Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

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I got "Blue" and "Ladies of the Canyon" for my parents, not thinking I'd ever want them for myself. And why is it that 'warbling' should be considered a bad sound to listen to? Her voice on those two records is lovely!

More to the point, did anyone see that Norwegian girl doing Joni Mitchell on Stars In Euro Eyes?

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Norman, it's funny that you mention Joan Baez in relation to this. Joan Didion has this essay about her in which she writes: "When it was time to go to high school, her father was teaching at Stanford, and so she went to Palo Alto High School, where she taught herself "House of the Rising Sun" on a Sears, Roebuck guitar, tried to achieve vibrato by tapping her throat with her finger, and made headlines by refusing to leave the school during a bomb drill." I love the myth that's suggested by these facts, esp. in relation to the setting.

as i am allergic to the entire countryside, i liked that they paved over paradise and put up a parking lot: asphalt = better than pollen dust, IMO

1. The completely unique sound she gets out of an acoustic guitar on "Blue". 'A Case Of You' = classic.

2. "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns": my definition of Pazz & Jop. Also includes Burundi music way before it was fashionable to do things like this.

3. A band like Nazareth can do great covers of her material. Also her vocal lines are ideal fodder for bootlegs (as Fluke demonstrated years ago). Recontextualisation and all that.

4. She kept Jaco busy - hence fewer shitty Jazz Rock records were made.

(I'm joking about No.4 alex!)

and/or multiple alternate tunings, some of her own invention, i believe?

she's one of the greats, compositionally, subject-matter-wise and maybe persona-wise. and yes, arguably hot, if you like the personality. and probably harder than anyone who thinks she's "twee".

Both For the Roses and Court and Spark are arguably better than Blue. Her best singing (and guitar-playing?) may be on the otherwise middling though convenient pre-C&S-greatest-hits live Miles of Aisles

i wish i liked anne briggs more.

just noticed gygax's post. well, a 2nd opinion then.

That should read v. famous SCOTTISH guitar player etc., hope you never meet Bert on a dark night!

Expanded 2CD remasters of "Court And Spark", "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira" were supposed to have been released by January this year. They are not yet in the shops half a year later.
Does anyone know what happened and when and if they are due?

she dumped them in the ocean, I heard.

listened to Dog Eat Dog the other day hoping to find a dollar bin gem amidst the 80s production. unfortunately it sucked doggie dick

hence the album title?

...lesbian dogs?!

I only know Blue but I love it. I started a little cult of Joni in secondary school when I traded my extra copy of Psychocandy with my friends extra copy of this. I think we both did well.

I still think the real gems are those mid 70s ones, when she used more instruments and adopted a more "floating" and sophisticated song style. Even if there may be a bit too much chorus guitar on "Hejira" at times.

I agree... Hissing of Summer Lawns is my favourite Joni Mitchell record.

Court and Spark is my favorite because of the incredibly strong songwriting . I prefer it over Blue for sure. I'm shocked at the animosity up-thread.

listened to Dog Eat Dog the other day hoping to find a dollar bin gem amidst the 80s production. unfortunately it sucked doggie dick

"Good Friends" is a good track and single!

"Night Ride Home" is an underpraised gem

the album or song?

"Come In From The Cold" is my favorite Joni song of the last 20 years.

i really enjoy about 1/2 of Dog Eat Dog - 'Fiction', 'Good Friends', 'Impossible Dreamer' and the title track all work for me, esp. the first two.

it's odd to think of Night Ride Home as underappreciated - i always considered it one of, if not her very best, post-'70s albums.

And nobody knows anything about the remasters?

I only have burned copies of those three, and I plan to buy them, but even though they often only a third of the price, I refuse to buy the old editions now that I know remasters are probably on their way anytime soon.

I think there's a thread somewhere on the reissues and someone in the know seemed to imply that the remasters were not gonna happen.

The current bunch of Mitchell albums in the discount bins suggest otherwirse.

The remasters have been done - there were even press releases being released just a couple of weeks before the supposed release date in January. But they were postponed obviously.

To me the HDCD versions of these albums sounded excellent, with nice warmth and dynamics. The enticement of new versions would have to be either in exras (in which case what are they?) or in surround versions or advanced resolution. (I recall that there was a quad version of Hissing....)

SpinCDs.com say August 10, but these have been delayed before — originally they were to be released in February 2006 — so I wouldn't put much store by that date.

I got most of Joni Mitchell's 70s output on vinyl for about $10 bucks out of dollar bins. My favorite album that she did is Coyote. She did other records that are kind of jazzy, but that is the best one. Her other records generally have a few songs that really catch with me. I like the two 70s live albums better than much of the studio records.

I always thought "Help Me" would have been a good song for late 80s Dinosaur Jr. to cover.

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?

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-q4foLKDlcE&hl=en&fs=1";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-q4foLKDlcE&hl=en&fs=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

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 ...)

wikipedia page doesn't sound fatal...?

this is very upsetting news!

hang in there joni

Jesus. Joni is one of those litmus tests for me, if you don't like (some of) her stuff, then I think you probably don't have a very developed sense of music. Especially her period from Clouds to Mingus, though she's had some wonderful stuff later. I was listening to Summer Lawns last night and was reminded of just how fantastic a songwriter she is, musically adventurous and lyrically evocative. There's still about a third of that album I'm ambivalent about, but I appreciate what she's doing. My favorite song on the album would have to be "Harry's House/Centerpiece", which is a song with another song in it. I used to be bothered by the emergence of the cover of "Centerpiece" in the middle of such a fantastic song as Harry's House, but I appreciate it more now; she segues into it in a musical breakdown equivalent of a flashback on television to signify the earlier era in a relationship blah blah blah I'm sorry, did I ramble on there?

Anyway. Classic.

Like a dragonfly on a tomb - Those lyrics paint such a clear and strong -albiet imagined on my part- picture of the corporate 70s

http://www.tvsquad.com/2011/02/22/tina-fey-joni-mitchell-song-paints-and-brushes/

Travelogue is so damn good, but for some reason it's overwhelmingly plaintive and sad and it becomes really difficult to listen to more than a few songs at once.

Travelogue always seemed better in my mind that in reality - whenever I put it on, I remember how corny it often sounds

http://www.tvsquad.com/2011/02/22/tina-fey-joni-mitchell-song-paints-and-brushes/

lol I totally missed this. awesome. "Saskatchewwaaaaaaaaan"

I heard “Woodstock” the song again the other day. I found it very sad, both her plaintive voice over that tense, minor-key melody and the childlike optimism of her lyrics, which I imagine would be burned alive by audiences if they were written today. The bombers turning into butterflies image, a lot of listeners today would find laughably naive, and there’s something of that song’s bare hopefulness lost to today’s reflexive cynicism, my own included, that I find depressing.

She does some of her spookiest background vocals on that song. I love 'em.

She tapes her regrets / To the microphone stand

oh man oh man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KyBdPeKHg

looool

oh look it's let's-revive-seventies-songwriters-threads day

it is? i was just listening to for the roses and was struck (again) by that line.

the song kills me btw

1. The completely unique sound she gets out of an acoustic guitar on "Blue". 'A Case Of You' = classic.

--That's because it's a dulcimer overdubbed over acoustic guitar.

i have been reluctant to listen beyond the 70s albums, but night ride home is great.

P4k's review of the new boxset. Pretty good piece, I think.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17269-the-studio-albums-1968-1979/

Man, are we going to have to wait for her to peg-out before they can release the big 70's box set with all the juicy demos and unreleased songs that *must* be locked away? I've only ever heard the Blue era track 'Hunter' and the Demo's Of Summer Lawns bootleg and they are both ace.

I would assume she's been careful to destroy as much of the stuff she doesn't want released as she can, and good for her.

^^^ every artist shd torch everything they don't want some archive-grubber dragging out when they're dead

...bbbut the Summer Lawns demos are great.

Are you assuming she cares about such things, what's so henious about putting out unreleased material?

i get the urge to listen, i just have weird issues about people's wishes being posthumously ignored - where that's the case, not necessarily here

we've been over my very harsh take on this before. in the absence of explicit permission from the author/artist I don't think unpublished/unreleased stuff should be printed/released. I don't care how many great works the world would have to live without as a consequence, exhume Max Brod and piss on his bones, etc.

(And I'm a huge Joni Mitchell fan, probably no artist alive more important to me, but there's no way I'm listening to demos she didn't consent to having released, or engaging in idle speculation about whether she cares they're out there or not - she's tightly involved in her catalogue, if she wanted me to hear the demos they'd be on the box set. It doesn't matter how good they are, my pleasure isn't actually the most important thing in the universe.)

Yea that is harsh.

lol the part about how I think Max Brod can go hell is harsh. The part about "it's easy, don't listen to stuff a living artist didn't release through the channels readily available to her" is pretty easy. If she'd wanted to make it available, she could - when you grab stuff like that, you're essentially saying "as long as I myself am not the guy who a) stole it or b) broke trust with the artist, it's cool" - 100% not down with that, I've been on the other side of it, it sucks.

I guess I had a wishy-washy comeback about how she is a now a Legacy artist *ugh*, pretty much retired etc: Why not make the big sign-off-on-yr-past box set like Neil Young, but I know it really doesn't hold water.

I like bootlegs, live/studio whatever, always have done. I don't like that ugly, entitled attitude that many collectors share, but I do get the tingles when I know some artist I love is putting out a bunch of unreleased material. My other half works in the back catalogue dept of EMI and she deals with Bowie, who has a good attitude towards his archive, basically 'It wasn't good enough them, why would it be good enough to release now?', which I think the answer to which would be *cause I (the artist) have a massive tax bill/divorce settlement or am sitting here on my broke arse*

think it was borges who noted the ambiguity re: the kafka/brod situation - ie what was stopping kafka from destroying the manuscripts himself?

cos he thought he might want the stuff up to the point at which he was dead?

it is very hard to destroy your own stuff. you want to put it somewhere where nobody will ever see it, or have somebody else destroy it. or imagine magic scenarios where you did it & learned what you learned from it but then it's gone. but just speaking as a guy who now destroys his own stuff if I have even a second of "you know, I don't think I want people to hear this": it's just hard to destroy your own stuff. when you do it, it means that you, too, will not be able to hear/read it again; if you wanted to salvage a line or a phrase or a change from it, better have a good memory, because destroyed means destroyed. if you intend to keep working up to your last day, it's nicer to have anything you might still use lying around. ergo I don't find any ambiguity in the kafka situation. he asked a friend to do something he couldn't do himself, his friend betrayed him, the world sucks and people are awful, smoke weed every day

obv. I have ~~feelings~~ about this issue lol ok

i agree with you, a lot of writing etc. is junk writing that precedes true writing and people shouldn't have to show their working out if they don't want to.

xp aero, surely you could keep private copies for yourself?

record everything in code

In Moscow they canoodle on Leningradsky Prospekt, that sort of thing

xxp and make sure that any friends who could be your max brod die before you do.

Make real sure.

we live in a world of Max Brods now. destroy everything

esp grocery lists

Brod only saved, what, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle? Three of my least fav. Kafkas

My favorite was in that bunch.

i thought those little short stories (my favorites of his) were published while he was alive.

and to be fair to Brod, he did tell Kafka he wouldn't burn the papers

we only have Brod's word on that & he's a pretty untrustworthy motherfucker so I don't buy it

I should start a separate Thread of Max Brod hate though I get real irrational when I think about that dude I wanna beat his ass

I thought the story was only published in The Trail but nah ok

"Before the Law" (German: "Vor dem Gesetz") is a parable contained in the novel The Trial (German: Der Prozess), by Franz Kafka. "Before the Law" was published in Kafka's lifetime, first in the New Year's edition 1915 of the independent Jewish weekly Selbstwehr, then in 1919 as part of the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor). The Trial, however was not published until 1925, after Kafka's death.

I read everything here until The Shorter Stories this past summer and I was blown away by how good they were, good job, Franz!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Stories_of_Franz_Kafka

under, not until

i'm sure those individual album scores are hella arbitrary but a 10 for court and spark/hissing and an 8 for hejira? :\

heh, my thoughts exactly. i don't think any of them are 'perfect' albums.

The review is best on For The Roses, I think. Leaving aside the score I think the Hejira bit was too high-level (even just relative to the still-short treatment the other albums got).

Jessica otm for saying that Hejira is for old people tho

"old" meaning over-30s that is

this is true, the police confiscated my copy

i'm sure those individual album scores are hella arbitrary but a 10 for court and spark/hissing and an 8 for hejira? :\

I appreciate Hopper throwing down the gauntlet for Hissing and giving it a 10 -- that record is always, always the one I play for people who only know the earlier records, those first two tracks in a row destroy all preconceptions of what she's about. Even if Hejira goes deeper for many fans once you are a fan, the idea of using the 10s to flag the three you think fencesitters should hear first sort of works for a PF review

Reckless Daughter = my favorite

loved the review, going to go home tonight and listen to as many of them as possible

I think Jessica is probably right in general but Hejira was my favourite album in the world at 14 and Court & Spark is the golden run album it took me longest to warm to fully.

totally got lost again in Reckless Daughter last night, there's no way it isn't the high point for me. it's too bad this review steers people away from it, less by dealing with the music than by going all P.C. on the packaging. you can rail on the fact that Joni dressed herself as an Indian with a word balloon saying 'How!', but to then immediately transition into mentioning 'Paprika Plains' as the highlight of the record without mentioning... the lyrics... well, space constraints, I guess? You can, in passing, safely call out blackface as not-okay-ever, but when you've got a jazz-fusion record with the artist in blackface with a word balloon next to her face saying 'Mooslems, Mooooslems! Heh, Heh, Heh', then there is officially something more complicated going on than you are ever going to be able to deal with in under one paragraph

I mean, yes, Mingus made me nervous the first time I heard it, but one night last year I came home and put it on and it was perfect, from beginning to end

Noticed they'd released a box of all of her lps to the late 70s, it was in the local HMV this week. I couldn't see anything on it about remastering so wondered, assume a box like that does indicate that though.
Had been thinking of getting hold of a few of those lps if I could get hold of a decent remaster.

Anybody got that set?

sorry just took a quick glimpse back at previous messages, & didn't seem to be what was being talked about. But now I see that was the reason the thread was revived.
It just was something I'd meant to google when I saw it on the shelf but had slipped my mind on getting home so was interested if anybody had 1st hand familiarity with it yet.

I've bought it and played through "Court", "Hissing" and "Hejira". Don't think they've been remastered, the packaging doesn't say, but it only lists the year of release on each record, and usually the year of the remastering is added, isn't it? Plus, I added "Hejira" to my ipod and the volume level is low. But it sounds good, anyhow, so I don't complain.

Thanks to recommendations by ilx's own Mordy, I got a used copy of Clouds and Heijera today - my first two Joni albums ever (I only knew maybe one or two songs before that)

I planned to listen to both today, but Clouds appears to be stuck on repeat :)
i love it so much

(truthfully I was looking for Blue or Court + Spark but the record store had neither and I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket. turns out settling for these two was a lovely decision)

Wait till you get 'Blue,' then you'll be in heaven. I love a lot of her other work, but 'Blue' really stands above on every level.

Do people love or hate Jaco's bass on Hejira? My dad is reading a Jaco bio where he claimed that Joni offered him a few hundred thousand to impregnate her (for his musical talent, I suppose). I hate to see it, but I can totally imagine her doing that!

hate to say it (and I'd hate to see it!). sorry bout that

I love Jaco's bass. Anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on anything.

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks Hejira would be nowhere near as good without him. I don't like to think of myself as a fretless bass guy but between this and Mick Karn, I guess I am!

I'm generally not a fan of fretless electric bass guitar, but yeah, Hejira is unimaginable without it.

I came late to Clouds, thinking she would still be finding her feet. Boy, was I wrong. Might be my second fave Joni, after Blue.

i'd like a thread of indispensable bass albums, come to think of it!

Listened to some of Heijera on the drive home...fretless bass takes some getting used to, at least for me. But so far i love Amelia, and the title track.

It will grow on you, at least on this record. This record also grows on you, stealthily. But I am now so deep into Hissing of Summer Lawns I can't see out of it.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/joni_mitchell_amazing_live_bbc_in_concert_performance_from_1970

Brilliant.

Thank you.

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

Oh man, Amelia is something else.

http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2013/06/05/joni-mitchell/

_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_

Just created a Joni Mitchell 1975-80 playlist on Spotify -- will be interested to see if this is finally what makes me turn the corner on her.

Bought Ladies of the Canyon the other day and loved it. Shared "Big Yellow Taxi" on Facebook and promptly got told by one of my friends that Counting Crow's version was "much, much better".

wow, this has to be one of the most obnoxious '2001 ilm' openings to a thread ever

Did you see the 90 min profile done for CBC in 2003? http://vimeo.com/20279550#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdpTGFZSgfA&feature=youtu.be

Bought Ladies of the Canyon the other day and loved it. Shared "Big Yellow Taxi" on Facebook and promptly got told by one of my friends that Counting Crow's version was "much, much better".

― arctic mindbath (President of the People's Republic of Antarctica), Friday, June 7, 2013 8:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always think Adam Durtz sounds happy that they paved paradise and put in a parking lot, like he had really needed the parking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

kingfarticus 2 weeks ago
Thumbs up if you heard this at Target, Macy's, or in an elevator.
Reply · 17

Amazing how much people hated her in 2001!

her crime was that she wasn't belle & sebastien

Wasn't there a Neptunes remix of the Counting Crows version or something?

classic:

Dud, Dud and thrice Dud. Annoyingly "twee" hippy songstress with a piercing warble that could make dogs' heads explode. Ick!
― alex in nyc,

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/an_enchanting_two_hour_interview_with_joni_mitchell

I don't think this is the same thing as the CBC doc...this is a 2 hour CBC interview

Watching Joni at her 70th celebration, giving in to the muse and deciding to sing in public once again, damn, that's uplifting.

I wish she'd give up smoking.

She makes a point of smoking!

My friend went to the Massey Hall thing the other night. She also tried to get Mitchell's autograph three different times this past week, no luck.

Any idea if the entire Massey Hall show will be available, beyond the shakey cell phone shots on YouTube?

choosing cigarettes over such a unique instrument is just... ugh

I love Dog Eat Dog. Can't believe it is disparaged even now, even here.

I feel bad for someone who think Joni Mitchell is a "dud," if someone sincerely believes that. If you're not moved (musically and/or emotionally) by at least 'Blue,' it might be time to think a little less about music and hear it a little more.

xpost: I picked up Dog Eat Dog in December and was surprised by how good it was. Definitely not bad.

She's 100% dud at interviews, afaic.

I love Dog Eat Dog and put "Shiny Toys" on my Joni ballot

"Good Friends" on mine.

Court & Spark is such a warm weather record.

hehe yeah - a kind of hazy stunned-by-the-heat listen

It's funny because Hissing was my first intense Joni listen - had liked Blue but not gone deep. I was alone in Perth, Western Australia, it was insanely hot and I walked downtown and bought Hissing on a whim. Sat down for a casual listen and bang, there goes the rest of the day. So that is a hot weather record for me, it's quite liquid in a way.

Yea! Harry's House/Centrepiece, 'heat waves on the runway, as the wheels set down' and the doppler horn-section intro. Such great imagery.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm3h2mjFOt1qbyeqlo1_500.gif

sigh...

I love Jaco's bass. Anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on anything.

OTM. The fusion fretless bass and processed guitars were actually what first drew me to JM.

By the time of Don Juan, the bass was the loudest instrument after Joni's voice, some track have two basslines, she must have been very taken with him.

Wait, I had no idea until now that she ever did a live album with Pat Metheny!

I think The Boho Dance might have been the first time I felt like a real "adult" listening to music, like a song could speak to something other than my adolescent desires and mood swings.

It's funny because Hissing was my first intense Joni listen - had liked Blue but not gone deep. I was alone in Perth, Western Australia, it was insanely hot and I walked downtown and bought Hissing on a whim. Sat down for a casual listen and bang, there goes the rest of the day. So that is a hot weather record for me, it's quite liquid in a way.

There's a funny resonance for me to the way In France They Kiss on Main Street kind of sounds like a continuation of Court And Spark both in musical style and content (it really kind of pairs with Free Man in Paris, and it has a similar beat to Help Me), but then the rest of the record kind of departs from that.

Sometimes Hissing feels close to a concept album but I think it's probably not. There are definitely recurring themes about suburbs/city and men trying to possess and control women.

Oh yes, there is a strong sense of being trapped by privilege across the whole album. And a strange tension that anchors the fluidity of the song structures and forms into one thing - folding Burundi drums and a 20s jazz cover into the dissection of upper middle class California makes it seem like anything could happen. That's why it's her peak for me.

would have been a much more interesting album for 33 1/3 to do a book on than C&S (which I love too, just not as good to write about)

Why does For The Roses not ever get enough props?

Because shit is fucked.

http://www.sainsburysentertainment.co.uk/en/Music/CD/Joni-Mitchell/The-Studio-Albums-1968-1979-Limited-Edition/product.html?product=E11133730

Why does For The Roses not ever get enough props?

― MaresNest, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 4:51 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because shit is fucked.

― Tim F, Tuesday, July 23, 2013 5:44 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm

is it the ass?

Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire is one of her greatest vocals imo.

Happy 70th Jones

dangerousminds.net (an ilxor? their content often seems to align with hot ilx topics of the week) posted an awesome video in commemoration of mrs. mitchell's b-day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoKBGotuNhc

Played the exact same video for my class around 9:15 this morning (just "Big Yellow Taxi," which you can find as a separate clip).

Love "Song for Sharon" especially the guitar

Classic

Blinked through the thread and there's a lot of hate and some of it possibly deserved

I don't know that much. About her even.

But, I can spot some golden open tuning lark going on

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.

― High in Openness (Shakey Mo Collier)

But DULCIMER!

It's not in my top three either but ugh Shakey

Tbh my appreciation of Blue has increased since that post. Its more consistent than its predecessors in a lot of ways

I think some of the tunes on Ladies of the Canyon do start to anticipate Blue in different ways ("Conversation" leads to "Carey", "California" and "This Flight Tonight"; "The Arrangement" leads to "Blue" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard"; "Rainy Night House" and "The Priest" don't really lead to anything on Blue, but maybe anticipate the nervousness of her later odd-numbered albums), but there's a kind of liberated intuitiveness to the performances on almost all of Blue (excepting "Little Green" which was old anyways), which she'd never done before except in flashes. The songs feel less ~composed~ and more as if she's just pouring out her thoughts in a manner that just happens to resolve into these charming melodies (this is a key sense in which Blue is importantly "confessional", as much as or more than due to the subject matter).

In fact I remember when I first got into Joni at 14, I didn't much like Ladies of the Canyon because it felt much less one-to-one relatable, much less Joni in the sense of what she meant to me for her work from Blue through to Hejira.

At some point in the following fifteen years I got into other folk music, and when I returned to Ladies about two years ago I really loved it, perhaps precisely for the qualities that had originally turned me off.

But whether or not it was for the better in the final analysis, the shift from Ladies to Blue still feels like a huge transition to me.

Lex did a great Ten Of The Best on Joni last week on the Guardian website, well worth checking out.

Tim OTM about Ladies.
For some reason, the record has always felt like work to me, even though i do really like most of the individual songs. Not sure how to explain this, but to my ears that album as a whole comes across as this folky "quality piece of work", whereas Blue (not my fave anyway) seems much more evident and necessary.

think i prefer Ladies to Clouds. not sure though, it goes back and forth for me. i love blue and it may be my favorite joni record, but i really really really prefer the dulcimer tracks to the piano tracks.

Blue is amazing, but it was kind of ruined for me when I was in college and lived off campus near the womens' college student center (and thus spent a decent amount of time in the student center), where the coffee shop was ALWAYS playing it. It's also one of those albums that's just so tender and interior and sad that it's rare that I'm in the right frame of mind to listen to it in my busy adult life.

also some of these "classic or dud" threads started 12-14 years ago in which the subject is an older artist who is typically undeniably classic (e.g. joni) always show a kind of interesting split between early and new ILM -- how many people on ILM nowadays who don't like joni mitchell would care enough to visit the thread and say shit like this:

Pure garbage. Not fit to pick the toenails of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley. Bloody ugly, as well.

― Johnathan, Friday, April 13, 2001 8:00 PM (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

newer artists obviously still get lots of discussion but i'm kind of grateful we don't see posts like the above anymore.

I feel like ILM used to get a lot more random googlers. IDK if that has changed for some techno-magical reason.

ILX didn't use to require registration - can't remember when that was changed

2007 iirc

Anybody who likes her at all shouldn't miss the debut, alternately listed as s/t or Song To A Seagull. Whatever romantic illusions she still had, she'd already been through some early shit (teen motherhood, baby put up for adoption, marriage soon over), not spelled out yet, but shadowy allusions clear enough in the first song, "I Had A King," and though feminism was hardly a recognizable term just then for most, "I in my leather and lace/I could never be that kind" in that voice, meant she had the strength to take her distinctive self pretty far, in whatever direction. That's not hindsight, because I first heard it soon after it came out. The tunings, the tunes,the chords--individually and in progression--the rhythmic turns, the way she made the warble work, between the level, confiding, unapologetic, though never complacent phrases: she could be a one-woman Pentangle, she could do folkie-pop, whatever. She was observational, she was introspective without getting lost in there---well, could've done without "The Pirate of Penance," but she kept me listening. She was already a Lady of the Canyon sonically, the way producer Cros kept her voice centered in there, with just the right deployment of echo, the occasional boom of lower strings. Eh, maybe it wouldn't sound that great next to some later ones now, but I thought it was awesome.

And it was almost all her voice and guitar, a little bit of her piano, plus a perfect li'l Stills bass riff on "Night In The City."

I'd be surprised if Stevie Nicks didn't know this record pretty well.

On a related tangent one of the things that surprised me about Linda Perhacs' album of the same era is how the mystical hippie stuff is intermingled with decidedly Joni-esque material like "Paper Mountain Man". It's sort of like a direction Joni could have taken if she'd drifted further towards, rather than away from folk after her first few albums.

Great post, dow. It's actually kind if amazing how in the first ten seconds of her recorded career you can hear the melodic/aesthetic/lyrical/arrangement template that she would explore for the next decade. Stark contrast to her contemporaries whose debuts all sound indebted to various Tom Rushes and the like.

i really like "Pirate of Penance" tho

also some of these "classic or dud" threads started 12-14 years ago in which the subject is an older artist who is typically undeniably classic (e.g. joni) always show a kind of interesting split between early and new ILM -- how many people on ILM nowadays who don't like joni mitchell would care enough to visit the thread and say shit like this:

Pure garbage. Not fit to pick the toenails of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley. Bloody ugly, as well.
― Johnathan, Friday, April 13, 2001 8:00 PM (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

newer artists obviously still get lots of discussion but i'm kind of grateful we don't see posts like the above anymore.

― marcos, Monday, May 5, 2014 9:52 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the reason for this is that there were so few regulars on ILM in the early days that the folks who /were/ here felt a need to contribute their opinion to nearly every topic/thread. now that sort of thing is impossible--I probably have time to follow four or five threads on the "new answers" page, if that.

i was on ILX in 2002 (!) and can pretty much remember how it worked.

--old man amateurist

Misogyny, thy name is Patriarchal Penis Envy! Never! Have I witnessed such a stomach churning Big Bully Boys Club Day Out as the shit flung at Joni Mitchell on this board.

Ever occur to you gents that you're jealous because you've done Sweet FA w/your lives and Ms. Mitchell's taken the very essence of life itself and moulded it to her muse?

I spit on you! Puh!

i think 2014 ilx consensus is that joni is most supreme. check out this to feel affirmed:
Oh I Wish I Had a POLL, I Could Skate Away On: The Joni Mitchell Tracks/Albums Results Thread (ILM ARTIST POLL #26)

googler, I take it? xp

valuable new poster

tbf when i open this thread up i always fp the naysayers at the top just to make sure

only FP cos I want to see if we can set a new record here

tho its fuckin madness to even hint at did ITT tbh

old ilx was a bunch of twee fuckers with challops regarding stuff abt which they knew v little.

Daphnis otm

old ilx was a bunch of twee fuckers with challops regarding stuff abt which they knew v little.

― a biscuit/donut hybrid called “bisnuts” (stevie), Sunday, 27 July 2014 09:39 (6 hours ago) Permalink

See also: opening few posts on the Neil Young: Classic or Dud thread

i think about the guy who told everybody they only liked coffee because it was cool like ... most days

Sweet FA would be a great band name.

sweet, sweet failure analysis

An early show, listed as Nov. '66 at the Second Fret in Philly, though someone quoted toward the end of the post says it's from 1967, that she did play there the previous year, but in a duo with her husband, Chuck Mitchell. Could be, since the post also links to an interview from the 1966 gig, where Chuck does a lot of the talking. Anyway, this show is all her, and she does some songs that wouldn't show up on her albums for years--- decades, in some cases:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1884

In case the tracks go away, here's the original annotations (also transcribed in the Big O post, if this isn't legible enough):

http://www.bigozine2.com/MP3AA/MP314/JMsfret/JMsfretBk.jpg

http://www.bigozine2.com/MP3AA/MP314/JMsfret/JMsfret2.jpg

thank you dow!

Welcolme, stevie. Before she plays "Urge for Going," she says that George Hamilton IV's version is "Number 13 with a bullet," so might be early '67 already, since that's when he got it into the Country Top 10. What a guitarist she is! I suspect the way she rang the changes "influenced" some other songwriters as much as anything else she did.

eh, "welcome," jeez.

her tunings are in any alt-tuning bible by name; she's one of the great acoustic guitarists of the rock era

I like the story from "hotel california" w/Clapton watching her play some tunes at mama cass's house and staring at her hands trying to figure out how the hell she was doing what she was doing.

aero otm

Read this earlier this year - its really excellent
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Like-Us-Mitchell-Generation/dp/0091899249/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406619092&sr=1-11&keywords=joni+mitchell

Yeah just to second that recommendation, good book

Thirded

Gosh Miles of Aisles is great -- love hearing the band from that era jam out

i've been listening to this really great album recently it's called blue

i didn't know night ride home before everybody got effusive about it, in this thread or a different thread, i don't know. & wow! i listen to it a lot lately. the windfall.

*puts on night ride home again*

"The Windfall" makes me feel a bit uncomfortable actually.

How so, Tim? I haven't heard it. This evening I came across an old tape of acoustic demos for The Hissing of Summer Lawns. She's still working out how to articulate all these dense lines, but I got some of the nuances of her social critiques, which aren't too aloof--she gets pulled into the promenades of "On France They Kiss On Main Street," "Dream Land," "The Boho Dance"---but on first listen, the simple male mind is most smitten by the most simplistic song, "Shades of Scarlett Conquering": sympathetically rendered scenes from the love life of a drama queen, fucked up by the movies--very cinematic, so maybe she just saw the wrong movies. Reminds me of that elegantly deterministic property, "Paul's Case," by Willa Cather. Sound's rough-edged, but no Tom Scott sax on these, yay.

It's only six songs from the finished album, which I haven't heard in ages.

elegantly anti-commodity-fetish property or progressive morality machine, something like that.

Like Mitchell was one of those who though a range of California-associated perspectives (did she date Jerry Brown? Think that was Ronstadt)

"The Windfall" is a blunt character assassination of a former house maid who had sued Joni. Even if the portrayal is accurate the whole exercise reveals a tremendous lack of tact.

Less important, but it's also the only tune that really jars with the compelling seer-crone-priestess vibe she sets up on the album's best songs.

Yes Miles is awesome!

Used to love Miles of Aisles back in the day, and it does have some of her greatest "swoops" and guitar-playing, but even if I like live albums more than he does, Xgau's right that the "jams" as it were are a bit woolly and the song selection does go on a bit.

on first listen night ride home sounds pretty nice! interesting to think about what if this had been the album she had made after hejira instead of don juan's reckless daughter.

my taste for stuff like this (night ride home) sometimes makes me think that i should listen more closely to ani difranco. i've heard plenty of ani's stuff -- my wife is a fan -- but i've never really sat down with it except for in college when i reviewed ani's up up up up up up for dom passantino's alma mater's student newspaper. and i have to say, at the time, i was kind of surprised at how much i was into it.

though this also reminds me, interestingly, of late bobby mcferrin.

Up × 6 isn't even a particularly good Ani album.

But you're right, there's a side of Ani that is very similar to Night Ride Home.

In particular Reckoning, the second disc of Revelling/Reckoning from 2001. This is the title track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvyHD9gJOO4

Box set---which she curated--get tired of this term nowadays, but if anybody does it, you know she does

http://wp-images.emusic.com/assets/2014/10/joni-mitchell.jpg

http://www.wonderingsound.com/news/joni-mitchell-discusses-handpicked-love-many-faces-box-set/

just a new attempt to monetize her catalogue, she puts some of her heart into it but that doesn't make it any less redundant

"What do you mean my royalty checks are getting smaller? How many records am I selling? What?! When did that happen? No one is buying my records anymore? Wait, so you're saying no one is selling any records anymore? Not even Jackson Browne? Wow. What's that? You think I should tour? Yawn, next. Is there some other way to get a paycheck that doesn't involve making new music, or playing live? A boxed set? Cool, let me spend two years on it. Hey, can we get it in that Pono that Neil keeps talking about?"

Mingus 2: Better Git It In Your Pono

wonder how much vertigo you experience in the transition between "car on a hill" and dancin' clown"

"Curated" compilations are p much always useless but I'm in favor of Joni Mitchell making money, even lots of it

i think about joni mitchell a lot. i hope she's feeling okay. i hope one day she feels okay enough to do another tour so i get a chance to see her live. but if not - she should just live + be well.

I hope she's reading this thread, smoking.

yeah I also feel a kind of sympathy/empathy for Joni Mitchell that I don't so much for most famous musicians. Maybe because she seems to give so much of herself to her audience and seems to be so pained, IDK.

Joni Mitchell has revealed some of the details surrounding her four-disc box set Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, a Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced. Originally meant as a tidy best-of compilation, the project took a couple years to complete, as the singer-songwriter tried to construct a clear narrative through handpicked selections from her 17 albums.

i know this is obvious, but it is completely absurd that it would take anyone 2 years to come up with a playlist for a four-disc box set. for her own music! jesus christ joni, just clear out a couple afternoons on your calendar and focus, it doesn't have to be so hard

how involved was she in the sequencing for hits? i've always felt like it's an exceptionally great greatest hits compilation. i'm curious to see how she sequences her career now - which of the early tracks she feels warmest about today. idk. i wouldn't buy the boxset tho esp since i already have every lp so who needs it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2738088/The-secret-torment-Joni-Mitchell-Unflinching-memoir-reveals-reclusive-70s-icon-battles-disease-makes-skin-crawl-haunted-stalkers-heartache-giving-daughter-adoption.html

Morgellons!

i know this is obvious, but it is completely absurd that it would take anyone 2 years to come up with a playlist for a four-disc box set. for her own music! jesus christ joni, just clear out a couple afternoons on your calendar and focus, it doesn't have to be so hard

― Karl Malone

idk have you seen the XTC poll?

maybe joni created a poll for her own songs, submitted a new entry every day for two years, checked in recently to view the results— and blam! box set.

"What do you mean my royalty checks are getting smaller? How many records am I selling? What?! When did that happen? No one is buying my records anymore? Wait, so you're saying no one is selling any records anymore? Not even Jackson Browne? Wow. What's that? You think I should tour? Yawn, next. Is there some other way to get a paycheck that doesn't involve making new music, or playing live? A boxed set? Cool, let me spend two years on it. Hey, can we get it in that Pono that Neil keeps talking about?"

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 15, 2014 6:53 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do wonder about these geezers who could depend on reliable royalty checks for a few decades and then, fairly suddenly, it all dries up.

like carole king. no doubt she raked in millions every year from publishing royalties alone ("you make me feel like a natural woman" / "you've got a friend" /etc.), and i'm betting the checks have been a lot smaller lately.

on the other hand, maybe michael bay decides to include "porpoise song" in transformers 79 and it's payday again

You know Carole King just had a hit musical based on her life and songs, right?

that's true... maybe she wasn't a good example.

let's take this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Bell

i imagine his royalties from back catalog sales of philly soul have diminished in the past 15 years.

or someone like, uh, neil diamond.

you know what i mean.

never mind.

ilx: the most pedantic place on earth

Some artists do get hung up on decisions like that; several have mentioned that they can't hear their own records without getting distracted (at least) by thinking about studio and other situations, incl backstories of the songs--plus being insecure and obsessive: Mogellons/delusional parasitosis: http://www.ent.uga.edu/pubs/EkbomCurrPsychiatryRpts.pdf
Plus, lingering effects of polio, which she's cited re not touring anymore--also if her voice really is shot, though it wasn't on studio tracks from about 10 years ago, live tapes a few years older---hey, if Dylan can manage, like every night...
At one point, she said that reunion with her daughter had taken away the need to make make music.

I think it's about time that Joni Mitchell put out a boxed set. Good for her.

Might not be financial as much as the urge to do something more, whatever she can. She already did the versions w strings for inst.; mostly pretty good too.

ts: box set vs. boxed set

I live Joni

amateurist I definitely think there are a lot of artists for whom the royalties eventually "dry up." I kind of doubt that's the case for Joni since she's canonized and also gets covered all the time. She also doesn't strike me as someone who blew all her fortunes on a lavish lifestyle, but who knows.

I wonder how much coin Joni rakes in every Xmas season due to "River"?

I can't even think of what Joni would blow wads of money on -- one-of-a-kind handmade scarves? A rustic villa in the Italian countryside? Whalewatching tours?

treatments for her psychosomatic disease?

and Hurting, yeah i wouldn't think joni is one whose royalties dried up... but surely even people like her saw a pretty big dip in the last 15 years. i just feel bad for those middle-level artists whose retirement was probably bet on the continued appearance of royalty checks.

Luckily she didn't buy her housemaid a car.

Royalty payments fascinate me and I could discuss'em forever. How much would she make a year, ya think?

She probably make a mint off the Counting Crows cover, our suffering for her gain I suppose. Aside from that, I have no idea. Musician's income always break down in weird ways. But:

amateurist I definitely think there are a lot of artists for whom the royalties eventually "dry up."

I'd say "all artists with few exceptions". (Except film composers, it seems.)

Oh big $ if you can turn your catalogue into a hit musical, in case any musicians here had a catalogue that could be turned into a hit musical

She probably make a mint off the Counting Crows cover, our suffering for her gain I suppose.

Or how about the Janet Jackson sample?

Think the income for a lot of established artists comes more from investments, not that some of them (Billy Joel, L.Cohen) don't have their personal Madoffs, as it turns out, The ones who actually get enough royalties to invest, that is--for the other side, see an epic and cogent discussion in Ruth Brown's autobio, Miss Rhythm: backstory of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, set up to establish, collect and distribute what a lot of artists, famous and otherwise, should have been receiving all through their careers (Atlantic Records giving a new meaning to "loss leader").
Not so much of a problem with white classic rock royalty, it seems. Indeed, remember reading in Billboard, early in the Napster era, that big companies weren't offering good deals to new artists because had so much tied up in long term deals w Clapton, Phil Collins etc.

I think the key is when someone covers your song. Your own album, the labels fuck you over and do everything they can not to pay you what's owed. But when someone covers your song, it seems like the payout comes much faster, perhaps for legal/licensing reasons. We've talked about it before, but I've always wondered what, say, Wire makes off REM. Or, you know, Leonard Cohen from his surprise credit on "Automatic for the People."

Well if you own the publishing (i.e. the composition itself) and someone covers it, you get paid through ASCAP/BMI iirc. There's no licensing issue to deal with, it's a "compulsory license." I think this is right, anyway -- I did study this at one point but never actually worked in the field so it's rusty.

I think ASCAP/BMI basically keep track of performances/radio plays/sales of the cover version for you.

royalties checks for legacy artists are probably still pretty good. I'm still getting checks (they don't pay the rent, but they help with it) on stuff I released twenty years ago that almost nobody's ever heard of. there is, as the last number of posts illustrate, a huge system of how publishing money works, and a lot of options (sell your publishing outright / license your songs / other people cover them and you get your percentage / etc) - these options are easier to exploit if you're more famous or have written songs lots of people recognize. Hurting's right about the compulsory license.

But Joni Mitchell probably isn't issuing the boxed set because her royalties stream from 30-year-old back catalog suddenly dried up. It probably experienced a the same sharp correction everybody else experienced right around 2001, but the checks are probably still pretty good.

Wish Joni had a boat named 'James Blake'

I would think Joni's got money coming in from a bunch of different streams - let's not forget she's also a painter

Would think (unless he got ripped off on older publishing too) Cohen might do alright from covers of "Hallelujah" alone (various heard in syndicated TV eps pretty often, most often Rufus Wainwright's---Willie Nelson's is my fave, maybe cos he doesn't sound too fervent)

I guess I can see how being a legacy artist who's not constantly performing could still have some precarity -- the money can probably be unpredictable and you have to stretch it to last a long time. So Mitchell = probably not poor, but maybe needs to do a new project once in a while to ensure comfortable retirement.

remember that cohen had all his money fucked away by an unscrupulous manager some years ago

that said, i'm sure that royalties from hallelujah (not to mention his endless touring) have kept him well in the black ever since

Cohen has said that touring has largely refilled those coffers.

This is an interesting topic that really deserves its own thread. FWIW when Richard Wright of Pink Floyd (stratospheric, I know) died his estate was worth £24 million.

All Who tours undertaken between 1989 and 2002 were done to keep John Entwistle out of debt. Ironically, much of his debt was incurred because he went out-of-pocket keeping his solo band on club tours that never broke even (though his spending on guitars, basses, cars, taxidermied fish, and a collection of medieval armor probably didn't help). When he died, all his possessions had to be auctioned off to pay outstanding debts and settle his estate's tax.

Worth keeping in mind that Richard Wright had many Floyd writing credits on albums that sell bazillions. Entwistle ... less so.

I would read an entire book on this stuff. It's fascinating to me how a single savvy decision like making sure to get co-writing credit or just how good/bad the terms of a certain deal are can become such a make or break for an artist for years to come.

sideline, but there was already a Joni box set, guys

http://www.amazon.com/Studio-Albums-1968-Joni-Mitchell/dp/B0097AQEOK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413561012&sr=8-1&keywords=joni+mitchell+box

and its incredibly inexpensive and wonderful

wow, that's a great deal

Indeed. Would also like to hear her choice & sequence of tracks, her implicit narrative.

I would read an entire book on this stuff. It's fascinating to me how a single savvy decision like making sure to get co-writing credit or just how good/bad the terms of a certain deal are can become such a make or break for an artist for years to come.

― my jaw left (Hurting 2), Friday, October 17, 2014 11:47 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This one is pretty great:
http://www.amazon.com/You-Never-Give-Your-Money/dp/0061774189

Indeed. Would also like to hear her choice & sequence of tracks, her implicit narrative.

― dow, Friday, October 17, 2014 10:55 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's called iTunes, and it's free!

sort of

Is Joni still represented by Elliott Roberts? If he's been able to keep Neil Young solvent, she should be a cakewalk.

no Who album has ever sold as much as Pink Floyd album. It's like comparing, I dunno, Tom Petty sales to Zep's.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Dark Side has sold more than the Who's whole catalog combined.

money, it's a gas

finally sprung for the joni studio albums 1968-1979 collection, i have a few already (mostly on vinyl) but at $40 for 10 albums it is a great deal. $4 an album is lovely.

yeah, I picked it up last year. was waiting for some sooper deluxe editions to drop but she seems uninterested in that and the price was right.

Gosh Miles of Aisles is great -- love hearing the band from that era jam out

― my jaw left (Hurting 2), Sunday, September 14, 2014 9:28 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, this is SO good

really been enjoying don juan's reckless daughter lately! doesn't seem to have been received as well but I find it pretty close to Hejira in terms of quality even though it's much looser in its experimentation

we are in synch! I drove around town listening to this yesterday and it's such a great record- "Paprika Plains"! amazing!

(not to dwell in the past but this was a big bjork fave that she was listening to a lot while finalizing "vespertine" and it shows, I think)

Could totally see that re: bjork

yeah i've always been surprised at how overlooked Reckless Daughter is to this day, even amongst Hejira stans

I love Jaco's bass. Anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on anything.

― Tim F, Wednesday, December 26, 2012 8:22 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes!

Jaco's alright if you like bass farts

I fucking hate Jaco, will never mature out of that opinion. He's where I draw the line.

my wife told me she couldn't handle hissing of the summer lawns this weekend and i was like :^0

hurting i guess you do not like hejira or don juan's reckless daughter then

and i think you makes just a lil fucked up tbqf

I love "Dreamland" so goddamn much that I almost never play anything else off that record

and i think *that you makes *you just a lil fucked up tbqf

sorry about typos i need to make this message clear

Hurting otm

I'm not a Jaco fan either, but I love Hejira.

Couldn't make it through Mingus, though.

mingus is not as good on first listen but i could see myself developing some kind of affection for it

and yes dreamland is WONDERFUL xp

Hejira is pretty much the only place I can tolerate Jaco, and barely. Actually there are one or two Weather Report tunes I like him on, but overall nope. BYOW BYOW BYOOOOWWWW

hey, do that again. i liked that.

yea!

Posted this on the Ron Sexsmith thread -- interesting to see later Joni covered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUDUCcOPFE0

yeah a little jaco goes a long way but joni deploys him beautifully. i'd also recommend his work on the pat metheny-led album "bright size life." aside from those, yes, i can see how his technique can grate.

I just generally hate the sound of fretless bass. the tone of it. there are a few dudes who get a pass on it because they employ it so strangely (Colin Moulding etc.) but it's a small bunch

amateurist otm re: bright size life. Such a good album!

it was recommended to me on ILM, maybe even on this very thread.

Some fairly wide-ranging Mitchell show tapes incl. Larry Klein having no prob w Jaco-associated songs, while not trying to imitate him (also no difficulty with songs from other eras).
Metheny Group could be good, though I like him better with Haden etc. on 80/81 and Rejoicing, also w Ornette on Song X (also good w Gary Burton)

I really liked Jaco's s/t solo debut. Really haven't latched on to anything else by him though, including the Mitchell work.

Yeah, that solo album is pretty funky. Sam + Dave and Herbie Hancock cameos help.

Bright Size Life is great and captures a lot of the same vibe as Hejira

Joni on Car(e)y:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-muse-behind-joni-mitchells-carey-1415721658

wonderful image too

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AR-AH807_JONI_12S_20141111102702.jpg

and an interview with Cary himself!
http://online.wsj.com/articles/when-joni-mitchell-met-cary-raditz-her-mean-old-daddy-1415721367?tesla=y

great article! xxp

yea both of those were really great

https://crete.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/joni-michell-in-matala-crete/

Mark Deming reviews new, def artist's-choice box set (think some audio excerpts too but haven't had time to check): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-has-many-faces-a-quartet-a-ballet-waiting-to-be-danced-joni-mitchell/28316633?ean=81227957858

Cover is also self-portrait, I think I read:

http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/81227957858_p0_v1_s600.JPG

Figured bump would be for
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joni-mitchell-will-not-allow-taylor-swift-to-play-her/

I said to the producer, 'All you've got is a girl with high cheekbones'....RAWR!

Who should play Joni would be an interesting game to play

She doesn't conform to the standards required to be met by anyone you've heard of.

Jenny Lewis is probably too old

A Joni biopic has so much potential for bathos, maybe it just shouldn't ever happen

Maybe if it were just the Cary/Carey experience? I wanna go to that island. Keira Knightley could do it (the island thing didn't involve much campfire chirping, seems like; could just use soundtrack of the original J)

K wouldn't be too old for that-era J

You know, like the one about the Beatles as Hamburg house band, or when John and Brian Epstein took a vacation together.

I thought the bump would be for that awful open letter by Dave Bidini (non-Canadians and anyone under the age of 25 go "who?") that's basically "why don't you smile, lady? ps why do u h8 John Lennon"

hey what can you folks tell me about post-70s joni?

what should i a seek out? listening to wild things run fast right now and i can dig it tbh

If you like Wild Things from the get-go, you may be well served just working through it all, you'll probably find a fair amount of interest in every record.

Night Ride Home (from 1991) is best though.

Re box set & all sides now, cool li'l interview this morning. Think there's more tomorrow:

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/369276288/after-decades-of-success-shes-still-just-a-painter-who-writes-songs

"man to man" from wild things is great, uses the new 80s production and style pretty successfully imo

I definitely rep for Wild Things, Taming and Night Ride (the latter two especially). Also, Shine is somewhat underrated, if occasionally overly serious and didactic (even for Joni)

and by "underrated" I mean among the kinda people who post to ILX. It was her best selling album since Hejira iirc

Hell, I love "Fiction" and "Good Friends" from DED.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B63FmFICQAALwAj.jpg

"They paved paradise/put up a designer boutique shop..."

lol

i am listening to mingus as we speak, didn't notice this thread in SNA, but searched it to post about mingus! anyways this album is highly underrated, it's a little flimsier than the preceding albums but i just love the looseness of it, joni does jazz VERY VERY well and i've never had a problem with how deep she wanted to go into jazz.

Joni doesn't either!

haha which is a good thing!

I like that portrait. Makes me feel like a lad again, hat in hand, before my girlfriend's Mom. Time and the Cali sun have not melted her.

Then again, Google her self-portraits...

they are amazing!

Eh I kind of feel like Joni doing jazz never really sounds like jazz, just jazzed up Joni ( not necessarily a bad thing). But I need to give Mingus a closer listen.

i don't particularly enjoy the "mingus" album but i've always been a little suspicious of how some critics seemed to want to punish mitchell for trying to make a "jazz" album, as if this white girl couldn't possibly know what she was doing. in fact i think more than a few of the critics were bluffing their supposed expertise in jazz that qualified them to disparage the album as not-jazz.

I remember not liking it a while back. I so rarely like ANY jazz vocals, that Joni doing her take on them was not likely to please me. Right now I'm listening to it again -- the opener is kind of messy and pointless imo, an exercise, but I guess it does sound like "actual jazz" whatever little that's worth. God Must Be A Boogie Man is sort of overwrought. I also have a distaste for Jaco's intrusive, farty bass playing in general. The lyrics she put to Goodbye Porkpie Hat are cringey, but she does a credible job on the vocal. The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey is a very good tune though.

It's also the least "jazzy" of the tunes so far.

Pre-Mitchell Joni:

http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/vintage-video-of-joni-mitchell-performing-in-1965.html

Thanks so much for posting that.

Total aside, but the Jim Chapin announced on drums wrote one of the most important drumset books out there, like one of a handful that pretty much every drum student uses.

She's already so much better than anything referred to as part of "the folk scene" aby then imo.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/joni-mitchell-taylor-swift-biopic/

Okay, like, some people just don't GET IT.

yeah not sure what to make of joni's reaction.

acid grass and gin
fibers in my skin
gobs of grins

Never seen this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8d3z4lkaw

Great new interview here: http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/02/joni-mitchell-fashion-muse.html

Yeah, that's great! Still chain-smoking, I see.

She says she heard, on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.’ ” The comment crystallized so much for her that she repeats it every chance she gets.

incredible pic

morgellon's thing bums me out, dunno what to make of that

She says she heard, on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.’ ” The comment crystallized so much for her that she repeats it every chance she gets.

she's been making this same complaint since... 1968? 1970?

according to joni mitchell, joni mitchell has been too good for the record industry since whenever

i mean, god bless her

haha yeah she has been a curmudgeon forever. kind of refreshing -- she never settled into being a cozy personality. not interested in being lovable!
i'd be curious to know what that "burglar" turned up for her nixed box set. probably some cool stuff!
She mentions the guy her record company sent not long ago — “the burglar,” she calls him — to root around her storage unit to cobble together a boxed set she calls a “turd,” which she eventually got killed.

oh to be a fly on the wall at the mitchell / geffen household

Yipes.

https://variety.com/2015/music/news/joni-mitchell-hospitalized-1201463950/

https://twitter.com/JoniMitchellcom/status/583099213170417664

Some slightly better word

https://twitter.com/LeslieCBC/status/583101711973236736

https://twitter.com/LeslieCBC/status/583101436243902464

get well soon, joni

Still in hospital, but also "in good spirits":
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/01/entertainment/joni-mitchell-hospitalized/

Bass Player Magazine just posted this
"Dry Cleaner From Des Moines"... Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias, Pat Metheny and Michael Brecker bring this house down with this Shadows and Light Tour clip from 1979.

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

Tour pic, also from Bass Player

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBsIRNWWEAAp_vY.jpg

(Lot of other Joni on that YouTube page duh)

full concert at same link, a YouTube thing now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1XFbhSMxIM

That "tour pic" got Erskine and Hancock w J and J, doesn't it?

excellent late 70s style happening in those clips

:(

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/04/joni-mitchell-has-fallen-into-a-coma/

oh no

so tired of cool people gettin sick and dying this year. can't some evil assholes get sick and die for once.

oh no

sending you love joni I have so much for you

:(

Really hope she pulls through...this is so sad.

so much for all the snark about "made up" illnesses--assholes. this is a tough day for my family and me

comas aren't made up. morgellon's disease looks pretty made up tho.

Very sorry to hear, though I must admit that I'm in the unfortunate habit of fearing the worst every time I see this thread bumped.

Does anyone know what exactly is going on here, medically? I'm not even that much of a Joni fan but she is such a big part of people I know and love that they've named children after her and her songs.

Not in a coma according to her website.

Great news. Sorry to spread misinformation.

Apr 28: Update on Joni's health
Contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet today, Joni is not in a coma. Joni is still in the hospital - but she comprehends, she’s alert, and she has her full senses. A full recovery is expected. The document obtained by a certain media outlet simply gives her longtime friend Leslie Morris the authority - in the absence of 24-hour doctor care - to make care decisions for Joni once she leaves the hospital. As we all know, Joni is a strong-willed woman and is nowhere near giving up the fight. Please continue to keep Joni in your thoughts. You may add your well wishes for her at the website WeLoveYouJoni.com

Jeez

whew, good news, thanx tyler

http://www.nutrasilver.com/morgellons-treatment

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32592528

excerpt:
A judge has put a friend of singer Joni Mitchell in charge of her medical decisions, after the musician entered intensive care last month.

Lawyer Alan Watenmaker told a hearing on Monday that Mitchell, 71, may leave hospital soon but is unable to confer with doctors about her medical care.

Leslie Morris, Mitchell's friend for more than 40 years, was appointed guardian by judge David S Cunningham.

It is still not clear what the singer-songwriter is being treated for.

approaching perfection

Sorry...Kind of similar to the info from late April.

"unable to confer w/ doctors"

i wonder... does this mean she can't speak? or isn't conscious?

whatever it is... jeez. poor joni.

Yeah the only common scenario that seems consistent with all the stories is a massive stroke leaving her no reliable means of communicating. Hope that's not the case though :-(

aneurysm :(

=(

Wait, RIP, or just the latest bad news?

the aneurysm was the reason she went into the hospital -- seems like they're actually positive reports, all things considered?
http://www.showbiz411.com/2015/05/29/update-joni-mitchell-moved-to-rehab-improving-after-brain-aneurysm

"she didn't have a stroke," unlike the headline on this very article; also see:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6582905/joni-mitchell-brain-aneurysm-sources?utm_source=twitter
But we'll just have to see (hope this doesn't turn into a Harper Lee/Ornette Coleman/BB King fracas)

Not that those are all the same-type fracas, of course, but re conflicting sources/caregivers etc

'very serious' condition and being moved to rehab.

xpost what happened to ornette coleman??

ornette just recently sued somebody for releasing recordings of him without his permission, i'm pretty sure he is fine health wise,

thank god!

yeah, i remember when that album came out with no fanfare it seemed odd. would make sense that they had released it w/o the full cooperation of ornette who seems to exert impressive quality control.

btw having read about this subsequently

it's denardo, acting as ornette's "legal guardian," who is suing. i don't know if that means that ornette is infirm or something, or just that in is old age he's decided to empower denardo with the authority to act on his behalf.

aneurisms are a bitch.

The Croz weighs in:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/26/david-crosby-joni-mitchell_n_7673682.html

I have been thinking about the song 'Amelia' a lot recently.

It's such a beautiful, weary dream.

Interesting that croz would rate her higher than dylan

Hoping for the best for her

just another false alarm