Music For The End Of The World, Part 16: "Prelude To Gravity" by Rickie Lee Jones

Not with a bang...

Entropy. The slow disintegration, the fading of it all. The sound of the end of the world...

https://rickieleejones.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Vanessa Leissring

Vanessa Leissring's startlingly pristine photographs of gas stations (or petrol stations for those not in the US) are beautiful and so atmospheric--lonely, mysterious, isolated. Oases floating in the inky black of night...

http://www.vanessaleissring.com/

Leissring's photos bring to my mind "The Last Chance Texaco," the glorious song from Rickie Lee Jones' debut album released in 1979. It is a lonely, pensive but yearning song, just like the photos above. I have always loved the chilling moment at the end of the song where she mimics passing, speeding trucks on the highway. Goosebumps...

A long stretch of headlights
Bends into I-9
Tiptoe into truck stops
And sleepy diesel eyes
Volcanoes rumble in the taxi
And glow in the dark
Camels in the driver's seat
A slow, easy mark

But you ran out of gas
Down the road a piece
Then the battery went dead
And now the cable won't reach...

It's your last chance
To check under the hood
Last chance
She ain't soundin' too good,
Your last chance
To trust the man with the star
You've found the last chance Texaco

Well, he tried to be Standard
He tries to be Mobil
He tried living in a World
And in a Shell
There was this block-busted blonde
He loved her, free parts and labor
But she broke down and died
She threw all the rods he gave her

But this one ain't fuel-injected
Her plug's disconnected
She gets scared and she stalls
She just needs a man, that's all

It's her last chance
Her timing's all wrong
Her last chance
She can't idle this long
Her last chance
Turn her over and go
Pullin' out of the last chance Texaco

http://www.rickieleejones.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: Rickie Lee Jones

In honor of National Poetry Month, each week I am featuring poetic lyrics of rock or pop songs.

And is there any artist who exemplifies a poetic sense in their work more than Rickie Lee Jones? She has written a mountain of majestic, awe-inspiring lyrics (and prose!) over the course of her (thankfully) long career. I had a hard time choosing one poem (song) to present, so I give you three. I am deliberately not including the actual songs in this post because I want the focus to be on the words.

Gravity
by Rickie Lee Jones

There are wounds that stir up the force of gravity
A cold that will wipe the hope from your eyes
Young girl standing underneath the "L" train
Standing there, watching the trains go by ...
You think that nobody knows where you are, girl
You think that nobody knows how this feels
Alone, in a world of your own
There you are girl
The small things float
To the top of gravity
Gravity
I'm telling you where it is
Gravity

We walk in easy snakes
Through the roulette rattling of the ethyl
And now the arson smell of moon
Polishes a newsstand
They empty the gas can
They watch the fire
If there are three girls running
There are three girls running nowhere
From remedies
That you call random
We call by name
And ask them to explain why

Oh, no I heard somebody
Hush up
Don't say nothing
I thought I heard someone
Well we walk when we want to go
Nobody's gonna be there
Seen somebody, somebody
Be quiet
Nobody's there ...
Nobody

I could not say no to the light of my desire
I'm not asking so much
But you roll-call the passion
His lips ?
No
His back ?
No
His face?
No, no, no
I'm not asking so much!

I try to imagine another planet, another sun
Where I don't look like me
And everything I do matters
Where you are, girl
In your green paint
With a pin to pull
At the fingertips of gravity
Gravity
I'm telling you where it is
Gravity

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

We Belong Together
by Rickie Lee Jones

I say this was no game of chicken
You were aiming your best friend
That you wear like a switchblade on a chain around your neck
I think you picked this up in Mexico from your dad
Now it's daddy on the booze
And Brando on the ice
Now it's Dean in the doorway
With one more way he can't play this scene twice
So you drug her down every drag of this forbidden fit of love
And you told her to stand tall when you kissed her
But that's not where you were thinking...
How could a Natalie Wood not get sucked into a scene so custom tucked?
But now look who shows up
In the same place
In this case
I think it's better
To face it ---
We belong together
We belong together

Once Johnny the King made a spit ring
And all the skid kids saw a very, very proud man
And he entwine her in his finger
And she lay there like a baby in his hand
Climb upon the rooftop docks lookin' out on the crosstown seas
And he wraps his jacket across her shoulders
And he falls and hugs and holds her on his knees
But a sailor just takes a broad down to the dark end of the fair
To turn her into a tattoo
That will whisper into the back of Johnny's black hair
And now Johnny the King walks these streets without her in the rain
Lookin' for a leather jacket
And a girl who wrote her name forever
A promise that ---
We belong together
We belong together

Shall we weigh along these streets
Young lions on the lam?
Are the signs you hid deep in your heart
All left on neon for them?
Who are foolish
Who are victim
Of the sailors and the ducky boys who would
Move into your eyes and lips and every tear
That falls down on the neighborhood now
I said "Bird, we just gotta tell them"
And they turn and ignore us
And the only heroes we got left
Are written right before us
And the only angel who sees us now
Watches through each other's eyes
And I can hear him
In every footstep's passing sigh
He goes crazy these nights
Watching heartbeats go by...
And they whisper ---
We belong together
We belong together

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Last Chance Texaco
by Rickie Lee Jones

A long stretch of headlights
Bends into I-9
Tiptoe into truck stops
And sleepy diesel eyes
Volcanoes rumble in the taxi
And glow in the dark
Camels in the driver's seat
A slow, easy mark

But you ran out of gas
Down the road a piece
Then the battery went dead
And now the cable won't reach...

It's your last chance
To check under the hood
Last chance
She ain't soundin' too good,
Your last chance
To trust the man with the star
You've found the last chance Texaco

Well, he tried to be Standard
He tries to be Mobil
He tried living in a World
And in a Shell
There was this block-busted blonde
He loved her - free parts and labor
But she broke down and died
And she threw all the rods he gave her

But this one ain't fuel-injected
Her plug's disconnected
She gets scared and she stalls
She just needs a man, that's all

It's her last chance
Her timing's all wrong
Her last chance
She can't idle this long
Her last chance
Turn her over and go
Pullin' out of the last chance Texaco
The last chance

http://rickieleejones.com/

The Duchess of Coolsville

I had the honor of being in the audience at the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco Friday night for an historic concert: Rickie Lee Jones performed her first two albums, in their entirety (minus one song), in the original track listing (unless she felt like moving a song here or there). Her first album, “Rickie Lee Jones” was released in 1979 and netted her five Grammy nominations and a Grammy win for Best New Artist. Her second album, which by no means suffered from the dreaded "sophomore syndrome," was the sweeping, symphonic/ jazzy “Pirates.” It was the material from these two recordings that made up the evening at the Davies.


I have seen RLJ in concert five times over the years and this sixth concert was an interesting treat. She has performed many of the songs from these two albums on past tours, but some have not been heard live since their initial release. Striding out onto the stage in a bright red beret (a direct nod to the cover of “Rickie Lee Jones”) and towering platform shoes, she and her band launched into “Chuck E.’s In Love” without any fanfare. There was a mix problem with the sound for this first song… thankfully, whoever was at the mixing board realized that, in a symphony hall, a lot of amplification is not necessary. We bebopped our way through her first record with her. I teared up during the delicate, exquisite "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963," and we all swooned on the ghostly and lovely “Last Chance Texaco,” complete with her chilling passing-truck sound effect (twice!) at the end of the song.

I expected that she—and we—would take an intermission break before heading into “Pirates,” but she took her place at the piano and she and her band began the grand, epic “We Belong Together.” It was an ambitious venture to play both albums back to back, and it took its toll on her and the band. Her horn section and band took turns playing solos, but a little while later, it was clear everyone was sagging. This is the first stop on a world tour for RLJ and I have a feeling the band was still in a bit of a dress-rehearsal mode. A full third of the way into “Traces of the Western Slope,” she made the band stop and start again, saying, “We just got off on the wrong foot,” (and by her own admission after the song, she said, “We shouldn’t play such a hard song so late in the set...”). I have been listening to these songs for thirty plus years, and it has never been brought so clearly to my attention that RLJ’s music is actually quite complicated. The bebop/ jazzy tunes are straight forward enough, but her lyrical/ ballad/ epic songs feature a never-ending cavalcade of shifting time signatures. And now that I have seen a drummer struggle to play these pieces (“Watch me for this entire song,” she teased the drummer), I have a new-found respect for the musical/ arranging ability and song-writing prowess of RLJ, and the musicians who play these songs. She was tired though, and began to leave out words, sometimes skipping whole lines of choruses. And the evening ended without the sweet, magical “The Returns” which closes “Pirates.”

Having said this, I do not want to give anyone the impression that the performance was sub-par or not entertaining. RLJ has always had a living, vital sense to her performances which are not simply mere reproductions of studio recordings, but true, organic musical events. This give and take, this start-over method only serves to imbue her, and consequently the evening, with the sense that we are witnessing someone carve and craft music before our eyes. We are watching someone paint a masterpiece, we are seeing someone chisel marble into a monument. Every RLJ concert is like a fingerprint—unique, singular, and perfect in its own essence.

Thank you Rickie, for the years of gorgeous, inspiring music and a legacy of fantastic live performances.
http://www.rickieleejones.com/