You are where I like it best

"This show was by far one of the most moving shows I have ever seen. Although I don't normally recommend shows by artists outside of the Durtro family on my updates or on durtro.com, this performance was so profound and numinous that I feel impelled to urge people to see her if you can. She is channeling something remarkable and beautiful and unsettling, and her band are extraordinary. Her tour is now in the UK and Europe till the end of May."

This is part of what David Michael wrote about Rickie Lee Jones. He blogged about her new album before, all raving mad about it, considering it a sister to Black Ships, so I downloaded it, liked it a lot and decided to take the advice and see her show in Paradiso. And indeed, he was right, she was channeling something remarkable and beautiful!
The great thing stared when I was standing around all by myself reading some free music magazine they keep around there when I realized they were playing Current. As far as I remember they weren't playing anything before. So somebody must have picked up on David's rants. I'm hoping they made contact, but it could be a mad Paradiso-employee too. Don't know who picks the music. It was a great introduction to a magical show anyway. Just before the band came out they played half of some SBS song.
Now, Rickie Lee Jones is a long standing artist, once talked of as the natural successor to Joni Mitchell. She had some good and bad times and a broken relationship with Tom Waits. Her newest album, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard, was inspired by a religious epiphany she had when asked to do something for a secular Jesus-quotation book (I don't tell the story well, go read it elsewhere). About a third of the songs on the album are improvised first takes, and most or all songs are inspired by Bible stories. But not in a mainstream Christian way at all. Or an understandable way for that matter.
The stage was covered in Eastern tapestries and Chinese lanterns, and on a small table in the middle there was a big candle burning with a white rabbit on it. Her second song was an amazing rendition of the first song on the album, Nobody Knows My Name. She had put down her guitar, used a tambourine but threw that on the ground (she kept picking up new tambourines and throwing them on the stage when she was done with them), and she was all smiling an glittery eyed, raising her arms up in the air and singing her heart out.
I'm sorry if I sound to floaty and spiritual, but you could really feel that, feel your own being reaching back and absorbing the feeling. Some music does that, makes you feel deeper, euphoric, with hope and love and warmth and desire and happiness and a religious kind of belief. The feelings that it either creates or brings up in me, that is why I adore music so much. Now, I think this woman has something amazing and I'm seriously considering worshiping her :p .
Another highlight was Where I Like It Best, but there were so many and I forget. They are broadcasting this concert on Wednesday, June 6th, on radio 6. I'm disappointed that it wasn't taped for de Luisterpaal, although it wasn't really that kind of audience. Mostly older people, and nobody smoked (at least round where I was standing). The audience was also very good at being quiet during those songs that needed it. They were still dropping plastic glasses on the balconies, but not a lot.
Rickie is multi-talented. Besides her normal guitar (for which she used different playing methods) and the tambourine, she also did acoustic guitar, keyboards and piano whilst singing and manipulating her voice. She played both her band and the audience with hand motions as well, urging us to keep quiet while she was making soft vocal music, going over into another song and steering her band during the many long improvisations they were doing. On the piano she was solo, three songs, and with the encore she send us of after the last song, after a performance that lasted longer than two hours, with words that went something like: if you feel pain in your heart, remember this moment, you are all connected, you are all satellites now. When the lights went on they started playing Where the Long Shadows Fall, so I hung around for a bit and bought the album. It is not often that you get to hear Current 93 in a church.