Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

both ssssssssssidessss now

Sharon you've got a husband and a family and a farm / I've got the apple of temptation and a mottled snake inside my cd player

DEEE-DEE-DEE-DEE
DUM-DE-DEE-DEE-DEE
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Just before our love got lost, you said
"I am as constant as a snake, " and I said
"Constantly in a CD player
Where's that at?
If you want me, I'll be in the bar"

he’s a real sidewinder, he’s not like me

waiting for a snake, climbing, climbing
climbing the hill

and who could forget the hissing of summer lawns, talk about hiding in plain sight

Wonder if this is worth getting, if you don't have any of her other CDs, or a working turntable?
Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced (4CD)
Some good prices on Amazon, also reviewer Bloomer says there:
...She gives you pages of reading on how she came to this 4 cd box set (also includes all the lyrics)...the sound is excellent! Anyone who has followed Joni through her 40 year career of music,art and interviews knows well her ego is as big as her art!...you see here she has tried to take her songs and put them into 4 series entwining them into a music novel. Some like myself may find the order in which she chose the songs doesn't really make a lot of sense. But the great thing is you can take the 53 songs that are now at the same volume level and arrange them the way you want or just enjoy her way of thinking. Joni is a "brilliant" and articulate woman and there will never be another one like her!...if you're an avid Joni lover you will love this collection.

Track list looks fun. Songs Of A Prairie Girl is another interesting sorta random comp (track list also selected by joni)

https://www.discogs.com/Joni-Mitchell-Songs-Of-A-Prairie-Girl/master/550925

Thanks! That track list looks fun as well, will check.
Also need to get around to her mostly-covers Both Sides Now, from 2000. Even xgau, who mostly gave up on her long before, gives it up for this one:
...This very if briefly great singer-songwriter proves herself a major interpretive singer. Lucky to write two decent songs a decade now, she instead applies her smoked contralto to a knowledgeable selection of superb material by mostly second-echelon Tin Pan Alley craftsmen (and I do mean men). Splitting the difference between pop and jazz like the Chairman himself, she doesn't transform the melodies so much as texture them, and on a few highlights--on "Comes Love" and "You've Changed," on "When love congeals/It soon reveals/The faint aroma of performing seals"--she bores so deep into the words you'd think she'd written them herself back when she had something to say. But no, that's "A Case of You" and "Both Sides Now"--both of which, you can bet the mortgage, she makes sure belong. A-

Great new interview, she's certainly got her words back:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/27/joni-mitchell-interview-archives-early-years-cameron-crowe

Just one little example, going with what xgau says about her as interpreter---she bores so deep into the words you'd think she'd written them herself back when she had something to say:

CC I remember you once saying every vocal performance is acting: “You must be the character who wrote the song when you sing it.” When you listen to this early music, are you playing a character? And “No, it’s me” is a valid answer.

JM It’s not like that. It’s, you know, the words to the song are your script. You have to bring the correct emotion to every word. You know, if you sing it pretty – a lot of people that cover my songs will sing it pretty – it’s going to fall flat. You have to bring more to it than that.

And it was something immediately striking, coming from some hit covers to her originals. Judy Collins' version of "Both Sides Now" was okay, the floaty opening was something of a set-up for "It's love's illusions I recall," but still she sounds wistful, despite the pverall steadiness, no JM-associated trills, etc.---but JM starts right out being more apprehensive, like this is still happening, slow down: "Rows. and flows. Of angel hair." Counting the illusions, drop by drop, pill by pill. Also, Stills does okay with intro of "Woodstock, ' but then the sparkly granola harmonies of Crosby & Nash hit the chorus. Heard a live version on Collegetown radio the other night, even better than her original, where she sings tiny interjections while ascending with the chorus, for inst explaining the stardust as carbon, rhyming it with "garden," think she mentions ecology or maybe not (this from around the first Earth Day, remember those?)

I love Prince's version of "A Case of You" - it sounds as if it was tossed off in half an hour to meet a deadline, he ditches large parts of it, yet it's still fantastic. Also Joni's cover of her own "Tealeaf Prophecy" on the Herbie Hancock album is currently my favourite track of hers.

relatively new to joni (within past 10 yrs or so) and always struggled to enjoy Heijera

a couple of weeks ago i watched the Jaco doc on Hulu. I didnt know anything about him other than he played on Heijera & was Kind of A Big Deal

i had never really listened to any jazz fusion or anything so the sounds he was throwing out felt somehow distracting, i didnt really much dig fretless bass sound? i guess i just struggled to take it all in, everything she’s doing & everything he’s doing, along with everything else & it all seemed like a sound-jumble

anyway after receiving the necessary ... um... contextualization from the Jaco doc, which i loved - i went back to Heijera & i genuinely enjoyed it for the first time ever! i found it really beautiful & quite groovy (is that ok to say?)

i think it was the line Joni says in the doc (paraphrasing) that it was like they were painting together & complimenting each other’s brush strokes - that was my lighbulb and i was like O_O “ohhhhhhh i get it now!”

i said to Mr Veg that i felt very grown-up lol

One of the things that makes the album work so well is that Jaco only plays on four of nine tracks. He's actually used sparingly but perfectly - it's hard to imagine him on Amelia or Song for Sharon, for instance.

Right? "Song for Sharon" needs the space.

Tempted to say you were righter the first time, VG, but yeah okay I can Music Appreciation Class tolerate him when applied sparingly.

I love Prince's version of "A Case of You"

Same here. I generally prefer Joni's versions of her own songs, especially on Blue, but "A Case of You" is a big exception. (And that's no knock on Joni's recording, it's just that Prince's version is so f-ing amazing.)

from that Guardian interview, with her new cat:

https://i.imgur.com/AntGG0n.jpg

I read that as "from that Guardian interview with her new cat"

also: <3 <3 <3

From the new box set, Joni's live performance of "Urge for Going from 1965(!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ474qQoRIw

An interview with the producer who compiled the Archives set with Joni. He touches on future plans, and I thought this part was cute:

"We did a Rhino festival [The Troubadours of Folk Festival in June 1993] at UCLA that was incredible. Joni did a solo set. She wasn’t really playing live at that time, and it was magical and so human. She was forgetting lines of the songs and she looked out at the audience and someone would yell out the line to her and she’d laugh and sing it. It was really endearing. And then I later found out that the two people in the front row that were screaming the lyrics back at her were Wendy and Lisa"

Really enjoying this box--hope it portends fascinating future volumes. I'm definitely a bigger fan of 'Blue' and after, but I have a real soft spot for the earlier stuff, as my mother (who fancied herself a singer-songwriter) sang me songs of the pre-'Blue' era as lullabies.

I had “The Circle Game” as a regular camp song

CC Who are you listening to? Any of the newer artists who’ve been influenced by you, like Harry Styles or Billie Eilish?

JM I have music. I don’t listen to too much contemporary music. Babyface I’m listening to – that’s about it. Babyface and Leela James.

Wasn't she tight with Prince? I wish he turned her on to better stuff than Babyface.

wat

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ea/f2/bb/eaf2bba60ba0050bf9f6a076289aa891.jpg

My guitar teacher, who has not been tuned in to pop music since the early '80s, really, is obsessed with Babyface's songwriting.

I've lately been (re)discovering Taming the Tiger - which I'd writtten off when I first heard it ~15 years ago as a teen getting into Joni Mitchell because at the time I hated the VG-8 guitar synth sound. I seem to have found a new appreciation for it with age, though. Some very good songs and the sound has aged surprisingly well. There's also a great episode of the Late Era podcast about it:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sdgc1v4HdBmleGloPihsx?si=-dpGf7jqR6uUfpQz82tC8Q

(Overall I do enjoy her 90s output, though, this was the last one to click for me.)

I would say the best songs on Taming the Tiger ("Man From Mars", "Stay in Touch", "Facelift") are her greatest work post 1977. Turbulent Indigo's mood was so bitter and hostile that it ruined the songs, I think she does better with some optimism in her outlook. With Shine, I felt she was actually starting to lose her grasp on how to create and perform music.

Joni and her dulcimer in the hills of Laurel Canyon in 1970.

Captured by Henry Diltz. pic.twitter.com/IyjLbjXl3S

— Joni Mitchell (@jonimitchell) March 11, 2021

I heard the song "Free Man in Paris" for the first time today

That song evokes being a kid in the back seat going over a quick hill, a rolling feeling in my bottom and tummy. I delighted in it.

just getting around to the Early Years set that came out last year — really good! The folkie stuff is more interesting than you might think and her development from there is kind of astonishing. of course, vol. 2, if it happens, will be even more mind-blowing.

I'm definitely most looking forward to when/if the series gets to '74-77.

I hope Vol. 1 of the archives was a "success" (whatever that means in the post-buying, stream-everything-for-free era). Really, really want to hear further volumes...

same

I don't think Joni or anyone involved with the first set mentioned "copyright protection," but from a strict business standpoint, that would be reason enough to continue.

The fact that she has been so stingy about unreleased material made this box special, nobody could say "oh, I have those already as bonus tracks".

The series will continue, at least according to this:
Joni Mitchell gave a rare interview on Saturday evening at Clive Davis’ virtual Grammy party, where she spoke to the industry mogul about her early career, songwriting, and her legacy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/joni-mitchell-clive-davis-grammy-party-interview-1170210/

Concurrent with the Archives series that was launched back in September, Rhino's going to remaster Joni's catalog on digital and vinyl, beginning with the first four which is being sold as a set (The Reprise Albums (1968-1971)). They just hit stores, and the biggest change is Joni's debut, Song To A Seagull. She never liked the way it sounded so she's gone back and remixed it, but unfortunately it sounds like complete shit. There's not enough details to confirm the reasons for doing what was done, but it's known that the recording has always been burdened by too much ambience and tape hiss due to the way it was recorded. It's likely that was one of the main things they addressed with the remix because they filtered the shit out of the recording, wiping out every bit of information contained in the higher frequencies. Many have compared it to a poorly compressed mp3 or an ancient Real Audio stream. It's a disappointment any way you cut it. The other three sound all right though - they were simply remastered.

Vinyl copies are having some pressing problems as well. Hoffman forums is all aflutter.

Really too bad about the first album's remix---I carried on upthread about my first encounter w that as a kiddo, and the big open overcast sky of the sound was as suitable for eventually swallowing "Marcie's sorrow" as it was for filtering the intimate details of "Sisotowbell Lane" and the pitches and rolls of "The Dawntreader." Seemed perfect for the shadings of her voice, her guitar, and just a few other sounds now and then. Don't if that might come across on YouTube, but I think if you like her early work at all, it's worth a look at auction and secondhand sites.

Don't *know* if

It's not for everybody---xgau dismissed it in passing early on, as much as he praised most of her 70s albums, and Jessica Hopper did the same while reviewing an import set of JM albums in Pitchfork. But it's one of the few albums by anybody that still plays itself in my head, without warning---others: Highway 61 Revisited, John Wesley Harding, What We Did on Our Holidays--my head has its standards.

i love song to a seagull! idk what version of it i know, but the only copy i've ever had is a second hand one picked up during my time working at a used record shop — presumably it's an original from 1968 or a 70s reissue. and i 100% agree with you dow: the production has always made it stick out in a very unique way. i'm not the biggest fan of sparse joni —much prefer the mid 70's stuff— but have always had a soft spot for the first album because of the stark production.

I like the first album a lot. Ladies of the Canyon is the early album that frustrates me. For Free is meh and Willy is BLECK. It’s got some good jams tho.

Don't much care for "Woodstock" either.

A lot of the "standards" from that early period aren't as memorable as the deeper tracks, and of course of number of them predate the first album.