Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

xxxxxxxp That's the bulk of my favorite Lou Reed records outside of the Velvet Underground.

Back to Joni, my introduction was really Court and Spark - still a favorite - but Blue came next. I can't tell you how many times I've put on that record in the midst of some horrible thing happening around me (not a particular sociopolitical event, just a sad state of affairs between people) and it felt like this music is by someone who knows, who would totally get what's happening and have complete empathy for it.

Some of you need some ECM in your lives. Namely Eberhard Weber.

fretless bass rules

but to get back on track,

I didn't get into Heijera right away, partly because I knew "Coyote" from The Last Waltz - in retrospect that wasn't a great way to discover the song.

the saunders lou reed band was literally the best band he ever had, reflexive hating on fretless is phoned-in silliness, most of thread otm

well, there was a time he had Metallica

Man, if he'd gotten with the Cliff Burton Metallica---!

The Cliff Burton Dave Mustaine Metallica, even.

And Joni. (Who might have liked Fernando too.)

Slayer's still around. WTF Lou, you missed your chance!

(or was still around)

Srsly, I could see Mitchell and Reed getting together later on, at least for a little while, with Saunders or RIP Rob Wasserman, say.

https://pitchfork.com/news/joni-mitchell-announces-new-asylum-albums-1972-1975-box-set/

Fernando Saunders’s octave figure on “Waves Of Fear” is one of the greatest moments in Lou’s post-‘70s work.

^^^^^^^^^^

My favourite Fernando Saunders with Lou moment: the bass solo at the end of "Ecstasy".

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, Austin, Texas, January 1976.
📷Norm Beitch pic.twitter.com/xLrY2BmucN

— Lonesome Suzie (@NathalieO5) August 1, 2022

Was wondering if she played any w Rolling Thunder--search led me to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeaO5UZ5OcI

1975 fundraiser at Lightfoot's house, here she's with Dylan and McGuinn

No unreleased music on this new box set, damn :(

Her adjustment of "Baby Blue":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzGD4eTifPk

this is just another of the regular LP series boxsets, there should be a separate archives one of the unreleased stuff too at some point

I'm more lenient about Joni Mitchell changing the chords (and words) to "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" than when the 13th Floor Elevators did the same.

XP - Oh thank goodness!

Yeah, and as the YouTube poster mentioned, Dylan himself had already been changing some of his songs in live performance.

Her first song to gain prominence was ‘Urge For Going’, which Tom Rush recorded as a single in 1966.

The song’s an account of winters in Saskatoon, Canada, where Mitchell grew up, a town subject to extreme temperatures, with warm summers and freezing winters.

"When winter comes along and the farms are all harvested and they don’t really have much to do if they don’t keep cattle. So most of them have winter houses in the Bahamas and Florida and they just escape, you know, to all the warm places like Philadelphia. [laughter] The rest of the people who have to stay there feel sort of like this…"

Joni Mitchell

Rush's version conveys the distinctiveness of her songwriting, the way she already had everything lashed together, nothing strained.

So does her version, but in 1966, people must have said, "Damn, who wrote that?"

Canada: this is not the rush youre looking for…

[laughter]

I also initially read it that way! I mean, Nazareth found success with This Flight Tonight...

Oh, I can totally hear Geddy Lee singing "Urge for Going"! GL & Lifeson should do a Joni tribute album---maybe they could get the first Rush drummer, if he's still around.

Or they could host an all-Canada tribute set: get Randy Bachman, Corb Lund, Terri Clark, Bruce Cockburn, Blue Rodeo, Nelly Furtado, Drake, Colter Wall, Neil Young---who else?

Arcade Fire? Kinda boring, but maybe with the right material---? that's one of the best things that can happen on tribs: when somebody you've written off rises to the occasion, finally not culturally deprived by their own songs.

Re-unite Northern Lights!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_Are_Not_Enough

Sarah McLachlan has already recorded covers of "Blue" and "River".

https://i.imgur.com/409bJBn.jpg

Please tell me there was a Randy Bachman stamp.

Hah! Anybody ever see that SNL sketch, Amerida, a parody of Amerika where it's the Canadians who takeover America? "Stay tuned for Late Night with Gordon Lightfoot..."

“Oh, just relax and have a nice cold Labatts.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Garden?wprov=sfla1

Canadian Joni tribute album.

Cameron Crowe was interviewed by Rolling Stone about Joni Mitchell and this was very sweet:

“Joni has a childlike appreciation of what’s going on right now,” says writer/director Cameron Crowe, who first interviewed Mitchell for Rolling Stone in 1979, and has spent time with her recently. “She’s having the experience that few people have that came that close to dying – she actually can see what it would have been like for people to have lost her, and see them express how much she means to them. And it’s enormously moving to her.”

Man, what kind of children has Cameron Crowe been hanging around with.

Just saw this from Keith Strickland in the NY Times' new interview with the B-52s:

[Ricky Wilson] removed the G string from his guitar, which eliminates some of the midrange frequencies, and he played with only five strings. That happened by accident. When I played the guitar, if I broke a string, I wouldn’t change it — I’d just retune the other strings to an open tuning. I liked how it sounded.

One day, Ricky was annoyed because I hadn’t changed a broken string on the guitar. I said, “You should play it like that.” He scoffed it off. But the next time I went to his house, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, playing and laughing. He said, “I’ve just written the most stupid guitar riff you’ve ever heard.” And it was the “Rock Lobster” riff, played on five strings in an open tuning.

He and I were aware of open tunings because we were both big fans of Joni Mitchell, who used them a lot. People always say, “Really? You like Joni?” because our music is nothing like hers. Some of the chords she used were so beautiful, and they sound unresolved. Open tunings offer different color palettes or voicings that might be physically impossible to play in standard tuning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/arts/music/b-52s-final-tour.html

ha that's awesome, also the G string is a notorious misbehaver re: tuning so fuck it anyway

love the moment in the Rolling Thunder doc when she's playing Coyote (linked recently itt) and Dylan & McGuinn are trying (semi-successfully) to follow her and she kinda scornfully says "it's in G" as an aside while playing

the most electric moment in that film!

b-52's story yet another example of: everybody digs joni. can't argue with that.

the G string is a notorious misbehaver

this is fake news — the g string is a physics-defying psychopath and IT MUST BE STOPPED

also i love the (apocryphal?) anecdote how some of joni's most unique tunings came about out of some form of necessity, i.e. saying "fuck this, i don't care if it's *wrong* it's the only way my song sounds good"

fools, use a wound G instead of the plain abomination

oh friend,

i play flatwounds. i am not a not smart feller.

flats with a wound G, perfect!

sigh.

also i love the (apocryphal?) anecdote how some of joni's most unique tunings came about out of some form of necessity, i.e. saying "fuck this, i don't care if it's *wrong* it's the only way my song sounds good"

I read somewhere this was partly because of lingering after-effects of childhood polio (stretching issues for the fingers I guess), dunno if that's true though.