A Certain Grace-io

 

I can remember getting really excited by this when I read it in the NME in the last dying weeks of 1980. Even though all I knew of A Certain Ratio at that point was "Flight" and "Shack Up", as played frequently on Peel, and all I knew of Grace Jones was "Private Life", her medium-sized hit.... it seemed exciting.  And covering a Talking Heads song, "Houses In Motion" too - a three-way conjunction of postpunk postfunk cool.

I was also taken by the arrogance of ACR's claim "We're gonna do a Talkin' Heads track an' do it properly". As a Talking Heads fan, very soon to get hold of Remain In Light as my Christmas present, and who had already heard a bunch of tracks from it on the radio, including "Houses in Motion", to me this seemed quite the ballsy statement.  

But the collaboration never came about - the A Certain Grace-io "Houses In Motion" never materialized. (Talking Heads did release their original version as the second single off Remain In Light, though).  

Then decades later ACR finally put out their instrumental version of "Houses In Motion" - the one they did with Martin Hannett in readiness for Grace to incant over. Near-instrumental, rather, for it features the guide vocal laid down by Jez Kerr for Grace to sing along to. 

Doesn't exactly eclipse the original. 

Now I feel like I have read somewhere or other, certain claims from ACR that it was them that propelled Talking Heads in a funk direction. This was supposed to have happened when ACR supported Byrne & Co on their UK tour in 1979. Byrne supposedly watching their shows very intently, listening and learning.

But Talking Heads had already released the ultra-funky More Songs  About Buildings And Food the previous year.  Indeed you can hear funk tendencies germinating on the album before that, their debut Talking Heads 77. Plus, Byrne and Weymouth and Frantz lived in New York City, they hardly needed to go to Manchester to learn about da funk - it was streaming out of the radio, seething in the streets.  Seems a bit of wishful thinking there from the ACR boys! 

Update: looking into it more closely, I see the chronology makes even less sense: the dates ACR played support to Talking Heads were in December of 1979, months after Talking Heads had recorded and released Fear of Music. So that's three incrementally funkier albums Byrne & Crew had made before supposedly being shown the Way by ACR. (Fear of Music starts with the Fela-influenced Dada-disco of "I Zimbra").  Meanwhile, ACR's debut single in 1979 was the drummerless dirge "All Night Party". 

"All Night Party", released September 1979

"I Zimbra", opening track of Fear of Music, released August 1979

"We're gonna do a Talkin' Heads track an' do it properly" - typical Manc-wank bluster 'n' bull! Talking of which, looking up ACR I see that Anthony H. Wilson proclaimed them, upon the release of the debut single, to be "the new Sex Pistols".  

I've had the raw ingredients for this post sitting for a month or two (got a bit of a backblog - I always do, on all of these blogs -  things started but not finished). The spur to finally poop it out came today when I saw the amazing news about a whole book  entirely concerning this abortive encounter between La Jones and A Certain Ratio. A short book, admittedly, but a book! Titled Strawberry and the Big Apple: Grace Jones in Stockport, 1980, it's written by Dave Haslam and it's the finale to the Art Decades series of  attractively designed monographs on esoteric subjects that he's been doing. (I have All You Need Is Dynamite, which is about the Angry Brigade and its links to the Manchester counterculture magazine Mole Express). 

 

Release rationale: 

In ‘Strawberry and the Big Apple’, the eighth and final short-format book in his acclaimed Art Decades series, Dave Haslam explains a seemingly unlikely scenario: the day in November 1980 when Grace Jones – a spectacularly glamorous jet-setting singer living and working in Paris and New York, and recording in the Bahamas – pays a visit to Stockport (a post-industrial town seven miles south of Manchester, with crumbling infrastructure and rising unemployment). Her quest that day? To meet A Certain Ratio, a group then signed to Factory Records.

This tale of worlds colliding includes Tony Wilson’s fascination with New York; an intriguing portrait of the early life of Grace Jones; a twist in the tale, and more than a couple of mysteries; plus walk-on parts for 10cc, Robert De Niro and Jerry Hall. ‘Strawberry and the Big Apple’ is the latest (and last) work in the Art Decades series by writer and former Haçienda DJ, Dave Haslam, exploring a variety of subjects rooted in cities, in recent history and lived experience, and a love for music, literature, and art.

Publication date: 11 April 2024. All pre-ordered copies of the book will be signed by the author.

I wouldn't say this is a story that NEEDED to be told, but I am quite intrigued. 

The Strawberry in the title is Strawberry Studios, where 10cc made their records (one of the band was a co-investor in the studio). 

What about the reference in the NME news story to Grace Jones as "infamous sparring partner" to chat show host Russell Harty? What, you've not heard about this legendary live-on-TV fracas?

Funny how things soar and dip and soar again in one's estimation over the decades - in 1980 I thought "Flight" mesmerizing....  ACR seemed like this fascinating shadowy apparition of a group... so much so that I sent off for The Graveyard and The Ballroom cassette (mail order, something I never did then) and listened to it over and over... 

but the promise dissipated with drab dessicated debut To Each.... flickered again with "Knife Slits Water" and "Guess Who" and a couple of other singles.... but then faded as they plugged away and chugged on. 

Caught them live in March 86 and they seemed like a pallid shadow of whatever they might have promised once... slick yet gaunt

In 1995 - when I was given these reissues to review for the Wire - my estimation of them was at its lowest probably

But by the early 2000s, as fascination for the whole postpunk Zeitgeist took me over, ACR again seemed like a tantalizing proposition

measured assessment: they never quite became what they seemed to portend 

a recent thought:

ACR's cold-fever funk was never better than on “Flight”, released in 1980 as a 12-inch single. The format testified to ACR’s awareness of  club culture: the deeper vinyl grooves offered deejays penetrating bass and a bigger sound.  Vivid but rather wintry, “Flight” didn’t light up too many real-world discotheques. But its swimmy spaciousness, ghostly vocals, and restless drums make for an immersive headphone experience.  

Prototypes for ACR

Bonus bit on "Houses In Motion" from an interview I did

“Houses in Motion” – Talking Heads (Remain in Light, 1980)

This is an interesting song. It was a single in England but it wasn’t a hit. It followed “Once in a Lifetime,” which was a big hit in the UK but not in America. “Houses in Motion” was sequenced on Remain in Light to follow “Once in a Lifetime,” which is about someone who’s suddenly estranged from his routine, his life, his possessions, his family, his wife. He’s estranged from it and it all seems absurd, yet that realization hits him with this sort of a cosmic force. It’s almost like a blinding, mystical epiphany: the idea that you cruise through everything without connecting with reality. And then, immediately, it goes into “Houses in Motion,” which is back inside alienation. It’s based in the same musical ideas as “Once in a Lifetime” but whereas “Once in a Lifetime” is a kind of mystical, oceanic funk, “House in Motion” is a sort of eerie, neurotic funk. The protagonist in the song is back inside neurosis. The key line is: “He’s digging his own grave.” He’s trapped in routine, going round and round, just working for these goals and missing life. So it’s almost as if the two songs are sister songs. In the first one, the guy sees through everything and grasps the oneness of existence, in an almost mystical way. In the second song he’s like a prisoner. He’s blinkered. He’s working for ambition and goals, digging his own grave, going nowhere.

Strangely I don't mention one of its most salient elements, the amazing Jon Hassell trumpet