This, is Rickie Lee Jones.
She is my favourite female vocalist ever.
Her first 2 albums and most of her 4th would be on my All Time Desert Island Discs, and she has released so many other sublime albums and covers that its hard to know how to begin to describe how much I love her.
However, as with all true artists, she has released some stuff which doesn’t ‘do it’ for me… I have to respect that, and generally I don’t let it worry me, however the last few times I have seen her live, she’s included a lot of the stuff I don’t get on with.
So it was with some small trepidation that on July 10th 2011, I set off for the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester with the Missus in tow. All the way I was hoping that she would feature a couple of the ‘old’ tracks in the show,and though I knew it was pathetically conservative of me, even though I new that if I truly respected this artist, I should be happy and open to her performance of the newest album, part of me was a spoilt, resentful child, who just wanted their favourites played….
As we entered the Hall, the 1st nice surprise of the evening, was that because I had ordered the tickets online, almost as soon as they were announced, we found ourselves 3 rows back from the front of the house, which would afford a superb view of the band and Rickie herself.
Pleased at least that the seats were great, I then noticed a couple of things that set me in an even better mood.
Clearly on stage, there looked like an area for a small horn section….If that were the case, then there was a very good chance she might play some of the tracks that featured the wonderful Tom horn section from the albums I loved…..
Next, out came the band, and I recognised almost immediately Jeff Pevafr, session player extraordinaire and an old member of Rickies original touring band….but nothing, nothing was to prepare me for what I heard next…You see unbeknownst to me… the rest of the audience new what they were coming to see. I had only seen the name RLJ and booked the tickets anyway….. so when RLJ came out on stage and announced ”
Tonight I will be playing the whole of my first 2 albums in their entirety in the order they were written, I very nearly wet myself.
Certainly I was grabbing my wifes wrist like an over excited puppy.. I just couldn’t believe what I was about to hear….. and dear reader, she didn’t disappoint……..