Rickie Lee Jones, c/d?

"Naw...naw...I'm not the greatest. I don't think there is a 'greatest.' Maybe we're living in a time of No Greatest. There's no 'greatest' anymore. I dunno...maybe one of -you- is the greatest. [pause] Hey...if anybody here thinks they're the greatest, come on up onstage. [pause] Naw...never mind...one of you assholes would probably do it."

Still the best stage patter I've ever heard.

http://www.matadorrecords.com/images/minis/ole-626.jpg

xpost: i figured it was one of the other kinds.

(Sorry, I've been drinking Pernod, and am sentimental and nostalgic.)

not even small change? i'll grant that he could be excessively maudlin and prone to the worst elements of beat-cliche, but the sadness is sad and the jokes are roffletastic and the cocktail-schmaltz piano playing is just godly.

otoh, i'd hate to think of where we'd be if our favorite wackos had never been allowed to free-express.

But yeah, of course, total rulelessness can be pretty fab.

i think if anything waits has gotten more like that over the years -- it's a shame his frank's wild years/black rider phase had to turn into stuffy elderstatesmanship rather than the full-on nihilism it should have progressed into. he's had a similar career arc as neil young (who shouldn't be doing that grandfatherly folksy twaddle either).

the early tom waits records were fun innocent L.A. hedonism. dirty jokes. good times.

I would still rather listen to Small Change, it must be said.

New album Sermon On Exposition Boulevard is a big mess. She walks in the sandals of Jesus when there was nothing wrong with her boots; she also does this mewling speaking-in-tongues thing on a few songs. Not good. And yet, and yet--the first song, "Nobody Knows My Name" rocks harder than she ever has. Drone-mantra, post VU throw down. We don't need another song about Elvis (the Son of God, of course) and Cadillacs, but this one has a groove that gets her over the silly name dropping (I think it's available for download on her website somewhere). And her voice is really terrific, when she's not mewling, and some of the best tracks just about reach the Vanological gospel trance state she's always loved. I give it a solid B.

I'm really digging 'Magazine' right now.

That album has one of the most wtf reviews on AMG:

The reason The Magazine was such a disappointment was that Rickie Lee Jones had proven herself a major artist with her first two albums and turned into a self-conscious, pretentious, minor one on this, her third. Once, she made art by observing street people and describing them carefully; now she tried to make "Art" by navel-gazing. What a letdown.

"The Magazine" is one of the greatest albums of the 80's..."Deep Space" is just breathtaking

classic

However the AMG review of her last album Sermon on Exposition Boulevard makes it sound amazing. Thom Jurek is so the best "I'll have what he's having" reviewer of AMG. He likes recent Maria McKee too though which makes me inclined to trust him.

So I need to go back and read through whole thread, but I'm really curious: After her debut LP, did Rickie Lee ever do any tracks with anywhere near the bounce, energy, hooks, and humor of "Chuck E.'s In Love" and "Danny's All Star Joint" again? They're far and away the best things on that album (I'd take "Weasel And The White Boys Cool" third, then probably "Easy Money"), most of the rest being dull tasteful ballads (tasteful musically, anyway, even when asking you to stick it into coolsville.) I've never heard Pirates or Magazine, and I'm guessing they'd bore me (like her Girl At Her Volcano covers EP did), but maybe I'm wrong. (Also, if she didn't ever do anything as catchy as "Chuck E.'s" again, I'm wondering if she ever explained why not. Was she just embrassed about having an actual hit?)

Also starting to be convinced, though, that she was probably at least a somewhat relevant influence on Teena Marie's beatnik jive-talk side -- even ballads like "Company" on the debut sound kinda proto-Teena, and the lyric sheet looks a little like It Must Be The Magic's inner sleeve. They both even include photos of themselves as little girls. Teena's debut LP came out in 1979, too, but she didn't really reveal her beatnik side until later. Of course, it's possible they were both just channeling Joni Mitchell in vaugely similar ways.

The timbre of her voice has always bothered me, but if you're looking for settings that complement it check out her Walter Becker collaboration from 1989. It won't convert you -- it reminds me a little of what Joni failed to attempt at the same time -- but it ain't much different than what you're used to from her.

Chuck Pirates is dreamy and jazzy so if you don't like the ballad parts of the debut I wouldn't recommend it as an album, but "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking" is an awesome party joint.

"Living It Up" and the title track swing between uptempo and morose with a vertiginous intensity that is pretty rare I think but I'm not sure you'd enjoy that.

there was a bunch of stuff on The Magazine that was hookier than anything really on Pirates - I think "Runaround" and "It Must Be Love" were both on that one, which were both RLJ at her most hummable

also Alfred if "what Joni failed to an attempt" is a Night Ride Home dis, know that I will cut you

"Jukebox Fury" is the most hooky thing on The Magazine I think ("It Must Be Love" is a great great ballad though!) but by that point she'd really shed the whole hepcat vibe which I assume is at least part of what chuck is looking for.

also Alfred if "what Joni failed to an attempt" is a Night Ride Home dis, know that I will cut you

I like that one; it's her other eighties albums that drift.

Thanks, guys. And yeah, I'm pretty convinced that her hepcat side is where her fun is; the amrorphous, theoretically "jazzy" ballads haven't been reaching me at all. But I'll keep the tracks people mentioned in mind should I come across dollar copies of Pirates or The Magazine, even though I still expect I'll find them even more frustrating than the debut. Meanwhile, here's a talk on Frank Kogan's livejournal last year, centered around a '90s track by her than I do like; also curious if she ever did anything else like "White Girl":

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/172216.html

Woah, so weird. Didn't see this thread, but I'm listening to the self-titled right now.

I kind of think that me trying to really interest Xhuxk in RLJ's career is the definition of insanity, but I guess if there is any explanation for why she didn't do a lot of happy songs like chuck e's in love it was the huge writer's block that killed her after Pirates.

I will represent The Magazine forever because it saved my life one summer, and Pirates has at least two songs I cannot listen to because they are too much in my heart. Anyway, there's a lot of great stuff floating around from the rest of her career, as I've been learning by combing dollar bins. Here's a brief alternative Top 10:

"Nobody Knows My Name" (kinda like an alt.dylan version of "white girl" if you stretch your mind)
"Show Biz Kids" (actually the whole "it's like this" cover album is amazing-pants)
"Altar Boy" (about as punk as sinead o'connor)
"Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act)" (aka "chuck e hates george bush" with gospel seasonings)
"Ghost Train" (beat as fhuxk)
"Wild Girl" (loose, easy folkie pop from last year's balm in gilead)
"Love Is Gonna Bring Us Back Alive" (live at red rocks, barely over her version of "gloria")
"Dat Dere" (oscar brown jr song from pop pop, love the songs where she just sounds happy)
"Lucky Guy" (country weeper, probably written about tom waits' roving ways on the road)
"The Real End" (most underrated jam from 'the magazine')

I will represent The Magazine forever because it saved my life one summer, and Pirates has at least two songs I cannot listen to because they are too much in my heart.

which ones?

The Magazine is the one I had on tape as a teenager and yeah it's wonderful, still my favourite tbh.

you can really hear her love of the blue nile on flying cowboys

I feel like she perhaps recognised kindred spirits: smooth surfaces / excessive feeling

I would love to know what Rickie thinks of Sade.

there are just some very blue nile synth tones in places on flying cowboys

which albums after that are worth digging into

I think Ghostyhead is really interesting: sort of a "belatedly ride the trip hop wave" effort on the surface but that dismissive take belies what's really going on which is that Rickie makes the obvious connection that these more rhythmic but still-guitar-driven soundtracks provide the perfect foil for her to really lean into her beatnik impulses - most of the album takes that kind of 'spill over the lines of the song' profusion aspect of her vocal approach to its logical conclusion. And musically I'm not sure what I'd compare it to: I imagine it was sold to Warner Bros as being in the vein of the first Beth Orton album but it's almost more like if New Kingdom decided to produce a folk artist.

I have Pop Pop too, it's nice enough but nothing ever really grabbed me about it.

I like Pop Pop, which was the first RLJ album I ever listened to. "Dat Dere" and the Jefferson Airplane cover were the standout tracks I recall.

It looks like the cover of the first album was flipped, I wonder why?

https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/photographs/gWMf6i/Rickie-Lee-Jones-Malibu-CA-1978

Was it? Most pics I see are oriented that way. Btw is she smoking a More cigarette there?

It wasn't. Album's always looked like this.

https://i.imgur.com/IYiRBnv.jpg

Weird, then I wonder what's happening here, and on some YouTube clips

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rickie-Lee-Jones/dp/B000002KK2

My guess is Gracenote or some other metadata provider for all the streaming/mp3 store platforms fucked with the art and it ended up everywhere. They've let the cover of Tracy Chapman's debut go on for years looking like a scan of a cd cover that was left in the back seat of a car in direct sunlight.

Don't know if I'll get a substantive answer, but I happen to know someone who works at Gracenote and she's going to ask the guy who handles that stuff tomorrow, so stay tuned maybe.

Ok so it turns out that when WB reissued the RLJ album in 2010 as an "original artist series" they flipped the image for reasons unknown to anyone but themselves.

Looks like she has a new album coming out - it's an American songbook album (all standards) produced by Russ Titelman. To promote it, she's doing an exclusive three-night residency at Birdland in NYC, which seems to have sold out, but there's a ticketed livestream. https://birdlandjazz.com/event/rickie-lee-jones/

Correction - she's doing two shows each night, and only the "early" shows have sold out. They still have tickets for the late shows:

https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/rickie-lee-jones-1623129

Pirates can bring me to tears.

I think Ghostyhead is really interesting: sort of a "belatedly ride the trip hop wave" effort on the surface but that dismissive take belies what's really going on which is that Rickie makes the obvious connection that these more rhythmic but still-guitar-driven soundtracks provide the perfect foil for her to really lean into her beatnik impulses - most of the album takes that kind of 'spill over the lines of the song' profusion aspect of her vocal approach to its logical conclusion. And musically I'm not sure what I'd compare it to: I imagine it was sold to Warner Bros as being in the vein of the first Beth Orton album but it's almost more like if New Kingdom decided to produce a folk artist.

― Tim F, Sunday, June 20, 2021 3:12 AM (one year ago)

so glad someone besides me loves this album

Pop Pop is great too, that Jimi cover is perfect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAPCmubduvk

yo sleeve! Sean and I both spoke for Ghostyhead, way upthread, so that makes four of us who Know. She understood how trip-hop can play well with words, for one thing.

<3

(Counting her, that makes five who Know.)

omgomg just lucked into a ticket to her chicago show! so so so excited

She put on a fantastic show last night. Opened w/ a solo piano version of "Living It Up" that she sang as though she'd written it last week. The set was mostly from her new album -- "There'll Never Be Another You" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" were highlights -- but pulled from Pop Pop and the first album. She played guitar on a couple songs, incl "Weasel and the White Boys Cool" and was very obv having a blast. Her band is terrific, too.

No Atlanta dates. :(

yeah, jealous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_7YGRLoG8

Aw crap, she did a free show in Brooklyn on Saturday and I totally missed it. (I was at another show anyway, but still, would've considered going to hers instead.)

Xpost that video of Rickie Lee talking about movies was awesome. Great storytelling chops and humor but I guess that was evident in her songs.

I kinda love that she took The Blob.

No mention of that hefty Fellini box though, which was odd.

The set was mostly from her new album -- "There'll Never Be Another You" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street" were highlights

Happy birthday!

well, I'm ugly too
no, no, no, you're not beautiful
no, you're ugly too
cause you've been traveling in so many universes and you manifest here