Grace Jones bares her teeth

Posted: March 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Music, Photography | Tags: concert experience, grace jones | No Comments »

Grace bares her teeth, originally uploaded by Caroline.

My first concert of the year was a bloody great one.

She’s 60 years old and her body puts the rest of us to shame. Fashionably late, fabulously wearing a different Philip Treacy hat for every song and – mostly miniscule – threads over her fishnet panty hose. In between songs she’d disappear to the side of the stage, all the while making lewd comments to entertain us: ‘Give me something to suck…’

Ms Jones played a lot of songs from her surprisingly good new album ‘Hurricane’, but she didn’t forget her greatest hits: ‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Pull up to the bumper’ (with on stage audience participation), ‘Nightclubbing’ and of course, ‘Slave to the Rhythm’, which she performed while gyrating a hula hoop.

It was the newer, more personal songs that touched me. The autobiographical ‘Williams Blood’ in particular, in which she channelled her mother talking to her daughter disapprovingly: “Why don’t you be a Jones like your Sister and your brother Noel?” But amazing Grace is blessed with the blood of her musician granddad Williams. She’s “wicked”, she says: “You can’t save a wretch like me…”

She closed the set with ‘Hurricane’ dressed in a flowing black robe, while a wind machine of giant proportions blew us and herself away.

View my Grace Jones photos on Flickr

All Jazzed Out

Posted: July 11th, 2004 | Filed under: Music | Tags: concert experience, festivals, food and drink, macy gray, nightmares, north sea jazz, signage, signs, stanley clarke, taxi, tiny bit, train fare, wrong way | 2 Comments »

North Sea Jazz was possibly the most frustrating concert experience I’ve ever had. I used to have nightmares just like it – me wanting to see gigs and getting lost and not being able to get in and being too short to see, etc. I found the building and its signage (Congresgebouw) utterly confusing. Twice I nearly panicked because I just couldn’t find my way out of a place. There weren’t any clear signs to the main exit either. I asked someone working there and they, again, pointed me the wrong way.

In the end I stuck with the largest hall, saw a tiny bit of Stanley Clarke (Ugh… not my thing.) and all of Macy Gray (who was good, but needs to lay off whatever she’s on and fucking sing instead of letting the band do all the work). Then I left.

10 Euro on food and drink, 16 on the train fare, 30 on taxi fare. What a waste. Next time I’ll go see jazz in a club where it belongs.

I think my expectations were highly romantic and unrealistic. Festivals, by their very nature, suck.