joni mitchell - blue - poll

I'll go for Carey for sheer pleasure, Little Green for lyrical elegance.

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Monday, December 7, 2009 5:55 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"will you take me as i am, STRUNG OUT ON ANOTHER MAN"

booming lyric imo

^^^^

The Last Time I Saw Richard

All I Want - how could anyone turn down her persona in this song??

this is making me reconsider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q4foLKDlcE

^reconsider my vote that is...

All I Want - how could anyone turn down her persona in this song??

I love the plaintiveness of "I wanna have fun..." - you can almost here a bracketed "is that too much to ask?" afterwards.

it's less sentimental than "little green"

I don't think 'Little Green' is sentimental at all; the gap between the wishes expressed- 'there'll be icicles and birthday clothes and sometimes there'll be sorrow'- and the fact that the narrative voice knows fully the enormity of what is being done and size of the wound being consciously deliberately opened up for both mother and child, mocks the wish as it is expressed. It's an astonishing song because Joni accepts the size of what is being done and doesn't attempt to clothe it in sentiment: she explains the situation but doesn't excuse either herself or the father, but nor, in the strangest most devastating line, does she cloth herself in false guilt: 'you're sad and you're sorry, but you're not ashamed'.......

Even the way it ends, with the little riff repeated an uneven number of times, and the resolving chord coming in slightly off- time and too loud points to this lack of fit between the words said - between anything that words could say - and what is being done.

Could've sworn we did this already but "All I Want," Carey," and the title track are my shit. I went for "Blue" because I can never tell when it ends.

"River" is my shit too. And "Richard." And.........

i meant the melody not the lyrics of "my old man" being less sentimental than "little green's". the first chords of "little green" immediately stir up emotion in me, touch something deep inside whereas "my old man" has a more relaxed, more ripe, bluesy down-to-earth vibe.

i didn't know until recently that this album was a result of being bummed out over james taylor. understandable though. he was one hot junkie.

http://blogs.sltrib.com/burger/uploaded_images/James-Taylor-69374-14-757585.jpg

there's a recording of them playing live together at some point -- they sound great! Nice blend.

man that live youtube clip...wow....what a talent.

He is pretty dreamy. I think only a couple of the very final songs written are about Taylor though - most of the album predates it. "My Old Man" is about Graham Nash for instance (as a side note, when I first got into this album at about 13, it didn't occur to me that "old man" might be used to describe yr boyfriend, i thought it must mean "father", and was kinda confused by the song as a result). There's also an argument that "A Case Of You" is about Leonard Cohen, though I find that unlikely.

Heaps of For The Roses is about Taylor as well - "See You Sometime", "The Blonde In The Bleachers", "Lessons In Survival".

yeah i meant that the actual "blue" vibe of the album was cuzza james. not all the actual songs.

man, reading that hotel california book i was really tempted to start writing down whose songs were about who, but it was endless. joni in particular. but all those laurel canyon people really.

^loved that book. all the stuff about joni was fascinating

I still have to read Hotel California! But I recently read Girls Like Us, about Joni Carole and Carly. That was great.

i was gonna read girls like us, but someone bought it before i could make up my mind to read it. cuz i sell books. hotel california kinda depressed me. everyone got so gross.

Do you think 'For The Roses' is a little sidelined?

I love that album every bit as much as Blue, maybe more, but I wonder if it would provoke as much discussion.

Also, 'Hotel California' WFT??? at the topless pic of Judee Sill.

post (mellow) n00dz

i meant the melody not the lyrics of "my old man" being less sentimental than "little green's".

Sorry, should have read your post more carefully.

Until that clip, I'd no idea so much of the record was her playing dulcimer!

was just looking at this book -- new, I think: http://www.amazon.com/Will-You-Take-Me-Mitchells/dp/1416559299
my wife's old company published a Joni Mitchell bio a few years ago which was one of the worst things I have ever read. In the intro, the author describes meeting Joni as "like Gaguin meeting Van Gogh!"

Really want to read that book, but it's always been too expensive, considering it's pretty slim.

Do you think 'For The Roses' is a little sidelined?

Yes. Sandwiched between two masterpieces, it's been overlooked, and the melodic/harmonic density is difficult to absorb in a casual listen (considering that most of these songs are just piano and guitar solo pieces, that's a lot to ask). But "Woman of Heart and Mind," "You Turn Me On," "Barandgrill," "Cold Blue Steel and Fire," and "Lesson in Survival" are just brilliant on first listen too.

"will you take me as i am, STRUNG OUT ON ANOTHER MAN"

booming lyric imo

OTM.

It's definitely between California and Case of You, but Carey and This Flight Tonight are close behind.

MMmmm. BUT. The dulcimer on "All I Want" is also made of win.

"you said love is touching souls / ...surely you touched mine / cause part of you pours out of me / in these lines from time to time"

"I met a woman / she had a mouth like yours / she knew your devils and your deeds and she said..."

I love these lines, so subtle and evocative - did Joni meet his mother or his sister or...?

I always assumed she met a former lover -- her mouth was like his, ie: his manner of speaking and words had rubbed off on her.

Yeah that's the other interpretation. Or maybe it's Carole King?

do yall think the fact that Joni Mitchell name drops kids reading Rolling Stone & other hippie-era icons in "California" dates the song?

Nah. I love those name-drops.

The whole song goes out of its way to carbon-date itself, and not in a bad way - "readin' the news and it sure looks bad / seems they won't give peace a chance / that was just a dream some of us had."

Almost gave River an automatic vote because it's December but I played it all over and the cocoon escape fantasy at the end of Richard blew me away.

It's gotta be "River" for me but under the right circumstances I could be tempted by "A Case of You" too.

Yeah, I love those topical details on this record. To me this album really captures something about moving through young adulthood and growing up (among a lot of other things), and having those little details in there gives an idea of what world she was in while that was happening. Being a 27-year old woman in 1971 was very different than being 27 in 1961.

i always thought River was a bit of a throwaway

California might be my favorite

The whole song goes out of its way to carbon-date itself, and not in a bad way

I like her whole stance on 60's idealism

"They won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had"

after all that stuff about stardust and getting back to the garden, the opening lines of the song just kinda brush it off as "a dream some of us had," so, like, on with the 70's cause there are "lands to see"

which is actually clear-eyed & rational

"Little Green", obviously

I put this on tonight for the first time in a decade-and-a-half. I really wasn't ready for it - the starkness of the arrangements took me aback a lot. The first three tracks in particular are pretty uncompromising as a lead-in; I think it's 'Carey' before we get a backing vocal, and by then I was pathetically grateful for that little bit of colour.

I must have listening to ever-lusher music without realising it, as this initially felt very alien to me - as if it was from another time, like hearing ragtime or ye olde blues. A trick she pulls from time to time is to throw in a couple of odd notes or a strange harmony so that for a second or two I think the tune has gone off in another direction entirely, when it's actually returned to its original pattern straight away. I've grown quite unaccustomed to this sort of songwriting and it's not exactly pleasant, more unsettling.

On the basis of one listen, the best thing here is 'California' - beautiful rolling melody, it feels like the words are tripping over tumbling out of her mouth. So catchy and uplifting. Worst: 'My Old Man', I think her diction there is quite horrible.

wtf @ My Old Man hate.

― Salvador Dali Parton (Turangalila), Monday, December 7, 2009 5:56 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't know, I think it's maybe too complex - it keeps taking these unexpected jazzy turns that break it up too much, and the song and arrangement aren't strong enough to hold it together. I'm not expecting a pub singalong exactly, but mentally I feel like I'm always a bit behind where she's going, without it being satisfying when you get back to the main thing (maybe not a very good example, but I've got 'Penny Lane' in my head as complexity where the tune is so good that you don't even notice). A bit of a dirge, in short.

I hate the 'we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall' line too, just the sound of it.

The only part of the song I don't like is how she sings "hall."

ha, i always thought that was

"we don't need no piece of paper from the city, aww"

(i obviously don't ever look at lyric sheets)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

^That Ann Powers is brilliant.

Subscriber exclusive: Joni Mitchell opens up to Cameron Crowe about singing again, lost loves and 50 years of ‘Blue’ https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-06-20/joni-mitchell-cameron-crowe-50th-anniversary-blue

‘I wanna talk to you/I wanna shampoo you’ is one of my favourite lyrics of all time

If you haven't already read it, this is a really great essay kind of tangled up in Blue, by the English poet Amy Key. I believe she's now working on a whole book about Joni etc

https://granta.com/a-bleed-of-blue/

these are awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYyyf9rRurc

will this embed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS1lzfDmKL4

^^the vocals are joni, gorgeous arrangement imo

Those demoes illustrate what a singular record Blue is in her career - "Hunter" sounds like Ladies of the Canyon, and "River", when the French horns come in, is a flash-forward to some of the orchestral overdubs on For the Roses. But neither of those outtakes would fit on Blue as we know it.

Joni was wise (or lucky) that she has kept such a tight grip on these sorts of outtakes over the last 35 years. It gives a real sense of occasion to the release of these Archives boxes that wouldn't be there if the albums had already been reissued two or three times with bonus tracks, demoes, live shows etc.

It's funny that that Paul Horn recording has more down votes than likes, do people think he kidnapped her and forced her to do a wordless version with his flute?

It's so good to hear Hunter properly at last, it has always been tagged on at the end of the Hissing demos.

woah, never thought the second Archives box would come so fast! thats a nice surprise.

no big news here to anyone who knows me but i put this album on today and wept uncontrollably through the whole thing

<3 this album and this thread

“Shittin’ in a park in Paris France”

This album is too much of a downer, prefer C&S

You're too much of a downer.

Little Green kills me every time.

River was the first Joni song that clicked with me after a friend put it on a mix cd. I struggled with her swoopy singing until then, but once it clicked I was fully on board.

In France They Shit On Main Street.

Perhaps a little too unfettered and alive

My dog does it, why can't I?