Channelling Jones But Short Of Grace
The Age
Thursday October 23, 2008
I'VE GOT A BULLETPROOF HEART: KENNY MELLMAN IS GRACE JONES
The Speigeltent, Arts Centre Forecourt, October 21-22 Running time: 50 minutes.THE physical difference between Kenny Mellman and Grace Jones couldn't be starker.He's a pudgy 40-year-old cabaret artist; she's an angular, androgynous black model and pop star.His half-hearted effort to suggest Jones' famous "look", with sunglasses and a sequinned hoodie, are naturally shambolic. But he meets with more success channelling her dark and rebellious 'tude.Mellman says he was inspired by a magazine photograph of Jones, holding a leash to four prone men in dog collars and gold lame G-strings. It's her severity he remembers, and that certainly comes through in this cabaret reworking of her songs.The vocal selection emphasises it. His interpretation of her three-note growlers - Walking In The Rain, Nightclubbing and Nipple To The Bottle - conjures Jones' persona, vacillating between affected apathy and genuine scorn.But between the vapid beats of a drum machine, Mellman's savage thrashing at the piano and his languid and angry vocals, a persona is all we get.It's annoying that the boppier numbers - Pull Up To The Bumper springs to mind - are given as gruff treatment as the song-speech. And Mellman doesn't touch at all on Jones' feminine side. Including the soaring melody of La Vie En Rose, for instance, might have presented a more complex musical picture of his subject.I've Got A Bulletproof Heart does peel away Jones' persona, but it doesn't do it through the music. Each song segues into a re-enactment of interviews Jones has given, and they present a woman of fiery intelligence, sardonic humour and liberal instincts.Given that Mellman seems concerned with Jones as impossibly cool man-eater, his stage mishaps are inexcusable. Grace Jones wouldn't drop a drumstick during Warm Leatherette. Nor would she fumble lyrics.
© 2008 The Age
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