TS: Joni Mitchell - 'Hissing of Summer Lawns' vs 'Hejira'

(don't interrupt the sorrow btw)

hejira is harsher. more straightforward somehow. more metaphor. amelia.

ah, where's my head at?

It's not perfect. "Furry Sings the Blues" always sounded like a retread to me--the one ringer. But "Amelia," yes--this might be her best song. "Song for Sharon" also is beautiful.

Joni Mitchell has so many qualities (and so much myth) that are likely to set alarm bells ringing in ILMs heads--including mine-- but she is incredible, just totally incredible.

Ladies of the Canyon and Blue jockey for second.

I'll defend Mingus, even though I haven't listened to it for over a year. It takes a few hundred listens to sink in, but from the first it's under your skin... I always found it quite unsettling, especially The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey. Apart from The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines, which is hella fun.

I love Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, but it is a huge sprawl with uncomfortable pockets (I don't like side 3). But the title track is one of the most amazing things she's ever done, spinning endless circles. 'Cotton Avenue' is the Joni that Prince really cribbed from, and the 'Veils' ending is heartrending. 'Paprika Plains' is a grower, the way the orchestral arrangements sprout around what sounds like a completely improvised piano solo is very unique.

The original vinyl version of Don Juan had Sides 1 and 4 on one disc, Sides 2 and 3 on the other, and this made a lot of sense actually... Try programming the CD version 1-2-3-8-9-10 for the pop version of the album, with occasional recourse to track 4 for 'Paprika', but that's not a piece for casual listening.

'Mingus' is crazy messed up flawed. The glossy fuzak jazz arrangements just take over almost completely, but there are good things buried in there. That last track on side 1 with the wolves howling and Joni mercilessly thwacking her guitar is not normal music.

I like the late 70's music better than the early 70's stuff (though 'Blue' is wonderful). She was savaged for going jazz (people just not comfortable with the blackface Joni on the inner sleeve of Don Juan, with the word balloon saying 'Mooslems! Mooooslems, heh heh heh') but I think those are her best records.

the problem is that those things broke down really easy and often scratched up the records, so no one uses them anymore.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is lengthy, but contains tons of fantastic material, and is one of my favorites. Mingus has some great moments, but overall the band sound is kind of slick and I dont really go back to it much. Travelogue to me is Joni's first real misstep. Many of the reinterpretations are less than compelling, and worst of all the string arrangements (just like the ones on Both Sides Now) are often lousy, going for a surprising amout of uncalled for overstatement. Since Joni has always had exquisite taste in arrangements and musicians, this really comes as a disappointment.

(must get m'self Hejira, haven't heard it in a fkn looong time)

'Court and Spark' is the commercial peak, it's very accomplished and I love 'Free Man In Paris', but the four albums that followed are a lot more interesting (to me). It's as if that album's huge success finally gave her the confidence to move forward.

The one song on Summer Lawns which I feel doesn't fit in is Sweet Bird, actually. The Jungle Line ties in with the bohemian, experimental, drunk-on-its-own-creativity mood which colours most of the album, but Sweet Bird is this weirdly misplaced conventional folk strum. In comparison to everything else on the album, it also has a piss-weak tune. Inspired by this thread, I'm listening to it again though... how fucking good is Harry's House/Centrepiece!

You 'n' me we're like America 'n' Russia
We're always keeping score
We're always balancing the power
And that can get to be a cold cold war
We gotta hold ourselves a peace talk
In some neutral cafe
You'll lay down your sneakin' round the town
And I'll lay down the highway

Oh, big big points for the Wolf That Lives In Lindsay.

Maybe Hejira has to take the cake. I'm simply unable to say a bad word about it. Always a contender for my favoruite album ever.

big big big points. I wish the last two minutes of that lasted for an hour.

why can i not find "hissing" in france?

'Hissing' is more colourful, and more adventurous, but for me it fails more. The songs have more red-bloodedness in them however, so it suits the cut n thrust of everyday life.

Who else could have done those albums one after the other?

i looked in g-j on st michel but no dice. i'll find it eventually.

If you dig the frosty angular accoustic strumming + the paco electric bass, I'd suggest you check out Pat Metheny's 1st lp 'Bright Size Life' (with Jaco on the bass)

She does that, though, she gets you used to being uncomfortable, to the point of gaining a taste for it. The first time I played myself her Mingus album, the group chorus on 'boogeyman' was so howlingly contrived I felt myself trying to draw a line, "no no no, this is objectively bad, I musn't follow her here..." A day later, sure enough, the verse melody had hooked itself in my head... listening to these records can be complicated.

i am sick of a lot of "Don Juan's .." but that's because i used to be hooked on it and play it all the time. Sprawling and again somewhat formidable at first i suppose. I like what Tim said about it feeling a bit like that beaut. bass-heavy funky stuff that you might have expected given the collision of the open spectrum of "Hissing.." with the bass-led fluid funk of her live outings, about how you wanted it to be another advance/continuation, and so were left maybe a bit dissapointed that the tunes weren't as good. I can relate to Sean's fondness for it, but since it was the first mitchell album i got into, i moved on to those (for me) better tunes.

"court .." has that then-new slick sound and immediate social politics and feeling of being "in on it" that i suppose meant it was lapped up by the public,
but "hissing .." shows she was prepared to then push things into those interesting sonic areas. I love its opening of "france kiss mainstreet"/ "jungle line", and even occasionally fantasize as to those songs being a pop-shot at the rolling stones. For me, "hissing .." is the one, even if it's promises have largely been left un-followed-up.

(so i never liked "Heijra" as it seemed too pop and easy and musically obvious, but maybe i should just enjoy the words. Anecdotal evidence from the vinyl second-hand stores of the '80s seems to indicate that it was bought and flicked, lots. "Hissing of Summer Lawns" was much more expensive to obtain. Did people hang onto that one or just not buy it ? and I love the funky "Hissing .." cover cf: the monochromatic "Heijra", yet both those album covers are accurate approximations of contents.)

i'd pick hissing (again)

"...and any eye for detail caught a little lace around the seams"

1. Court and Spark.
2. Hissing.
3. Héjira.
4. For the Roses.
5. Don Juan. (Some crap on it, but an album's worth of good stuff also.)
6. Blue.
7. Mingus.
8. Clouds.

I've heard some others but wasn't so struck on them.

I'm listening to it on headphones tonight, just for context.

The guitar tone at the opening of Refuge of The Roads is perfect.

it paints such a vivid worldview, complete with ambivalence, which enables me to...not overlook, but perhaps appreciate the more self-serving parts in context.

what's most impressive is the evident respect joni has for her friend. surprisingly there's not a strong sense that joni is insisting that she took the right path... just her path. but there's just enough contempt in there to make it interesting.

it's not too early here, it's 11:30 AM

On the whole, I see the lyrics of Hissing as always revolving around the same theme of free spirits of the 60ies trapped in the numbing dullness of 70ies suburban apathy. On Hejira, Joni would turn the mirror on herself and realize that she's also stuck in a dead-end.

I agree that it's not entirely successful in vindicating her; I suspect she knew that and that makes it even more involving.

Still and all, I like "For the Roses" the best; something about the sound of "Court and Spark" grates on me, it just seems awfully trebly or something, but the songs are classic. I have a problem with this kind of '70s production, I'm afraid--Tom Scott gets on my nerves in a major way. I'm not often in the mood to hear Joni Mitchell any more, I feel the same way about her I do about James Taylor, who I admit I enjoy for about two songs--then the self-involvement kicks in and I have to go listen to something else.

I'm not so sure. To me it feels more like an offhand dismissal of hipsterism as a solution to the dullness she describes in the rest of the album ("Jungle Line" could also be seen as such), or at least as a universal one. Neither attitutes, street hipness or glamorous frivolity, would work, if they don't stem from the person inside (70's belief in self-development and all...).
What's interesting in the song is that she doesn't really know herself what exactly would be the path for her. There's some doubt, and maybe some envy, when she dismisses her friend's obscurity as something for her.

uh no way. the lyrics and the music are intertwined anyway. summerlawns works here to, ah, whats that when the sum is greater than the parts? hejira is all parts. and rhythmically? lawns has jungle line. and centrpiece. and shadows and light.

Having to choose between her two best albums, I will go for "Summer Lawns", for its more varied sound. On "Hejira" that chorus guitar becomes a bit weary on you after having been used on every single track.

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...) (webmail), February 16th, 2004 4:27 PM. (GeirHong) (link)

vs.

I prefer "Summer Lawns" for its somewhat more varied production. "Hejira" has interesting songs too, but you do get tired of that chorus guitar after having listened to it for an entire album.

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...) (webmail), June 11th, 2004 4:12 AM. (GeirHong) (later) (link)

Stand by the lyrics bit - Summer Lawns has the rather enjoyable but trite morass of its title track to answer for. Hejira leads off with one of J.M.'s best lyrics EVAH. For me Hejira is second only to Blue.

NB I used to really represent hard for Summer Lawns but then I joined the Hejira cult

I think the lyrics on Hissing are generally pretty great, and they're often very powerful because - under the sumptuous imagery - they're pretty pointed. But I think she was mainly
working with tighter song structures on that album so there's nothing as, yeah, decadent as "Song For Sharon" or "Hejira" or "Amelia". I half-agree with Geir that the basic sound of Hejira is very repetitive (or, rather, consistent), but I happen to love its sound so I don't mind at all.

at the time it exerted a powerfully strange hold over me. and even now i cannot hear it any other way - it may be pretentious - certainly my love of it is grounded in mystery.

court and spark passed me by somehow. have to rehear that.

(shameful middle class admission: joni was the first "intelligent" woman i ever heard say "fuck")

Just listened to Hejira in the car driving to Kamloops; it still wins for me. One of my very favourite albums every released.

Joni's getting a little shameless with the repackaging, however; two new comps of old material out this fall, one an oddly-paced 'best-of' and the other a self-determined collection of 'political songs'. They're handsomely packaged with her paintings and all, but is this really necessary?

Perhaps Blue has to hit you all at once. It hit me when I was 14 or so, and I can't be objective about it.

If I needed a second I'd sooner look to Ladies of the Canyon or even Both Sides Now.

Further proof that Joan Didion and Joni Mitchell are actually the same person.

Some day we will have to have a thread about author/musician doppelganginess like that.

These two women are so closely linked in my mind that they shall ne'er be separated.

evoke rooms with heavy curtains shielding them from the harsh mid afternoon California sun...

Nice one. That's what I really love about Joni's music. I need to check out Didion's stuff (I only read "Slouching..." so far)

i really like "the jungle line." i don't know about the title track.

i've been listening to a lot of joni lately. i'm venturing, tentatively, into her 80s and 90s stuff. i'm not sure what i think, yet.

Hejira: Coyote is sensational. Full of the specificity someone above said her post-Blue work lacked (as is Song for Sharon, and Furry). Amelia is one of the prettiest songs she wrote. The whole Jaco emphasis and the thematic consistency make it stand out and give it heft. "Blue Motel Room" > "Centerpiece" as the obligatory faux-jazz blues song. Except for Refuge of the Roads, the lesser songs all have something musically or lyrically to recommend them. The album cover art is 50 times better than the cheesy Hissing cover. Hejira really defined Mitchell's deepening interest in jazz and non-linear forms; it is the critical hinge between her classic period and the rest of her career; it is her Blood on the Tracks.
It just isn't any contest.

Also, Amazon tells us that Hejira is more popular today than Hissing. It tells us that Blue is the most popular of Mitchells original albums, followed by a close grouping of Hejira, Court, and Ladies, all of which have ranks within about 800 places of each other (around #2000). Hissing is next, but is ranked in the 8,000s overall. Obviously a cheap argument, but in this case the public is right.

I love the most decadent-sounding tracks best, and the way they're married to lyrics of stasis and boredom - the title track and 'Harry's House/Centrepiece'.

To illustrate, I think the following, sung over loops of African drumming with occasional throaty yells, is a somewhat embarassingly Heart of Darkness in its association of Africa with The Primal, The Lawless, The Primitive, etc., in contrast to repressed Civilized white people in New York:

The jungle line, the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging, chanting down the jungle line

Which is not to say I don't respond to it (as I do to Conrad, or to Riefenstahl), or that I don't think it's a pretty good, subtle lyric, especially in the parallels it draws between Henri Rousseau's painting and jazz and (implicitly) Mitchell's own music. And the drumming is very cool, and this was to my knowledge the first significant use of a looped sample in pop music. When it came out, this was my favorite song on Hissing, for sure, although even then I thought it went a couple of clicks beyond good taste. My reference to Riefenstahl above is pertinent; when Hissing first appeared, the exhibition and then publication of Leni Riefenstahl's The People of Kau had made a huge splash and provoked a lot of debate about the representation of Africans in Western art. Whether or not Mitchell was consciously influenced by Riefenstahl when she did "Jungle Line" (maybe so, maybe no), I thought and think that there is a fair amount of Riefenstahl's aesthetic in that song. Which makes me ambivalent -- not condemnatory, ambivalent.

There's a lot of songs on the album that set up an idealisation/reality split, where the music is at least nominally on the side of the idealisation.

Hejira is also my favorite. 'Coyote' may be my favorite Joni Mitchell song. Jaco's bassline is something else on that tune.

I took her to a hockey game, too.

Yeah.

Good times.

I've been listening to Court & Spark most lately, actually. I only pull out Hejira for special occasions, when I really need it.

Having said that, didn't Joni have some erotic obsession with black men in the 1980s or something?

Don't forget, however, that we're talking about an album which is 30+ years old now. A lot's gone on in that time - and we can't really retrospectively apply the values we have today.

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is a wonderful album, though. It ended up, along with Saint Etienne's last one, being the soundtrack to Summer 2005 for me. Her evocation of West Coast America contrasted with suburbia in Harry's House is intoxicating. And anyone who's had an affair with a 'free-thinking' bastard will relate directly to Don't Interrupt The Sorrow.

Put me down as a huge fan of [i]Hejira[/i] who needs to get [i]Hissing of Summer Lawns[/i] on cd after not having heard it for years. The box set of her 80's Geffen albums is endlessly fascinating. I forgot how good [i]Dog Eat Dog[/i] is. Surely "The Three Great Stimulants" is one of her best late career songs.

William

I think Hejira has some of the most well-crafted, evocative, etc. etc. etc., lyrics of any record I could name. Hissing of Summer Lawns is elliptical and inscrutable and disillusioned in the best possible way, but her narrative powers were at their absolute peak on Hejira, imho. It's had a huge influence not just on my own writing, but on the way I've processed events in my own life.

And in contrast to Hurting, above, I absolutely love the way it sounds - sparse, wintry, bell-clear. It's a gorgeous, timeless record, one of my top five of all time.

C&S has pretty great high points (title track! Trouble Child!) but there are some fillers and it somehow lacks the cohesiveness of the two following albums.

Ironically, for all the talk of Hissing's arty inscrutability she was much better on that album at matching complex lyric and melody, and Hejira simply circumvents the problem by mostly jettisoning choruses. I actually consider For The Roses and Court & Spark to be Joni's "difficult" growing pains albums, and the subsequent two albums to be much more fully realised and comfortable-sounding.

That's why I love it. There are refrains in these songs - The "white lines on the freeway" section of "Coyote"; "Amelia, it was just a false alarm" - but they're narratives, art-songs, not as beholden to a "pop" formula. It taught me so much when I was a kid about what a song can consist of. Mark Eitzel is one of the few songwriters who comes close to Joni's work in this form; for some reason, I find it much more intriguing than feeling shoehorned (to borrow your word) into the standard verse/chorus/verse formula.

I agree with Tim 99%, although I admit to being charmed in a hokey way by the "energetic flapping" of "Raised on Robbery". And, yes, the form of Court and Spark is a marvel - that middle stretch through to "Trouble Child" is hard to beat.

"Twisted" just shoots the plane right down, though. What was she thinking...

Whereas the more complex, visually arresting stuff always comes once, so you're struggling to absorb it even as it fades from hearing (the title track especially, lyricism as exquisite bloodletting)

Even with "Just Like This Train" and the title song and "Down to You"?

I actually consider For The Roses and Court & Spark to be Joni's "difficult" growing pains albums, and the subsequent two albums to be much more fully realised and comfortable-sounding.

This is very OTM, regarding For The Roses, which is never mentioned much even though "Barandgrill" and "Electricity" and of course "You Turn Me On (I'm A Radio) [an even better pop song than "Help Me"].

Is anyone able to describe the differences with the new remixed version on that compilation she released last year? I haven't heard it.

There is absolutely zilch on the Rhino website about this, however, at least as far as I can see.

Can anyone independently confirm? And are there tracklists available? Can we expect previously unreleased material, or is this gonna be the more typical 'alternate, demo and live versions' cash-grab?

!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OTOH it doesn't get much better than Joni. Will wait & see...

Joni Mitchell
December 21, 2006, 3:30 PM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Bjork, Prince, James Taylor and Elvis Costello are among the artists who have recorded covers for "A Tribute to Joni Mitchell," due in the spring via Nonesuch. The 12-track set also boasts contributions from Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris and Sufjan Stevens.

In related news, Billboard.com has learned that Mitchell has been recording original material at a Los Angeles studio in recent weeks. It is unknown in what form she plans to release the music; she angrily announced she was quitting the music business in 2002 after her last album, "Travelogue."

Here is the track list for "A Tribute to Joni Mitchell":

"Free Man in Paris," Sufjan Stevens
"Boho Dance," Bjork
"Dreamland," Caetano Veloso
"Don't Interrupt the Sorrow," Brad Mehldau
"For the Roses," Cassandra Wilson
"A Case of U," Prince
"Blue," Sarah McLachlan
"Ladies of the Canyon," Annie Lennox
"Magdalena Laundries," Emmylou Harris
"Edith and the Kingpin," Elvis Costello
"Help Me," k.d. lang
"River," James Taylor

lol @ Sufjan Stevens "unfettered and alive" my ass

Phil Collins, "A Song For Sharon"

This absolutely frightens me... I can only imagine Surfjan trying to recreate Joni's take on the song. And he'll fall completely short. Unless he's got a magic bag of tricks, nothing I heard on Illinois has the depth of emotion that Joni brought to this - that up-sound and excitement, but the way her voice undercuts the song, so you hear the desperation and loneliness. Like being in a crowded room of people but feeling alone.

"A Case of U," Prince

haha. He changed "A Case of You" to "A Case of U." God knows what Prince will do with this. I drew a map of... Minneapolis?

The rest seem obvious enough. I actually think I heard James Taylor do River on a bootleg once. There's this great Taylor/Mitchell show (10-28-1970). I love it when they sang together.

And of course - super-psyched about new material. (Like a fanboy waiting for the new Good Charlotte album.)

REVIVE

I can't really imagine Bojork doing getting the Boho Dance

the Prince cover is really lovely.

And the Sufjan one is awful. This coming from someone who actually really liked Illinois.

Has anyone heard the Joni cover album Herbie Hancock put out? Some intriguing pairings... Tina Turner singing 'Edith and the Kingpin' anyone?

i only listened to <a href="http://blog.zeit.de/tontraeger/2007/09/28/liebesbriefe-nach-kanada_532";>leonard cohen reading "the jungle line"</a>. which i liked a lot.

sorry: the jungle line

anybody heard of this before?
http://www.bigozine2.com/archive/ARrarities07/ARjmseeding.html
i haven't listened yet, but it seems like a good thing.
still curious about that herbie hancock thing. have heard samples and it sounds pretty good. there's a danger of it sucking though, no doubt about it -- i recently heard that Gershwin's World CD Herbie did a few years back and ehhhhhh ... i understand that having big name guest stars on your record means it'll sell a bajillion more copies, but still ...

I like the Herbie Hancock album. I think the guest stars are fairly understated, and Tina Turner's rendition of "Edith and the Kingpin" is pretty fantastic actually.

Yes, what I've heard from that album was actually very good. Need to pick it up.

Awesome link by the way. Thanks! Can't wait to hear these.

Wow - the guitar demo for Harry's House is awesome.

So... Whatever happened to those remasters?

they happened already dude

[reads upthread]

oops i thought you meant the remasters from 2 years ago or whatever

They are still nowhere to be seen around here. Other than up to "For The Roses" that is.

both of these are so good. long time coming. i feel like those last two tracks on 'hejira' bring it down a notch. too cute. need more digesting time though. i love joni right now, probably too much.

but i'm thinking 'hejira' ftw

"Refuge of the Roads" is cute?

yeah. not 'cute,' but not 'black crow,' you know? cute.

1+ fretless bass
1- chords, song

1++++ fretless bass.

these are the clouds of michaealangelo
muscular with darts

fuck this, this is no contest, i'm just loving joni more and more.

For me, 'Refuge' is both the essence of the album and its natural conclusion.

I mean:

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads

Weird - listened to "A Song for Sharon" this morning. I don't know anyone who can write these melodies for these polysyllables, or have the inspiration to use high-pitched whoops for emphasis.

I love the way those lines build up to "Or me here least of all..."

It's amazing how many self-puncturing references the album has to Joni's own self-absorption.

on that topic, a pretty interesting background note on that song (and teh overall topic of self-absorption): http://jonimitchell.com/research/g_entry.cfm?id=16

That last paragraph from 'Refuge' I alread quoted ALWAYS slays me.

Fabulous.

In case someone is interested in hearing the Travelogue version

no, thanks. when she released travelogue for me she lost the last bit of credibility she had. what a syrupy piece of overproduced crap.

travelogue = killing your own babies.

I don't mind the version you've linked baaderonixx, but I don't know if that sort of treatment can do much for Hejira songs. Whereas I love the similar treatments of "Both Sides Now" and "A Case Of You" that she did previously.

or travelogue = flooding your kittens in strings.

I still have very mixed feelinsg re. Travelogue. Often I feel that it's very close to being brilliant, the nearly-noirish vibe, the husky late night voice ... but it kinda falls short and ends up being, yes, sirupy and "grown up".

wtf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kins8_pA9M4

well that was random.

he pretty much follows the original arrangement.

She does that, though, she gets you used to being uncomfortable, to the point of gaining a taste for it. The first time I played myself her Mingus album, the group chorus on 'boogeyman' was so howlingly contrived I felt myself trying to draw a line, "no no no, this is objectively bad, I musn't follow her here..." A day later, sure enough, the verse melody had hooked itself in my head... listening to these records can be complicated.

i find some of lou reed's records to work in a similar fashion

otm

loving this part lately

I pulled off into a forest
Crickets clicking in the ferns
Like a wheel of fortune
I heard my fate turn turn turn
And I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues

travelogue = killing your own babies.

― alex in mainhattan, Thursday, November 13, 2008 8:59 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

Listen again it's actually awesome

poppy poison
poppy tourniquet
it sliiiithers away on brass like

mouth

piece

spit

^^^ next level rhymes

i've been listening to Hejira a lot, lately, and when it finishes or half-way through i think about listening to HOSL, but my copy's far away, and now Hejira is starting to sound to me like the desire to listen to HOSL.

this thread is such a delight.

I'll defend Mingus, even though I haven't listened to it for over a year. It takes a few hundred listens to sink in, but from the first it's under your skin... I always found it quite unsettling, especially The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey. Apart from The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines, which is hella fun.

― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, August 1, 2003 2:35 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark

it takes a few hundred listens to sink in! <3

this was a good thread!

i keep venturing tentatively into 80s and 90s joni, then retreat. why? it's not like the albums are that bad, just kind of hit and miss.

I feel a Joni period coming my way. Good weather and mild depression always put me in the mood for Hejira & Hissing

I've spent all day listening to Hejira -- and I have to say, I absolutely love that it's pretty much 90% guitars and fretless bass sloshing around with her singing these free flowing melodies over the top which perfectly complement the road theme. Notwithstanding "Blue Motel Room," these songs almost entirely feel of a piece. Only "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" has really captivated me from HOSL by comparison, but I'm willing to give it time.

Interesting how no one has mentioned Shadows and Light -- the live record from this era that features Metheny, Jaco, Don Alias and Michael Brecker, I believe. Is it just that her live performances coudn't match the atmosphere of the originals?

remember watching the video version of shadows and light that showed up on cable a lot when i was a kid. really dug it tho i didn't know anything about joni at the time

Interesting how no one has mentioned Shadows and Light -- the live record from this era that features Metheny, Jaco, Don Alias and Michael Brecker, I believe. Is it just that her live performances coudn't match the atmosphere of the originals?

― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 31 January 2013 4:20 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, I think. There's very few stylistic variations on Shadows and Light that I think actually improve the originals.

In general I tend to think that Joni is a much better arranger than improviser, and her efforts to recreate the spontaneity of live jazz don't really win me over (one reason why I find HOSL much better than DJRD). The pristine perfectionism of HOSL and Hejira gets lost a bit on Shadows and Light, I find.

shadows and light to me sounds more like a fusion record, the essence of joni watered down. hejira is an album with a very strong flow which shadow and light obviously isn't as there is a mix of songs from different albums on it. miles of aisles is her best live album i think but that was before hejira. i really like her banter and intros to the songs on that one.

Hejira is def the way I'm getting into Joni as performer after long being a fan of her as songwriter

I spent a lot of this weekend listening to Shadows and Light in the car...and it's started to win me over. The bass n' brushes version of "The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines" in particular is less over-produced than the Mingus version and just as lithe.

In fairness, a big piece of my enjoyment of this is that I'm a Metheny fan -- and Shadows and Light is kind of a dream lineup in some ways (Joni, Metheny, Mays, Jaco, Don Alias, and Michael Brecker). When Metheny breaks out a typically billowy solo on "In France..." it just feels natural. There are moments on this record that just ebb back and forth between Joni's schtick (which admittedly isn't that different than her studio versions) and something off of Metheny's live Travels album.

If anything, it's a little disappointing there isn't more of Metheny on this (Brecker is the dominant soloist, which isn't altogether a bad thing). He only has a handful of solos (tho he has one cut all to himself) and Mays is mixed down really low. More of Metheny accompanying Joni on the Hejira material in particular (which itself sounded like a first- or second-cousin of his debut w Jaco, Bright-Sized Life) would have been interesting to hear. Part of me wonders if he was holding back a bit given that he wasn't the star Joni was in 1979 (tho in jazz and pop circles, he pretty much would be just two years later).

been obsessed (again) w/ "boho dance" lately. seems like the kind of song that would just be flattened by a politically-correct hot take (just like a lot of "hissing"), since the worldviews the song explores are not really there to be accepted or dismissed, since what the song best expresses is ambivalence--both that of the narrator and the (male?) hipster she's describing. the delicacy with which joni describes those worldviews is rather astonishing, isn't it? also the way the distinction between the worldviews is explored through subtly gendered metaphors ("The cleaner's press was in my jeans/And any eye for detail/Caught a little lace along the seams"). later the clothing metaphor is inverted to suggest the opposite ("A camera pans the cocktail hour/Behind a blind of potted palms/And finds a lady in a Paris dress/With runs in her nylons"). in other words, she doesn't belong completely in either milieu. this concludes with the "stricken from your uniform" and "not mine, these glamour gowns" phrases.

also, "another hard-time band/with negro affectations" is basically blueshammer, right?

also if you ever want to be reminded what an extraordinary arranger joni was, listen to the demo of "boho dance" (on the "seeding of summer lawns" boot) and compare it to the finish product. it was always a great song, but the full arrangement contributes so much, adds greatly to the sense of wistful ambivalence.

one last thought -- joni mitchell and paul simon seem to be the two late-60s singer-songwriters who quickly outgrew the folk template of their earlier work and sought out, above all, new textural and rhythmic influences. joni wasn't as determinedly eclectic as simon, but i think it's fair to say that her rhythmic sense is even more sophisticated.

I've been carrying the studio version of this tune in my phone for a few weeks. I love this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6d2RG2Rl64