Takings Side: Laura Nyro vs. Joni M. vs. Rickie Lee Jones

everyone will just pick joni. laura nyro fans will go home in tears.

Hmmm...I put this up for discussion because as much as I think Joni is totally amazing, for the past year or so I have been more into Ricki Lee's stuff. But then again, Laura has some beautiful magic going on; though, whether it's enough to trump Joni's catalog is another thing altogether. So, this for me has come down to pathetic "High Fidelity" record-store clerks' arguments. Completely pointless, but maybe it will yield some intrsting comments. And for Thor's sake, what does Geir think?

tough to compare, at least for me, as each has their own niche (Nyro = soul, Joni = jazz, Rickie Lee = blues)...Nyro doesn't ever seem to get the props the other two get, probably because she ultimately chose to embrace "uncool" things like domesticity and motherhood in her music...but I'll take her over them (and Carole King too) in a heartbeat...even when she phoned it in (Nested, Mothers' Spiritual) the results were never less than enchanting...I will forever be in amazement that "And When I Die" was written when she was, like, 16 or something...

Yeah, wow. She's pretty amazing. I really should re-visit her later records...

I like Lauro Nyro (esp. "Stoney End," Diana Ross nails that song) and Rickie Lee but c'mon man, the reason everybody will pick Joni is she towers over both of these.

Yeah, but I dunno. Lately Rickie Lee has been blowing my mind. She's not as ...lugubrious(?) as Joni, but her stuff is still moving. When she starts scatting or whatever towards the end of "Living it Up", I pretty much lose it.

good question but i can't answer cuz i don't know ricki lee at all.

The notion that Court and Spark or Blue somehow "tower" over Eli and the Thirteenth Confession or New York Tendaberry is so criminally misguided.

Surmounter, go steal "Pirates" or the first s/t record immediately. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

The notion that Court and Spark or Blue somehow "tower" over Eli and the Thirteenth Confession or New York Tendaberry is so criminally misguided.

Yeah. God knows I love me some Joni, but, Stoned Soul Picnic or Sweet Blindness are evidence enough to refute that, even if it is a strawman-ish assumption...which actually, I guess it's not, since those Joni records are on everybody's top 50 rawk records lists or whatever, while Laura is still relegated to almost cult-status ghetto

is true

I own every Rickie Lee Jones album include the 10" Girl At Her Volcano and once covered "Skeletons" (poorly). Love her, got nothing but praise for her. I will rep for The Magazine, even. Or Ghostyhead. Joni Mitchell is still just much, much better, and is on "everybody"'s top 50 lists because she's a better 1) lyricist and 2) musician than RLJ.

Nyro I gotta admit the voice stands in the way for me a lot of the time. I would rather listen to other people singing her songs.

The writer of "Wedding Bell Blues" for me, but I have a long-standing thing for good old pretentious Joni; I forced my parents to get Mingus from the Columbia Record and Tape Club and committed it all to memory in about a month. And I surpass J0hn in love for The Magazine, I dived into that record like it was a swimming pool, and it saved a whole summer for me.

Hmmm...I gotta think about yr points there, J0hn. I was all ready to agree with you, but now I'm starting to think...

I mean, you're probably "right", or right, but, fuck, I think more than a few of RLouJag's lyrics are completely brilliant ("walking barefoot to the Circle K on a burning street...this town is a drive-by for the whole Inland Empire"..."cunt-fingered Louie"...) well, okay, maybe not so brilliant in isolation, but still, the way that she marries the lyrics with her singing slays me...whereas sometimes it seems like Joni is reciting really great poetry, as opposed to snging it. But that could also be b/c Joni's lyrics don't always scan neatly and the resulting cramminginofsyllables sometimes doesn't work as well for my ears as it might.

Plus I'm pretty sure that RLJ is a pretty fine pianist, more-than competent guitarist, and fine arranger as well, no?

Well, in terms of voice handicaps, you've got Laura's awkward falsetto, Joni's painfully earnest folk singer thing, and Ricky Lee's slurry Olive Oil thing. Of the three, I find Laura's the least contrived and the most human.

Nyro I gotta admit the voice stands in the way for me a lot of the time. I would rather listen to other people singing her songs.

J0hn, you so crazy! I think that all of the covers that I've heard are inferior. I mean, I love the Fifth Dimension and all, but hearing Laura belt the originals out is unsurpassable.

Jimmy Webb, on the other hand...

INteresting point, NTL. I gotta think about that one.

First answer was Laura, but then I thought, well, I'd save Blue even over the first Nyro record, and then I thought 'I haven't listened to RLJ in a while, and I never bought Pirates...... so I've got S/T on now, and it sounds pretty damn great, so....... Still Laura, for And When I Die

Nyro I gotta admit the voice stands in the way for me a lot of the time. I would rather listen to other people singing her songs.

That's my thing too. Joni all the way for me, even though there's so much of Nyro's work I don't know. I'll even defend several Joni tracks from the eighties. Even when her songs got strident and her voice lost much of its power, she recorded a strange, affecting hybrid of jazz-inflected synth pop that sounds like nobody else; to me she was the only boomer who adapted to the technology despite lacking songs deserving adaptation, if that makes sense.

Can you describe The Magazine? I'd love to hear it. Didn't Walter Becker produce a later album?

(Walter Becker producing Joni in the eighties may have curbed some of the tendencies I mentioned above)

Joni has a lot more looks than the folk look - see especially Mingus & Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, and then Night Ride Home & especially her delivery of "Both Sides Now" at that Lincoln Center thing which is one of the most incredible reimaginings of a song by its author that I've ever seen

in re: The Magazine, it's kind of eighties art-pop, if that's a genre: clearly expecting to actually sell a few copies, pretty secure...Alfred I would be very surprised if it didn't turn out to be your favorite RLJ effort - it has a sheen to it that's pretty dazzling.

Joni has a lot more looks than the folk look

Agreed -- and I'm a fan of Mingus, DJRD and Hejira, where she dropped a lot of her folkie mannerisms for kind of a pop Ella Fitzgerald look. But even there, she never quite shed her inner-folkie when she hits those higher registers.

Whoa - 5 star review of Pirates in Rolling Stone.

Also: found the video for "Satellite," which I remember hearing at the time but had no idea it was by Jones.

thx dell i will get

RLJ's 'Pirates'(and 'Traffic from Paradise') is one of my favourite records, along with Joni's 'Hejira'(and Hissing of Summer lawns, ok), so i can't really pick. It doesn't make sense as a comparison, though- they come from and definitely go very different places, i think.

i will say, though, that RLJ's run since 1993 - Traffic from Paradise; Naked Songs; Ghostyhead; Evening of my Best Day; Sermon - is far more interesting and wonderful than Joni's comparable recent career after 1994(i really like Turbulent Indigo).

i dearly love laura. i'm going to play christmas right now.

but yeah, joni is greater. haven't heard enough rickie lee.

go get Pirates, seriously. the cover is beautiful, too.
http://www.kkbox.com.tw/funky/album/68157.jpg

Rickie Lee Jones singing 'You Don't Love Me When I Cry' and 'Been on a Train' at Laura Nyro's memorial concert in 1997:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW6G3J7xl_g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGX8_pQHmhc

I’m mainlining New York Tendaberry ...fuck me I love Joni and Rickie Lee sooo much but Laura was just imbibing from Gods own when she created this...she was just so ahead of the game...unbelievable