In these days of individualistic, self-prescribed spiritual experience, you can have Jesus any way you like him, pulling from Scripture what you like of him or fashioning him into a rebel, an iconoclast, a poor smuck, or a misunderstood anti-hero. You can literally mold and shape him as you will. That's basically what's going on in Ricke Lee Jones' new release, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard --- an extremely interesting foray by Jones into the world of Jesus (well, and Elvis too).

It begins with Peter Astamoff and Lee Cantalon, two visual artist/poets living meagerly in Culver City, California, just getting by. The guys dream up a spoken word project (you know how well those sell!) called The Words. Only the boys don't collectively have the funds to record it. Enter a friend, Marc, who allows them to use his studio on (where else but) Exposition Boulevard, and the guys go to work. They want it to sound pretty, but not too pretty, "broken " in fact, and definitely all about "longing." (How many artists make longing the sin qua non of their work?). The guys record sounds around the LA area, have long conversations with a homeless man (their collaborator) and then decide to ask Rickie Lee Jones over to read some lines for them. Rickie begins to read, says "I can't do this," and then begins to improvise by singing the words. Waala! Art is born. Brilliant moment after moment follow. Spiritual bliss. She's channeling Van Morrison's mystical Astral Weeks. And in the end the boys meet their goal they say, " to distance the words of Jesus from a traditional or religious enclosure." I'll say. (Read more of that story here.)

I don't want to like this, but the thing is, I do. Mostly that is. I agree Jesus needs to be rescued from the religionists. If the authors of these lyrics had stuck to the words of scripture, that would have been a rescue --- a rescue from the purely human Jesus of the liberal church, from the Jesus that sounds like a card-carrying liberal democrat (as well as a Republican), the Jesus of tolerance for tolerance sake (read the scripture and you can see that Jesus was not too tolerant of some people.) The problem is that here is another attempt to recast Jesus in our own image, tailor him to our political sensibilities, use him for our purposes, even if its just spiritual experience. So I applaud the effort, but lament the end.

That being said, I find this music interesting, a mostly melodic acoustic rock vibe with some experimental detours (some of which are like fingernails on a chalkboard). Rickie has an interesting, soulful voice, and the use of repetition (just like Van Morrison) is effective and emotional. "Gethsemane" captures the agony of Jesus in the Garden, contemplating death, his friends sleeping. It's effective in conveying the deep emotion of that night. "Falling Up" is a rocking number about I don't know what if not the call that Jesus had on people, His effect. "Lamp of the Body" is a plea to avoid darkness and have pure motives. "Where I Like It Best" ask "how do you pray in a world like this?" The song is an urging toward sincere prayer, not the prayers "of the people on TV who close their eys and say Let Us Pray." And then there we are ridng around Heaven in "Elvis' Cadillac" with "Janis Joplin working at the bar."

Well, it's quite a ride, but in the end, I'm not near as bothered by this as I thought I'd be. Maybe Jesus needed rescuing. I just don't know if Rickie is the one to do it. But I bought the record. I like it.