Joni Mitchell - you don't know what you've got...

[Globaltruth]

Lat - when I'm rewarded with such erudition & stimulating responses it's a pleasure to start such a thread. I also like the fact we've had posts from new visitors.

Think you're right about the 'ready to quit' feeling - that was one of the reasons why I titled the thread as I did.

But I'm a bit worried we've had a Cap'n B & a JM in relatively close order...hope Neil Young and/or Lennie Cohen are feeling ok.

[handsomefortune]

i only like the captain - but agree that the thread's an interesting read.

[Stunsworth]

Did she do anything good later? Do I need to catch up all the albums for the next 32 years?

Hejira is almost as good as Hissing of Summer Lawns. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is very good. Then, for me it all starts to go downhill.

When Hissing of Summer Lawns was released some of the reviews panned it for having no tunes. I bought it when it came out (1976?) and it was the the first Joni Mitchell album I ever bought, and I've loved it ever since.

[gurnemanz]

I have about 20 albums. Along with Dylan she is the only popular singer I have stuck with (buying nearly all albums) over the decades after I turned "square" in about 1969 and started liking classical music. "Blue" came out when I was 22 and no doubt suffering from an appropriate degree of emotional brittleness. I was just about to graduate and take the big step of going to teach in Germany, possibly thinking I might be "only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and flyyyyyyyyyyy away" ("The Last Time I Saw Richard") - along with" "A Case Of You," "California," and "All I Want" absolute classics on that album. Just before I left these shores I remember her doing a live set for BBC TV (yes, that kind of thing once happened) where she introduced us to her post bi-centenary "Ludwig's Tune" from her new LP "For the Roses" (another great album). A couple of years later I adored the more raunchy robustness of Court and Spark (no doubt vaguely wanting to be "unfettered and alive" like that that Free Man in Paris). It is probably my Desert Island choice from her output, if my arm were twisted.

In the late 70s we also enjoyed her live gig in London complete with dulcimer, despite the unconducive venue being the barn that was Earl's Court.

I am bound to agree that the later albums are less exciting but I like Turbulent Indigo (1994) and have a soft spot for the orchestral Travelogue (2002) which many hated.

[johncorrigan]

I read an article about it last year, that morgellons thing - I was interested that it was not animal, vegetable or mineral according to the sources.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...erious-illness

Maybe Joni is still fed up with Bob cos, according to a book I read about her, she was playing on stage with Bob and according to her he always has really terrible breath and so he always arranges that they shared a microphone and breathes into her face. She also was famously fed up with Bob around the Hurricane Carter case when he brought him onto stage during the rolling thunder review and she was not impressed. And of course some do say that Coyote is about him.

On songs on later albums, I think that Cherokee Louise from Night Ride Home is one of her greatest songs - the destruction of childhood. I love Slouching towards Bethlehem and Sire of Sorrows(Job's song) from Travelogue. I really enjoy a listen to Taming the Tiger all the way through. I was listening to Blue today on my way back home from the west and I still find things in there to discover and I must have listened to it hundreds of times over the years. Lat's comments about skin were really interesting - does that create the psychosomatic or did she know there was something up - might never know.

Like I do with B Wilson, I dream of one last great Joni album - she's been one of my faves since I first heard Big Yellow Taxi on Disco 2, all them years ago.

[Lateralthinking1]

Maybe Joni is still fed up with Bob cos, according to a book I read about her, she was playing on stage with Bob and according to her he always has really terrible breath and so he always arranges that they shared a microphone and breathes into her face. She also was famously fed up with Bob around the Hurricane Carter case when he brought him onto stage during the rolling thunder review and she was not impressed. And of course some do say that Coyote is about him.

One of the best things about music is that one gets the artistic personality rather than the entire personality. Whether the latter is coloured or blurred by lyrical imagery, whether the music itself is orchestral or industrial, there is something about the channels that make it easier to accommodate than the commentary of most artists. I find I try to say these days that I like people's work rather than saying I like them. Some of my favourites would probably be a perfect pain in the day-to-day.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of the best things about music is that one gets the artistic personality rather than the entire personality. Whether the latter is coloured or blurred by lyrical imagery, whether the music itself is orchestral or industrial, there is something about the channels that make it easier to accommodate than the commentary of most artists. I find I try to say these days that I like people's work rather than saying I like them. Some of my favourites would probably be a perfect pain in the day-to-day.

[Stunsworth]

I was listening to Blue today on my way back home from the west and I still find things in there to discover and I must have listened to it hundreds of times over the years

Little Green took on a much more powerful meaning after I read that she'd given up a child for adoption.

[cloughie]

I have only just caught this thread - the first point I would make reagarding Madonna ii that she has got away with style over substance for 30 years or so and the term reinvention seems to have been her invention, whereas JM with a natural talent for words and music has evolved her style and musical requirements over the years and has set the bar rather than jumping on bandwagons (how many more metaphrs can I mix?).
I've liked all JM's albums over the years my favourites probably are her first album Song to a Seagull and the wonderfully orchestrated, almost Wagnerian at times, Both Sides Now but I also liked her late 70s jazz-influenced, not least the Jaco Pastorius presence on a couple of them. The Dylan saga of the bad breath I had heard and guess that tainted her view of him. Having never met either of them I am happy to listen to both and judge on the sounds they have produced over the years as I do with another contemporary whose music and words I have liked over the years, Leonard Cohen.

[johncorrigan]

Little Green took on a much more powerful meaning after I read that she'd given up a child for adoption.

She was reunited with her daughter in the late 90s, Steve, and there were a couple of grandchildren, but I think the relationship was quite fraught, as you would imagine, and a few years on the police were called following a bust up between the two at Joni's big house in LA. So maybe no happy ending to that beautiful song.