Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/an_enchanting_two_hour_interview_with_joni_mitchell

I don't think this is the same thing as the CBC doc...this is a 2 hour CBC interview

Watching Joni at her 70th celebration, giving in to the muse and deciding to sing in public once again, damn, that's uplifting.

I wish she'd give up smoking.

She makes a point of smoking!

My friend went to the Massey Hall thing the other night. She also tried to get Mitchell's autograph three different times this past week, no luck.

Any idea if the entire Massey Hall show will be available, beyond the shakey cell phone shots on YouTube?

choosing cigarettes over such a unique instrument is just... ugh

I love Dog Eat Dog. Can't believe it is disparaged even now, even here.

I feel bad for someone who think Joni Mitchell is a "dud," if someone sincerely believes that. If you're not moved (musically and/or emotionally) by at least 'Blue,' it might be time to think a little less about music and hear it a little more.

xpost: I picked up Dog Eat Dog in December and was surprised by how good it was. Definitely not bad.

She's 100% dud at interviews, afaic.

I love Dog Eat Dog and put "Shiny Toys" on my Joni ballot

"Good Friends" on mine.

Court & Spark is such a warm weather record.

hehe yeah - a kind of hazy stunned-by-the-heat listen

It's funny because Hissing was my first intense Joni listen - had liked Blue but not gone deep. I was alone in Perth, Western Australia, it was insanely hot and I walked downtown and bought Hissing on a whim. Sat down for a casual listen and bang, there goes the rest of the day. So that is a hot weather record for me, it's quite liquid in a way.

Yea! Harry's House/Centrepiece, 'heat waves on the runway, as the wheels set down' and the doppler horn-section intro. Such great imagery.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm3h2mjFOt1qbyeqlo1_500.gif

sigh...

I love Jaco's bass. Anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on anything.

OTM. The fusion fretless bass and processed guitars were actually what first drew me to JM.

By the time of Don Juan, the bass was the loudest instrument after Joni's voice, some track have two basslines, she must have been very taken with him.

Wait, I had no idea until now that she ever did a live album with Pat Metheny!

I think The Boho Dance might have been the first time I felt like a real "adult" listening to music, like a song could speak to something other than my adolescent desires and mood swings.

It's funny because Hissing was my first intense Joni listen - had liked Blue but not gone deep. I was alone in Perth, Western Australia, it was insanely hot and I walked downtown and bought Hissing on a whim. Sat down for a casual listen and bang, there goes the rest of the day. So that is a hot weather record for me, it's quite liquid in a way.

There's a funny resonance for me to the way In France They Kiss on Main Street kind of sounds like a continuation of Court And Spark both in musical style and content (it really kind of pairs with Free Man in Paris, and it has a similar beat to Help Me), but then the rest of the record kind of departs from that.

Sometimes Hissing feels close to a concept album but I think it's probably not. There are definitely recurring themes about suburbs/city and men trying to possess and control women.

Oh yes, there is a strong sense of being trapped by privilege across the whole album. And a strange tension that anchors the fluidity of the song structures and forms into one thing - folding Burundi drums and a 20s jazz cover into the dissection of upper middle class California makes it seem like anything could happen. That's why it's her peak for me.

would have been a much more interesting album for 33 1/3 to do a book on than C&S (which I love too, just not as good to write about)

Why does For The Roses not ever get enough props?

Because shit is fucked.

http://www.sainsburysentertainment.co.uk/en/Music/CD/Joni-Mitchell/The-Studio-Albums-1968-1979-Limited-Edition/product.html?product=E11133730

Why does For The Roses not ever get enough props?

― MaresNest, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 4:51 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because shit is fucked.

― Tim F, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 5:44 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm

is it the ass?

Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire is one of her greatest vocals imo.

Happy 70th Jones

dangerousminds.net (an ilxor? their content often seems to align with hot ilx topics of the week) posted an awesome video in commemoration of mrs. mitchell's b-day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoKBGotuNhc

Played the exact same video for my class around 9:15 this morning (just "Big Yellow Taxi," which you can find as a separate clip).

Love "Song for Sharon" especially the guitar

Classic

Blinked through the thread and there's a lot of hate and some of it possibly deserved

I don't know that much. About her even.

But, I can spot some golden open tuning lark going on

having inherited my mother-in-law's near-complete collection of Joni Mitchell vinyl over the last year... Blue isn't even in like my top 3 fave albums of hers. I've never understood why its so canonical, it doesn't seem all that different from her other albums of that period/style.

― High in Openness (Shakey Mo Collier)

But DULCIMER!

It's not in my top three either but ugh Shakey

Tbh my appreciation of Blue has increased since that post. Its more consistent than its predecessors in a lot of ways

I think some of the tunes on Ladies of the Canyon do start to anticipate Blue in different ways ("Conversation" leads to "Carey", "California" and "This Flight Tonight"; "The Arrangement" leads to "Blue" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard"; "Rainy Night House" and "The Priest" don't really lead to anything on Blue, but maybe anticipate the nervousness of her later odd-numbered albums), but there's a kind of liberated intuitiveness to the performances on almost all of Blue (excepting "Little Green" which was old anyways), which she'd never done before except in flashes. The songs feel less ~composed~ and more as if she's just pouring out her thoughts in a manner that just happens to resolve into these charming melodies (this is a key sense in which Blue is importantly "confessional", as much as or more than due to the subject matter).

In fact I remember when I first got into Joni at 14, I didn't much like Ladies of the Canyon because it felt much less one-to-one relatable, much less Joni in the sense of what she meant to me for her work from Blue through to Hejira.

At some point in the following fifteen years I got into other folk music, and when I returned to Ladies about two years ago I really loved it, perhaps precisely for the qualities that had originally turned me off.

But whether or not it was for the better in the final analysis, the shift from Ladies to Blue still feels like a huge transition to me.

Lex did a great Ten Of The Best on Joni last week on the Guardian website, well worth checking out.

Tim OTM about Ladies.
For some reason, the record has always felt like work to me, even though i do really like most of the individual songs. Not sure how to explain this, but to my ears that album as a whole comes across as this folky "quality piece of work", whereas Blue (not my fave anyway) seems much more evident and necessary.

think i prefer Ladies to Clouds. not sure though, it goes back and forth for me. i love blue and it may be my favorite joni record, but i really really really prefer the dulcimer tracks to the piano tracks.

Blue is amazing, but it was kind of ruined for me when I was in college and lived off campus near the womens' college student center (and thus spent a decent amount of time in the student center), where the coffee shop was ALWAYS playing it. It's also one of those albums that's just so tender and interior and sad that it's rare that I'm in the right frame of mind to listen to it in my busy adult life.

also some of these "classic or dud" threads started 12-14 years ago in which the subject is an older artist who is typically undeniably classic (e.g. joni) always show a kind of interesting split between early and new ILM -- how many people on ILM nowadays who don't like joni mitchell would care enough to visit the thread and say shit like this:

Pure garbage. Not fit to pick the toenails of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley. Bloody ugly, as well.

― Johnathan, Friday, April 13, 2001 8:00 PM (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

newer artists obviously still get lots of discussion but i'm kind of grateful we don't see posts like the above anymore.

I feel like ILM used to get a lot more random googlers. IDK if that has changed for some techno-magical reason.

ILX didn't use to require registration - can't remember when that was changed

2007 iirc