Music Arcades: Rickie Lee Jones: Pirates

I got this from Record Collector in Broomhill in the late '80s or early '90s, so not when it was 'current' but before catalogue albums were ridiculously cheap. It's a long time since I listened to it.

But it comes flooding back — or at least the first minute of the first track does. It's a great opening to an album, up there with This is Our Music. The whole track is pretty good, but, for me, the album always fell away after that. It has glimpses of a fusion of Steely Dan and Van Morrison populated by Tom Waits characters; but they're just glimpses.

I put it on while feeding the Boy. By the time we got to 'Side 2', he'd finished the bottle, and I put him over my shoulder to wind him. Somewhere during A Lucky Guy his eyelids narrowed to slits, and by Traces of the Western Slopes he was out. Half way through that song and I was nodding off myself. I kept waiting for The Hit — you know the one — but it never came. I wondered if I'd slept through it. Then I remembered that it was on the earlier album, and I remembered that I'd deliberately chosen the album without the hit, because I thought it would be more experimental, and thereby somehow more authentic. Dickhead.

Anyway, I put the album on again, this time without a baby on my lap, but again I was slipping away by the time I reached the last quarter. Not the music's fault, I think, just exhaustion.

Last year I bought the RLJ anthology Duchess of Coolsville for Lucy's birthday. I asked her yesterday evening if it was any good. "Haven't listened to it, yet," came the reply. So I'm not the only one.