2022: Pull Up To The Bumper!

Grace Jones – Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions
Island Records – 314 524-501-2
2 x CD, Compilation, US, Jun 16, 1998
info

In my last post I said that Sly & Robbie's work with Grace Jones "sounded like the future." Seemed like that made it a fitting post for a new year... Happy New Year, everyone. Wish everyone peace, health and strength as we head into 2022.

_______________________________

In 1979 and 1980, Island Records completed construction on their new Compass Point recording studios in Nassau. Label chief Chris Blackwell was worked to pull together his dream band of in-house musicians to work with the stars he'd soon begin flying to the Bahamas to record. Blackwell had lived in JA in his youth and had some success promoting the reggae artists he'd signed to Island abroad (especially some guy named Marley), so it's not completely surprising that he'd decided that he wanted a Jamaican rhythm section for the new house band.

Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (RIP) had taken off as reggae's drum and bass team of choice. Island hired them to bounce over to the Bahamas as core members of the newly assembled Compass Point All Stars. Pulling from Blackwell's connections in the British rock world, keyboard wizard Wally Badarou was flown out alongside Marianne Faithfull's guitarist to join them. Guitarist Mikey Chung and percussionist Uzziah "Sticky" Thompson were regular collaborators with Sly and Robbie on their Jamaican reggae work and followed them into this new adventure.

Reggae was a core influence for the Compass Point band, but dub, funk, new wave, disco, the early strands of hip hop, and more were all channeled into the records cut at this new studio in the Caribbean. The recordings were were experimental, but still decidedly pop and featured the work of a brilliant young engineer and producer named Alex Sadkin. A motley crew of pop stars passed through to cut records backed by Blackwell's team over the next few years: Joe Cocker, Gwen Guthrie, the Tom Tom Club, Manu Dibango, Mick Jagger, Serge Gainsbourg and many more... including Grace Jones.

Jones was clearly embracing the spirit of the recent punk explosion and playing with new directions in her music. Post-punk experiments in New York and the UK were marrying that energy with disco, funk and reggae production techniques and possibilities they opened for the dancefloor that were a perfect match for the arty, defiant, icon. The Compass Point band was up for this challenge, building long, tracks of mutant disco-funk-dub hybrids for Grace's vocals, performing covers of soul and punk rock(?!) songs alongside her quirky originals.

This double CD set collects those recordings, 26 Grace Jones tracks with all but the last backed by the Compass Point All Stars. These songs are mostly pulled from her Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981), and Living My Life (1982) LPs, with extended mixes and dub versions that had only been featured on 12" singles, cassette versions of albums or left unreleased until this compilation.

Grace Jones and the Compass Point team really pulled off something special in these sessions. Jones was already more or less the coolest damn person in the world, but she sounds like she was reborn during these recordings, finding her own voice (even when covering someone else's song) on a level that those first few albums never pulled off. Songs by the Marvelettes, Iggy Pop, the Pretenders, Melvin Van Peebles and Johnny Cash turn up. Grace's vocals are remarkable, at one moment flying beautifully and the next snarling and ready to fight. Somehow, She and Compass Point band turned the proto-industrial of The Normal's Warm Leatherette into something I could play in a club. Their take of Bill Wither's Use Me here shows Sly and Robbie in brilliant form and the long version included here features some fantastic keyboard and guitar work as the track is stretched out for the dancefloor. Originals Nipple To The Bottle and My Jamaican Guy are classics, funky disco given a punky dub makeover. A previously unreleased demo of Ring Of Fire has Jones singing patois country over what sounds like their update to the rhythm from Dawn Penn's No, No, No. And her take on She's Lost Control by Joy Division managed to finish their journey from gloom-punk into arty dance music a couple years before the Manc band worked it out themselves in New Order.

I love this stuff and keep finding new reasons to revisit it over the years. Listening to it through some nice headphones as I wrote this, I heard so much that I'd never caught before in these songs that I'm so familiar with, but used to hearing blaring from a speaker or a DJ booth. Grace Jones' recordings at Compass Point are so thoroughly a product of the early eighties and at the same time still sound cutting edge- modern or maybe actually from the future.

If this is new to any of you, I really hope you enjoy. And these extended 12" cuts and dubs are a great treat even if you already know and love the original albums.

_______________________________

Tracklist

Disc 1

1-01     Private Life (Long Version)

1-02     Private Life (Dub Version)

1-03     Love Is The Drug (Long Version)

1-04     Breakdown

1-05     Warm Leatherette (Long Version)

1-06     The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game (Long Version)

1-07     I've Done It Again

1-08     Pars (Long Version)

1-09     Pull Up To The Bumper

1-10     Use Me (Long Version)

1-11     She's Lost Control (Long Version)

1-12     She's Lost Control (Dub Version)

Disc 2

2-01     Walking In The Rain

2-02     Cry Now, Laugh Later

2-03     Nightclubbing

2-04     The Apple Stretching

2-05     Nipple To The Bottle (12" Version)

2-06     My Jamaican Guy (12" Version)

2-07     Feel Up

2-08     I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)

2-09     Demolition Man (Long Version)

2-10     Unlimited Capacity For Love

2-11     Ring Of Fire (Demo)

2-12     Man Around The House

2-13     Living My Life (7" Version)

2-14     Slave To The Rhythm (Hot Blooded Version)

_______________________________________

Laid back not thinking back in FLAC (Download zip file):

https://mega.nz/file/YLI3ASxb#DMadjBaP7cOFbZnHmgkDEuOz91A1ShQEDe1-xey_W8Q

No way him gwan fall out pon me in MP3 (stream or download):

https://mega.nz/folder/NfYFQI5K#EZ5EZXsmiErwc1EuDxoQPg

Both CDs and the full booklet/liner notes in both. Happy New Year!