Rickie lee Jones, S/D?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

well?

― derrick (derrick), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 19:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

she will always be the "you don't get clouds like that anymore" woman to me.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 19:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

so, eh, classic.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 19:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

Really, Really, Really, Really, Really can't fuckin' stand her.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 20:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

She wrote a song about me!!!!

And she's much better than Norah.

― Chuck E., Tuesday, 18 February 2003 20:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

Love her. Search the first album, which is amazing.

― Sean (Sean), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 20:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

I feel sorry for this thread, but I don't have anything to add except that I love her first lp -despite 'Chuck E', it must be said - and makes me think of the Sissy Spacek character from 'Badlands' if she'd spent her teen years with Tom Waits rather than Martin Sheen. And that it boggles my mind to think that when Morrissey did 'Late Nite Maudlin St' he was trying to do something in the vein of 'Last Chance Texaco'.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 20:32 (twenty-one years ago) link

"Easy Money" used to be one of my favorite songs. Maybe it still is!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 20:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

don't like the first album too much. at the same time i think she has never made a bad album. my favourites are pirates with the wonderful a lucky guy, the great live girl at her volcano and the magazine.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 21:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

I hate her.

― frank p. jones (frank p. jones), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago) link

I enjoy everything she's done so far. seems there's a bit of division, though.

― derrick (derrick), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 03:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

- destroy the cover photo for the first album where she looks like a combination of little feat and edie brickell
- search the cover itself

wait a minute the MUSIC!! i guess it's her name on the record so you have to hold her accountable for the music which i remember as being "light rock" with some honkytonk echoes. what saves the backing tracks from being billy joel though are their consistent lightness and (mm can i say) effervescence? where billy joel had this embarrassing tendency to want to Really Rock in some hard kind of way, to get all overwhelming and serious.

and none of this talks about her voice, which i remember pretty vividly. she had a Thing with her voice that a lot of people would kill for.

― Tracer Trebek (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

Don't hate her, but certainly don't love her. I've bought and sold her first album twice. You know the drill. "I think I like this! No, wait... I don't." Rinse, repeat.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

is "coverability" an acceptable thing to think about with a band, or set of songs, or whatever? i mean sure it's subjective, it's versions that haven't even been recorded by bands that may never exist, so certainly it seems like an unfair criterion to bring to bear on someone's stuff - but i BET a good rock band could cover any song off the first album (the only one i remember in any detail) and make it sound good. their slight genericness is an advantage? you could go "NOBODY could have done it like X Y or Z did, and THAT's what makes something good", something i kind of associate with some jimi hendrix texturalization-of-sound shit (oh no i just realized that's a hyphenated noun, cf Xgau sentence thread!! my stars)

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:31 (twenty-one years ago) link

in any case if another band did it they wouldn't have her voice, which is what makes it special for me i think.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:32 (twenty-one years ago) link

I think coverability is an acceptable thing to think about if you're about to cover something. If you're just a listener, it doesn't add that much. The casual listener isn't going to be saying to themselves, "'Danny's All-Star Joint' would be GREAT if [insert band name here] did it!" To that person (and I am largely that person), generic-ness just sounds like generic-ness. If it takes someone ELSE to make your song great, then you did something wrong the first time.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

But I think you clarified what makes the album not-so-great: it's generic songwriterly fare. Nothing especially revalatory, nothing especially new. Her voice is supposed to be what carried the record over, and to some extent it does, but it has always left me finally empty.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

yeah, i guess i already think it's good - and the openness of the songs allows me to come at them from difft angles at difft times, i like that. the backing tracks are unobtrusive to the point of just being a suggestion (though this admittedly could be just cause i haven't heard it in a while) and i all i really remember is her voice, bouncing and bumping along

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 07:49 (twenty-one years ago) link

This album is so old, and so almost good, I wonder if the people here like it for simple nostalgia's sake. Do you listen to it often? Would you proudly play it for someone else?

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 08:08 (twenty-one years ago) link

S: pirates.
D: ??

― cecilia, Wednesday, 19 February 2003 15:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

And she's much better than Norah.

Day-old boudin from the world's worst Louisiana restaurant is better than Norah.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 15:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

I don't understand how people are agreeing the songwriting, particularly on the first album, is generic. You don't find a singular point of view or persona being put forth there? To draw an obvious parallel, would you say Tom Waits's songwriting is generic?

― Sean (Sean), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 16:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

i think the SOUND of the band is kind of generic, the way the instruments sound together. i find the singular viewpoint snapped into focus by RLJ's voice, frankly - she could do standards and i'd probably like it just as much.

Kenen i would absolutely play it for someone who came over.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 16:36 (twenty-one years ago) link

the thing that's weird about her though is no "edge" like Tom Waits. she can get broody but that's not the same.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 17:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

To draw an obvious parallel, would you say Tom Waits's songwriting is generic?

It's a parallel only to the Early Years stuff. And yes, actually, that stuff leaves me mostly cold -- either finger-popping goofball Beat generation "Ha! Ain't it coooool...." crap or, what is it, 17 minutes of "Tom Traubert's Blues." Nothing before Swordfishtrombones explains why Tom Waits is a God.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 18:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

I feel the same about Ms. Jones as i do about Suzanne Vega; Vulva Cheese.

― christoff (christoff), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 18:41 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...

Interesting to see the discussions of genericism upthread. I was listening to Pirates again yesterday and it's such a restless and unusual album - very much in that vein of MOR-but-weird albums that I often find myself loving (see "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" Steely Dan, The Blue Nile) but are also often much more uncomfortable than straight experimental fare. I mean, something like "Living It Up" - WTF? The emotional navigation on that song is just screwy.

Was it Marcello who traced a connection between this album and Mary Margeret O'Hara?

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 30 August 2004 13:22 (nineteen years ago) link

one year passes...

the genericness definitely works in the s/t's favor -- i hear it more as natural, unforced restraint (not sure that's the right word because it implies "holding back" rather than starting straightaway at an otherwise held-back position). i like how she doesn't feel like she has to be eccentric ALL THROUGH THE RECORD... it comes and goes in a flash, like a kid keying the paint job on your car and running away before you can see who did it. and then it doesn't even feel like "look, i'm being eccentric now!" those moments are just nice little parenthetical burps that don't in any way ruin the mood she's created.

― like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 2 December 2005 22:53 (eighteen years ago) link

Did anyone else follow her attempt to come to grips with trip hop/the dust brothers/her own past as a sample source etc. on Ghostyhead? There are parts of that album I really really like.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Sunday, 4 December 2005 01:13 (eighteen years ago) link

parts of it are great! it really was trying a bit too hard mostly though - it felt kinda desperate, and since confidence had always been a big element of RLJ's persona, that was a little weird

I personally think the song "Pink Flamingos" on an album whose name I can't remember right now is one of her best songs! -a fairly late record, anyhow

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Sunday, 4 December 2005 01:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Traffic From Paradise is the album. one of her best, and a favourite of mine since it came out in 1993.

― derrick (derrick), Sunday, 4 December 2005 05:23 (eighteen years ago) link

two years pass...

Really, Really, Really, Really, Really can't fuckin' stand her.
-- Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, February 18, 2003

i wouldn't go that far but i am truly baffled at what people see/hear in her.

― gershy, Saturday, 19 January 2008 05:08 (sixteen years ago) link

three months pass...

"i like how she doesn't feel like she has to be eccentric ALL THROUGH THE RECORD... it comes and goes in a flash, like a kid keying the paint job on your car and running away before you can see who did it. and then it doesn't even feel like "look, i'm being eccentric now!" those moments are just nice little parenthetical burps that don't in any way ruin the mood she's created."

This is so right. I'm still baffled and enthralled by "Living It Up" and "Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)" - the way they careen dizzily from breezy uptempo soft-focus jazz rock to these sudden burst-through moments of awed and awesome solemnity.

― Tim F, Saturday, 17 May 2008 15:06 (fifteen years ago) link

one year passes...

I've listened to Pirates so much in the past year and a bit. It's probably in my top ten albums ever at this stage. The moment I refer to the above where the title track goes all eerie soft ambience is so astonishing, in precisely the way jody describes it.

― Tim F, Sunday, 9 August 2009 15:01 (fourteen years ago) link

two years pass...

man. traces of the western slopes shouldn't work, but it is so amazing. i feel like i've actively resisted going back into a rlj phase for several years and now i fear for my psyche

― dell (del), Saturday, 14 July 2012 19:16 (eleven years ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.