ILXers Get Out Your Polls And I'll Put On Some Joni Mitchell Voting and Nominations #26 (Voting Deadline: September 28)

Not expecting agreement, but I love Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" (and that's the one I heard first, of course). I think Three Dog Night's "Night in the City" is probably pretty good--haven't heard it in ages--though the original's better. And, as already mentioned, Tom Rush's "The Circle Game" and "Urge for Going" are, I believe, as good as the originals--not better, but just as good.

Oops--missed the Judy Collins post.

You know, Tori does "Landslide" great and even sells "Strange Fruit" just fine but even as a teenager I didn't buy her "A case of you".

That said, before I heard the Cornflake Girl b-side studio version, I'd heard an over-emoted live version on the radio that was, well, it was no good.

I like that Judy Collins version but "Both sides now" is kind of perfect to cover, the hippie stuff in the first verse is real quaint.

I actually love Bjork's version of "Boho dance" I've been listening to that tribute album now

Should mention Nazareth's "This Flight Tonight" also--not a fan, but I like that.

WHOA didn't mean to dis "Both sides now", just that Joni's lyrical voice is clearly as a part of a community and a culture on that one

xp haha yeah forgot about Nazareth that is great

OH. CSN+Y Woodstock cover obv classic too.

Listening to Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus today and thinking this is where things really start to get interesting for me. For whatever reason, the singer-songwriter alone at her/his piano or guitar has a hard job of work to get into my head. (Similarly, I'm not a huge fan of pre-electric Dylan.)

that tori amos cover is very pale compared to the original. she kind of slurs the words, she delays them, her pronunciation is horrible, totally not like the original. obviously i heard joni first.

¡I had no idea Woodstock was a Joni original! I had it on earlier & was thinking she'd done a terrific job on it.

And she wasn't even there.

the famous detail iirc is that she wrote it after deciding not to go to woodstock. xp

xp: is there any joni mitchell fan out there who likes woodstock? i think it's one of her worst songs. i can't bear the words and i find the tune not interesting at all. it would have been better if she had arrived at woodstock and played there instead of writing a song about a festival she did not go to. it's a second hand song.

her pronunciation is horrible

well this is kind of Tori's deal, to her detriment imo but it's something she does

that detail always made me somehow import cynicism into it. i can't decide if that makes it better or worse. argh, xp again

I love her version of "Woodstock," and the combination of the foreboding tone of the melody with the fact that she wasn't there just increases the under-the-table cynicism of it. Or something.

The weird instrumentation on it is what makes it imo; it's not ominous as such, more otherworldly set against all the acoustic numbers.

I'm still surprised she wrote it though, it seems very uncharacteristic melodically, and too detached lyrically (explained by her not being there I suppose).

I like the hit version of "Woodstock" by Matthew's Southern Comfort better than either the original or CSNY's. But I don't think it's that great a song in the first place--whether she was there or not doesn't much matter to me.

Should mention Nazareth's "This Flight Tonight" also--not a fan, but I like that.

OTM, v classic

Always thought this one was underrated and just gorgeous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hd2H57BAsY

I bought an immaculate vinyl copy of DJRD in April and eagerly dug in, hoping to write an On Second Thought-type reconsideration. No dice :(

immaculate vinyl copies of DJRD are by no means in short supple

*supply

I like Emmylou Harris' version of "The Magdalene Laundries".

Okay, Ladies Of The Canyon is the best thing I've found yet - I could and might vote for any of the modal run from the title track to The Priest.

I'm really not into Big Yellow Taxi though - it's a nice ditty but the production is so obvious and clumsy, I feel like I'm being mocked for listening. It's like all the other elements that aren't *quite* irritating elsewhere - the busy guitars, the choir, too-high vocals (and even the nagging thing in the right channel, which I do like) - get a big flag stuck in them for the two bars that their particular hook is worth. When Phoebe recorded her song in Friends, I'm pretty sure this was it.

"rainy night house" is my favourite on LOTC

can't tell whether i hate "big yellow taxi" because it's so ubiquitous or just because it's shit (plus the layer of being ubiquitous precisely because it's simplistic and trite)

Yes, that's the best one. Morning Morgantown is lovely too - she kicks off those early albums so well.

For The Roses I can't get into at all. Anybody want to give me a hook to look out for?

I know next to nothing about Joni Mitchell & will be using the results of this poll as a guide

― gesange der yuengling (crüt)

I'm with Crut here but will be checking out the albums people recommend.

― VOTE in the 1980's ROCK POLL PLEASE! (Algerian Goalkeeper

noted. I'm going to be paying more attention to the discussion than the track order anyway.

― gesange der yuengling (crüt)

^^

I made slight effort to listen to the first five or so earlier in the year, but it left me a little bewildered - also, I don't mind "Woodstock"/"The Circle Game"/"Big Yellow Taxi", which seem to get a drubbing in this thread.

(just listening to "Conversation", seems to have a pixified version of the "Walk On The Wild Side" singing at the end)

For The Roses I can't get into at all. Anybody want to give me a hook to look out for?

The first three songs. "Woman of Heart & Mind." And of course "You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)."

For The Roses I can't get into at all. Anybody want to give me a hook to look out for?

― Ismael Klata, Monday, September 17, 2012 9:53 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For the most part it's not that kind of album: it's spiky, willful, in a soft and abstract and eventually beguiling manner, as I said upthread perhaps the ultimate Joni album (though it's only my fourth-or-so favourite). It was my first album by her (stolen from my mother) but it's one I'm still extracting all the secrets from.

My favourite moments on the album are those sudden swerves and flourishing panic attacks (mirrored by unexpected musical interludes):

"your friends protect you / scrutinise me / I get so damned timid / not all the spirit that's inside of me / oh baby, I can't seem to make it with you socially / there's this reef around me..."

or

"mama thinks she spoilt me rotten / she blames herself / but papa, he blesses me / it's a rough road to travel / mama, let go now / it's always called for me..."

The Hissing of Summer Lawns (which it prefigures) may be more obviously experimental, but it's also much more composed: there's a sense of stretching out in real time that makes For The Roses feel very singular (Don Juan's Reckless Daughter probably shares that quality, but I never remember finding it very successful in that regard).

FTR will always be the least loved of the major albums. It makes demands of the listeners that even Hissing and Hejira don't. However, it's an album that insinuates itself into your musical life without noticing.

Yeah

I think Hejira is a very easy album to love actually (in spite or because of this it's still my favourite).

I like to think it was a bit of an influence on Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates (obv. Joni was generally on Rickie, but I pair these two together).

I like The Supremes' cover of "All I Want", mostly because the first 30 seconds sound like a long-lost Stereolab track.

hejira is really good although jaco's little bass solo at the end bugs me to no extent

to no end, rather

bass solo
time for my bass so-lo-o
this is my bass so-lo-o
my bass so-lo

"Big Yellow Taxi" got knocked around a bit earlier. I've always loved it, and when I listened to Ladies from the Canyon in the car today (the one album among the first six that I don't have on vinyl, so I cheated), I found it came as a relief after struggling through all of the art-song that precedes it--title song excepted.

I picked up the Songs of a Prairie Girl comp last night, as it was cheap and a convenient way to plug a few of the gaps in my Joni knowledge. A couple of things from this may well sneak onto my ballot as a result, notably "Harlem in Havana".

Clouds is nice. I could live without the anti-American acapella, though I guess it must've been new once. Roses Blue sounds very odd to me, harmonically - is that Joni's famous alternate tunings at work?

Big Yellow Taxi is great fuck the haters.

the fake laugh at the end is a bit grating but the song has one of the best pop hooks she ever wrote

Is there any love for 'Ladies Man'...

oh, there will be at LEAST two songs from 'for the roses' in my ballot

top ten should basically be Court & Spark tracks 1-10, with Twisted thrown in a bin somewhere

― Jamie_ATP

Very late on this but could not agree more. Just listening through some of her albums making a shortlist and most of Court & Spark has made it, easily my favourite album of hers. I can't think of a worse closing song in my collection, maybe that Polyphonic Spree song on their first album that's 32 minutes of humming or whatever it was.

Although I love it Court & Spark is probably my least favourite of her golden run. I think maybe "assured" isn't necessarily what I look for first in Joni's music.

Joni Mitchell feels like a period piece, in that unlike the other albums it's from a time which has passed; although I like it well enough for what it is, but I can't really relate to it as anything other than artefact.

She's got a sweet voice which is extremely pure here, but the songwriting is unimaginative I feel - certainly compared to how she takes wing shortly afterwards - and the instrumentation provides little in the way of hooks. Except for a very incongruous bout of feedback midway through one of the songs - I wonder what was the deal with that?

Oh, it's actually called Song To A Seagull, my (spotify's) fault. Just got Summer Lawns to go then I'll be about ready to do a ballot, assuming there's a long quarter-century barely worth touching thereafter.

NO you must listen to Hejira!

^^^^^

It was listening to Hejira that prompted the thought, actually (I'm not going chronologically) - it's a good record on first listen, but she's devolved so much in her songwriting that I can barely tell the tracks one from another now. There's no way I'll have time to do a dozen records on those lines any kind of justice.