#213
by Craig Fitzgerald
May 9 1980
Grace Jones
Warm Leatherette
Genre: New Wave? Reggae?
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Craig’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Craig’s Highlights:
Warm Leatherette
Bullshit Breakdown
by Craig Fitzgerald
There is no way I would’ve ever heard this record in the whitebread, classic rock, dipshit hick town of Wilmington, Massachusetts where I grew up. If I had, I would’ve been given a wedgie beaten up by a fan of Foreigner. Therefore, my exposure to Grace Jones was limited. This record is a completely new experience for me. And given what I knew about her -- the video for “Demolition Man” which was in pretty regular rotation on MTV -- this is a pretty conventional album. It’s the kind of new wavey-dancy-reggaeish pop that sounds like about 97 percent of the other records I barely listened to at that time. As I found out, the reason for that was that it was one of the earlier Compass Point All Stars records. For a while there, a lot of records sounded like this because all the same people played on all of them, in the same studio. These guys were like the Swampers at Muscle Shoals for middle-aged recording artists in the ‘80s. Synth and guitar forward, super clean, generally non-offensive. It’s no surprise to me that Robert Palmer recorded two albums with the same people. MIck Jagger’s generally terrible first solo record was recorded here, along with every single musician known to man at that time. The other thing that was kind of a surprise was the fact that most of the songs on it are covers, and real bvious covers. Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” is on here. So is Tom Petty’s “Breakdown.” Both of these covers polish the rough edges right off of those songs. Unfortunately, the rough edges are what I like about them. That’s not to say they’re “bad.” The performers are great, but they sound like something you’d hear in any classy bar with a piano. The title track is probably my favorite song on the album. I tried to figure out what it was all about, and it turns out it was inspired by the novel -- which became the movie -- Crash, about people who got boners seeing car crashes. The song is better than the movie. It’s definitely the most “new wave” sound of anything on the album. “Bullshit” is a good song that had absolutely no hope of getting any airplay in 1980. It would’ve been great if somebody like Tina Turner belted it out. This is a record that definitely feels like Grace Jones is trying to figure out exactly what the hell she’s doing. She probably had that mapped out a lot better in her next record.
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