Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

I drove the Chrysler
Watched from the darkness while they danced

"these guys sound like they've never heard jazz and just had it described to them."

would probably check out a new band described this way

Sounds like a description of King Krule

accurate

Stevie, regarding that Yaffe biog, does it go into detail about the Morgellons disease?

Not huge detail, but there is some stuff on it

ok

is it... disconcerting?

It should be.

I’m most interested in the weird period after Hejira, eg Don Juan.

I love the way she sings “false alarm” in Amelia. Had that bit stuck in my head for days now.

me too!

more excited than I should be about Hejira coming in the post today. one of those records i've been meaning to buy for avout 20 years

There is a nice anecdote from Joni in a Jaco documentary currently on Netflix. She was instructing a different bassist to play a G, and the bassist refused, saying "that's not even in the chord," and she replied, "well it WILL be, once you PLAY it."

lol

Song for Sharon has got to be my favorite

me too, or hejira

Don Juan's is now my favourite album by her and I'll believe anything I want to.

Would love to read about that period.

I've been listening to Joni for a long time--these days I like Hejira. The most travel-burned record she did. Jaco was beyond great and this record may be his single finest performance overall (in the service of the greater good, of course the shit he plays on "Teen Town" and some of his solo stuff is amazing). I haven't listened to Court and Spark in many years, nor have I to For the Roses or any of her earlier records. I suspect I'd hear Court the way I view some Altman film now, Long Goodbye or California Split (or Ashby), as this kind of dated "very modern pop but with realist touches" sort of thing, the good old '70s that now seems a bit, a lot, too self-involved and mod-ish to really appreciate. Altman's plotting is for shit, Joni's "stretched out and mutated" song forms aren't as interesting as I once thought. Dunno. "Car on the Hill" always seemed great and "Same Situation" also. Hissing also seems problematic in a different way--once I was sooo impressed by her jazz chords, and watching some live footage of this material recently, wow, it's good, actually, but again, I don't think she does it as well as Becker and Fagen, and I prefer Joy of Cooking's more modest, homespun, but jazzy, music these days to Joni's, seems more direct and less hung up by its celebrity. "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" is great, though, and Hissing does have some great ideas. But is it also somewhat dated in the peculiar '70s manner of so many records, from Jon Lucien's to Caroline Peyton's to Phoebe Snow's to a zillion jazz-rock ensembles? I have no doubt she was great, but I'm partially responding to her celebrity, her beauty (Joni Mitchell, are you kidding, she is so beautiful), her fucking ego for that matter. Very impressive. Hejira is so influential--I'm listening to some acoustic Lee Ranaldo right now, and you know he loves that record, and it's so moving.

I never thought she was beautiful but i always found her voice so pure and clear and touching at the same time. When she sings i have to listen to what she sings, there are only very few singers where this happens to me. Usually i do not care for the words. She radiates an incredible authority and truthfulness for me. Does this make any sense?

I suspect I'd hear Court the way I view some Altman film now, Long Goodbye or California Split (or Ashby), as this kind of dated "very modern pop but with realist touches" sort of thing, the good old '70s that now seems a bit, a lot, too self-involved and mod-ish to really appreciate

????? ok man, imo it's a good record when you listen to it

her and becker & fagen were using similar ensembles toward entirely different ends, it's pretty apparent in the albums you haven't heard in many years

idek how to deal with sentences like "i never thought she was beautiful but i always found her voice so pure etc."

I never understood what was so great about Steely Dan, I heard them on the radio in the 70s and it was ok but it was still mainstream and slick and kind of over-produced. Joni Mitchell on the other hand I discovered later in the 80s by chance and she spoke to me. Hejira is about a million times more intimate and warm than anything by Steely Dan. Jaco's bass plus her voice were a marriage in heaven.

i would like to clarify that evaluating joni mitchell's looks in tandem with her music is some barely-coded misogyny (which eddhurt can't seem to get through a whole post without indulging in) and fuck off with that pls

Warmth and intimacy were never in steely dan's mission statement imo, but i love joni and the dan plenty for the different things they do

Sure is a lot of Steely talk on this thread and several others, but to anyone who wonders wtf, I'd say check out everything through Aja(the title track and several others, though they lost me about half way through).
As I said way upthread, always heard thee voice of experience delivering hope and foreboding, quest and unrest---didn't know about giving up the baby as a very young unwed (as we said then) with no money, or bust-up of the (subsequent) marriage, but she sounded like she'd been through stuff, plus the observational, unresolved stuff along the way, as she continued on (and this was the debut). Some romantic, even exotic phrases, with the tunings and all, but in that big dark space, which I pictured as an apartment without much furniture to absorb the sound, dark because utilities not included.
Striking difference--in tone, tempo, spareness--between originals and some early hit covers, esp. "Both Sides Now" and omg "Woodstock." Chirpier later w more AM radio ambitions of her own, but basically mostly okay.
Joy of Cooking! Right on.

So what's Gaucho? Chopped liver?

Never made it through that one.
xp And later on yeah the evidence of travel, and whatcha been reading Joni? "The Painted Word," prob some Didion.

Holy hell, the first fistful of posts in this thread make ILM seem like the shittiest dude-bro place with no taste at all to exist on the internet, up there with Youtube comments.

Does the thread get any less ultra-dud?

Mitchell is a genius.

Thinking about "Hejira" (the song): the imagery is so dense, and is piled on so relentlessly, so thick and fast, that you could make a case for it being the ultimate Joni song, even though trying to choose the best is practically a fool's errand.

It's interesting to me that discussions of the developments and changes in Joni's music across the early-to-mid seventies tends to focus on some combination of the subject matter, the style of the musical arrangements and her voice, but not, generally, the changes to her lyrical style, which was the aspect that really struck me with the most force and intensity when I was first getting into her music as a 13/14 year old.

Hejira doesn't represent a break from Hissing in terms of lyrical style (subject matter, sure) - the key difference is that everything is faster, the interlocking metaphors and allusions so rapid that they resemble the ceaseless patterns of the guitar chords:

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen
Strains of Benny Goodman
Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of a hotel room

re the early posts: 2001 was a time when ILM was growing quite rapidly and the informal rules of engagement weren't particularly settled, so the nature and quality of threads was heavily contingent on which posters populated them first.

And yes, they get better. Thanks for the lyrics, Tim! Reminds me that I hear this several times every Christmas (incl. on the local jazz station):

River
Joni Mitchell
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry
He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye
It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

Thinking about "Hejira" (the song): the imagery is so dense, and is piled on so relentlessly, so thick and fast, that you could make a case for it being the ultimate Joni song, even though trying to choose the best is practically a fool's errand.
It's interesting to me that discussions of the developments and changes in Joni's music across the early-to-mid seventies tends to focus on some combination of the subject matter, the style of the musical arrangements and her voice, but not, generally, the changes to her lyrical style, which was the aspect that really struck me with the most force and intensity when I was first getting into her music as a 13/14 year old.
Hejira doesn't represent a break from Hissing in terms of lyrical style (subject matter, sure) - the key difference is that everything is faster, the interlocking metaphors and allusions so rapid that they resemble the ceaseless patterns of the guitar chords
Beautiful, Tim F. This song has two "chords." C-sharp minor 9 and D9. This music has as much to do with Joao Gilberto as it does to "folk," seems to me. Excellent video explains the song's structure and her tuning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYWYb6_ET6U

tim, great post. was just listening to this this afternoon

Um, the chords in that video are from "Refuge of the Roads", not "Hejira". It also only covers the two-chord intro, so saying the song has only two chords is way off base.

lol

WTF, "Refuge of the Roads" and "Hejira" are cross-labelled in my music library. How on earth did that happen? Apologies for the "correction", altho the two chord error is still wrong for "Hejira".

5:28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY7MBzjfIvI

Amazing. Those haunting chords

In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of a hotel room

I love these vivid images of 70's sterile modernity that she conjures on Hissing and Hejira.

^^^ Yes indeed, which is exactly what I love about certain songs on Hissing too.

Harry's House, for instance, which contains this bland, 70s airline magazine imagery, even the softness in the production makes me think of shag carpet in a Hockney painting or an avocado trim phone.

Right---from the beginning of "The Circle Game" (though being a circle, can have no beginning or end--except it's a game)
Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
to "Harry's House":
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper-minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid

yellow checkers for the kitchen
climbing ivy for the bath

Didn't mean to quote so much, but it's hard to stop with that one.

Cruel, bleak, bitter, reductive, impassive, unblinking, kinda punk---not Didion this time, more Vonnegut, that surly bastard, especially when he was whoring for GE's publicity dept in Schenectady, slaving for the wifenkids---but later on too, when he was a superstar like JM.

But she does it better, in part because she's got the music, not just the page.

I like “A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof / Like a dragonfly on a tomb,” but the rest seems a bit too much of a “Little Boxes”–style suburbia critique? I should go listen to the whole song...

Yes the judicious music helps judgmental words: more nuances/gradients of tone.

But yeah the words start at the top

(and not just the roof)

It's a very nice song (or some other, less inadequate, adjective)