SFGATE senior culture editor Dan Gentile went 'Nightclubbing' with all the other elder millennials at the fest

Grace Jones knows how to make an entrance. As the sun held onto its last light on Saturday at San Francisco’s Outside Lands, the curtains at the Lands End stage unfurled to reveal Jones towering over her band, standing on a riser several stories high. A 60-foot-tall, black-and-white skirt flowed down to the ground, originally designed by Keith Haring in 1986 for the music video “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You).”

Grace Jones, the highest (!) performer at Outside Lands this year ⁦@SFGate⁩ pic.twitter.com/dCJsRZGsce

— Dan Gentile (@Dannosphere) August 11, 2024

Jones, the main legacy act playing the festival, was a contemporary of Haring, as well as Andy Warhol, who makes an appearance in the same music video. The Jamaican-American multihyphenate has been a fixture in the worlds of fashion, film and music since the ’70s, working with titanic musical figures like Tom Moulton (the original pioneer of the disco remix) and Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (Jamaica’s most legendary rhythm section). Her covers of songs like “Warm Leatherette” (The Normals), “Love is the Drug” (Roxy Music) and “Nightclubbing” (Iggy Pop and David Bowie) have eclipsed the originals in the minds of many listeners, and her Paradise Garage classic “Pull Up to the Bumper” (1981) remains a staple in many DJ sets today (I’ve owned the single for 15 years, and it still regularly ends up in my crate).

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