Oh I Wish I Had a POLL, I Could Skate Away On: The Joni Mitchell Tracks/Albums Results Thread (ILM ARTIST POLL #26)

haha yeah sorry, my fingers are just used to typing ffs all the time, too many diary entries i s'pose

AND tbh I think it's very Canadian of Canadian-born songwriters to ~not~ make references to cities and provinces, or, when they do so, to do so in an not-necessarily-flattering light ("I hate Winnipeg" i.e.)

-"I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet" = you're weak? Never knew if that was a love song or breakup song or both

yeah i always thought this was a put-down, i never realised until recently some ppl parse it as 'you're just so awesome i could drink a whole bunch of you', wikipedia says it is a song about 'infatuation' which is just ???

i saw a busker playing the appalachian dulcimer today.

My ballot cuts off at Blue:

01 Tin Angel
02 Little Green
03 I Had a King
04 River
05 A Case Of You
06 Blue
07 I Don't Know Where I Stand
08 That Song About the Midway
09 The Last Time I Saw Richard
10 Marcie
11 This Flight Tonight
12 Conversation
13 Roses Blue
14 Nathan La Franeer
15 Cactus Tree
16 Michael From Mountains
17 The Gallery
18 I Think I Understand
19 Chelsea Morning
20 Rainy Night House

"Tin Angel" should have placed - U R all stupid etc.

Thanks for doing this poll Mordy!

My ballot:

ALBUMS:

Hejira
Night Ride Home
Blue
The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
For The Roses

SONGS:

Come In From The Cold
Hejira
The Last Time I Saw Richard
Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free)
A Case of You
Amelia
Edith And the Kingpin
Let The Wind Carry Me
Two Grey Rooms
The Boho Dance
Court And Spark
Lessons In Survival
Song For Sharon
Shades Of Scarlet Conquering
Same Situation
All I Want
Coyote
This Flight, Tonight
Furry Sings The Blues
Both Sides, Now (2000 Version)

Wow, I better check out Night Ride Home.

That was a strategic placement in a way "Come In From The Cold" wasn't - in truth it's on a level with Hissing for me. I had a feeling Blue wouldn't really need my help.

But Night Ride Home did sneak three tunes into my top ten, and I could have easily put "Cherokee Louse" and "Nothing Can Be Done" in the second half of my songs list except I started to feel like I was just throwing votes away.

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

I just finished reading/listening to all of this. Cheers Mordy and everyone who voted for a good education.

Man why did I not bother with this? Maybe guilt that I only know four Joni albums well: 1971-76. But those four albums mean so much to me.

But wait, you say, there were five albums between '71 and '76. I forgot, as I often do, about For the Roses. Need to give it more of a chance, IIRC.

Listening to Ian & Sylvia's greatest hits with a cover of Circle Game on it right now. :D

Came home depressed last night & put on Blue and sung along loudly to the whole album. Made me feel so much better.

After about two weeks of obsessing over everything she did from 1975-79 I'm a little stunned at how little of it actually made it into this poll. Part or me thinks there are different kinds of Joni fans -- pre-jazz and post. Judging by some or the comments here, that doesn't mean you exclusively like one or the other but that often only one makes you an obsessive.

And as a total latecomer to the party on this stuff, what I guess surprises me is that with the reappraisal of that era that's taken place since (ie, PFM calling Hissing her "most timeless" record) I kind of figured that bifurcation would have been left in the 70s.

"Paprika Plains" finally started sounding lovely and strange instead of diaphanous and strange last week. Talk about a sleeper.

just wanted to say, I don't know Joni's music well enough that I didn't participate in this poll at all, but listening to the Spotify results playlist is making my day, thanks for the crash course you guys

I may be an unusual JM fan in that I listen to her almost entirely for the sound of her music.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, October 3, 2012 5:38 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

count me in, though reading Mordy's choice excerpts make it clear I'm missing out

it's not as if I don't pay attention to the lyrics at all, I just mostly notice fragments, certain phrases and motifs...

anyway, great poll, Joni's the best!

We didn't talk enough in this poll.

how did i miss it? just listening to that bbc concert with james taylor from 1970 where john peel speaks the introduction. there are already quite a lot songs which later were published on blue on it (carey, california, river, my old man, a case of you) and her soprano is really perfect here. not as high-pitch as on the first album but still very girlish and innocent sounding. and all that great in between song banter. where she explains that the circle game was her uplifting answer to that kind of sad song from that unkown young canadian folk singer whose name she doesn't mention. the song was sugar mountain.

there's some discussion upthread about the meaning of being able to drink a case of somebody and still be on your feet, and while it is similar in structure to "I eat x like you for breakfast", I don't see how it could mean anything but I can't get enough of you

She seems to be putting the guy down in the first verse, though.

It could just as easily mean "you don't do anything for me (anymore)".

"Hejira" was my favourite song in the world at 14, I printed out all the lyrics and stuck them on my bedroom wall.

― Tim F, Wednesday, October 3, 2012 10:42 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am now 14 year old Tim F

xp well she's certainly teasing the guy, answering his metaphysical boast with an acerbic and then a prosaic remark, but anyway since the next thing she remembers is drawing his face on a map of Canada it's reasonable to suggest there's also a level of vulnerability, even love (though it's ofc slightly undercut by the drawing being on the back of a cartoon coaster lit by a tv screen)

what makes the central metaphor unlikely as a putdown imo are
a) the singer's fetichization of the lover - even if she does not explicitly desire drinking a case of the lover, the repeated focus on the act suggests infatuation
b) the beautiful preceding lines:

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter
And so sweet

If you wanted to criticize wine for being weak or harmless, this is not how you would describe it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_dY2cy0E2I

That's phantastic dreamy stuff. It reminds me of another song, something from "wild things run fast"?