THE NEW RECORD
Rickie Lee Jones talks about her soon-to-be-released record, the first
collection of all-original songs since Ghostyhead

I have been working now about six, eight weeks since November I guess. Or was it October? I believe I will be finished in a month. I am still writing though, and I like it all, so I am working to keep making each new song a living song, since it is so long between my writing opportunities, if you will, or writing abilities, or writing finales, that now that it is here and songs are coming I want to keep enjoying it. I have about fourteen or so songs, which will maybe not all make it but i like them all.

this week I am working with a couple of horn players and a couple of vocalists. i originally was thinking of Hugh Masakala but I believe he is in Africa. But the proud and revolutionary spirit of the street back in the 60's, especially the black music, this is driving me somehow. this work is about revolution, about being a part of the world, about murder, corruption. It is about sweet moments in summer, and once in a life time events in otherwise sad lives. I like it allot. I have been listening to allot of Curtis Mayfield, and occasional Sly and the family stone, and this one Van Morrison record, Veedon Fleece, with once in a while Outkast. and that's about it, And I believe the character of this great black pride finds it's way into me. I saw this movie once Spike Lee made about a black family in the early 70's. and I find my self referring, not to the movie, but to that time in our history, and to the black experience I imagined. There is some amazing sense of hope, of self-relience, of bold challenge. I guess i am writing like a bad journalist right now, but what i mean is that I feel this revolution inside me about what is going on in the country, and i have no white reference for it. Black men being murdered, being incarcerated, at rates four or five times higher than white men, living lives of despair, falling into hopeless voids of jail, unemployment, wasted spirit. Now I watch this pimp ho nigger thing going on and i wonder, what happened?

When I was a kid in Venice I had a good friend named Yusef Rahman. He was a scientologist, but other than that i really liked him. He gave me a place to stay, and gave me work singing back ground, paying jobs. He meditated, he hustled work, he took care of people.
Same time I had a pimp who took care of me. A guy from another part of town, drove a gold cadillac limo, big puffy hair, jeans dry cleaned. He took care of me, too, when no one else would. I had lived in a white world, and none of my white friends would lend a hand when things got tough. but this guy gave me a place to stay for a month, He did not ask me to work. but he was getting around to it when i took off.

I have this vision of that time, of the hippies black and white, and of the black 'community' taking this revolution thing very seriously. they meant to make their lives better, to challenge the system. To fight the war. to overcome stereotypes, and create families that stayed together, went to school, walked with dignity.

Grant Lee Philips and Rickie, January 2003

Now why does this suddenly matter so much to me? I don't know, but it does.
I heard a radio show on KPFK, a black d.j. talking about his experience. About taking care of his children, about the old days, the brown berets (anybody ever hear of them) the black panthers. And he said, maybe some of you out there are watching t.v. and you are feeling very, very alone. Because if you believed the tv, you would think every body loves GW BUsh. Well, I feel very alone too. and man, you are not alone. There are plenty of us who can't understand what's going on. We hate this man, we think this presidency is a travesty.

I am paraphrasing, but i think i got the gist of it. And i was so gratified. Who is this, what radio is this? Now i listen to it every day. And my old mom, she would rather hear it than our old stand by KCRW, which has become terribly non committal, terribly careful in it's reporting. And when i say careful, i am talking about a media controlled by the right, where all news is bias, and so anything non bias appears to be left.

and there is virtually no voice of distention, no national voice of distention against the behavior and policies of this administration. they would have you believe he was elected by some landslide popular vote. that was not the case, and people don't like him any more now. They are just afraid of saying they don't like him. why is that? How can it be anti American not to like the president. I thought this was a democracy, two parties, etc. Because if it is anti American to attack the president, then the whole republican party should be executed for their outrageous slanderous attacks on Clinton.

Right now, in America, the Bush administration has taken this 9-11 opportunity to revoke the rights of American citizens to do process. Now this is a constitutional right, the basic one, the reason they created the country in the first place. this means you no longer have the right to an attorney, if the decide to arrest you under suspicion of terrorism, of conspiracy, of anything that falls under the very vague terms of anti government. Because surely my words, any anti Bush activity could be construed to support "the other side" whatever that is. Believe me, if there is another side to George Bush I am on it.
It means they can hold you indefinitely and do not have to present any evidence to you and do not have to tell anybody where you are there. My guess is secretly police agencies were quite annoyed with that Miranda thing, that lawyer and due process thing, because allot of bad guys were getting a fair shake. So secretly, fbi, cia people probably envied the freedom that the kgb operated with in the USSR. and so, now they've got it.

Americans are actually acting as human rights monitors here in Los Angeles for other Americans.
People are being arrested and taken away while applying for visas.
they are being asked if they are 'religious'

The right is attempting to divert public interest in anti-war sentiment by plowing us suv's.
Anti war activists do not care what kind of car you drive, that is low on the list. To target a kind of car and say this has something to do with anti war activism is just typical disinformation. why not promote electric hybrid cars, why attack suv's in the name of no blood for oil? Because it is a diversion from the real issue. the real issue is that George Bush is an oil man, and he wants oil, and he will get it in Alaska even though all of America does not want it, and he will take it from Afghanistan or Iran or whoever he wants, even though Americans don't want it. And Huffingtons right wing rhetoric sits very well on that Detroit Project bullshit. It means nothing. fight against the war, Arianna, against the Bush administration aggressing nations - for any reason, but shame on us for allowing him to attack or threaten to attack because he doesn't like their leader. He doesn't like their leader because he wants the oil and he is trying to even a personal score because his daddy thinks he lost the election because of Sadaam.

so he said, don't worry daddy, get me elected, and i will take care of it. (9/11 bears an uncomfortable coincidence to conspiracy at this point. )
And why not. this is just stuff his daddy did covertly. now they have the balls to do this in front of the American people.

SUV's are not the problem. George Bush is the problem. His shameful "tickle down economics' I mean how does he have the audacity to say that to use that term to describe his blatant rich get richer economics?
Trickle down indeed, because these bastards are up there basking in piles of money, protecting each others industries, destroying, discrediting anyone who does not agree, undoing years of good ecological work. The national parks, the air pollution laws, the logging laws, coal mining and nuclear energy, long abandoned here as obsolete and dangerous, he has returned all these demons to the American people with a vengeance.

so this is going on, besides my contemplations and short stories, my photographs of people using music. I am thrilled with this music. It's not all about politics, probably no more than ever, just a little more developed.

He's an ugly man
He always was an ugly man
He grew up to be like his father...
an ugly man.

rljones / january 2003

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