Seven Songs – Myer Music Bowl

Seven Songs was an ambitious and ultimately successful closing event for the Melbourne Festival. It drew together a group of diverse, revered and challenging music artists and gave them the task of selecting and performing seven songs that fulfilled a well considered set of criteria.

Each artist was to perform a their first song, a song to share, a Leonard Cohen song, a song they coveted (ie that they wished they had written), two songs of their own and a song to leave behind.

The artists agreeing to take this challenge were an enticing assortment – Sinead O’Connor, Rickie Lee Jones, Gurrumul Yunipingu, Meshell Ndegeocello, John Cale and the Black Arm Band (which included Dan Sultan, Shellie Morris, Leah Flanagan and Ursula Yovich).

 To be honest which songs fitted which categories became a bit blurred – except for the obvious Cohen covers – and none of the artists other than O’Connor felt the need to explain the reasons fort their chooses or even how they interpreted the meaning of the categories.

This wasn’t a shortcoming though – in fact it added to the spontaneity and unpredictability of the show. Some artists did mini-sets within the show but it wasn’t a programme where one artist did their seven songs and then the next did seven songs and so on. Rather they seemed to come and go almost randomly. For example O’Connor appeared early in the show to perform the song she coveted – the brutal female punk anthem Shitlist (originally performed by radical femme punks L7) , bu then she wasn’t seen again until quite late in the show.

All the artists were backed by Orchestra Victoria who performed a diverse range of material with sympathy and creativity – a fine effort from them which really added to the show as a whole.

The highlights were many and varied and interestingly came from just about all the categories. Yunipingu opened the show playfully with surf instrumental Wipeout which was an amusing choice for an artist whose voice is so rightly revered. Ndegeocello version of Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel No.2 was hypnotic as was her take on Pop Life and she was the nights most enthusiastic contributor frequently guesting as bass player on a number of other performances.     

Sinead O’Connor’s song to leave behind was a stark, and memorable rendition of her big hit, Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U while her cover of Dylan’s Serve Somebody was ironic and confronting.  John Cale’s collection of songs seemed least obviously tied to the criteria but his strange and discordant reworking of Heartbreak Hotel was apt.

The Black Arm Band collective performance of Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble was uplifting while Dan Sultan confirmed his fast rising star with Cohen’s If It Be Your Will.

But perhaps two of the most stunning moments of the night was provided by Rickie Lee Jones. Firstly her duet with the absent Archie Roach on Somewhere (There’s A Place For Us) was touching and poignant and contrasted with the exuberance of her rendition of Gangsta’s Paradise, her song to covet. As she showed on her relatively recent tour Rickie Lee Jones remains a surprisingly and creatively monumental artist.

Perhaps predictably, but fittingly Cale led the entire cast through an encore of Cohen’s Hallelujah to close the evening.

It was a magical and inspiring evening of music delivered with class and taste by a brilliantly selected group of great artists. I just wish it had been a few degrees warmer at the Myer Music Bowl!

Rickie Lee Jones Heads All Star Line Up for Melbourne Festival

After an outstanding series of shows in Australia only a month or so ago Rickie Lee Jones will return to Australia for the second time this year to perform for the Melbourne Festival where she will be joined by Sinead O’Connor, John Cale, Meshell Ndegeocello and Gurrumul.

Jones, O’Connor, Cale, Ndegeocello and Gurrumul will feature in the closing concert ‘Seven Songs To Leave Behind’ in a show that will also feature an appearance from Black Arm Band.

In a format of entwined concerts, over more than three hours, these artists each share highly personal musical essays of seven classic songs that hold special meaning to them. They will sing their first song – the song that switched them on to being a musician, one from master poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen, a song to share with another, a song that they covet – the one above all others that they wished they had written, two songs of their own and one for the end of days – a song to leave behind.

In case you were wondering these wonderful artists are:

Sinead O’Connor is recognised worldwide for her astonishing voice and songs, has been making music, rejecting stereotypes and defying expectations for a quarter of a century.

John Cale is the legendary founding member of The Velvet Underground, acclaimed composer and one of the most influential and thought-provoking musicians of all time.

Meshell Ndegeocello is a prolific songwriter and fearsome bassist, has had ten Grammy Award nominations during a stellar career traversing musical boundaries and defying categorisation.

Rickie Lee Jones is highly influential, Grammy Award-winning, multi-million selling US singersongwriter and producer who, over the course of a three-decade career, has performed and recorded in a variety of musical styles including rock, R & B, blues, pop, soul and jazz and has influenced an entire generation of female singers.

Gurrumul Yunupingu is award-winning Indigenous Australian artist who will be familiar to Festival audiences from his previous sold out and critically acclaimed appearances.

The 25th Melbourne Festival runs from October 8 to 23.

Earlier in the festival, John Cale will perform his album Paris 1919 in its entirety with Orchestra Melbourne in his own show.

Rickie Lee Jones – The Forum

Rickie Lee Jones performance at The Forum was simply mesmerising. It was one of the most pure musical experiences I can recall having the privilege to be a part of.

And she didn’t even need to play her two best known songs!

It’s difficult to explain just how both joyous and melancholy this concert was – two different but closer than is immediately obvious emotions!

Jones wanders on stage in jeans and one of her own t-shirts and she is joined by two musicians – drummer Lionel Cole and bassist Joey Maramba. She straps on an electric guitar and they launch into a very cool little power-pop song. Had the artist on stage been twenty-five instead of fifty-five and had the venue been a tiny pub in Northcote (or Silverlake) instead of Melbourne’s most ornate live music theatre, I imagine we’d be thinking that she was a deliciously influenced punky decendent of Patti Smith or Polly Harvey. It really wasn’t what I expected from the jazz-inflected Duchess of Coolsville.

The surprises keep coming. Jones explained that they were performing without a setlist and it was an approach that bore fruit. She mixed newer songs with older material and with either group she could barely disguise her sense of wonder in where the music would take her. Her spirit of adventure made some songs almost freeform and the dexterity of the players allowed this approach to bring rich rewards.

In this respect – the ability to reclaim and re-embrace her own music – this concert reminded me a lot of Leonard Cohen’s triumphant shows from last year. It was truly like Jones had made peace with her songs after years of working to constantly re-invent herself and with that peace came the realisation that her catalogue was indeed all part of one very personal body of work.

Rickie Lee Jones doesn’t need to run away from herself – and that’s a healthy realisation to have.

Accordingly we received the gift of stunningly good versions of some remarkable songs. Among the highlights were It Must Be Love, The Last Chance Texaco, Living It Up and Coolsville and the pin-drop genius of We Belong Together which surely transported every person in the room to another place and time in their lives.

But remarkably, even in this exulted company, two new songs were just as startling – the song Wild Girl (written with reference her daughter and her late mother) and the simple and simply beautiful Bonfires.

Rarely have I felt an audience so entranced by a concert as this one. Similarly to the Cohen show there was an initial sense of an audience “willing” the show to be great almost out of a desire for redemption for the artist and then this feeling giving way to a sense of sheer joy when the performance exceeded their most optimistic expectations.

It was a special night of adventurous, brave and spirited music.

Rickie Lee Jones To Tour

Rickie Lee Jones will perform a number of additional shows in Australia as well as her performance at Sydney’s Vivid Festival.

Jones tour comes on the back of her fourteenth studio album Balm In Gilead (2009) but she has stated that there will be plenty of songs from her storied history.

That history commenced in Los Angeles in the late 70’s. A four-song demo of material was circulated around the L.A. music scene in 1978  and it  came to the attention of Lenny Waronker, producer and executive at Warner Bros. Records.

Jones was signed to the label, and work commenced on her debut album, co-produced by Waronker and Russ Titelman. Jones was courted by the major labels, and chose Waronker because of his work with Randy Newman, and because, she said, she had a vision of standing in his office the moment she saw his name on the back of Newman’s Sail Away album.

Rickie Lee Jones was released in March 1979 and became a hit, buoyed by the success of the jazz-flavored single “Chuck E.’s in Love”. The album, which included guest appearances by Dr. John, Randy Newman, and Michael McDonald, went to US #3 on the Billboard 200 and produced another US Top 40 hit with “Young Blood” (#40) in late 1979.

Following a successful world tour, the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, Jones secured five nominations at the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, Song of the Year (“Chuck E.’s in Love”), and Best New Artist, which she won at the January 1980 ceremony. She was also voted Best Jazz Singer by Playboy magazine’s critic and reader polls. Jones was covered by Time magazine on her very first professional show, in Boston, and they dubbed her “The Duchess of Coolsville.”

She went on to release a diverse and interesting collection of albums.

* Rickie Lee Jones – (1979)
* Pirates – (1981)
* Girl at Her Volcano (EP) – (1983)
* The Magazine – (1984)
* Flying Cowboys – (1989)
* Pop Pop – (1991)
* Traffic from Paradise – (1993)
* Naked Songs – Live And Acoustic – (1995)
* Ghostyhead – (1997)
* It’s Like This – (2000)
* Live at Red Rocks – (2001)
* The Evening of My Best Day – (2003)
* Rickie Lee Jones: Duchess of Coolsville – (2005)
* The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard – February 2007
* Balm in Gilead – November 2009

Rickie Lee Jones will be performing in a trio format with electric bassist Jose Maramba and drummer/keyboardist Lionel Cole.
Dates

26 May  – Concert Hall, Perth, WA
28 May  – Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW
1 June  – Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, SA
3 June  – Forum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC

Tickets for all shows except Sydney are on sale April 12 at 9am.