KEY POINTS:
I cried at the Grace Jones concert in Sydney. My shoulders shook, tears
trickled down my cheeks, I lost it - laughing. Everyone around me was doing the same. The cause? Jones, 60-year-old grandmother and singer extraordinaire, had gradually shed her clothes - she wasn't wearing much to start with but the temperature inside Newton's Enmore Theatre was stinking - until she was wearing just a strapless little black number cut high on the leg. Very high. Her outfit was bottomless, showing off her tightly chiselled rear. Literally, showing off. During one number, she mounted a platform, turned her back, then began a rumpy-pumpy
routine, muscles rippling from right buttock to left, then back again, over and over, turning just once to wink at the screaming (with
laughter) fans. I don't know how she did it, but it was one of many magic, mad moments during the 90-minute concert, the last of Jones' three-night gig as a headliner for the Sydney Festival.
There were so many compelling things about Jones' show, part of the Hurricane Tour to promote her new album. Good as some songs are from that album, it was the older material that really grabbed the crowd, many of whom appeared to be Jones' vintage or more, but in much shabbier shape.
To open, the band - which included her son Paulo Goude - came on, then
Jones appeared mid-air on a throne as she roared out Nightclubbing. She looked wild, magnificent. As with each song of the night, she vanished behind a curtain to the side of the stage for a lightning change, chatting to the audience as she "swallowed something good" or complained that "that hole is too damn tight". She was referring (I think) to her offstage requirement of freshly shucked oysters and bottles of Cristal to keep that two-and-a-half octave contralto oiled. Or perhaps she was talking about the costumes, which ranged from high thin horns on her
head, to masks, to a twisted, peaked hat with fringed coat which looked like a cross between a chicken and a voodoo doll. All credit to British millinery legend Philip Treacy, who created the 17 costumes for her, and
was there himself to dress the diva.
The highlight had to be when she came out in her black bustiere with just one accessory - a huge pink hula hoop. It was testament to her fitness that as she slowly sang Slave to the Rhythm she undulated the
hula hoop around her waist right through the entire song. When the show ended, she came back for an encore, and ended with bows, kisses and smiles to a crowd who were loving her back.
Jones' offstage antics in Sydney made terrific fodder for daily gossip columns in the newspapers. She changed hotels after finding the first one didn't offer the right ind of steam room. She went on a cruise on
celebrity accountant Anthony Bell's $7 million superyacht, and jumped
overboard for a Sydney Harbour swim. She toured Sydney in the city's longest limo, waving to onlookers through the sunroof - even if
they didn't know who the hand belonged to. She gave the festival invaluable media profile.
The next night, there couldn't have been a greater contrast between Jones' sunniness to the shattering Holocaust play The Pianist at the Belvoir St Theatre in Surry Hills. Based on the memoirs of piano virtuoso Wladyslaw Szpilman, one of the few survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, the play is a two-man show conceived and scripted by Polish pianist Mikhail Rudy. Rudy played works by Chopin
during the play as a counterpoint to the gruelling first-person story told by actor Sean Taylor. The stage was bare, save for Rudy's Steinway and a few violin stands which served as props to indicate Szpilman's family members dragged away by the Nazis to the camps. It was a
shockingly powerful production and towards the end, the theatre was filled with sounds of sniffling and nose-blowing. Tears not of
laughter but of sadness.
The Sydney Festival had many other highlights to offer when I was there but the endurance test of the Sydney Theatre Company's eight-hour Shakespeare homage The War of the Roses featuring Cate Blanchett was not for me. I had another festival marathon in mind: All Tomorrow's Parties, the alternative music festival which originated in England and debuted
in Australia this year, first in Melbourne then for two days on Cockatoo Island in the middle of Sydney Harbour.
A former prison and shipyard, Cockatoo Island's dry docks were built by convicts, including infamous bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, who escaped the island by swimming to the mainland.
Today, the island is administered as a Sydney Harbour Federation Trust Site, its spooky tunnels and huge old sheds ideal for film shoots - and you can rent camping spots.
ATP, curated by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, was pitched as a festival for grownups, with around 7000 people visiting each day of the festival. Opening at 11am, ATP was spread around four stages, including one inside the enormous shipbuilders' shed, with paths and tunnels between each site making an easy wander around the island.
The mood was mellow, perhaps because the crowd was generally more "grownup" - until later that night when some punters had clearly reverted to adolescence via alcohol.
Due to a friend's work commitments, we didn't get there (by water-taxi) till 6pm, which felt about right, given the sunburnt faces sported by many. We'd missed out on bands like Bridezilla, Laughing Clowns, Robert Forster and Japanese girl band Afrirampo, but we didn't care. The only bands we were there to see were the temporarily reformed The Saints followed by Cave & the Bad Seeds.
The Saints, fronted by Chris Bailey and joined by the great guitarist Ed Kuepper, were in fine form although Bailey was affronted by the arrival of a group of police officers who pushed their way through the crowd. "Do you have tickets?" he inquired. "Did you get a group discount?"
The crowd went berserk when the band played their 1976 hit (I'm) Stranded, incomprehensible, Bailey assured them, because it was sung in "fluent Queensland".
Nevertheless, everyone bellowed along to the chorus, an anthem to the urgent need to get out of Brissy.
The sun was setting as Cave and his merry band of brothers stepped on to the main stage, the singer resplendent as ever in a three-piece suit and Mexican bandit mo. Having worked all day as curator, introducing bands to the audience, Cave forgot the words to a song and stopped the band,
telling the crowd he was"f***ing exhausted".
But he was in great form, dancing like a demon and singing like an angel while a little boy, who I suspect was one of his sons, watched from the side of the stage.
The Saints were robust in volume but pipsqueaks compared with the Bad Seeds - people from surrounding harbourside suburbs had been "ringing up complaining about the noise", Cave said.
The band tried to get away after their one-hour set but the crowd wasn't having it and back they came for a stupendously rumbling encore ending with Red Right Hand, lit by a hellishly appropriate red glow.
As the crowded ferry pulled away and the sound of New York electronic duo Silver Apples drifted across the water, the sky flushed with the light of an enormous full moon.
At her concert, Grace Jones said, "Sydney is so hot ... I like
it!" The Sydney Festival, which brought in $6.7 million last year
and had reached $5.3 million this year at time of writing, has generated much of that heat over the past month. The rest is down to Australia's fierce Mother Nature.
Linda Herrick travelled to Sydney courtesy of Tourism NSW.
