Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

The HDCDs are of her earlier singer/songwriter output only. "Court And Spark", "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira" have never been released in HDCD.

Warner's CDs from the 80s sounded better than most other 80s CD, with better dynamics and more stereo separation (I guess that's why they have yet to do anything about the back catalogues by the likes of Prince or Phil Collins), but they still don't hold up today when compared to HDCD ones.

I will say she is Classic for Blue alone.

The HDCDs are of her earlier singer/songwriter output only. "Court And Spark", "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira" have never been released in HDCD.

I spent some time in England and remember that for some reason you could find the HDCD versions of the early albums but not of the mid-late-seventies ones. Presumably this is still the case in the EU. The HDCD versions can be differentiated by the spines: instead of having big block print, the lettering is the same as that used on the back cover, and the artwork wraps around where applicable. I think the catalog numbers are the same.

does "Song For Sharon" have the best chord progression ever or what?

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wow, that didn't work.

what is the chord progression?

i for one, on this cool sunday night, 'm quite ready to happily believe that wot nothinbutcuts posted actally is the chord progression :)

any love for chalk mark in a rainstorm? one of her most melodically accessible albums for sure, and lovely reverb-heavy 80s production with awesome shimmering synth pads. and some really bone-chilling vocal harmonies all over the place.

"my secret place" (feat. peter gabriel vocals), "lakota", "the beat of black wings", and "snakes and ladders" are all tremendous.. the one big obnoxious dud is "dancin clown" (feat. BILLY IDOL and tom petty yelping and yowling all over the place)

anyway, this album stands out (in a good way) from the rest of her catalogue.. i haven't heard dog eat dog in years, though, maybe it's more of the same?

There's no denying Joni's no great shakes in the personality dept (funny how this comes up with women but men, not so much!) but such a freakin genius, indisputable. I also am stunned by the misogynistic stuff at the beginning of the thread, wow.

will put Night Ride Home in my JM top 3 these days - certainly a peer for Court & Spark & Blue & Hejira

that's another one i need to check.

i don't care for anything before for the roses, but all that stuff seems to be what her haters base their hate on, which is perfectly understandable. there's a part in barney hoskins' "hotel california" where she's fretting about not being able to find musicians who can play her songs well. someone suggested "well why don't you try playing with some jazz peopls" and that's pretty much where her brilliance begins/mediocrity ends for me

I never checked Night Ride Home or Chalk Mark Rainstorm, on the grounds that Turbulent Indigo was supposed to be her artistic comeback and yet I only just kinda liked it.

I now suspect that i'd like them more than TI though, based on what I've read about them.

would post youtube of "lakota" video but they seem to have cut the audio out of all the copyright shit

yeah "chalk storm" is way different sonically than turbulent indigo (lol 80s)

I lovelovelove "Come In From the Cold" -- the sounds Joni gets from those billowy synths and her ravaged pipes is awe-inspiring.

I have nothing against Turbulent Indigo (it doesn't feel as natural as the record before it, but some great songs still), but it's a classic case of the "artistic comeback" retrospectively applied to the previous album's real comeback... so check it out.

will put Night Ride Home in my JM top 3 these days - certainly a peer for Court & Spark & Blue & Hejira

― worm? lol (J0hn D.), Wednesday, May 13, 2009 1:09 AM

I don't know where I'd place it but cosign on the quality for sure.

I even bought "Shine"

:(

was 'Shine' really that bad? i never heard any of it.

I also am stunned by the misogynistic stuff at the beginning of the thread, wow.

teh glory days of important internet music thinking etc

Dud.

Registering my wish to see this user removed from the site.

wow wtf with the beginning of this thread

i don't care for anything before for the roses, but all that stuff seems to be what her haters base their hate on, which is perfectly understandable. there's a part in barney hoskins' "hotel california" where she's fretting about not being able to find musicians who can play her songs well. someone suggested "well why don't you try playing with some jazz peopls" and that's pretty much where her brilliance begins/mediocrity ends for me

I don't get this... so, you don't like anything? because pre-For the Roses its mostly just her, and Court and Spark was immediately after and is all jazz guys, etc.

Read that again, Shakey.

ah I had begins/ends switched there. nevermind.

jaymc, my loyal proofreader!

JM is great, despite the preoccupation people seem to have with Blue and nothing else (not that Blue isn't great and all, but its getting that weird over-cannonized vibe these days)

^this

I think it's almost inevitable and will get worse: people my age for example read about Blue but aren't aware of any other JM "must haves", we check it out and like it but maybe don't feel the need to sample the rest of JM's back catalogue, then we recommend Blue to our friends or smugly reference it in a review of a more recent female singer-songwriter (e.g. "x is basically mining the same territory as Joni Mitchell did on Blue")...

I think it'd also be easy to read about how Joni went soft-jazz-pop subsequently and just assume that the material wouldn't be as strong - if only because there's still a bit of a prejudice against the kind of thing.

For critics, Blue is the point of comparison when it comes to spare, relatively confessional female singer-songwriter music.

So it's not just Blue standing in for other JM albums, but for a whole genre - a lot of the time the artists the comparison gets applied to sound a lot more like (e.g.) early Suzanne Vega.

having inherited my mother-in-law's near-complete collection of Joni Mitchell vinyl over the last year... Blue isn't even in like my top 3 fave albums of hers. I've never understood why its so canonical, it doesn't seem all that different from her other albums of that period/style.

I'm not saying it's deserving vis a vis her other albusm, but the canonisation makes sense:

1) The songwriting is better than on the previous albums

2) It's the point where she completed the shift away from a folk-storytelling lyrical style into a confessional lyrical style (I get the feeling it was also the first album where she wasn't using songs already several years old)

3) After that her material became too obtuse (For The Roses), jazz-pop (Court & Spark) or both (Hissing of Summer Lawns) to have across-the-board appeal to people into the style that album represents (confessional folk-pop).

The shift to For The Roses is pretty dramatic I think - even the relatively confessional songs ("See You Sometime", "Lessons In Survival", "Let The Wind Carry Me") are very oddly structured and filled with sudden disruptive jumps, as if the jittery nervousness of Joni's mind had breached the boundaries of her vocals and lyrics and started to distort the song-structures themselves.

e.g. in "Lessons In Survival" when, early on, she suddenly bursts out, "YouNEEDtobelieveinsomethingonceIcouldinOUUUUUUUURlove" - this is fabulous but probably a bit of a challenge for people looking for classic singalong songs like "River" or "A Case of You".

Lately I just steer people towards Hejira or Court and Spark (which, despite being her best-seller, is weirdly underrated).

Second side of Court and Spark lets it down a bit, for me. I've been playing Blue a lot this week, not because I don't know her other stuff but because it really is that good.

JM is great, despite the preoccupation people seem to have with Blue and nothing else (not that Blue isn't great and all, but its getting that weird over-cannonized vibe these days)

― moved to the Home of Rest For Horses at Speen (jjjusten), Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:49 PM (Yesterday)

I came to Blue not expecting anything. The only reason I had it in the first place was that two people bought me Psychocandy for my birthday one year and a girl who shares my birthday told me that two people had bought her Blue for hers and that we should trade. It is the album I have successfully turned the most people onto but I became so obsessed with it that it has made me completely uninterested in hearing anything else by her in case it breaks the spell somehow. Usually I am super obsessive about bands or whatever when I enjoy anything as much as I have in the past enjoyed this. Also it is so tied in my head to the last few months of school and the guys I used to hang out with and play guitar.

Blue and, say, Hejira could be from two different artists - over a short period of time she'd changed vocally, lyrically, in terms of song structure (the songs on Hejira rarely have choruses, often just a single-line refrain and sometimes not even that), and in terms of musical style.

I love both albums (particularly Hejira) but in many ways I don't think of them as relating to one another very much.

Jesus, I just got Court & Spark + Summer Lawns & one of those infrequent but pleasant 'how the fuck did I not find out about this sooner?' moments.

I had that same experience maybe two years ago.

2003 was my wake up year, crunched Summer Lawns / Hejira / Don Juan's Reckless Daughter down to one cassette and it never left the car

I assumed for years Joni Mitchell wld be some chick solo w/an acoustic which I'm sure there are good examples of but not a thing I dig at all generally. I heard 'Help Me' on the radio a few weeks ago and thought 'hey maybe that was Joni Mitchell,' lord knows how. And it was, and today I am happy for it. She's got so much stuff going on in each song, so good, like if Kate Bush was a creepy old lady who made you eat dusty circus peanuts when you visited her house as opposed to K8 who would, I don't know, let you paint her dog or something.

wait till you hear the last minute of side 1 of 'Mingus', that's when I got to feeling like I trusted her

I mean, that album's kind of awkward, and probably not the next best stop, but the weird parts are so weird & by the time 'Dry Cleaner From Des Moines' comes on...

'Don Juan's' is the one where she really lets it hang out.

I sometimes have a daydream that 10 years out of law school I'm the guy in Free Man in Paris.

I guess it's sort of weird to fantasize about being unhappy in your future job, but that's the kind of guy I am.

I think post-Blue Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan have been my big -- "Oh, there really is great music that you don't appreciate until you're older" discoveries.

She's got so much stuff going on in each song, so good, like if Kate Bush was a creepy old lady who made you eat dusty circus peanuts when you visited her house as opposed to K8 who would, I don't know, let you paint her dog or something.

Do you mean Joni is the creepy old lady?

yeah I do

ok so vh1 classic is airing/just aired something called "BBC Crown Jewels" that is a just pre-blue live show w/joni mitchell and i am all aflutter and stunned. jesus christ, what an amazing mind-blowing singer/writer/performer.

In an interview, says she is ill and "fighting for her life."

==================================
Sun: Are you working on anything right now? You say you're probably canning the idea of a box set, but are you working on a new record right now?
Mitchell: I'm very ill, I'm fighting for my life.
Grand-Maitre: We're talking about a new ballet maybe, eh, Joni?
Mitchell: Yeah. We intend to do another one. But I've been very ill, so mainly I'm just trying to survive.
Sun: Oh really? I didn't know that, sorry. How are you doing?
Mitchell: Well, nobody knows.
Grand-Maitre: Let's stick to the ballet, John, ah?
Sun: Sorry about that. So what's the new ballet?
Mitchell: We don't know yet.
==================================

What a disheartening exchange. "Let's stick to the ballet, John, ah?"...sure, Joni's dying, but let's talk about this ballet!

Yeah, and then she comes back to the "I'm dying" bit several times but it's like she's in a whole different conversation. (She also identifies her ailment as Morgellons -- the Wikipedia entry on this is seriously o_O ...)