Rickie Lee Jones s/d

[koganbot]

OK, I know way less about Rickie Lee Jones than about most any other of the influential singer-songwriters, but lonepilgrim embedded this live track and, as the YouTube guy says, "This shit rocks!"

Rickie Lee Jones and a bunch of half-naked guys:

"Rickie Lee Jones, WHITE GIRL" (Watch on YouTube)

So, tell me more. What do you know about Rickie Lee Jones, what do you like, what do you dislike? In my comment I told Peter "I'd only heard a smattering of Rickie Lee Jones over the years, have no idea of the arc of her career, but this track actually fits right into my expectations, sort of a cross between Patti and Joni..." And then I went into my usual shtick about Joni et al. leading to Stevie and Sheryl and Alanis which in turn leads into the '00s teen-confessional.

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

So, sad to say, new album Balm in Gilead is mostly sounding like a snooze to me -- more mannered goody-goody low-key neo-soul and/or alt-country singer-songwriter than anything else. Still curious about the rest now, though (especially whatever she may have recorded in the mid / late '90s, circa that noisy video clip. And okay, also that 10-inch Girl In A Volcano EP or whatever it's called, but that has more to do with my incurable fetish for 10-inch EPs than anything musical.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And when she tries to go "jazzy," she tends to revert to this cutesy pootsey little girl squeak that I find difficult to stomach (even though it was probably already there to a certain extent 30 years ago, just maybe didn't bug me as much back when she had actual idiosyncratic and kinda funky finger-snapping and diddy-bopping very-early-Springsteen-style hooks to back it up.)

Best track on the new one might actually be "Blue Ghazel," an instrumental, for all the gothic midnight atmosphere at the beginning, turning into sad eerie blues guitars and buzzing insects and horns -- these days, I could almost hear something like that metal album. Though I guess it counts as jazz, too.

And Rickie does wind up getting a sort of a "lush swooping sound" going in a couple of the album's later tracks, "The Gospel Of Carlos, Norman And Smith" and "A House On Bayless St." But I still can't see wanting to return to them, in part because she never does anything that makes her words remotely grab me.