Clouds rolling in -- back to shirtsleeves. Should be a rainy Christmas.
My first post listed some of my faves (way back in the archives somewhere), and I can't
remember if I included one music fave that has just gotten better with time. It's Joni
Mitchell's controversial album Mingus.
It came out in vinyl while I was still pretty much a "cub" reporter. For those of you who
remember LPs or look at them in re-sale shops, the artwork on many a classic record
stood out. Mingus was no exeception. Full of Joni's paintings of Mingus during his last
year on Earth, it is probably the best laid-out of any of hers (and she's had many a
standout album cover!).
But the music inside was the surprise: it was actually very good. Joni Mitchell took a lot
of heat from rock "critics," fans and even other musicians for turning to jazz-rock. But to
try to write music for the last lyrics written by an avant-garde legend like Charles Mingus
was too much for them, and they all panned it. They saw songs like "I's a Muggin'" as
cliche and numbers like "God Must Be a Boogie Man" as silly. It sounded to them like
she was trying to use a dying jazz great as a prop for her musical ambitions.
But the music is powerful. Much jazz dates quickly because times and tastes change.
Only the best performances survive the test. And Joni Mitchell's Mingus is still good --
check out "The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey" on her greatest "misses" CD. Just open your
mind and listen.
Hejira was my college senior year fave. Dynamic and different, it featured lyrics
designed to impress English lit majors like me. It also featured Weather Report's
Wunderkind bassist -- the equally legendary Jaco Pastorius -- playing bass guitar like it
was a lead guitar! The music is very inventive, but people like my dorm roommate
thought the lyrics were all very pretentious. In later years, I came to agree, at least to a
point.
The album the guys freshman year borrowed to seduce their dates was another Joni fave
of mine: For the Roses. This is the sound that made Joni Mitchell a standard among her
female fans, but I could relate to it as well. Her song about Beethoven (the title track)
included some orchestral and piano writing by the songstress. It was a first for her, I
think. But not the last.
My first working year was 1977. That year, local FM radio played albums every
Wednesday night, without interruption (unheard of in today's commercial environment!).
I remember taping Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughter all the way through.
They even played a commercial between sides, so you could flip your cassette and not
miss a note! Jaco's on this one, too, and, if anything, he's even better. But Joni's songs
were uneven -- some really good, and some leaving you wondering why they were
recorded at all. One entire side of the double album includes a kind of "concerto" written
by Mitchell, as, in the concept of the album, she's asleep and dreaming while on board a
transcontinental flight.
The concept was pretty good, but the album was not up to it overall. Here are some tracks
I liked: "Cotton Avenue" "Dreamland" and "Off Night, Back Street." I also
thought "Silky Veils of Ardor" was great at the time. But I don't think it wears well today.
Oddly, I never bothered to look at the sleeve art in stores, because I was satisfied with the
cassette I'd made. Several years later, I found the album in a bin of remainders. We called
them "cut-outs" because the sleeve always had a little notch cut out of the corner to tell
retailers to get rid of it for a dollar. I bought it merely because the cassette tape had worn
out. When I got home, I noticed there was a picture of a thin black "pimp" caricature on
the cover! Poor taste, thought I. Then, I realized it was Joni herself in black body makeup
and men's clothes! I'd had no idea (I didn't read the music mags) that people had slammed
the cover art years before as a kind of slur. Joni said it was her alter ego named "Art
Nouveau." OK ... .
The best is last: The Hissing of Summer Lawns. A college chum and rabid Joni fan
hated it so much, he refused to even talk about why. Most of her fans absolutely loathe
the record. One year, again flipping through the "cut-outs", I found a copy and bought it.
It has the best overall work on it, and it wears well through the years. No confessional
love lyrics in this one, but sharp and even handed observation of the LA scene of the day.
Joni's 80s and 90s work was mostly done with synthesizers. Her voice does not go well
with that, in my opinion, and I either sold or gave away all my copies after a listen or
two, and then stopped buying her music altogether. I missed some of her best songs on
religious themes: "Passion Play" and "The Magdalene Laundaries*." I caught them later,
again on her "misses" CD.
I've heard it said kids of the 60's were either Beatles fans or Stones fans, never both. I
was Beatles, myself. And the same could be said about Dylan or Mitchell. I was
obviously Mitchell. My odd reason why in another post.
By the way: her "hits" album has a little secret. If you listen to "The Urge for Goin'" "The
Circle Game" and "Both Sides Now" in sequence you'll hear a theme developing, both
musically and lyrically. Insert "Little Green" from her album Blue in the sequence, and
you'll have the complete story, all neatly developed. I'll let you rip your own tracks and
figure out where to insert "Little Green" and what the story's about. If you listen on good
headphones, you can even hear Joni's voice cracking and choking back sobs.
Hard "hit"ting, and heartbreaking.
___
*I've left several words misspelled, just as they were in the original post. The song about Beethoven is called "Judgment of the Moon and Stars", and my first fave list did not list Mingus.
LJ orig.: 12/21/06
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