Joni Mitchell - For The Roses POLL

not a huge fan of this album. "Radio" seems like the standout cut...? certainly the one with the best hook.

wow, not only have i never heard this album but i don't think i recognise even a single song title. is it worth getting?

ive never heard it either! alfred are you a big fan? just looked it up and see that it came out btwn blue + court & spark... hmmmm

just listened to this yesterday! Her phrasing and vocal performance on this album is as good as anything in her catalog - it's like she was trying to expand the sound primarily by stretching things out vocally with tinges of extra instrumentals before going whole hog on the jazz band on Court and Spark and beyond. "Cold Blue Steel" and "Radio" are the obvious standouts, but I'm voting for "Steel" for being the best combination of the more folky music from before this album and the jazzy stuff to come. I also like "Banquet" (what an intro), "Barangrill", "Electricity" and the last two tracks.

It took years for me to love this; it's a bit dense, the last of her albums reliant on piano and acoustic guitar.

the extra instrumental touches here are really interesting - drums, saxophones, synth, electric guitar, backing vocals - they're used quite sparingly, often appearing mid-song and maybe only for a few bars or a verse before disappearing again. the arrangements seems very calculated and precise, but she seems to have been rather tentative about expanding the sonic palette too much too quickly, leaving all the heavy lifting to just her voice/guitar/piano. I checked my iPod and I only kept four songs from this one - Radio, Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire (this about heroin, right? I didn't read the lyrics too closely. sounds like there is some reference to "lady laxative of release" or something? lol), Let the Wind Carry Me, Blonde in the Bleachers.

so, some good stuff, but not a patch on the albums that bookend it imho

you turn me on you're a radio!

(talking to joni here)

title track great too

Her trademark swooping harmonies are well used in "Electricity." What a pretty song. Lots of that here.

"Woman of Heart and Mind" is a good manifesto.

Excited to get to vote for my all time favourite Joni song (Cold Blue Steel & Sweet Fire) on a rather undervalued record.

"lessons in survival". Love it.

Cold Blue Steel. Amazing record...

This is my favorite JM album. I love Lesson in Survival/Let the Wind Carry Me.

"some get the gravy
and some get the gristle
some get the marrow bone
and some get nothing
though there's plenty to spare"
(banquet)
the lyrics and the music are very joniesque, this song could never have been a hit. personal stuff which rings so true. it makes me think of parties i have been to. and life in general. i love the whole album. it is somewhere in between. where joni was most of the time when she made great records.

I had a lot of trouble getting into this, at the very same time that I was obsessed with Blue. To me, this sounded like a forced attempt at recreating Blue, almost as if she painstakingly notated what on Blue was improvised. But reading this thread, I'm thinking I should seriously revisit this.

Well, it's less reliant on narrative; the melodies are denser.

"Let The Wind Carry Me" also deserves comment. When people (incl. Joni) talk about Blue being "naked" I think that it's more true of this song (and "See You Sometime") than of anything on Blue excepting maybe the last two tracks.

Love the contrast between "Papa's faith's in people / Mama, she believes in cleaning" - the noble but meaningless abstraction of the first line and the unvarnished ordinariness of the second captures the subtlety of the point she's making so perfectly, and so neatly.

"lessons in survival". Love it.

haha funny to agree w/you about something but 'lesson in survival' is such a fantastic song, they way the music itself seems contradictory, impressionistic, veiled. i like how proud & conflicted she sounds

See, this is what I mean, soto, when I call you ILM's Keeper of The Well-Made Song: I just KNEW this was your poll.

And hello people, it's "Blonde in the Bleachers" cuz how could it be otherwise??? World historical!

So is the cover photo of her on that island she lived on without electricity or whatever? Never occurred to me before.

this record is great but I know it much less well than the ones I went super-deep with when I was 22 years old & in deep need of what Joni brings to the table

That would be true for me too I think but it was actually my first Joni album, stolen from my mother at 14.

Only subsequently did it come to seem strange and slightly difficult as compared to later favourites like Blue and Hejira.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3435/3989961255_9e5063fef9_o.jpg
i have never seen this nude picture of her which apparently was included on the inside cover of the original lp and in the cd booklet. i bought my lp roundabout 1986 (nice price) and i don't think there was any inside cover.

I have that, I remember that I kept thinking the dark wave next to her left hip was some kind of weird protruberance.

I wonder if FTR had a better cover it might not have slipped through the cracks as much as it seems to have, most of her early covers are arguably near-iconic, FTR is totally 'meh'
That photo above was Joni's first choice for the cover until Elliot Roberts talked her out of using it, the actual cover looks like a total lash up, what's even up with the temperature of that photo? It looks like total shit.

I love this album about twice as much as I love 'Blue.' It's much more emotionally complex, has more humor, and is more expansive. The melodies are indelible. I think every song is fantastic. I voted for Barangrill, I guess because I love the little world in the song. But I could easily have voted for just about any other song on here. I even love You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio, which never seems to be a fan favorite.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I do listen to this more than Blue.

Christgau's take.

I've always really liked Christgau on female songwriters he likes himself, he gets really close to the interrelationship between the artist, their projected persona and (unusually) their compositional approach. Like here I like the way he's able effectively to conflate the changes in melodic style in Joni's songs with a change in both the song's themes and characters and a change in Joni as an artist and even "woman"... without coming on all hamfisted or patronising.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Not bad.

good picks.

the songs about fame/being a musician are probably the most resonant here: the title track (which anticipates "the boho dance") and blonde in the bleachers. as i posted on some other thread i can't find now,

she tapes her regrets /
to the micro phone stand

is one of my favorite joni couplets (not for the words themselves as much as the way they fall in the song). similarly with

in put / out put / elec tricity

also lots of nice, not too insistent arrangement touches here, like the bongos on electricity. love the circular melody of that one.

i think the 2nd side is best, esp from you turn me on i'm a radio through the last song, judgement of moon and stars. nothing on this album is bad but some songs suffer a bit from poetic overreach (aka pretentiousness) e.g. banquet.

honestly though the overriding impression this album gives is of joni's gifts as a melodist. just endlessly inventive. i think this is actually the breakthrough album in that regard. blue had some knotty, wonderfully off-kilter melodies but many others are kind of folklife in their selfconscious simplicity. here she goes all out, i think, and that sets the pattern for her best records to come. if that makes sense. sorry, i'm a shitty critic.

sad that one day i will die and won't be able to listen to this album anymore. :(

who knows. maybe the dj on the other side plays joni...

Somehow I've slept on this album for a long time -- in fact in my mind Court and Spark was somehow the first album that followed Blue. A pretty amazing and challenging record imo, mostly hookless song poetry with great lyrics.

the songs about fame/being a musician are probably the most resonant here: the title track (which anticipates "the boho dance") and blonde in the bleachers. as i posted on some other thread i can't find now,

she tapes her regrets /
to the micro phone stand

is one of my favorite joni couplets (not for the words themselves as much as the way they fall in the song

Amateurist otm - this track should have won by a country mile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh9Z8OsfxEo

Also, isn't it "she takes her regrets to the microphone stand" not "she tapes her regrets to the microphone stand". Google is split on the matter, but the first, IMO, is far better poetry.

The lyric sheet says "tapes".

I now concede it's 'tapes', but still think 'takes' woulda been better.

I don't want to quibble though, about one of my ten favourite songs of the 70s!

Tapes is better - it implies that confessional rock bloodletting becomes the new (but still flimsy) foundation on which she builds her sense identity. While also being a plausible visual image.

Sense OF identity.

Tim F,

Is it that plausible though - why would you tape your regrets (in shorthand?) to the microphone stand?

How many could you fit on. Would you need an A4 sheet of paper.

Taking your regrets sounds so much more natural, as a part of you that can't be shrugged off and so will always make its presence felt.

Whether Tapes (which it clearly is after re-listening) or 'takes' though; the one-two of You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio / Blonde in the Bleachers, is... something I honestly don't know how to describe. It's sent shivers down my spine for decades but I've never been quite sure why. Any thoughts as to why the raw-nerved quality of this essentially 2-song medley hits such striking chord would be gladly appreciated, Tim.

do you wanna
contact
somebody first

but I know my needs
my sweet tumbleweed

some watch the paint peel off
some watch their kids grow up

only 1 vote for Blonde In The Bleachers? you people.

I could live in "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire."

me too

come with me i know the way

If you voted for Radio you don't really love this album imo

Fall is def a good time to revisit this one again. Getting chills just thinking about some of the songs.

CBS&SW is the best of Joni imho

Wanna hear something terrible?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFIscEAW3p4

I honestly think if For The Roses had an iconic cover, like some of her others, instead of an awkward washed-out tourist selfie, it would get much more love.