The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard

by Thom JurekConsulting theologians and Bible scholars during the 1990s, photographer, writer, graphic artist, and everyday mystic Lee Cantelon (aka Pennyhead) assembled a small book presenting the words of Jesus Christ (just Jesus' words, not the stuff surrounding them) in a fitting translation called The Words. He did it for the purpose of presenting those words to people who were not "religious" -- people who were put off by organized religion or even offended by it. In 2005, using artist Marc Chiat's studio (on Exposition Boulevard) as the recording space, he invited a number of musicians to begin assembling backing tracks for a spoken word rendition of his book (Mike Watt was just one participant, reading "The Harvest" over the music). Rickie Lee Jones was invited to participate in the summer of 2006, and in a matter of moments she changed the entire nature of the project. Jones claimed she could not read the words with any authority, but asked if she could sing them. She was left alone in a room with a microphone and, without the text, completely improvised the words from her heart. There were two tracks taken from those sessions, the opening cut, "Nobody Knows My Name," and "Where I Like It Best." Those two cuts appear here unchanged from the original recordings made on Exposition Boulevard, as are two others ("I Was There," "Donkey Ride") recorded later at Sunset Sound -- first takes, no alterations. The rest were done using the same basic principle, with The Words as the inspiration. The end result is easily the most arresting recording of Rickie Lee Jones' labyrinthine career. The songs Jones cut at Exposition Boulevard sat on a shelf for a while, until she contacted producer Rob Schnapf and asked him to recruit the same musicians to go further. The sheer organic nature of some of these recordings is more akin to what indie rock musicians would try to pull off because of budgetary constraints. Understandable, but the end result here is something so completely unraveled, moving, and beautiful, something so unexpected -- even from a latter-day Beat chanteuse like Jones -- that it can only be called art. Certainly many of these songs feel raw, but they are supposed to; it's not artifice, it's inspiration. Check the opener, "Nobody Knows My Name," where a three-chord Velvet Underground-styled vamp gives way to Jones as she channels Jesus walking through the streets of history and particularly Los Angeles, as himself, as disguised as a suicide, as a player, as every woman and man, and comes out truly anonymous. The pain in her voice when she gets to the refrains is the wail we only get from her in live performances. This is likewise the case in "Gethsemane," a tad -- not much -- more polished, and once more with Jones as Jesus, here relating the agonizing experience of the beginning of Jesus' moment of trial before he has been handed over to be put to death. ... Read More...