE IS FROM A REMIX ALBUM CALLED SELFISH BY HARD TON



THEN THERE ARE THE WTF TYPE ENTRIES....



AND THOSE WHO TOOK IT ALL QUITE SERIOUSLY AND IMMORTALIZED THE GRACEFUL FORM IN METAL SCULPTURE...



AND THE BEST OF ALL... GRACE JONES AS LEGO!!!



Ok, I admit it... strange things amuse me.

**tro-tro - Ghana's answer to the non-existent public transport system. Private (usually old and rattling) minibuses that are used on set routes around the cities and towns, seating capacity is 12, passengers are usually between 15 to 25, plus chickens, sometimes goats... anything goes :-)

Santogold - makes me smile

One day in a bank semi-recently, waiting impatiently, I saw this bizarre music video on the flat screen up on the wall, meant to distract you from the extra long and tedious wait. It worked - I fell in love with the song and the video. I became obsessed with finding who the group was, the song name, and ultimately getting the video in my hot paws so I could watch it again.

Well through the help of my son and other Internet sleuths (namely his online friends forums)I found it!!! This wasn't easy, given all I could explain was that it was a video of a girl on a horse in a forest...

Music makes me happy - but finding a song I've been yearning for makes me even happier.

What do I love about this song? The bizarre scene of the girl on a horse in front of an ominous forest, with the awkward sideline dancers... I guess I just can't explain it. Music is one of those things.

I might be the only one who likes this song... who knows! I wouldn't be surprised.

Over the years I've loved some pretty bizarre things (and people - but that's another story!). One of my fav movies is Gummo (everyone I know questions my sanity on that one). There are obscure little known movies I LOVE like Chocolat, set in the Colonial 1950's in Cameroon and The Lunatic about a sex crazed German and a local madman in Jamaica. One of my all time muses is Grace Jones. You gotta love her, or at least I do! But hey -

Today I share my weird found video - enjoy!!! (or not) :)

SANTOGOLD - Les Artistes



Turns out I don't like much else the group or singer has done, so I won't be looking for the album, but just wanted to pay my hommage to them for this one!