living it up

sometimes there is magic, and i think i should cherish it more. and so...

i wrote the current citybeat cover story about rickie lee jones and her new album, sermon on exposition boulevard. it is a rockin', plaintive, and at times very intense, even difficult, work. but you can read about it if you want to.



anyway, i wrote about her, and it was really cool to interview her. for one thing b/c she's got a lot to say, and i didn't have to talk much (although i did at times). but really it's b/c she is one of those few artists i've liked since before i ever wrote about music for a living. when i was a teenager, my sister made me a cassette tape of her early albums. (she also gave me some pretenders. i still have both tapes. sisterhood rocks, indeed.) and the things that music made me think about and feel when i listened to it back then ... partly just the alien feel of the language, bulletins from far-off coolsville to my squaresville surroundings -- but also to imagine other places and ways of being, maybe. it definitely helped fuel that (100% accurate) sense that i did not belong where i was and had to find someplace else to be. which i soon did. whereupon eventually i came to meet and talk with rickie lee jones.

i dunno. that's just ... neat.

so ... i received much praise for this article, but best of all, rickie liked it. which is journalistically not supposed to matter, but frankly makes me feel kind of great.