An ad for Dutch music television show ‘TopPop.’
 
After launching in September of 1970, the music television show TopPop, the Dutch response to Top of the Pops, would give the British show a run for their money by providing bands, musicians, and performers a venue to creatively mime for their lives every week. During its eighteen-year run, the show hosted pretty much every band and musician known to man and a fair share of Nederpop (a word coined to describe the pop scene in the Netherlands). Loads of them such as Slade, David Bowie, Queen, Debbie Harry and Blondie appeared on the show multiple times. Many acts also filmed exclusive video content for the program, especially during the 1970s as promotional video material was not yet a regular industry practice. If for some reason a musical act wasn’t able to make it to the Netherlands, the show had a secret weapon—Dutch ballerina and choreographer Penny de Jager. The gorgeous de Jager and her ballet troupe went all out when the opportunity presented itself, such as her Aladdin-themed dance-off to Queen’s “Someone to Love,” or turning the TopPop studio into the Dutch version of Soul Train for the Commodores soul standard, “Brick House.” There are a few instances of TopPop traveling to film their guests like heartthrob David Cassidy, who the show shot on the grass at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Then, in 1974, TopPop packed their bags and flew to Los Angeles to film Barry White at his home.
 

A photo of Brian Eno from his appearance on ‘TopPop’ in 1977.
 
TopPop stands out in the vast sea of music-oriented television programming thanks to their creative presentation of their guests’ performances. This included various mind-enhancing stage designs, optical effects, or perhaps mini-narratives in a vein that would later become the norm on MTV. I can personally tell you that your life is not complete unless you have seen Brian Eno yodeling while he falls through a backdrop of trippy 70s-style effects. And, since I’m a special kind of Black Sabbath geek, one of their more infamous TV performances was filmed for TopPop, a fantastic black and white video of the band grinding out “Paranoid” while some sort of bizarre motorized art project spins behind them. Sure the bands were lipsynching, but that didn’t have to mean it had to look dull. 

Iggy Pop was another of TopPop‘s regulars, and you’ve probably heard about him trashing TopPop‘s studio during what was supposed to be his lipsynched performance of “Lust for Life.” This would be one of many times Iggy would appear on TopPop seemingly with no other goal but to fuck everybody’s mind up. Following Iggy’s unhinged destruction of the studio, Dutch journalist and TopPop contributor Mick Boskamp interviewed Iggy, perhaps for damage control purposes, asking him if he rehearses his “acts” or do they come to him “spontaneously”? Iggy replied that trashing a European television studio wasn’t something he would rehearse because it was just not something he “does.” “I just come in and do it.” Which accurately sums up his unhinged ambush of TopPop‘s defenseless studio. 

There are over 3000 videos from TopPop on their YouTube channel, so feel free to use the rest of your lifetime digging through the Dutch treats it contains. A few of my personal favorites are posted below.  
 

Brian Eno doing “Seven Deadly Finns” on ‘TopPop.’
 

One of Iggy Pop’s gonzo performances of “Lust for Life” taped for ‘TopPop’ during which he destroys a chair in 1977.
 
Much more after the jump…

Artist Keith Haring painting Grace Jones in 1986 on the set of ‘Vamp.’
 
Grace Jones was 36 in 1984 when she, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, and pop artist Keith Haring all converged in Mapplethorpe’s studio in New York City. The reason for the epic get-together was to shoot photos of Jones covered in body paint done by Haring in his distinctive style. The session lasted a marathon eighteen hours during which Jones was photographed by Mapplethorpe adorned by Haring’s body paint, a towering headdress and an ornate “skirt.” Orchestrated by Warhol—who had introduced Haring to Jones a few years prior—Andy had been wanting to feature Jones on the cover of Interview magazine and believed that an artistic collaboration between Haring and Jones would be awesome. And he wasn’t wrong. However, Mapplethorpe and Warhol didn’t exactly click despite Mapplethorpe’s desire to be among Warhol’s ever-growing gang of muses, friends, and hanger-ons. In fact, during the photo shoot, it has been alleged that Mapplethorpe attempted to sabotage Warhol while he was taking photos of Jones by requesting Andy not use his flash in his studio. Meow.

Haring’s handiwork on Jones’ magnificent bodyscape was not the first time he used a live human as a canvas. In 1983 Haring painted Bill T. Jones, the legendary Tony Award-winning dancer, choreographer and cofounder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. This session was photographed by Tseng Kwong Chi, a prominent figure in the downtown NYC art scene.

Getting back to Haring’s work with Grace Jones, he would get to paint the Jamaican goddess more than once, including when Grace performed live at the Paradise Garage before the much-loved gay-club closed its doors. Perhaps most memorably Haring would use Jones’ body as his canvas when she landed the role of Katrina the Queen of The Vampires in the 1986 film Vamp. The look Jones cultivated for Katrina is said to be based on the character played by actress Daryl Hannah in the 1982 film Blade Runner—at least when it comes to Jones’ startling red wig and face makeup. For Jones’ 1986 video for the song “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You),” Haring was enlisted to paint the massive 60-foot white skirt Jones wears in the video. The video also includes time-lapse footage of Haring painting the giant skirt and a brief appearance by Andy Warhol—one of his very last before he passed away three months later on February 22, 1987.

I’ve posted images of Jones “wearing” her famous body paint done by Keith Haring as well as photos of Bill T. Jones looking like her muscular male doppelgänger. You can also watch footage of Grace Jones stripping down to her Haring body paint in a clip from Vamp and the video for “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You).” Much of what follows is NSFW.
 

Jones in body paint and adornments by Haring, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe in his NYC studio in 1984.
 

Another shot of Jones by Mapplethorpe.
 

A cheeky shot of Haring and Jones.
 
Much more after the jump…

A Danish postcard featuring a publicity still of Klaus Kinski from the film ‘And God Said to Cain,’ 1970.
 
The images in this post were culled from a large collection I found online at a site called Filmstar Postcards—and once I started digging through the site’s massive alphabetical list, I couldn’t tear myself away. Historically, postcards have been used as promotional vehicles for everything and everyone. The vintage postcards in this post are of European origin with most hailing from Germany, France or Italy.

Of the astounding array of postcards cataloged by the site, I was most taken with images that captured the faces of the famous before they were well known. For instance, in the “B” section I found a rather astonishing Hungarian postcard of Bela Lugosi that shows a young, dashing looking future Dracula in a white suit staring stoically into the camera with a cigarette between his lips. While most of the celebrity postcards are of the stars of yesteryear, there were a few of more contemporary actors/performers such as Asia Argento, Grace Jones and Serge Gainsbourg. Check them all out below!
 

British postcard of Grace Jones.
 

French postcard of Marianne Faithfull.
 

 
Belgian promotion card by Taschen Gallery for the exhibition ‘Taxi Driver - unseen photographs from Scorsese’s Masterpiece.’ The image was a publicity still for the 1976 film ‘Taxi Driver.’
 

Italian postcard of Asia Argento used to promote the 1998 filmd ‘Viola Kisses Everybody.’
 
Many more after the jump…

 
In the mid-1980s Honda had a series of quite dauntingly cool musicians hawking their scooters. They had particularly playful, sexy commercial in which Adam Ant and Grace Jones flirt with each other and then presumably fuck because they are so preposterously vital and attractive. Others featured DEVO, Berlin, Lou Reed, and Miles fucking Davis.

The Adam Ant/Grace Jones ad was “racy” enough that there was an edited version. In the full version Jones bites Ant’s ear, an act that doesn’t seem especially interesting. In any case, there was second version that trimmed the ear bite. The video below features both versions.

Were the commercials successful? I don’t know, Honda is still in business so probably, yeah. Do you know anyone who owns a Honda scooter? Hmmmmmm.
 

 
References to Reed‘s Honda commercial are inevitably rather amusing. Mick Wall in his book Lou Reed: The Life writes:
 

New Sensations was so listenable that ... it attracted the attention of an advertising agency executive, Jim Riswold, then chief copywriter for the Madison Avenue [actually Portland] giants Wieden & Kennedy. ... So he approached Lou Reed to help make an ad for Honda scooters.

At the time, Riswold recalled, “advertisers didn’t put people in commercials who had a long history of drug addiction, and of course [Lou Reed] was a man who at one time in his life was married to a man, and that man was a transvestite, so I guess you could say he wasn’t your typical spokesman. But if you looked at who we were trying to sell scooters to, it was natural. Actually, when you look back at that commercial it seems pretty damn tame today.”

Actually, at the time it just seemed plain hilarious. Lou Reed in a TV commercial? Selling scooters?

 
As Wall points out later, it was doubly weird because in the title track of New Sensations, Reed rhapsodized about a competing vehicle, the Kawasaki GPx750 Turbo motorcycle, singing that “the engine felt good between my thighs.”

Similarly, here’s Nick Kent, in the anthology Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis:
 

America’s TV heartland has already witnessed this curious image of a man, a skinny figure with gleaming skin and what remains of his hair curling all over his shoulders: his hands grip (what else?) a trumpet, his lithe form is slouched against a small Japanese scooter, his eyes stare out at the viewer with imperious disdain. Then the voice, emanating from that shredded, node-less killing-floor of a larynx, mutters, “I ain’t here to talk about this thing, I’m here to ride it.”

 
Watch the Honda scooter commercials after the jump….....

Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren. Photographed by Helmut Newton, 1983.
 
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until I can’t remember that far back—the 80s were a weird, wonderful decade. And a perfect example of how wonderful it was is the unexpected coupling of 6’5” actor Dolph Lundgren and enigmatic Jamaican-born powerhouse, Grace Jones.

Born in Stockholm, before he got into acting Lundgren was an accomplished scholar who by the time 1982 arrived had already received a scholarship to fulfill his Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney in Australia. While he was in Australia, Lundgren worked security detail for musicians like Joan Armatrading, Dr. Hook and Grace Jones—and his chance meeting with Jones would turn into a four-year love affair. In 1983 Lundgren was the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to the equally prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston. According to Dolph he would arrive on the legendary campus on his motorcycle with a leather-clad Jones in tow. At Jones’ urging Dolph soon switched gears and headed to New York to study drama. He worked security at the Limelight nightclub until Limelight boss Peter Gatien caught him eating a sandwich in a stairwell and fired him. But thanks to Jones’ deep connections in the world of entertainment he landed his first acting gig with his exotic paramour in the last James Bond film to star Roger Moore, 1985’s A View to a Kill. 

1985 would be a pretty big year for the couple. Jones and Lundgren were immortalized together in a stunning photographic series by Helmut Newton that appeared in the July issue of Playboy magazine. Lundgren would then land the role of “Ivan Drago” in the 1985 film Rocky IV that would propel him to stardom. Sadly it wouldn’t be long before things got weird between the gorgeous duo and according to her 2015 book I’ll Never Write My Memoirs Jones’ recalled the moment when her beautiful union with Lundgren would begin to dissolve: after she showed up at his hotel in Los Angeles with a gun. Here’s more from Jones on how that went:

I actually had a gun. It seemed very natural that I would go and fetch Dolph holding a gun. I did so out of desperation — we had been together for years and had made this move to L.A., a place I absolutely loathed, against my better judgment, and then he comes back from being away and Tom [Holbrook, Dolph’s manager] blocks me from even saying hi. What is going on?

We turned up at the hotel, not to shoot anyone, but to make sure he came with us. We banged on the door of his room. Bang, bang, bang! I’ve got a gun! I’m screaming, “Let him out, you bastard!” It was as though Tom was holding him hostage and we had come to rescue him, hair flying, legs flailing, breasts heaving, guns flashing, music pumping. This was the kind of hysteria that took place in Los Angeles. In one of the many lives I never got to live, another Grace (one who never came true) shot Dolph there and then… And that was the end of the ballad of Grace and Dolph.

Later in the book Jones also tells the story of setting Lundgren’s clothes on fire. The couple called it a day before anyone got killed sometime in 1986. I’ve included images from the former power couple’s Playboy shoot as well as a nice assortment of other photos of the two canoodling back in the day that will remind you that love doesn’t follow any kind of rules, and should never have to be subject to them. Some of the images are slightly NSFW.
 

 

A photo shot by Helmut Newton of Jones and Lundgren that appeared in Playboy Magazine in July of 1985.
 

 
More after the jump…

Grace Jones and Rick James at the Grammy Awards, 1983
 
One of my really awful guilty pleasures (I also love the band Rush, but I don’t judge and neither should you), is watching awards shows. I know, I know, they’re stupid, and that my street cred just went out to the dumpster to smoke cigarettes with Milli Vanilli. I’m okay with that.
 

Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees at the Grammy Awards, 1968. The band was up for two awards for “I’m a Believer” (Group Vocal Performance and Contemporary Vocal Group), but lost both times to The Fifth Dimension’s “Up Up and Away.”
 

It does not get much cooler than this: Alice Cooper and Stevie Wonder at the Grammy Awards, 1974
 
Plenty more classic Grammy moments after the jump…

Grace Jones with Jimmy Baio, Divine, Julie Budd, Nona Hendryx and a few unnamed dancers
 

In the ‘70s and ‘80s we all had our fun, and now and then we went really too far. But, ultimately, it required a certain amount of clear thinking, a lot of hard work and good make-up to be accepted as a freak.—Grace Jones

If a single photo series could encapsulate ‘70s disco dust debauchery and fun… this document of Grace Jones’ 30th birthday party held at LaFarfelle Disco in New York on June 12, 1978 would be IT. Famous guests included Elton John, Divine, Andy Warhol, Jerry Hall, Jimmy Baio (Scott Baio’s cousin, of course), Julie Budd and Nona Hendryx.

To have been a fly on the wall for this birthday party. Can you imagine all the shit people were up to when the cameras weren’t flashing?!

Divine
 

 

Elton John, Andy Warhol and Jerry Hall
 

 
More after the jump…
 

Andy Warhol roller skating
 
If you keep up with my posts here at DM, you know I often put together cool photo-sets featuring famous people doing things that we all like to do like hitting the beach or lying in bed. This time around I’ve pulled together something fun for you to kill time with this Friday - images of people way cooler than us on roller skates.
 

Bettie Page and Gus the Gorilla roller skating, mid-1950s
 
Some of the images are from the wide variety of films with either roller skating themes or scenes in them such as Raquel Welch tearing it up on the derby track in the 1972 film, Kansas City Bomber. Others are from the late 70s and 80s when Roller Disco was all the rage. There’s even a few that go way back in time that I slipped in because they were just too cool not to share.

I’ve also included a video that features Dutch girl band, the Dolly Dots roller skating around in leotards lipsynching to their 1979 track, “(They Are) Rollerskating.” Because, like I said, roller skating RULES!
 

Grace Jones roller skating at Compo Beach, 1973
 

Judas Priest, 1981
 
Many more famous rollerskaters, after the jump…

 
“It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” spots have long been a mainstay of local NYC television news broadcasts. I haven’t lived there since 2007, but I would imagine that they still are.

When model-singer-actress-whatever she wants to be Grace Jones taped this brief PSA for WNEW-TV in New York way back in 1979, the talk in the studio afterwards was no doubt along the lines of “Now, THAT should get their attention.”

Jones, now 67, returns to New York this summer, headlining the annual AfroPunk NYC Festival, set to take place August 22nd and 23rd at Brooklyn’s Commodore Barry Park, along with Lenny Kravitz and Lauryn Hill.
 

 
Via Lady Bunny Blog

Only Grace Jones would look at home in a blue/teal/peach bodysuit and purple ponytail…. You can’t beat it.
 
Grace Jones is such a likable presence that any random 44 minutes of her life would, we can presume, be tolerably diverting. Even better when it’s a pristine chunk of her performing on Chilean TV right smack in her prime. This marvelous footage popped up on YouTube in December but hasn’t gotten the play it deserves (yet). Considering that the clip is roughly 35 years old, to my eyes and ears both the audio and video fidelity seem extraordinarily high.

The setting is some kind of swank eatery/studio, there are tables with well-heeled patrons enjoying food and drink. Quite a distance from, say, sweaty and chaotic Studio 54, n’est-ce pas? During the first number, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game,” off of 1980’s Warm Leatherette, Grace briefly attacks a potted plant (an incident that, judging from this playful clip, got more than its share of attention in South America) and ends the song by hovering over a table full of patrons.
 

 
During the interview segment, conducted mostly in Spanish, we learn that Grace was under the weather that day. It didn’t prevent her from shedding a tear or two during “Ma Vie en Rose.” During the jaunty track “Bullshit” she gets on a table and boogies down.

This whole clip is crazy entertaining, but if you’re in a rush, it’s still worth it just for the stunning multicolored bodysuit and synthetic purple ponytail she wears for the first song. (After a costume change, she re-emerges in a more familiar mannish gray jacket.)
 

Track listing:
The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game
La Vie en Rose
Bullshit
Fame
Autumn Leaves

 
I’ve been attempting to track down the entirety of Luciano Pavarotti’s Pavarotti and Friends, a 2002 benefit concert for Angolan refugees, ever since I saw his brilliant duet with Lou Reed on “Perfect Day.” There’s just something so absurd and charming about this classical operatic tenor with a pop culture presence, using that leverage to reach out to such an erratic assortment of musicians for charity. I haven’t found the whole show on YouTube yet, but there’s video of his duet with Grace Jones, and it is phenomenal.

In a fantastic moment of grand drama, some members of the audience break into laughter upon Jones’ entrance—whether it’s nervous, derisive or joyous I cannot tell. Ever the gracious stateswoman, Grace radiates… well, grace, and blows them away with the strange and powerful performance. Pavarotti is characteristically brilliant, and I’m not sure if he picked his guests for the special, but he pairs with Jones beautifully.
 

 
If you haven’t noticed—and it would be easy not to, because they aren’t showing up in many retail outlets yet, mostly just Amazon—over the course of the past year UMe, the catalog division of Universal Music Group that puts out all of those “super deluxe” two and three CD sets of classic albums, has started releasing high definition Blu-ray “Pure Audio” discs.

The BD discs contain no video content, although they certainly could (hint, hint), but what they do offer should be considered as close to the master tape, as heard in the recording studio, as is possible to experience in your own home. In terms of their HD-DTS Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD tracks, it’s probably not possible to give any more definition to a digital audio signal and expect the human ear to even be able to detect it. If it’s feasible to add a 5.1 surround mix to the discs, they do so (although when they don’t, it becomes a bit problematic from a consumer standpoint, but more on this below.)

So far UMe’s roster of “High Fidelity Blu-ray Pure Audio” discs include stalwart titles like Nirvana’s Nevermind and In Utero, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Miles Davis’ soundtrack album for Louis Malle’s L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud, White Light/White Heat and The Velvet Underground & Nico, Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life, Derek & The Dominos’ Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, the fifty song Rolling Stones GRRR! comp, Let It Bleed, and Exile On Main St., Ella & Louis, I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone, Selling England By The Pound by Genesis, John Lennon’s Imagine, Queen’s A Night At The Opera, Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire De Melody Nelson and a handful of jazz and classical offerings, about fifty in all. 5.1 surround mixes of The Who’s Quadrophenia and an expanded version of the Legend collection of Bob Marley’s greatest hits are scheduled to come out this summer via UMe.

Backing up a bit, the majors began releasing 5.1 surround and high resolution audio in 1999 with the introduction of the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) which allowed for the reproduction of DSD audio streams that had the same “warmth” as vinyl. The music industry did such a terrible job of marketing the SACD format that few people even knew it existed before they more or less pulled the plug on it. (Bob Dylan’s entire catalog and all of the Rolling Stones ABKCO albums were released as SACDs, but for whatever reason, this fact was downplayed to the extent that it is barely noticeable in the packaging, although they can be easily identified in used CD racks simply as the ones in the digipaks). Elton John’s classic albums came out remixed in 5.1 surround. Ziggy Stardust was remixed for 5.1 surround in a way that made the album sound totally fresh (and much more muscular). Peter Gabriel’s catalog came out on SACD. Once it went out of print, the SACD surround version of Roxy Music’s Avalon—an album audiophiles have always gravitated towards—started selling used for hundreds of dollars....

The first time I heard an SACD of Blood on the Tracks, I was hooked because not only did it sound like Bob Dylan was actually singing in the room with me, such were the sonic details that you could literally hear the guitarist’s fingertips moving across the ridges of the strings. Back in the days of Napster and Limewire, it was said that SACDs were not only impossible to rip, but that the files were too big for easy transport across the Internet (yeah, they really thought that). SACDs can only be played in a special SACD player but since hardly anyone bought one in the first place, the format was basically DOA. I have a ton of them, they sound great, but… yeah, who cares about SACDs? Cut to a few years later and since everyone has a DVD player, now the new thing is DVD-A. Mute put out Nick Cave’s back catalog remixed to 5.1 surround, setting the bar high for archival releases. Rhino put out a box set of Björk’s albums called Surrounded and the entire Talking Heads discography came out on so-called “Dual Discs” (one side a 5.1 surround DVD, the other a “red book” CD layer). Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson became the undisputed go-to-guy for 5.1 and produced newly created surround mixes of several Jethro Tull and King Crimson albums.

Last year Blu-ray audio releases starting to edge out the DVD-A releases, notably the excellent 5.1 surround mix of Van Morrison’s Moondance album, Steven Wilson’s new mixes of Close to the Edge by Yes and XTC’s Nonsuch and the approximately fifty Blu-ray Pure Audio releases from UMe. After watching them fumble the ball so many times on the surround front for the past decade, I’m finally starting to think they might get it right this time (and I do hope that someone at UMe in the Blu-ray department is reading this.) The UMe BD releases, especially the ones with 5.1 surround mixes (which sadly ain’t all of ‘em) are nothing short of stunning. The two best that I’ve heard, in terms of their audiophile ability to knock your socks off are Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (you can actually hear the sound of his foot on the pedal of his grand piano, it’s sublime) and Beck’s Sea Change (I don’t give a shit about Beck, but this album is the first thing I grab to demonstrate the possibilities of high resolution surround sound.)

Until the newly remastered version of Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing came out a few weeks ago, I believe that UMe’s Blu-ray releases were only being test marketed in France (where they’re manufactured). Perhaps the “Pure Audio” discs were catching on as Nightclubbing is being released worldwide simultaneously on double LP, CD, as a deluxe two CD set, on digital download and as a Blu-ray Pure Audio disc. Apparently the Blu-ray disc is now being seen as another music format and for consumers, and for the record labels themselves, I think this is a good thing. I’ve been evangelical about surround sound—it’s simply the best way to listen to music outside of having the musicians show up at your front door—and high definition audio for years and at long last the industry seems to be sitting up and catering to the consumer wishes of the folks who still can be relied upon to buy music on discs.

Although I have noticed that the prices for the UMe BDs on Amazon tend to be in the $25 to $35 range prior to the street date for some of these discs, once they hit, the price drops to around $15 to $18 per. That’s not bad and considering that they are, in fact, noticeably better than regular CDs, I don’t feel like I am being ripped off for buying something that I have perhaps already owned multiple copies of—if I had to attempt to objectively quantify it in some way, I’d say that the stereo BDs are about 7-10% better than their regular CD equivalents and that the ones with 5.1 surround mixes, compared to CDs and even the best vinyl pressings, is like going from an old tube 20-inch TV set to a 50-inch HD flatscreen.

Consider the sort of leap in quality that gets made when a song like “Bohemian Rhapsody” is opened up from two speakers to six and the data used to reproduce the music employs six times (or better) the data found on a regular compact disc. Since so many homes are now set up with home theater systems, it makes sense that the surround thing finally seems to be catching on to a wider public. You watch movies in 5.1 surround, you can listen to music on that very same system.

At this point, though, as someone on the picky audiophile side of things, I gotta say, there aren’t a lot of titles that I would buy on Blu-ray audio discs unless they’d been remixed to include a 5.1 surround option. It’s THE LEAST the labels can do when asking the public to re-purchase classic albums already in their collections. Want me to upgrade? Sure, I will, and trust me I want to, but only if you can give me a surround mix. If I don’t get that, you don’t get any money from me UMe, it’s that simple (Dear UMe executive who might be reading this, note that I purchased the DVD-A of Histoire de Melody Nelson in 2013 BUT that I would have bought it again (for the fourth or is it fifth time?) had UMe offered the 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray. But you didn’t, which makes no sense because it would have been so easy to do, so I will not be upgrading… and I would have!)

To address Nightclubbing as a product, or rather as a product line, I’d have to say that if you’ve got a Blu-ray player, unless you are a die-hard vinyl person, there is no reason whatsoever to buy either the 2XCD set (it’s more expensive) or to buy a digital download. The BD is a much higher quality piece of software than the CD, hands down, but you also get a free digital download with every UMe BD purchase anyway (there’s a coupon inside each one), so why would you want to go that route and miss out on the vastly superior Blu-ray? It’s easily the best value for the money.

Although there is no 5.1 mix included on the Nightclubbing Blu-ray—WHY NOT?—it’s still great and I wholeheartedly recommend it for all of the above reasons. Unlike with many of the UMe “Pure Audio” releases, Nightclubbing isn’t something I already owned, so I think I’m probably being forgiving on the “no surround mix” point simply because I’m listening to the album on repeat twenty times a day and can’t get enough of it. But I do hope that when UMe is considering the next batch of Blu-rays to release, that they’ll opt for giving the discerning consumer the extra added value of a 5.1 mix. For me, it’s practically a requirement, but give me that and I’d be willing to rebuy half my record collection.*

*If my wife would allow this, I mean…

Below, Grace Jones in her A One Man Show live video from 1982.
 

 
Grace Jones has a theory that “men need to be penetrated…at least once in their lifetime.” The singer, actress and muse thinks it would help men “understand what it is like to receive,” which could (perhaps) “...help take some of the aggression out of the world.”

It’s a theory Jones has perhaps held for a while, as during the making of the movie A View to a Kill, in which she played villain May Day against Roger Moore’s James Bond, she (jokingly) tried out her theory. In a seductive scene between May Day and Bond, Jones surprised Moore by disrobing to reveal a large rubber strap-on attached to her body. She then pounced on the unsuspecting 007. The prank left Bond shaken, but not apparently stirred.

Grace learned all about male aggression from an early age. She was brought up by her grandparents, who were devoutly Christian, tough, hard, and violent. She was frequently whipped by her grandfather over anything he considered to be a misdemeanor.

“Sometimes we’d have to climb a tree and pick our own whips to be disciplined with. When you had to pick your own whip, you knew you were in for it.”

Such aggressive behavior taught Grace to hide her emotions form her family, though later it did inspire her to create a fearsome alter ego.

“I think the scary character comes from male authority within my religious family. They had that first, and subliminally I took that on. I was shit scared of them.”

A few years later, Grace moved to America to be with her parents. Without the brutish discipline of her grandparents, Grace started to rebel, and gave up religion for the world of music, art and theater. She became a model, and started to hang-out with Andy Warhol and his Factory scene, and in the late 1970s, she began recording.

Her collaboration with artist and designer Jean-Paul Goude produced several decade-defining fashions, music promos, and ads. In 1982, this perfect balance of Grace and Goude produced a video of Jones’ concert A One Man Show, which along with Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense is one of the best concerts of the 1980s—a brilliant piece of theater and music, which is long overdue a full release on DVD. Track listing, “Warm Leatherette,” “Walking In The Rain,” “Feel Up,” “La Vie En Rose,” “Demolition Man,” “Pull Up To The Bumper,” “Private Life,” “My Jamaican Guy,” “Living My Life,” and “Libertango/Strange I’ve Seen That Face Before.”
 

 
Bonus compilation of Grace Jones’ rarities, after the jump…

 
Grace Jones applies her makeup as Lady Miss Kier and DJ Dmitri of Deee-Lite ham it up for the video cameras in the dressing room of the legendary Palladium nightclub on 14th Street (now an NYU dorm, of course).

Worth mentioning is the fact that the wild costume Jones is wearing was designed by a guy named David Spada (seen in video wearing a polka-dot shirt). Spada, who died in 1996, was the designer of the iconic anodized aluminum Freedom Rings symbolizing LGBT rights that were launched in 1991.

Video shot and edited by Janet Speier and David Wallace Crotty. Mildly NSFW due to what is now called a “wardrobe malfunction.”
 

Bowie’s Aladdin Sane cover artwork with X-Man Cyclops.
 
German artist Ewe de Witt re-imagines iconic albums with superheroes.

I think the Grace Jones cover with Luke Cage is my favorite.

Check out more of Ewe de Witt‘s superhero album covers at his Cover Parodies section on DeviantART.
 

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon cover artwork with Dr. Strange.
 

Grace Jones’ Living My Life cover artwork with Luke Cage.
 
More photos after the jump…