Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

yea!

Posted this on the Ron Sexsmith thread -- interesting to see later Joni covered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUDUCcOPFE0

yeah a little jaco goes a long way but joni deploys him beautifully. i'd also recommend his work on the pat metheny-led album "bright size life." aside from those, yes, i can see how his technique can grate.

I just generally hate the sound of fretless bass. the tone of it. there are a few dudes who get a pass on it because they employ it so strangely (Colin Moulding etc.) but it's a small bunch

amateurist otm re: bright size life. Such a good album!

it was recommended to me on ILM, maybe even on this very thread.

Some fairly wide-ranging Mitchell show tapes incl. Larry Klein having no prob w Jaco-associated songs, while not trying to imitate him (also no difficulty with songs from other eras).
Metheny Group could be good, though I like him better with Haden etc. on 80/81 and Rejoicing, also w Ornette on Song X (also good w Gary Burton)

I really liked Jaco's s/t solo debut. Really haven't latched on to anything else by him though, including the Mitchell work.

Yeah, that solo album is pretty funky. Sam + Dave and Herbie Hancock cameos help.

Bright Size Life is great and captures a lot of the same vibe as Hejira

Joni on Car(e)y:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-muse-behind-joni-mitchells-carey-1415721658

wonderful image too

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AR-AH807_JONI_12S_20141111102702.jpg

and an interview with Cary himself!
http://online.wsj.com/articles/when-joni-mitchell-met-cary-raditz-her-mean-old-daddy-1415721367?tesla=y

great article! xxp

yea both of those were really great

https://crete.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/joni-michell-in-matala-crete/

Mark Deming reviews new, def artist's-choice box set (think some audio excerpts too but haven't had time to check): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-has-many-faces-a-quartet-a-ballet-waiting-to-be-danced-joni-mitchell/28316633?ean=81227957858

Cover is also self-portrait, I think I read:

http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/81227957858_p0_v1_s600.JPG

Figured bump would be for
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joni-mitchell-will-not-allow-taylor-swift-to-play-her/

I said to the producer, 'All you've got is a girl with high cheekbones'....RAWR!

Who should play Joni would be an interesting game to play

She doesn't conform to the standards required to be met by anyone you've heard of.

Jenny Lewis is probably too old

A Joni biopic has so much potential for bathos, maybe it just shouldn't ever happen

Maybe if it were just the Cary/Carey experience? I wanna go to that island. Keira Knightley could do it (the island thing didn't involve much campfire chirping, seems like; could just use soundtrack of the original J)

K wouldn't be too old for that-era J

You know, like the one about the Beatles as Hamburg house band, or when John and Brian Epstein took a vacation together.

I thought the bump would be for that awful open letter by Dave Bidini (non-Canadians and anyone under the age of 25 go "who?") that's basically "why don't you smile, lady? ps why do u h8 John Lennon"

hey what can you folks tell me about post-70s joni?

what should i a seek out? listening to wild things run fast right now and i can dig it tbh

If you like Wild Things from the get-go, you may be well served just working through it all, you'll probably find a fair amount of interest in every record.

Night Ride Home (from 1991) is best though.

Re box set & all sides now, cool li'l interview this morning. Think there's more tomorrow:

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/369276288/after-decades-of-success-shes-still-just-a-painter-who-writes-songs

"man to man" from wild things is great, uses the new 80s production and style pretty successfully imo

I definitely rep for Wild Things, Taming and Night Ride (the latter two especially). Also, Shine is somewhat underrated, if occasionally overly serious and didactic (even for Joni)

and by "underrated" I mean among the kinda people who post to ILX. It was her best selling album since Hejira iirc

Hell, I love "Fiction" and "Good Friends" from DED.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B63FmFICQAALwAj.jpg

"They paved paradise/put up a designer boutique shop..."

lol

i am listening to mingus as we speak, didn't notice this thread in SNA, but searched it to post about mingus! anyways this album is highly underrated, it's a little flimsier than the preceding albums but i just love the looseness of it, joni does jazz VERY VERY well and i've never had a problem with how deep she wanted to go into jazz.

Joni doesn't either!

haha which is a good thing!

I like that portrait. Makes me feel like a lad again, hat in hand, before my girlfriend's Mom. Time and the Cali sun have not melted her.

Then again, Google her self-portraits...

they are amazing!

Eh I kind of feel like Joni doing jazz never really sounds like jazz, just jazzed up Joni ( not necessarily a bad thing). But I need to give Mingus a closer listen.

i don't particularly enjoy the "mingus" album but i've always been a little suspicious of how some critics seemed to want to punish mitchell for trying to make a "jazz" album, as if this white girl couldn't possibly know what she was doing. in fact i think more than a few of the critics were bluffing their supposed expertise in jazz that qualified them to disparage the album as not-jazz.

I remember not liking it a while back. I so rarely like ANY jazz vocals, that Joni doing her take on them was not likely to please me. Right now I'm listening to it again -- the opener is kind of messy and pointless imo, an exercise, but I guess it does sound like "actual jazz" whatever little that's worth. God Must Be A Boogie Man is sort of overwrought. I also have a distaste for Jaco's intrusive, farty bass playing in general. The lyrics she put to Goodbye Porkpie Hat are cringey, but she does a credible job on the vocal. The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey is a very good tune though.

It's also the least "jazzy" of the tunes so far.