Victor wrote, "There's simply a cd player and cd's that you put in the player."
---and the lump that's sitting in front of the cd player. There's the barb. Kidding. More kidding. I am enjoying this little barb fest of love/hate. -More Joni duality. -The question is, I think, "How do YOU plan on living through the end of Joni's career?" Personally, I see T'log as brilliant, beautiful, daring, richly executed project that is wildly better than I ever imaged Joni set to Orchestra could be. It's a brilliant step up from BSN by everyone concerned. And if you guys can't handle a 59 year old woman with enough gile, grapes and daring to put herself -again- out on a musical limb, imagine the pains yer gonna have when she's 70... 79... 93... "Thank god, Uncle Wayne croaked and we don't have to listen to that endless noodling anymore." "Uhhhh, but that voice..." ( At 93, Joni WILL be singing in that comical old woman's voice she used in one interview: "The Last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68. And I said, "Richard...") Perhaps being in the middle of my mid-life crisis, I see this thread from a different perspective. It is a metaphor, for myself at least, about coming to grips with 'endings.' And how to live life in spite of knowing it all ends. Face it folks, All good things come to an end. Even Joni. You. Me. The JMDL. Fests at Ashara's. Record contracts. Lovely, young, strong soprano voices. The question is, how gracefully are we going to deal with the close of this brilliant, meteoric career? Whine? Complain. Lose one's self in what was? Compare the next new cd to Hejira? Compare the next cd to Hissing? Be forlorn if it doesn't measure up? Longing for one more For the Roses? Pray for a small jazz band? -How small. And without vision. This is how you want to close your relationship with the greatest songwriter in the second half of the twentieth century??? Here's a woman at 59, with the gaul to see the blessings left in her person at the end of her career and making the best of them. She's not lamenting the loss of her highs. She's not pulling out the old cd's, waxing nostalgic over happy days seen through rose colored glasses, soaking in what was. She's forging on. Taking delight in what's been revealed by her limitations. -Limitations?! Those 'choppy' phrases... She's speaking the music! It's her voice giving out! Really? From day one Joni Mitchell emulated her idols, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross and made music with a more 'spoken' approach to the line. It's always had a feel of being half spoken. -That's always been part of the intimacy of her approach. "On the next cd, she should work with a small band." "She should go acoustic." "She should sing a full cover of blah, blah, blah." Ya know what? What we were blessed with for over 30 years was an artist who lived her art. An art was shaped and formed from her life experiences and nothing more. Somewhere in the earliest of days, when she was writing countless forgetable melodies on napkins, I think she came to the realization that the only way to be good, really good was to be as honest as possible and to let them flow from her life experience. When she was sad she wrote sad. And when she was in the company of 60's melody she wrote that way with Morgan Morgantown. And when she was forced by success into the social company of the upper crust, she commented about it. If the circumstances of her life lend to using a tight, small band, that is the only way and only reason the new recording will be with a tight, small band. It won't be because "she'll sound prettier for it," --which is the motivation of people who ask for this to happen. I can hear Joni now, "Screw pretty. I'm going to give you the art of my life man." And she will do it trying to make the most beautiful product she can. The girl has vision. All of this is what T'log is for me. She took a life experience (the momentary joy of being on stage in the company of a palette of many, many sound colors...) and decided there was something she could do about the 'spareness' about the old recordings. I firmly believe when Joni listens to all the old stuff loved around here, what she hears is all the open, empty spaces where colors were meant to be, but aren't. The bass lines she wanted on those records aren't there. The drum lines she imagined to be there aren't there. The 'brass' section of her guitar wasn't the sum of the brass she envisioned in her mind. -And she decided that the music was good enough, still valid enough, to warrant going back and giving those quality songs a deeper sound color than they got the first time around. Give the lines the grace notes that were left off because there was so much story to tell. And perhaps as strongly, she felt they were deserving enough to give the songs a maturity of perspective that could have been there. -You know, THE most perfect song that was meant to be on T'log but wasn't? Based on her own comments: Cold Blue Steel. She was absolutely right in her observation that her young voice at the time wasn't sufficent enough to carry the drama of the song. -Cold Blue would have been smashing in her, at the end of the game, voice. And that's what all this is about, the end of the game. I think Joni is looking at the end game and saying, "I'm going out just as I came in, giving you the honest fruit of my life." Remember the interview she did with the release of TTT, discribing returning to writing for the sake of providing a song for a movie??? At the time, she said something like, paraphrasing now, the only music she was hearing in her head was from the 1940's and 50's. -T'log is a deliberate celebration of music from the past. It's Joni turning her back on all that is happening right now and saying there's no way she wants to play in today's aesthetic sandbox. And I don't think she has any apologies for it. What we get is the honest fruit of her life. When I contemplate the possibility of Joni making new music, I am most thrilled by her ability to invent something new. It's a skill she's show over and over again. -The exciting part is she still has it in her. No one could have anticipated T'log, love it or hate it. She's going out just as she came in. And when she says, paraphrasing again, that if she writes again she knows she has to make a new shove... well kids, set aside your "wish-she'd-do-a-tight-jazz-band-do-a-just-her-and-guitar-thing-because-it'll-be-so-pretty." We will be in for life art. It will be the unexpected. -And she will do her best to make it beautiful. Dammit to hell, I'm in tuned to her muse enough to say I'm going to love it and I haven't heard a note yet. -That woman knows how to LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How do I plan on living through the twilight of Joni Mitchell's career? I will not go out sitting with one piece of the puzzle weighing and judging it against other pieces of the puzzle. I will look lovingly at the sum total of the Artistry she has graced my life with and say, "Thank you." (Imagine how silly some of you are going to look when you watch that up and coming movie of Joni in the studio recording T'log... the beauty of that woman in the act of making art will be enough to make the harshest critic aware of the power of this production. ) I listen to that woman sing, "Oh, where is hope?" and I think to myself, 'That woman knows how to LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' Peace. j.
