And so it’s here. The last of Dave Haslam’s Art Decades series. Strawberry & The Big Apple. The strawberry of the title refers to Stockport’s own, Strawberry Studio. Place in which 10CC recorded. Place in which Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures was recorded. Place, these days, that it is very easy to walk by, but scene in November 1980 of a curious and unusual meeting.
The Big Apple, you’ll no doubt be unsurprised to learn, is New York, the place where Jamaica-born Grace Jones, singer, model and provocateur, initially made her name and a place that Tony Wilson, erstwhile provocateur himself (owner of Factory Records, TV presenter, etc), liked to bring bands (bands like New Order and A Certain Ratio, sometimes also known as ACR) to help them see what Manchester could be, if given a shove in the right direction.
These worlds came together on that grimy day in November 1980 (on the day after Jones got uppity with silly chatshow host Russell Harty), when Grace Jones was ushered into the company of ACR with the idea of maybe covering one or two of their songs (Jones had already covered Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control – the she of that song calling out to Jones who sang it as “I lost control again” in a version that you should definitely hear if you haven’t already).
It shouldn’t come as any real surprise that nothing very much came of this particular clash of worlds (you only have to read a vintage ACR interview from back in the day to see that they weren’t the kinds of people who pushed their advantage), but it certainly gives Haslam enough of an opportunity to pursue a sort of flaneur’s eye-view of links and threads and connections.
As ever, blink and you miss it, 58 pages are gone in a flash and you think, well Dave, if this is to be the last Art Decades book in the series then so be it; just make sure to treat us to something we can hold in our hands for a while longer (a book of two or three hundred pages would serve us nicely, thank you very much). Publishing people, if you can just sort out the finances and let our friend Dave crack on with the words, everyone will be happy.
Any Cop?: A treat, as ever. If you’ve yet to dabble with the Art Decades series, now is the best possible time. Treat yourself to a boxset, why don’t you?
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