Ghostyhead

Amazon.com
Not a late-to-the party attempt to revitavlize her sound, Rickie Lee Jones acknowledges the fact that trip-hop is a natural medium for her stripe of boho beatnik in the late 1990s. Intriguing, late-night stuff delivered with style and wit on standouts like "Scary Chinese Movie" and "Little Yellow Town." The lyrics are the make-or-break proposition, but you'll have to go to her web site to find 'em. --Jeff Bateman

Ghostyhead,Rickie Lee Jones,Warner Bros / Wea,Adult Alternative Pop/Rock,Popular Music,Rock,Singer/Songwriter,Trip-Hop

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Ghostyhead

Average customer rating: her best...trippy-hip A midunderstood treasure Moonlight on the Hill... ghostyhead come lately Smely Cat

Ghostyhead Rickie Lee Jones Manufacturer: Warner Bros / Wea ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music Singer-Songwriters | Pop | Styles | Music Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music Contemporary | Vocal Pop | Pop | Styles | Music Adult Alternative | Pop | Styles | Music General | Rock | Styles | Music Trip-Hop | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music Similar Items: Traffic from Paradise It's Like This The Sermon On Exposition Blvd. [Deluxe Limited Edition --- includes 5.1 SACD version and 40 minute DVD of making the record] Pop Pop Pirates ASIN: B000002NER Release Date: 1997-06-17

Tracks:

1. Little Yellow Town
2. Road Kill
3. Matters
4. Firewalker
5. Howard
6. Ghostyhead
7. Sunny Afternoon
8. Scary Chinese Movie
9. Cloud Of Unknowing
10. Vessel Of Light

Amazon.com

Not a late-to-the party attempt to revitavlize her sound, Rickie Lee Jones acknowledges the fact that trip-hop is a natural medium for her stripe of boho beatnik in the late 1990s. Intriguing, late-night stuff delivered with style and wit on standouts like "Scary Chinese Movie" and "Little Yellow Town." The lyrics are the make-or-break proposition, but you'll have to go to her web site to find 'em. --Jeff Bateman

Customer Reviews:

her best...trippy-hip.......2007-03-14

i have to agree with most of the reviewers here...this is one of her best. it's certainly my personal favorite. would be even more awesome in a 5.1 mix

A midunderstood treasure.......2006-10-23

Hypnotoic. Haunting. Daring. Challenging. Beautiful. So different from everything else she's ever done, and yet it fits perfectly within her cannon. Grab it if you can find it.

Moonlight on the Hill..........2006-05-25

This album has undeservedly become commercial roadkill, but I find it to be among Rickie Lee Jones' best and most original albums; it was surely among the top albums of 97. Critics wrote that Ghosty Head was Jones' attempt to keep up with a trip-hop/industrial trend, but the studio cuts are true to RLJ's sonic sensibilities, and some of the songs are among the best of her current live playlists, which shows that Jones did not create them to keep up with the Cobains or the Reznors. You will want to tell friends about this obscure treasure.

ghostyhead come lately.......2004-07-21

I didn't love this album when it came out, and can't say I love it now, but I have found that the songs from this album have become some of my favorites when I see Rickie live. Little Yellow Town, Ghostyhead, Matters, Cloud of Unknowing, Road Kill - all awesome live. And Howard! What a great song in the live version! Give the album a try, it might surprise you. Then buy some of the live versions from her website and you will be amazed how beautiful these songs are when they are stripped down.

Smely Cat.......2003-06-05

The title track sounds exactly like Pheobes' 'Smelly Cat' song from Friends. I found the rest of the album annoying in it's dull pretentiousness.

Average customer rating: Art... One of Rickie's best, if not her very best this is her ghostyhead Rickie Lee takes a chance, and succeeds! Her most experimental album is also her weakest

Ghostyhead [IMPORT} Rickie Lee Jones ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD General | Rock | Styles | Music Contemporary | Vocal Pop | Pop | Styles | Music Rock | Imports | Stores | Music Pop | Imports | Stores | Music ASIN: B0000564LX

Customer Reviews:

Art..........2002-05-15

I read somewhere once that an Artist is `the trunk of the tree'...infering that they are drawing information from one place/level of experience and the information, passing through them, presents itself on the other end...the upshot of this analogy is that the `viewer' cannot expect the branches to look or be shaped like the roots. The information has been transmogrified. Distilled.
Rickie Lee Jones is an Artist (note the capitalization).She is everything that an Artist is supposed to be; fearless where her self-expression is concerned, and heedless of naysayers.
This album is not for everyone, that is a given, but negative criticism of it tends to fall flat...the music just keeps shimmering and twisting in it`s own space, heedless.
I have always been a fan, but this recording even challenged me. The writing is so personal and truthful on some levels that it is frightening. It is truly a `through the looking glass' experience where I find myself wondering if they are her lyrics or my memories-you look into the void, and the void looks into you.
Criticisms of this kind of work are all sort of pointless, whether they are pro or con. The point is, it will make you think, feel, and react again and again...inspiring love or hate, but rarely indifference-it`s art, that`s what it`s SUPPOSED to do!
There are parts of it I love alot, other parts I find rather emotionally difficult, and yet more parts that I am not even sure I want to or was ever meant to understand.
Bravo!

One of Rickie's best, if not her very best.......2002-02-01

To counter what a previous reviewer alleged, I have been a Rickie Lee Jones fan since her first album and I'm over 40. I think this may be her best album to date. It is a shame that it went out of print so quickly. Yes, it is VERY different from anything she had released before. Hooking up with producers of electronic music resulted in RLJ getting a musical face lift of sorts. Not that she needed to change...I could listen to almost any RLJ album over and over (except the dreadful and overrated Pop Pop). I think one of the things that is most compelling to me about this album is that it is SO unique and SO different from the rest of RLJ's catalog. Her lyrical style remains intact, but the funkin' drums and bass on many of Ghostyhead's tracks, and the spacey electronic noises behind others, add an edge that I find extremely compelling. It can also be trance inducing -- for a period of time I went to sleep listening to it every night!

While I would agree that anyone who thinks that a Rickie Lee Jones album should sound more like other pop/rock records musically (acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums, piano) would be disappointed with this, any true RLJ fan will be able to see/hear/feel the art she presented here. That is what has kept me buying every RLJ album for the past two decades -- she is obviously an artist who engages in a creative process in order to release an album, not focusing on how well it will sell. This is an unusual approach for someone who previously had a top 10 hit. Instead of trying to duplicate "Chuck E.'s In Love", RLJ keeps making fresh and innovative albums.

Oh -- this album sounds GREAT with headphones on.

this is her ghostyhead.......2001-12-08

When Rickie Lee Jones first appeared twenty odd years ago, her impact was huge. Against the backdrop of disco and punk, she was an anomoly, incredibly unique and appealing. Musicians copied her style (the lace gloves, sheila e, prince, benetar) the beret and ciggerette attitude were the blue prints for countless t.v commercials, and a children resteraunt chain even named itself after one of her songs - that's how huge it was.
then she turns and does Pirates, a brooding and lush dive into a darker book of characters, one of whom is killed, and the others... it dared audiences to stay with her, and half of them did.
then she turned again, a strange Volcano, the Magazine, etc.
Pop Pop caused a big hub bub, when she introduced the accordian to the jazz ballad, played the chanteuse. If she would have just smoked a ciggerette and sang my funny valentine (like she did in '79) she would have landed in the glove of what people expected.
But once again she did an unexpected and new treatment. she had helped to educate a pop, teen audience to jazz ballads in 79, 80, 81, (Playboy for instance voted her best jazz singer two years in a row) But now even her jazz audience was puzzled.
so what's the big hub bub about ghostyhead?
A sumersion into dark and wonderful vision, where monsters float and voices call for gods and towns appear and disappear..
this is a fiction writer whose medium is music. An adept musician, not adept at trends, and a true stylist.
People who grew up with her music mostly don't like this, they are maybe too old for really new music, from people they know, or from anyone else for that matter. If you were under forty or thirty and heard this you would probably like it alot - alot more than chuck e or we belong together.
some thread of the old irish writers and musics is in this, and like the Irish writers, it cannot be ventured into lightly, expecting to read Sidney Sheldon, or even expecting Rickie Lee Jones, as it turns out. Because who is she? A thelonius monk, an ezra pound, imprecise and seeking, all the components of real new music are here. Not in abundance, but here nonetheless. She is the unrefined dutchess, the waitress and genius, the genius as waitress. she is not what the white men in their r.u.v.s listen to while reading u.s.a. today, that's for sure.
She is inspired, and inspiration is a thing that is not tame, and cannot arrive on time, and does not cooperate with marketing ideas.

note, i wrote this whole thing once and it did not go through so i am trying it once more. hope it doesnt show up twice, the first one was better.

Rickie Lee takes a chance, and succeeds!.......2001-06-15

I bought this CD when it was first released. Its a shame that her former record company failed to support it. It is worth buying as an import, even at its import price. Nothing you've heard before will prepare you for Rickie's eerie, moody, delicate and sometimes rocking soundscapes. Certain songs will appeal to RLJ fans immediately: Matters, Firewalker, Ghostyhead and Little Yellow Town. It takes time to soak up the other songs and grasp what RLJ is doing here. Repeated listening reveals that it is still Rickie, but with the courage to grow and experiment. This is a brave recording by a terrific artist who insists on doing it her way.

Her most experimental album is also her weakest.......2001-04-26

I've been a huge fan of Rickie since the mid 80's. She's always been one to take risks and this is by far the biggest one she's taken. It's obviously inspired by psychedelic drugs. There are quite a few references to LSD and Ecstacy. I was so put off by it on the first few listenings that I would never make it completely through the disc in one sitting. There are some passages where she is SO off key that neighborhood cats might congregate outside your window while it's playing. I've returned to it from time to time and some of it has actually grown on me. "Roadkill" "Firewalker" and the title track in particular. I've been a frequent visitor to her wonderfull website and in her MP3's are some live renditions of a 3 or so of the songs found here that are far better. The material here translates better live.

If you're a fan of Rickie and have never heard any of this material, I suggest that you try listening to some MP3's before you fork over 33 bucks. This is not what I or anyone might have expected from Rickie Lee Jones. I enjoy surprises, but nothing could have quite prepared me for this. I have to say that it does succeed in evoking an overall creepy feeling like nothing I've heard previously or since. Jones stated herself that it was something she'd had pent up in her and had to let out. To be candid, if I had something like that pent up in me, I'd want to exorcize it too.

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