Grace Jones Electrifies New York With Eye-Popping — and Hilarious — Show: Concert Review
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Grace Jones was one of the most iconic artists of the early ‘80s, with a boldly androgynous and prescient image and string of brilliant albums with a pioneering sound and expertly curated covers that fused R&B, new wave and reggae into a fusion that has been echoed everywhere from Rihanna to Massive Attack and beyond. Now 75, she’s continued performing but hasn’t released an album since 2008, and seemed to drop below the radar for all but her fanbase, influencees and the LGBTQ and Pitchfork audiences until the past few years, when the brilliance of her “Warm Leatherette,” “Nightclubbing” and “Living My Life” albums became even more undeniable. Yet even fans who’d seen her shows in the past probably were not prepared for the eye-popping, mind-blowing concert she staged as part of Blue Note Jazz Festival at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Wednesday night, which mere words cannot do justice. At 75, her always-deep voice sounds as great as ever, her outfits and staging are as provocative as ever, and she could give Mick Jagger a literal run for his money in terms of fitness and dexterity at a certain age. Best of all, for all her hauteur, diva-tude and icon status, she never takes herself too seriously and every outfit, headdress, and staging touch had an undercurrent of humor that’s sadly lacking in most artists — and her stage banter is absolutely hilarious, although the humor often lay less in what she was saying than the way she said it (although lines like “Why do you need a dick if you’ve got a dildo?” land in a multitude of contexts).