Live Review: Rickie Lee Jones

There were many, many songs Rickie Lee Jones could've played. With a recording career that starts in the '70s and travels all the way through more musical fads than you'd care to remember, let alone list, she has a well of music that is deep and wide.

She began at the beginning and knocked socks off left and right from the get-go. Weasel And The White Boys Cool and Young Blood from her debut, self-titled album still sound fresh and risky. How she was never hailed as a poet in the vein of Springsteen in the mainstream beggars belief.

People sniffed back tears during The Last Chance Texaco, nudging their partners during Living It Up and clutching their friends' hands when Jones pulled out her transcendent retelling of Julie London's Cry Me A River.

Jones's voice is as clear and true as ever, jazzy and whisperingly powerful with enough emotion in a sigh to make you rock back on your heels in a way Mariah Carey and her like never could in all the belting out they affect. And her onstage banter is as sassy as a 1940s movie star.

With so much adoration running through the crowd it was surprising that when she prefaced The Horses by saying, "I actually wrote this," some people were confused. There were genuine, money-paying ticket holders standing at the bar who were not aware that Daryl Braithwaite had appropriated one of his biggest hits from Jones's 1989 album Flying Cowboys. But who cares? We sang, she smiled. All was right with the world.

Gethsemane, Christmas In New Orleans, We Belong Together - they were there. Chuck E's In Love, too. Even her version of Bowie's Rebel Rebel came out in the encore. It wouldn't have mattered what was included and what wasn't. Jones is an international treasure.