Judee Sill

I do enjoy Joni Mitchell, esp. Hissing of Summer Lawns.

but these are trifling matters. awesome piece, DL.

for those completely obsessed with sill, that tommy peltier disc that came out last year is pretty good. her contributions aren't too overwhelming, but it's nice stuff.

so, there's a new Judee Sill release! Live recordings from BBC sessions, on Water. picked it up last weekend -- great stuff, even better than the live stuff that was on the Rhino CD of the first album.

Her guitar playing really sounds great on "There's a Rugged Road" and ditto her piano on "Enchanted Sky Machines". there's a funny moment in an interview with a BBC dude who asks if she's enjoying playing European venues, and Sill says "What's a venue?" also a sweet part where she says she misses her basset hound.

anyone else pick this up?

Yep, got it in mail the other day. Sounds really good, tho hearing those between song talks sheds as much light on JS as the songs do to me

Just got the BBC disc in the mail this morning. Stunning from the outset.

Voxtrot's new album has a song about Judee Sill called "Real Live Version". I have mixed feelings about it, but ultimately I think I may like that at least someone tried to write a song about her. Any other examples?

Jackie Leven, 'The Silver In Her Crucifix,' from his fine 2007 album 'Oh What A Blow That Phantom Dealt Me.'

Was listening to that BBC session earlier, when she introduces The Kiss as "a new song I finished a few weeks ago", wow... that's intense beautiful. Like Dominique said, you can tell by those talks she wasn't really kidding around.

Apparently there's a Tommy Peltier record called Chariot of Astral Light which supposedly features Sill, anyone heard it?

the harmonies in "my man on love" are wacky; love it.

Her voice can make me cry sometimes.

can someone tell me where is this song from originally?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Y1YimQa5U

there's a couple of songs on that comp that were based on unrecorded sheet music

thanks

why was i not told about this artist

listening to "heart food" over and over. saving the s/t for tomorrow.

oh wow i'm jealous. she's literally the greatest

♥Judee♥

Yeah I also discovered her pretty recently. Incredible.

I cry almost every time I hear the bridge on "The Kiss." This brief set from '73 is a little rough but endearing: http://youtu.be/AnVa2GK3_T8

this performance of "the kiss" is sublime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feFedDW_iQ

Treeship, seek out Sybille Baier next for extra joy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY_F0mPq7ec&feature=youtu.be

^^^ otm. Also, Connie Converse doesn't sound much like Sill or Baier, but as she has a similar quality of being both eccentric and uncomfortably emotionally direct.

long time judee fan

i always thought her first record was way better than her second

have a first pressing of it in near mint condition

she was one wacky lady which adds to the allure

One thing that's amazing about her live is that the records have a lot of enhancements and overdubs, yet she manages to get the same level of intensity with just her voice and a guitar or piano.

ya'll like mary mccaslin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnEXe2gGU94

I really, really like that LP ("Way Out West") but haven't heard or got around to hearing any others. Where next with Mary?

I just heard Heart Food for the first time. What an Incredible record.

Really wishing that it wasn't expensive to get a copy on vinyl right now. Even the reissue is really hard to get.

Tim, I love the Old Friends album as much as I do Way Out West. Sunny California is her major-label debut and also quite good.

https://www.discogs.com/Judee-Sill-Abracadabra-The-Asylum-Years/release/1720277

That's a really good compilation that has a lot of really worthwhile bonus material and the price is right.

Thanks for the link. I might have to get that for now. Feels like I'm discovering my next big musical obsession.

judee looks like an aunt who incidentally also grew up in california in the 70s and was obsessed with religion and was a bit of a hippy

must've been something in the air at that time

You got it, also a bit of a junkie, as she forthrightly confessed/professed. What do yall think of that Laura Veirs song about her on the album w Neko Case and kd lang? So far (only heard a few times, on the stream, which can filter sound), seems like music & lyrics sail in candid, vivid and undersold, but maybe a little too much of that last--?
I also really like xpost Mary McCaslin & semi-reformed ramblin' hubbie Jim Ringer's duet album, The Bramble and the Rose.

I do like the Way Veirs simulates Sill's aw-I'm-gonna California accent throughout, but the song is a bit slight. I do think it would've been far swankier if it had tried to emulate Sill's compositional method, which was really sophisticated and mathematical--voice leading and stuff, real structural stuff that hung together and all that. This doesn't do that, but it's not bad at all, just vague musically. Judee Sill really was a composer. I don't know anyone who does that kind of thing now--does Rufus Wainwright count? I've had moments where I rate her up there with Joni Mitchell, she's the classical writer and Joni's the one who breaks the rules.

Yeah, xgau didn't and doesn't get into most folkie singer-songwriters, or *anything* to do with religion, as a matter of course---but back in the 70s, her music and even her visions or what she made of them got to him, as much as possible:

Judee Sill [Asylum, 1971]
It's her devout hope that we'll "savor each word like a raspberry," and I do mean devout--Sill yearns for the day when Christ the Bridegroom will "take all the gentle away." Thank god her music is spiritually unpresumptuous--pythagorean melodies and spare, delicate chamber-folk arrangements that set off her homespun drawl (the lyric sheet favors spellings like "cuz" and "gunna"). Wish I could also say her lyrics were tart as raspberries, but they remind me more of peaches--fuzzy. B

Heart Food [Asylum, 1973]
Beneath a lusher surface, her voice enriched with overdubs and less idiosyncratically accented, Sill has become a real militant. Christ is a "Soldier of the Heart," a "Vigilante": although "the chosen are few" we're supposed to "see how His mercy shines," presumably because he saves any of us sinners at all. Last shall be first or not, this is pretty repulsive as ideology, yet until the kyrie eleisons at the climax I find it paradoxically seductive. Say she's a mad saint instead of a sainted madwoman and make room for another rock crazy. B+

Rufus Wainwright does write well at least some of the time, and can see how he attracted Van Dyke Parks as arranger, but his literal long-windedness tends to distract me: he can hold a note forever, so he does---not always; I love some of his tracks---but often.
In a less polished but surefooted way, the 20-year-old Julien Baker---from a Southern fundamentalist family, out lesbian, still Christian---sounds like one of Sill's pilgrims, seems like; the live stream from Newport got and held my attention even while I was puttering around in a lot of mental clutter. Here's a post of the whole set, and yeah some Judee appeal:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/488354526/julien-baker-live-in-concert-newport-folk-2016

Andy Partridge is a huge Judee fan, and once I got into her stuff, it made total sense.

Heart Food is indeed an incredible record, and yeah, it's totally not hard to see why Partridge is a fan!

I don't take her Christianity at face value fwiw, although I haven't like thoroughly analyzed it to see if I can back that up.

Striking read

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/judee-sill-songwriter-profile-1130869/

she had such a crazy life. she would be a good subject for a biopic.

Good stuff. Thanks, Ned.

I had learned most of the major points of her biography from the 2021 Rolling Stone article, so I knew this would be a tough watch in some ways. This filled in some missing detail, and the bits of footage were great to see, as well as the extensive written quotations (whether just from letters or if there was also a diary, it wasn't clear to me). Definitely worth a watch.

i feel like there used to be a personal site belonging to a childhood neighbour of judee sill where she recounted stories from when they hitchhiked together but i'm starting to wonder if i invented it.

I've never heard of that, but it does sound like something she might have done. Certainly not any weirder than her more well-documented youthful hijinx like armed robbery.

yah it was v sweet iirc and jarred with the 'troubled' version of her omnipresent in descriptions you read

this doc was v sad, i knew 90% of the fucked up shit but the gaps turned out to be very dark. some boilerplate talking head crap and rote animation to fill in narrative gaps but overall better than vast majority of rock doc imo. they kind of glossed over how such a woman with a hardscrabble upbringing could have such a great musical education to do the notation/arranging that she did but then they mentioned the well-to-do stepdad(?) who was also an abuser maybe(?) who was affluent and provided music lessons. Weirdly I ordered a Heart Food vinyl reissue just before I saw this, sounds so great. They had a good radio interview with her to intersperse within the doc but there were (AI?) fake voiceovers too, right - I get confused about what is "kosher" in docs these days?

I don't think it was AI. There was a voice actor reading her diary stuff. Whoever it was did a pretty good job of imitating her voice.

Her 80th birthday today. Reminds me I need to watch the documentary. R.I.P. and wish you were here.

Oh!