Joni Mitchell worship thread

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I mean, what about the Blue Motel Rooms tune upthread? It's more jazzy than Blue, but you like Bill Evans don't you so you can relate.
 

luka

Well-known member
I like bill Evans when I'm eating pasta with a sauce made out of tinned tomatoes
 

luka

Well-known member
Heijra is too diffuse and fusion for me. Not a direct assault on my dessicated shrivelled emotional organs
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
Never listened to a song of her I think, at least not consciously. It happens sometime, I completely ignore certain artists because somehow I think I won't like them anyway. Joni Mitchell is one of them. Might listen to one of these youtubes now.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Hejira has got Mays and Metheney writing in that thing they do for her as a backing band so its good but its also verging on tepidity.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

The Gallery (1969)

I care more about Joni Mitchell's lyrics than most musicians, but this one I don't even register the words, the melody just slays me.

To have been so gifted at writing lyrics AND melodies (not to mention singing) really is remarkable.

I snuck this in here cos Luka has shut down COTD
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/john-lahr/so-hard-to-handle

This is a brilliant review of an (apparently) mediocre hagiography of Joni. It's probably behind a paywall for some of you. If you're interested PM me and I'll email it to you. Eye-opening for me as it reveals her to be in some respects a rather unlikable person, especially in her embittered later years.

Like many successful autodidacts, Mitchell was her own greatest invention; humble pie was not on her menu. ‘She was about as modest as Mussolini,’ according to David Crosby. Asked by one interviewer how she should be described – composer, songwriter, singer, painter – Mitchell said about her talent: ‘I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s definitely Renaissance.’

Mind you, you don't get many humble geniuses.
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
are there any (non septuagenarian) geniuses with accoustic guitars knocking about these days?

other than Ed Sheeran, natch
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Blue is irritating: self-obsessed twiddling. Hissing is where it's at: L.A. decadence and slime, hard sunlight, the smell of chlorine.
 

jenks

thread death
Blue is the great personal work with the heft of emotion, raw and open to the world; Hissing is cool, languid, like Joan Didion - I listen to Hissing more but love Blue with the same fondness of first love.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i have a lot of her albums (there is an 80s compilation that i have that is as good as any proper album and maybe underrated in the wider scheme of joni things) but am no joni expert.
that said, she has a lot of very good guitar vamps in her songs, eg help me, for which i am grateful.
i once had a job at a record shop in notting hill and my main memory of don juans daughter is that i bought it while working there and the girl working there at the time also appreciated it and was very foxy which has enhanced my memory of it considerably.
 
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