It’s back with a bang this week as disco legend Grace Jones makes her debut on the blog. Appropriately enough it is with one of her own very early recorded appearances, in this brief cameo as a nightclub singer in the 1976 Italian crime film Quelli della calibre 38, a classically pulpy tale in which coppers tire of the administration involved in having the law in their own hands, so choose to go underground to battle ruthless French gangsters free from red tape. Despite really not being stretched in the role, there’s still plenty of healthy mugging to camera from the young Grace, or to be more generous, she’s been done no favours by an editor who presumably can’t speak English and has royally screwed up the lip syncing.
Written by the film’s composer, the stalwart Stelvio Cipriani, the song was released as a single only in Italy but it would go on to enjoy an eventful afterlife. Indeed, Cipriani seemed keen not to let it go, recycling it seven years later in another of his soundtracks, appropriately enough for the radioactive zombie caper Incubo sulla città contaminata. Jones herself would later go on to re-record the track for her third album, Muse, with a version that even a disco fan like me would have to say is perhaps best described as chintzy nightmare. For my money it’s the stripped down version that features in Colt 38 Special Squad that’s the best. Different still even from the single version, its simple intro of piano and harmonies lend it more melancholic air that better suit the desperate cry of its lyrics.
Grace Jones – I’ll Find My Way To You