Erica Trudelle wrote: > hey all, > I just got DJRD and NRH....I wish to receive any and all comments, advice, > warnings, and joyus remarks about listening to one or both of these.
DJRD is on my desert island list. I feel Joni was hitting (another) creative peak, both as a songwriter, and a record maker. I love the sparseness of the arrangements. While the instrumentation is often similar to Hejira, the song are looser and jazzier. Many real nice examples of Joni's guitar playing, "Silky Veils" is a show stopper, and "Off Night Backstreet". The moment when Jaco's bass comes in on the intro to "Cotton Avenue".....Jaco's bass! It's pretty cool, even though "Otis and Marlena" and "Dreamland" sometimes drag a bit. Think of them as intermissions... BTW "Paprika Plains" was the song that caught Charles Mingus' attention and moved him to call Joni to write lyrics for him. NRH, like most of her Klein era albums has not really moved me much. But then I've probably only played it 3 or 4 times...It is considered by many to be a return to form after the synth oriented stuff she had been doing. Is it her last acoustic guitar album? Not sure. Lots of people really like it. RR
