Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

"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.

Pre-Mitchell Joni:

http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/vintage-video-of-joni-mitchell-performing-in-1965.html

Thanks so much for posting that.

Total aside, but the Jim Chapin announced on drums wrote one of the most important drumset books out there, like one of a handful that pretty much every drum student uses.

She's already so much better than anything referred to as part of "the folk scene" aby then imo.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/joni-mitchell-taylor-swift-biopic/

Okay, like, some people just don't GET IT.

yeah not sure what to make of joni's reaction.

acid grass and gin
fibers in my skin
gobs of grins

Never seen this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8d3z4lkaw

Great new interview here: http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/02/joni-mitchell-fashion-muse.html

Yeah, that's great! Still chain-smoking, I see.

She says she heard, on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.’ ” The comment crystallized so much for her that she repeats it every chance she gets.

incredible pic

morgellon's thing bums me out, dunno what to make of that

She says she heard, on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.’ ” The comment crystallized so much for her that she repeats it every chance she gets.

she's been making this same complaint since... 1968? 1970?

according to joni mitchell, joni mitchell has been too good for the record industry since whenever

i mean, god bless her

haha yeah she has been a curmudgeon forever. kind of refreshing -- she never settled into being a cozy personality. not interested in being lovable!
i'd be curious to know what that "burglar" turned up for her nixed box set. probably some cool stuff!
She mentions the guy her record company sent not long ago — “the burglar,” she calls him — to root around her storage unit to cobble together a boxed set she calls a “turd,” which she eventually got killed.

oh to be a fly on the wall at the mitchell / geffen household

Yipes.

https://variety.com/2015/music/news/joni-mitchell-hospitalized-1201463950/

https://twitter.com/JoniMitchellcom/status/583099213170417664

Some slightly better word

https://twitter.com/LeslieCBC/status/583101711973236736

https://twitter.com/LeslieCBC/status/583101436243902464

get well soon, joni

Still in hospital, but also "in good spirits":
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/01/entertainment/joni-mitchell-hospitalized/

Bass Player Magazine just posted this
"Dry Cleaner From Des Moines"... Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias, Pat Metheny and Michael Brecker bring this house down with this Shadows and Light Tour clip from 1979.

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

Tour pic, also from Bass Player

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

(Lot of other Joni on that YouTube page duh)

full concert at same link, a YouTube thing now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1XFbhSMxIM

That "tour pic" got Erskine and Hancock w J and J, doesn't it?

excellent late 70s style happening in those clips

:(

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/04/joni-mitchell-has-fallen-into-a-coma/

oh no

so tired of cool people gettin sick and dying this year. can't some evil assholes get sick and die for once.

oh no

sending you love joni I have so much for you

:(