Grace Jones has been giving us life since the days of Studio 54, and today she turns 67! The model/singer/actress/fashion icon and all around crazy person is one of the last surviving and thriving icons of the glittery disco era still kicking it with the avant garde. Jones was born May 19, 1948 in Spanish Town, Jamaica before moving to New York at 13. From there she took the modeling world by storm, eventually moving into a career as a singer, then an actress. She appeared in such films as the camp classic horror Vamp, the Bond film A View To A Kill, Conan The Destroyer and Boomerang. Her biggest hits include her silky disco cover of La Vie En Rose, her ode to butt sex Pull Up To the Bumper and the amazing and classic Slave To The Rhythm. This bitch is FIERCE! Below are some fun videos of Grace, including her performing Slave To The Rhythm for The Queen of England at her Jubilee celebration while.....well.....just watch. She was 64 at the time. Keep that in mind. The last video is of what I consider to be Grace's masterpiece, Williams Blood, a song about the history of her family from her 2008 album Hurricane, written with Wendy & Lisa. Anyhooo.......Happy birthday, Grace!!!
Perhaps one of Prince & The Revolution's most offbeat, transitional works, Around The World In A Day, was released on an unsuspecting public 30 years ago today. With minimal to zero promo to trumpet its release, Around The World In A Day showed up in record stores without even a picture of Prince or the band to push it. In fact, first single Raspberry Beret was not released until a month after the album. Prince stated that he wanted listeners to experience the album as a whole and not base its substance on just one song. Following the hugely successful and overtly commercial Purple Rain, Prince & The Revolution hit the studio looking for a new sound. What they came up with, rumored to be influenced greatly by Revolution members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, was an eclectic group of songs with a psychedelic twist, relying heavily on tambourines, cymbals and strings. Even without promotion, Around The World In A Day still managed two Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 with Raspberry Beret (#2) and Pop Life (#7), a top 20 with Paisley Park in the UK (#18) and one more Hot 100 entry in the US with America (#46). While not as successful as Purple Rain (what was?) ATWIAD still hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and stayed there for three consecutive weeks. What it also did was set up a change in Prince's sound that would stay with him through his next album, Parade, the amazing soundtrack to his film Under the Cherry Moon, also written in tight collaboration with Wendy and Lisa. Although it is not as lauded as some of his other output during his most commercially successful period, I find Around The World In A Day to be such an important album in terms of evolution of his sound and reinvention in Prince's career. I still listen to this album to this day and it hold up incredibly well. So take a listen below and Happy 30th, Around The World In A Day.
