Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

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.

(Yeah, prob gonna have to get thee box) xpost I was stuck by the apprehensiveness of her version, esp, "We are stardust, we are golden"---going up, giving herself to just that one word, that one high---back down to "and we've got to, get ourselves, back to the garden..." still apprehensive, not quite resolute, like, what the hell will this entail, if it's even possible, in a meaningful way? Especially after Crosby-Nash sickening granola bliss on those very lines.

(Likewise effect of hearing her "Clouds" after Judy Collins' hit, which was okay, but certainly seemed detached, a little wry, and that's about it, by comparison.)

Collins seemed...older, maybe world-weary, JM still in the thick of it.

I somehow missed hearing Woodstock until this past year, when Joni finally clicked with me. I expected to dislike it, assuming that it would be fuzzy wuzzy hippy blergh, but the apprehensive quality of her recording makes it work. Big Yellow Taxi was also new to me. The production makes it work. I feel like I shouldn’t like it, but it’s so damn good. Even her goofy laugh at the end.

I install art at a big museum, and we just had a big David Hockney exhibition. Someone from his studio assisted us and we bonded over Joni. I asked about the photo of Joni and Hockney that was making the rounds and he said that she was a regular at his gallery. Hockney is apparently a massive stoner and I imagine them getting stoned to the bone together.

"Woodstock" is not something that comes to mind when I think of my very favorite Joni Mitchell songs, but I like it, both her version and the one cut by CS&N. (I don't think Déjà Vu is a great album, but it's still their best one and "Woodstock" is one of the more enjoyable cuts.) It's a time capsule, but even as I remain skeptical about the significance and mythology that's been marketed on Woodstock, I never had a problem with the song. It's a good and honest take of what it meant to Joni, and it manages to get the tone right without sounding obnoxious or risible. Her low-key arrangement doesn't make it as radio-friendly as CS&N's version, but it does a better job of drawing me in.

Curious that her song about getting "back to the garden" is, I believe, her only song featuring solo electric piano.

i feel like "Woodstock" is not about how awesome Woodstock was, maybe i have misunderstood

it seems like a combination of celebration and apprehension. As I understand it, she wasn't there, but was responding to news about it, and actually recorded the song while the festival was happening.

A lot of the skepticism in Woodstock comes through in the performance imo, which is why it sounds like an anthem in CSNY's hands and much less so in hers.

You get a hint of it in the "child of god" who opens the song saying
"Think I'll join a rock and roll band
I'll camp out on the land
I'll try and set my soul free."

But if not for those words the rest of it could be read as a pretty straightforward celebration of the hippie ethos, especially if you weren't otherwise familiar with Joni Mitchell.

yeah i'm not thinking just in terms of lyric but in the notes she chooses, the mood of the song, but then also the lyric filtered thru those decisions

also maybe hearing it thru decades of "hippie dream goes sour" songs/writing/movies etc

from the very beginning of her recording career there are always plenty of blue notes in Joni's songs that complicate the words

She did go and live in a cave the next year, though; there a sense of mourning but she's not Arthur Lee or Zappa casting a jaundiced eye on the hippies.

I like Austra's floaty goth version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYE7s9EVSRU

yeah i'm not thinking just in terms of lyric but in the notes she chooses, the mood of the song, but then also the lyric filtered thru those decisions

― Southgate Serves Imperialism (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:31 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also maybe hearing it thru decades of "hippie dream goes sour" songs/writing/movies etc

― Southgate Serves Imperialism (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 10:32 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In fact, through hearing it performed in the Isle of Wight festival film, which was filmed the following year.

Unearthed tape of Mitchell in Ottawa in 1968, recorded by Hendrix; sounds great:
https://www.stereogum.com/2155564/joni-mitchell-the-dawntreader-jimi-hendrix-ottawa-1968/music/

had heard rumors of this tape but assumed the quality would be very lo-fi — this sounds much better than I expected. Jimi must've had good equipment.

Four days before her first album was released.

This was also when Joni first met Graham Nash

Hmm, apparently that meeting happened four days earlier when The Hollies played the Capitol Theater. Joni did a two week gig at Le Hibou in March 68.

Anyone check out the new Archives box set yet? The bulk it seems to be whole shows.

Didn't think they'd shipped yet? Got a notice my copy had, but seems to have been premature, UPS shows no movement...

Ah ok. I thought they'd be in stores by now. Online shops that sell hi-res downloads already have them available. If it's streaming, I may give them a good listen over the weekend.

I think she got better and better over the course of her first four albums, with Ladies of the Canyon and especially Blue being the two great ones, and I feel that's more or less reflected in the contents of the new Archives installment. The Hendrix recordings are a great find, no question about that, but I enjoy the Carnegie Hall recordings more and the final live recordings accompanied by James Taylor even more than both. Similarly, the demos and studio leftovers for Blue are more enjoyable simply because they involve better songs - to be fair, it would be hard for anyone to compete with them - and the earlier live performances of a few Blue songs are wonderful too.

Blue is overrated and most everything else she did is somewhere between under appreciated and vastly underrated.

There's probably some discussion upthread or elsewhere but 'For The Roses' is just as great as Blue but is sadly overshadowed by it. I think the kinda shitty, washed-out cover artwork is somehow partially to blame.

Weirdest discovery of the box for me so far isn't on the discs. In the accompanying booklet, there's an ad for a late '60s Joni performance, and on the bill is Four Jacks and a Jill. The show does not take place at a Ramada Inn in Kansas City. Maybe Fred Willard was on the scene in the '60s and dredged that memory up for Spinal Tap. Kinda neat to find out they were a real band.

Apparently the name was used earlier than that for a film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Jacks_and_a_Jill_%28film%29

The article for the band is also kind of interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Jacks_and_a_Jill#Career

About two dozen mentions in ILX archives. Skot a big fan.

I didn't think Blue is overrated - it's her best work alongside several other masterpieces, not to mention a string of good-to-really-good albums - but given how it's been canonized in recent years as the greatest this and greatest that with virtually no mention of her other albums, I can see how it's overrated at the expense of everything else.

*didn't think Blue was overrated

Appropriate that she was taped by Hendrix, before the debut alb release: they both emerged fully formed---later changes seemed logic of evolution (maybe some devolution in her case, as she lived so much longer, but then the covers album and some other resurgence from time to time). I'd already read sooo much about Dylan, that I wasn't that surprised by finally hearing him, but they just showed up.

Of course, I'm talking late 60s, coulda prep-read tons about them later.

Talking to Cary.

https://www.newstatesman.com/katemossmaninterview/2021/12/joni-mitchell-carey-california-blue-lyrics-cary-raditz-interview

The Last Time I Saw Richeard.

CLASSIC: https://jonimitchell.com/news/newsitem.cfm?id=1592

I think the Spotify fallout warrants its own thread

I wonder where Joe Rogan stands on Morgellon’s

Would it mess up Acts that are not on Spotify ?

Yeah, someone start fresh

Sam Stone interviews Patrick Milligan on Vol. 2 of the archive series: https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=5126

Vol. 3 will apparently cover 1972-1975.

Cant wait for that volume

Joined by Brandi Carlile, Marcus Mumford and other artists, Mitchell played guitar, told stories, and sang a dozen songs in a surprise Newport headlining performance.

“I just realized, Joni’s the least nervous person up here,” exclaimed Brandi Carlile halfway through a historic Newport Folk Festival set that paid tribute to Joni Mitchell, in her first full set-length concert appearance in two decades.

Over 13 songs, Mitchell, who last appeared at the festival 53 years ago, in 1969, held court as a star-studded crew of musicians (Carlile, Blake Mills, Lucius, Wynonna, Celisse, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, and many more) sat around on couches on-stage playing a mix of her favorite oldies (The Persuasions’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” The Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9” as well as an array of Mitchell masterpieces.

Sitting in a throne, Mitchell began the set by occasionally singing along to her own songs, accompanied by vocalists like Carlile, (“Carey”) Goldsmith, (1991’s “Come In From The Cold”) and Celisse (“Help Me”). But by the end of the hour-plus performance, the 78 year-old singer who only recently sang on stage for the first time in nearly a decade had stood up, played a lengthy guitar solo (“Just Like This Train”) and sang a moving baritone lead vocal on Gershwin’s “Summertime'” as well as tear-jerking takes on “Both Sides Now” and “Circle Game.”

The premise: Recreating the recently infamous “Joni Jams,” the informal A-list gatherings of musicians at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home in recent years, where everyone from Carlile to Elton John to Herbie Hancock to Bonnie Raitt gather around Mitchell and trade songs and stories in the years following Mitchell’s aneurysm. ”No one brings folk singers together like the humility of trying out a new song in front of Joni fucking Mitchell,” as Carlile, who curated and organized the entire set, explained in the introduction to the performance.

At the end of the set, Carlile pronounced the night’s eternal important: “Joni Mitchell,” she proclaimed, “has returned.”

(Fellow more or less retiree Paul Simon apparently also popped up to play at the Fest with, um, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.)

holy shit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aqGjaFDTxQ