Double D in LA.

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2011-10-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

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{ Sept. 13 } full moon at sun rise

2011-09-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

LA River

I live just up the hill from Griffith Park, on the big street that never sleeps. I mean that someone is always going somewhere on the street where I live. Bad part is the smog. I have to clean my plants often, and I wonder about my own leaves, the little ones attached to the ends of my lungs. I love where I live, in spite of the rats and carbon monoxide poisoning and recent theft of my bicycle. I am a walk to Silverlake and Franklin Hills, and Sunset Boulevard, what they call Sunset Junction, is a five minute bike ride from my house. All mostly Downhill.

the atwater bakery

I have some favorite places around here now, the atwater bakery, with the lovely baker in her crisp white apron, and on hyperion the bakery with the european looking fruit pastries and cakes, grande cups of cappuccino, a place your dog can lay down outside while you read the paper. I have run into the wonderful Bud Cort Twice, so I figure either we both need to stop eating baked goods, or we were meant to have a conversation, which we did.

the atwater bakery

He started by telling me he had waited in line for two hours to get into the Echoplex show two years ago or so. No, make that Four years I think. Well, I reminded him of meeting at Greenblatts back in the day, Oh, 1982 maybe, when I lived there and my mother was visiting. Im actually starting to forget things. Too bad. On your way to the atwater bakery, which I must warn you, is not only pretty to look at but the best baked goods overall than any place in town. I like Clementines, in West LA, but for inviting and delicious hand pies, chocolate without dairy, corn muffins with raspberry jam (my favorite), oatmeal pancakes, ricotta cake, polenta cookies, and most delicious chocolate chip cookies vote... But most important to me: the coffee is perfect, and it makes those baked goods even better. I get a small Americano and my day feels like I could be anywhere.

the atwater bakery and its baker

That ‘s what I wanted to tell you … this area where I live, it could be anywhere, and I mean that in a good way. The spirit of my Boulevard is so continental, it reminds me of Chicago when I was a little girl, big trees, and people are always walking, bikes going by, huffing up the hill, or walkers and joggers, of all ages, and there is something uplifting about that. It reminds me to get out there.

On the corner of Griffith Park is the wonderful Philosophical Society, started way back In the 20s or 30s. I believe these are the folk that found Krishnamurti and brought him to England, from which he escaped to Ojai and denounced idolatry. But the Society went on, and sometimes I see the orange robes of monks parading the shady Side of Los Feliz, a sight that always makes me feel, well, happy. Someone to bow to, at least in side. I need that.

There are a couple dogs around here Juliette and I have gotten to know. I nice little black mutt whose lesbian owners are brave and friendly enough to let him check out my dog. And one is a big pitt bull whose 30 something single man owner keeps him carefully away from other dogs. This is such courteous walking manners, especially with a male whom the owner knows might be impatient, shall we say. He's an alpha dog and this way, he just keeps everything happy. The dog has never postured, but the guy knows people are afraid. Julietta is a pitt bull, too, she's my dog. But she is so… beta, so kind, wagging her tail while people are busy pulling their dogs away by their little necks, avoiding my eyes. I am watching to see if Julietta will feel bad, she just wants to sniff like anyone else, maybe play, get to know someone out there besides me. Life is a pack, after all. Any dog can bite, obviously. We get to know our animals and what we can and cant do with them. I never mistake my dog for my child. I do not vouch for her. But I know she is a kind and non violent dog. I am never comfortable when children walk up and put their faces by dogs. Julietta looks at me and softly wags, as if she wishes she had a baby, too. But I never turn my back when a dog and child are near each other.

So anyway, we know some nice people who let their little dogs sniff who they want, and some who project all their own prejudice onto their animal. Nice man up the street with a great dane. He’s a smaller guy, and when he got this puppy he would apologize for everything the dog did. It sniffed you, he’d say 'oh I m so sorry.' And he was so upset about his dog, as if he had been left it in a will or something. Soon he quite walking it. I know that the dog was not a little man, and it was too bad the little man projected all his insecurity onto the dog. And in a way its good, because I learn something every single day, just sticking my head out the door.

A little ways down the hill from the Philosophical Society is the eastern (I assume) entrance to Griffith Park. It is right by the freeway on what seems to be the north side of the street. Im guessing by where I watch the sunrise what direction things are. turn into the park, Here is the way to the little kid horses and their little kid train, (no not the horses train) and the park with a lot of grass, where kids have parties, and left, the way to the golf green and composting. Keep going straight though and you will pass the old large train museum, and come to the zoo and the Gene Autry museum. Behind it is a horse path, I sometimes ride my horse that way.

Other times I go up in the mountain. Keep going now through the zoo area, and in a mile or so you will come to the train museum and on your left, the majestic park. You will find hikers and horseback riders up here. Bikes aren’t supposed to be on the trail. I'll fill you in though, there is a way to the top of the park and down the other side you will end up in Beachwood Canyon. It is a wonderful ride on a full moon like tonight. Maybe I will go catch the sun rise…

On that side of the park, in Beachwood, there is a stable. I cant really recommend this stable, and that’s all Ill say. But there is a path there, many pictures have been taken from there, for it leads to the Hollywood Sign if you go one way, and to the Observatory if you go the other. From the area above the stable, its about A thirty, forty minute walk to the observatory, all mostly flat and very beautiful, looking down at the city or around you at the fir trees and woodpeckers. Do watch out for those spring time rattlers, especially if you like to walk in the early morning. But lets say you don’t turn into the park, and you are heading for the freeway, but for some reason you drive past it, going east. Just before you would come to the Atwater Bakery on your left at the light, you might notice a little EAT sign, and a T-off golfing green right by the free way. Pull over there and park.

Here is the LA River, and you can walk or ride your bike for miles in either direction. It is filled with birds of all kinds, egrets, mallards, geese. I mean its fantastic. It is not crowded ever, seems to really be a local hang, and for this reason I would not want to leave this area. The park, the locals, the shopkeepers, all add up to a great community. But for me, loving animals like I do, I am just a few miles from all the stables, the Equestrian Center and horses everywhere. But I am a two minute coast downhill to a wonderful urban bike path, one that makes me think that the birds love this community as much as the people. the skunks sure do. And more than once I have seen a coyote trotting down Sunset Blvd. in the early Hours. Guess he missed his ride.

Next: that coyote could take the number two blue bus all the way to the beach.
At least I think... that was the one i took... back when i worked at Sarno's.
Remember Sarnos? yeah baby!

the nine eleven generation...

2011-09-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

I was speaking with my daughter last week. Remember the day of the bombing has been something I've talked about with journalists through the years...

On that day I was in Los Angeles, my daughter was getting ready for school, it was her first week in the 8th grade. I took her to school, and came back to my house and walked up to the beach. There were no planes in the sky.

And I could feel all the living things holding their breaths, as if waiting for the war. But, no, it was only people. The birds still sang, the sea still roared, the sky was blue and the grass was green. We have destroyed it all, I thought. And we could have stopped it. We have let 500 men kill billions of people. 500 wealthy men around the world fighting for oil and power have killed us all. I swore that day that would never again be silent about my political opinions and that for the rest of my life I would remember this day, and if we did not die, I would do something to try to stop these '500 men'

I mentioned to her, gee, you are the generation that grew up in the wake of nine eleven. She lit up over the phone. Yes, we are. And you know what? You guys are Rehab central, anonymous interactions, living through computers... Well, our voices don’t matter. We know that.

We all feel this way now, but what is it like to grow up that way? Here it is, 2011, ten years later, the world I knew is gone. I grew up in a time, as did my parents and their parents, when people felt like they had a voice because they did have a voice. No one was afraid of the government. Watch the old movies, people smart off to the cops. Now you smart off to the stewardess you end up in secret airline prison. It's terrifying. We worked hard to stop the police - or anyone in the US - from having absolute power, Miranda Rights were just one of the wonderful results of our diligence. Our rights hard won, but part of an American tradition of fair-mindedness. No, really, I’m not kidding. We were the nation with the guy who said ' I may not agree with what you say but I will fight to the DEATH for YOUR right to say it. ' hahahahaha. Imagine someone saying that today on Fox news.

We were co-authors of the Geneva Convention, ( which, under Bush, we have abandoned, and under Obama, have not reinstated our commitment to) We abhorred the idea of torture and ' truth and justice' were the American way. I think someone out there still thinks we are that Superman show, but he is just not wanting to see the terrible truth of what we have become. We fought for fair conditions for any one in war, whatever they were called 'soldiers' combatants' whatever. Now we have people who kidnap people and hold them without trail, who train our own child soldiers to torture and humiliate them. Thing is, we allowed this to happen. Helplessly we looked on as everything we knew as America was stripped away. We know they think they are clever when they say, well what is torture, really? Your rendition is not mine. Yeah, lets call it 'rendition' that sounds legal.

Our social, spiritual, communal intention was to stand for the rights of all human beings. That is why white people joined black people in the protests, from 1965 to 1975, and in South Africa and in Berlin... we cheered for the idea that the people could overtake governments that seemed to rule with Satanic power. Here at home, Vietnam, our voices rang out - and we were heard - on every tv station, in ever newspaper across the country. We were not censored. That is how the 'crimes' of soldiers were exposed by our own press in our own country. Because we wanted to be a good country, and we thought we were. Our voices were still heard here at home in gay rights protests, though less and less now. States are actually passing laws protecting the right of gay marriage. No, women’s rights have not come along as hoped. But our voices were heard. We were not afraid. And we were fighting for each other’s rights. No longer. Today we live in an atmosphere of hatred and aggression toward one another. We fear our own government. If a million of us take to the streets in protest of a war for oil.... our voices simply will not find their way to tv or media. I know, because millions marched against the war nine years ago, and their marches were simply not reported. As we watched the presidency abducted - by an idiot billionaires son, CIA operatives all over Florida, strange twists that made no sense, at least not in Our country, (the fraud, the voter intimidation, the Supreme Court voting against making sure the voting fraud reports were accounted for..by simply recounting) we knew we were in terrible danger. But the moment of knowing you are in danger usually is a moment too late. You see the guy with the gun, unless you know how to deal with him, he's probably going to win.

In one swoop, 250 years of human rights were over and assimilated in semantics and lies. But when nine eleven happened, and all the inconsistencies and unfortunate coincidences came to light, the idiot president reading a children’s book as the city is blown up, how appropriate, from memorandums suggesting this kind of attack would be good business, to the recordings of calls from planes that we heard the first day and never heard again, or the gold under the world trade center and the odd fact that no other buildings but those two seemed to be destroyed... and then we bomb a country that had nothing to do with the world trade center bombings and we all knew that... we all found some of this whole thing rather shady. There was the beginning. We watched in true shock and awe as our own power was stripped from us, arrogant and intimidating men hissed at the presses right to ask them what they were doing, and the Patriot Act took from every citizen his right to a fair and speedy trial, the right to an attorney, the right to not be held and hung and no one ever know. I What could we do? Cops will kill us, government will steal us, we already felt pressure not to speak against Bush, he really was so like Hitler. If you don’t like Bush, you don’t like America, that’s what people were saying.

Now we meet a generation of people, children who have grown up in this..this brave new world. They know they have no voice. They live in fear of speaking out. They see intimidation and pray, just don’t pick me. Sounds like Serevo. Santiago. Wonder where those 'consultants' learned how effective fear among the population can be.

I wanted to say something, but I just didn't "Why didn’t you?" , I asked a twenty year old waitress today.. She told me she was afraid to speak out when she saw an ' Arab' looking person being questioned with what she felt was racist aggression, at the airport... ' well, ' she said thoughtfully ' they can do anything they want'

"Exactly"

And there is the difference between her generation and mine and all the others. No other American generation has believed they lived in a country where their government that could do anything it wanted to anyone without responsibility, without repercussion. This generation of people, up to 25 years old, know no other world but this. The ground they walk on is never safe. They live in a secret society that takes people away when they are in line at the airport, but it is cleverly disguised, because the airport is full of so many pretty things to buy.

If we have lost American to 'consultants' , if torture is now 'rendition' and if we can call a thing a different name and it is a different thing, then these kids know that the country is not theirs, and ground they stand on shifts beneath them even as they step inside their own homes. The epidemic of drug use and addiction has resulted in a billion dollar unmonitored industry of rehabs. The six week $30,000 is my personal favorite. Our health care systems refuse to pay for the elderly to have rehabilitation for more than eight sessions after a stroke. But get hooked on drugs and they have to fork up 25,000.

Any addict knows nobody gets well in six weeks. But my point is that everything is for sale here. Sell that idea to private enterprise and the republicans will buy it. It seems to be the 'business' party and the 'citizen' party. And its as simple as that. Writing for, and reading this on the internet, we are all part of the brave new world that finds solace and comfort in anonymity. The loneliness of the day, the pressures, the sorrows and frustrations are soothed somehow by knowing that we are connected. You are Sunday Morning Live! to a world that may not know your name but hears your voice, somehow, even if it’s only 140 characters at a time. The prophet Andy Warhol knew this somehow forty years ago. Everyone is famous. So no one has to watch the tower burning. We can watch Charlie Sheen instead.

Rickie Lee Jones

2009-12-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

rickie lee here,

the other half of our radio show got the flu, so hope to be able to do that next year.

meantime, wishing everyone, from south america, Europe, Africa, the Pacific Islands, the lochs and the Keys, (yes i just made that up) under the southern cross and up by the northern lights, a safe and calm week of christmas and new years gathering.

thank you for a good year and a great tour, finally got our band, feeling good about my crew, and the band, Wyatt, Joel, and Rob.

now back to Europe!

And... stay away from internet poker.

rlj

2009-12-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

last night we did Conan... last stop of the european run. We started on London, met the new crew, played for some old FFtP fans and had a good show, then went to Belgium and .. heck where did we go? Anyway it took a couple shows to find our identity as a trio. In Spain i resolved some vague images and pulled us together, or rather pulled my energy together, and our shows really improved.

I loved Bilbao, but i did not get to spend much time there. it seemed to be an elegant city, a river, very clean, lots of european and even american city elements, with the Spanish language, and this was one of a few shows that seemed to be entirely male. I looked out at the audience and they were all men, except for the waitresses and a few women, but i mean, ten maybe...at most. That was interesting.

I loved Barcelona this time and have never been able to get a feel for the city - always like the Bikini club but this time i got the city, and took lots of flip video. in fact i think it just arrived, so i went out walking. someone, in other times, i have felt lonelier somehow, or more isolated, i was not interested in walking. But this tour i was out and about, sitting in cafes and walking by rivers.

Christian was the promoter rep, we rode with us on the bus, he was a cool guy. We had this amazing dinner down in town by Morocco. i forget names, i just remember dinners and walks to the gig.

We traversed Spain, driving all the way to the bottom from Belgium, then back up to Madrid, and then back down and then left and right, it was alot of driving and playing, with only two days of driving and not playing, and i mean driving 1800 miles in two days... that kind of thing . I had to fly to Paris on their day off for a tv show. Then flew back and finished Spain...

Then we made it to France, to Nantes, Paris, two town that start with an R and both of them great shows. But you have to understand, we drive up at two, load in and play, then we sleep and leave at six in the morning. Not much time to remember the name. But one thing happened, but the end of the tour the venues were twice as big, and they were sold out. The tv and the record are striking a chord, and it is manifesting. Fabrice was the tour rep there, and I liked him alot. He used to work on the street barking for the bourlesque houses. He has the kind of feeling that is no nonsense, yet accomadating, I like these promoter reps. they are like the secret police. they have some secret power they do not show but you can just tell its there.

Our bus drivers were Clauss and Jorge, and we had two because the drives were long and the laws in Europe require the drivers to pull over every eight or nine hours for another eight or nine hours, so the only way we could get to our gigs was to have two drivers. Good call on tour managers part. This is the first time I have been able to sleep on a bus. I slept for hours and hours, the sound of the road, and the nice litte crew, maybe knowing the drivers were not driving all night, I dont know, but the bus was ok for me this time. Watched fight club three or four times, not many movies on the bus, watched all the Capra films. Thats kind of cool driving through Europe watching Frank Capra.

My tour manager was a real find, he did a great job and kept a cool demenour all the time. British of course. He lives on a farm and has a goat.

So the tv show last night was great, and Conan told me he bought an old Martin...... was asking me about my Taylor. He is a very very nice man.

And.... now i am heading home for a few days before we go out on our week on the east coast run. I hope to see all the fans out there in Boston. I will be brining Joel Guzman, Wasserman and young Wyatt Stone, 19 year old UCLA student.

should be fun. see you there

hey

2009-10-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

here i am in new york city,
had a great (though very long) day of press yesterday,
three radio shows at two stations,
and a couple long interviews with press that will
get picked up by.....Rueters, stuff like that.
Both journalists were very informed, very thorough,
and pushing.....you know.....the envelope of discussion,
and I enjoyed it alot.

i prefer email interviews, i can elaborate and contemplate and
do it on my own time, in my own way... on the road its the best way.
but these two phoners were pretty satisfiing after all.

This tour has been outstanding for a couple reasons.
the first is that i feel so surrounded by love that i just have to
puffy up once in a while and shake my feathers. really.
my tour manager, the band, and the audience, they
seem to be gathering together in a rally of support
that makes me feel more comfortable than i have felt in a long time.
I am most always comfortable on stage, but this is happening
off stage. smiles, pats, extra help all the way.
it's like they really do want me to play, and want
the shows to go well. i feel it, the audience feels it.
the audience is another critter all together, and
they have always been, as one spirit, a loving
and compassionate point....they move like water
or wind through a grove, they are leaning toward
the left, now rising, now contemplative, its so
wonderful, i just love my life today, right now,
the sound of my breath.

i want to also again say cudos, gratulations,
love, to my web designer Roxanne, what a beautiful
job you have done for me. Every time i come to the site
i think this is more than i could have imagined, i mean,
how do i say this. The art she offers for the music is
so well paired, such a mirror, and yet so much more,
she has really taken this web site to a dimension of art
subtle and extensive, i am so very pleased.

so just three more shows, and only one more with Charlie,
the drummer. our last two shows will be acoustic, they way
we started in North Carlolina a week or so ago.
i will travel on my 55th birthday, as i did on my 50th,
to a gig in London, Jools Holland, after many years, and
are we excited. we will perform the Moon is Made of Gold,
daddy would be so happy i think. well, mother too.
well, they are so happy.
then a small tour, through spain, holland, belgium ,
and so excited to be back. Sal Bernardi will be wtih me again.
and i am looking forward to visiting David Tibet in England.

so that is the tour update. we are getting a camera and will
be posting much more regularly the antics of those wild
boys of austin, paris and la as they dust off the european
streets with wild winds music, magic and madness.
and lots of prayers and laughing and sleeping.
and maybe some chips and tea and ginger and peppermint and i am
on a french keyboard so excuse the odd note here or there.

2009-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

I want to say hey to all the people who have been waiting for me to come back to my web site... I have been busy working, and recovering, and still am not entirely on my feet. I have been ill, and am feeling better every day.

David Kalish and I have made a new recording, made over the past 10 or 12 weeks. We are going to start playing it for people in February, and the first few people who have heard it have been wildly encouraging.

It looks like it will contain two or three re recordings of older material. Horses, Saturday Afternoons will probably make the cut. The rest of the music is all new, some written during the recording, some older and never recorded. The music is powerful, r&b, soul, and rootsy blues, I guess. I can't really describe what I create.

I plan to make some music available to the people who so generously sent money for the cd last year, I plan to make available a song or two to people attending the live shows at Largo , starting this Valentine's Day.

So welcome back, and I hope to see you around. We are redesigning the site over the next few months, but hope to keep up afew pages we can keep current while we are reamaking the site. Send me any suggestions you have, I am not on the internet that much any more, so I need to hear all the ideas you would like to see on the RLJ stie.

Adios.

Rickie Lee Jones

Who are the 25 most influential singers in Pop music today?

2008-09-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Some guidelines and rules...

Rules

Singers must have started their recording careers no earlier than 1953, and no later than 1993.

What is POP music?
That umbrella including folk, rock, r&b, black, white, soft, loud, all the latter day sub genres of those disciplines. In other words, every kind of popular music, from Leslie Gore to Lou Reed.

Singers must have some relevance to the popular culture.They must have either been played on the radio, worked professionally, discussed in media during their own lifetimes, achieved some notoriety so that their name was, is known among musicians and/or the population at large.

Some scenarios..

Robert Johnson is a good example. If no one really heard of him during his lifetime, if his work was not re-recorded and he was not played on radio or performed regularly in public, if he was not heard during his lifetime, he did not influence the music that evolved after him. If he was discovered forty years later, and imitated, then the case can be made that he directly influenced music, as long as the imitation is obvious. If the imitation is not direct, it is a case of inspiration, and this is not what we are calculating here.

Billie Holiday is another example. She has been imitated by a very successful young singer. Perhaps the case could be made, if one argued that this popular singer has been influential herself for over fifteen years, that Billie Holiday is directly influential on pop music today. ) Again, I am looking more for the influences started with the discovery, more or less, of rock n roll, as I personally think Sinatra is the King, but he will not be on my list, since his career begins long before 1953. )

If JJ Kingbaum taught Bob Dylan how to write poems, JJ Kingbaum did not influence music, Dylan did. We do not know JJ, he did not record, and he is not who we listened to. In this context, we are looking for the names of people you think had an influence on the way songs are sung, the way people listen, they way writers write. The obscure singers guide may be another sporting event... we shall see.

Guidelines

No more than three sentences to explain your choice. Give us the list, just a bit of background.

Here are some guidelines to use when thinking this through...remembering that all singers are derived from what came before them, and that this list is not a list of best or better, but a calculation, a summation of your view of which voices seem to have influenced waves of other voices, what tones or vowels has history has brought forward, what are the threads each new generation uses to weave its tapestry of sound?

When you do this work you may be surprised who you come up with. Youngsters may not even know that they have taken the tone of Buddy Holly, or Aretha Franklin, may not know their names. It is for you to correctly gage history, our musical history.

So much music journalism, under the influence of publicists, products, under pressure to conform, impress, deliver, or, simply due to lack of knowledge, rewrite history from a vantage point that does not recognized the truth, ignores unpopular names and opts for the more cooler version. You write it now, and remember, this is not your favorite list, this is the list of whose voice has affected pop music? Is Madonna on your list? How bout buffy St Marie? Why? In three sentences. Use your before, during and after. Our history is our culture. Let’s write it for ourselves.

Before, During, and After

Did their style exist before they appeared?

If so, how did they impact it? If not, how many people today sing, in some manner, like this singer?

Did they have an impact on their own time? Where they impactful during?

Do you hear elements of their style now? What elements are unique to them? (The elements that make your artist unique... even though they have been taken up by somany singers, or so much of the culture.)

Dylan first two words of a sentence use two notes, half spoken, it’s his trademark. How is this heard today? Do you hear it? Has it been edified so much that it is a new thing entirely?

If your singers style is unique, yet they seem to bare some resemblance to an older singer, one not as clearly impactful on the POP music of today, mention the mentor. It is a chance to show how even the most unique have roots in others. This is good. (For instance, say you voted for Tom Waits, but noted his voice bore some resemblance to Louis Armstrong. You would note this after his name).