In a message dated 1/24/02 12:04:04 PM, SCJoniGuy writes: << ... I get the songs on DED & CMIARS crossed up myself sometimes [this in kind response to my embarrassment over placing "Nothing Can Be Done" on CMIARS rather than on NRH]. But I see a real delineation between NRH & CMIARS, where NRH is a return to form of Joni re-establishing control of her projects and her sound. Even though "Nothing Can Be Done" is basically a Klein song, it seems more at home on NRH than it would on CMIARS.>>
Hey, Bob, Nice line of thinking -- it got me thinking of the sequence from Mingus to TI. When JM talks about Mingus, she admits that after working through at least two albums of emphasis on rhythym and simplification of melody (Hejira and DJRD -- one of the reviewers cited in Luftig's "Companion" said something about JM squeezing more syllables into one line of melody than anyone else in history -- amusing, but possibly true), she went into melody and left the rhythm sorta adrift on purpose throughout Mingus (well, with the exception of "Dry Cleaner"). And then, of course, she strated the one album every three years thing, and the next one was WTRF. Which had melody and rhythm in spectacular, one might almost say dizzying, variety. Joni seemed to have recovered rhythm, but had slowed down the syllables-per-line thing. She'd also begun her decade-long experimentation / learning curve / whatever with technology. Was this just her next phase -- the shortening of lines with more electric-sounding stuff -- or was it the first sign of LK's influence? And if the latter, was it necessarily all bad? She doesn't seem to think so, even in retrospect, as far as I've been able to determine. The other thing that I guess first showed up in WTRF was the call-and-response stuff with guest vocalists, which I guess some jmdlers also associate with/blame on LK. The tech stuff peaked out with DED, while the call-and-response thing peaked out with CMIARS. I see it as a gradual working out of the limits and a very gradual decision-making process, with some successes and a few clunkers. And I agree that by NRH, she seemed to be on the verge of having decided how much of each of the three experiments (techno, shorter lines, and call-and-response) to integrate into her style. It was the easiest of her albums to listen to in a long while, and still one of my favorites. And then with TI, she'd come full circle. She seems to have kept the shorter lines, used what aspects of the techno that she wants or needs, and more or less dropped the call-and-response thing. It was a long experiment, but if TI is the result, then I feel it was worthwhile. Thanks for letting me ramble, and I love to hear what everyone else thinks about all this. Thanks esp. to Bob, who got me thinking about all this... Walt
