November meanderings

WHEN I am tired or full of doubts, or unwinding, or just want to relax, I go back in time and place to all those things that have given me nourishment over the years. Then I feel renewed and more cheerful and soothed, and I am thankful I have these things to sustain me, these things that I marvel at, these pure and beautiful sounds and precious, comforting thoughts, things that make you feel special and unique, like you have uncovered some kind of corner or something hidden, where there is inspiration and goodness and silence and wonder and shining gratitude where you feel like a knight that shimmers in his armour, or can imagine all the colours of autumn leaves brightly standing out.

I am thinking of… lots of things… as I let my mind drift back in memory lane to events in the past. It is a film and the image goes wobbly and out of focus, and suddenly there it is in colour.

I am standing in this secure web of playing cricket with the other kids in the neighbourhood. We are playing for hours in the late afternoon sunshine. It all happens on a corner. The wickets stand in the middle of the road at one end, and at the entrance to a neighbour’s nature strip at the other (as time goes on they will build a garden on their nature strip to make it more difficult to play cricket). As a car intrudes we scoop the wicket up with one hand to allow the car to pass, and get back to the cricket. Sometimes Sam or Sotto are umpires and they have less idea about what to do than the rest of us. Wayne appeals for LBW, manipulatively and vituperatively, and they nervously raise their finger. The fear of going against his appeal! I like this shot which is like a cover drive (the bowling is slow enough for me to be able to do this), whilst Anthony at the other end smacks the ball over several houses. 

There is the time Wayne smashes the bat against a telegraph pole and creates a sudden end to our glorious games… but that’s another story. It’s all pretty innocent. Sometimes we just stand outside the Arbuckle’s house and chat- for hours and hours about anything. The talking and the listening and the speculating and the mystery of life, it’s all quite fascinating. We are like children in a William Blake poem from ‘Songs Of Innocence’, except we are surrounded by bitumen roads rather than being in the heart of the country:

‘When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.’

‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.’

‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.’
The little ones leapèd, and shoutèd, and laugh'd
And all the hills echoed.’  

 (William Blake, ‘Nurse’s Song’).

Then there are other images, unravelling. I am still in this secure web. I think it is about the same time. I am still eleven or twelve, or maybe thirteen. I have grown up on a diet of Enid Blyton books. I have devoured them, especially the ‘Five Find-Outers’ series and the wonderful adventure series, like the ‘Valley of Adventure’ and the ‘River’ or ‘Mountain of Adventure.’ I read these books in one or two goes until they are finished. The older siblings, or the adults, are probably watching television. I am oblivious to the other noises in the house. It is all making me go blind. I am on the bottom bunk, without a lamp. But then, at that time, it doesn’t matter. These are the halcyon days of reading. 

Later, quite a bit later, as an adult, I will sit in a lounge room chair with Colm Toibin’s second novel, ‘The Heather Blazing’, and I will revisit those wondrous days of reading with a sense of wonder, enthralled by the writing and the characters, feeling as though I am reading something somehow intrinsically significant, moved by the power of words and moods and staying absolutely still until it is over, like you have finished a sumptuous meal.

Music. Memories of music come flooding in. When I was young if I wasn’t up the corner like Blake’s children, or devouring sets of books by Enid Blyton or Agatha Christie, I was in the lounge listening to the Marantz stereo, possibly with headphones, music making me deaf just as reading made me blind. The price you have to pay.

The cousins in Bundoora had some Beatles. It was the first time I ever had ‘Sergeant Pepper’ placed in my hand. I studied the numerous faces on the cover with absolute fascination. If I couldn’t quite get moved by ‘For The Benefit of Mr Kite’ or ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’, I was floored by ‘Lovely Rita’ with its delirious panting, astonished by the domestic violence in ‘Getting Better’ and put into a wondrous dream by ‘A Day in the Life’, the dreamy bit on the bus sung by McCartney my favourite bit. Then of course I would buy them all. Still very deep in my memory is going to Northland and taking ‘Abbey Road’ to the Marantz, staying up late when all were in bed, fascinated by the street scenes on the front and back covers, wondering what was next to the 'N' partially by the girl in the blue dress, Lennon’s screams in ‘I Want You’, his groans in ‘Come Together’, the nonsense of ‘Sun King’ and the majesty of the last twenty minutes of the vinyl’s ‘Side 2’:

‘One sweet dream
Pick up the bags and get in the limousine
Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
One sweet dream came true today
Came true today
Came true today (Yes it did)’

(Paul McCartney, ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’)

Naturally, my musical journey took other paths. I became even more involved in ‘The Doors’, and by Year 12 it was an obsession.

 I wore a Jim Morrison badge every day. People said I looked like him. Perhaps I thought in a way I was him. I even, somewhat cautiously it must be said, even tried to mimic a bit of his alleged lifestyle. I loved the rockier songs, like ‘Peace Frog’ and ‘LA Woman’, but it was probably the more adventurous or experimental ones I liked, as well as some ballads. ‘The Soft Parade’ and ‘The End’ have always held a fascination, and I can’t remember how many times I’ve crooned along to ‘I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind’, ‘The Crystal Ship’, ‘Blue Sunday’, ‘Indian Summer’, ‘Wishful Sinful.’ Never really the boppy hits for me. Jim’s face has always fascinated me. To this day I often look at pictures, and sometimes find new ones. Young and beautiful, and then equally as handsome, and more poetic and dignified looking, around 69’/ 70’ with that magnificent beard. A towering charisma, for all his faults and his reckless lifestyle.

Then, entering adulthood, and the space is all colour now and fresher and more recent and long lasting. The eldest brother had a Joni Mitchell- ‘The World of Joni Mitchell’- a compilation. It was enough. It wetted my appetite. I was spellbound, and still am, by the wondrous beauty of the words, and the shimmering melodies, unusual instruments like the Appalachian dulcimer- and Joni’s flowing hair and angular features and soprano voice, all creating seductive little hooks. The first songs (from this album) were really ‘That Song About The Midway’ and ‘Song To A Seagull’, the latter with its mesmerizing lyrics centred on place, the alienating city:

‘I came to the city
And lived like old Crusoe
On an island of noise
In a cobblestone sea
And the beaches were concrete
And the stars paid a light bill
And the blossoms hung false
On their store window trees
My dreams with the seagulls fly
Out of reach out of cry.’

Events from the past whirr about me. These are gloriously hungry times, of searching Joni’s oeuvre, internet-less and probably penniless. The album ‘Blue’ came quickly after, and we already had ‘Court and Spark’ (screeching in the lounge room to ‘Help Me’, and emotionally moved, without really understanding ‘The Same Situation”), and other Joni albums, some as they came out, brave efforts like ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’ (brother’s help again), but then the ultimate floored experience, trance-like, in another world of blissful devastation- the discovery of ‘Hejira’, with no less than ‘Amelia’, ‘Song For Sharon’, and the majestic title track, the groove, the Jaco Pastorius bass, and the sheer love of poetry:

‘I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones

I know, no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tribute to finality, to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality

In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years

We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone…’

There’s a lot here because it is really difficult to know where to stop. It’s Joni at her best- an outsider with feelings of melancholia and confusion, a fresh break-up in the incessant quest for love, or safety, or security. And wandering, wandering. Just like another artist… which leads on to…

Van Morrison. A simultaneous discovery, and just as profound, when my mind was teeming with new ideas and experiences and questions and reading and thinking. Absolutely ripe for ‘Astral Weeks’. In some ways a similar journey about travel and a the old 70’s search for answers. John Densmore, in his book, tells the story of how he witnessed Van writing the lyrics to the song ‘Astral Weeks’ when they were sitting on a couch at a party together. Near the end of the song there is this heavenly experience:

‘Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world
I'm nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
In another face.’

The first thing you will notice is how evocative and expressive and other- wordly or mystical it is. Then how repetitive it is. And that’s Van Morrison. Another realm. His words don’t win him a Nobel Prize for Literature. But they are electric and earth shattering when they combine with the music and the unique phrasing. One of the ‘way up in the heaven’ lines goes for about ten seconds. ‘Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up in the heaven…’ Sometimes when I read something really good, like some gorgeous prose from someone who knows just exactly how to write- like Fitzgerald describing Gatsby’s world just before he gets shot- I imagine them up in their study on the top floor, putting the pen down, drawing a breath and looking out of the curtains and thinking ‘wow, where did that come from?’ That’s how it is with the whole of the ‘Astral Weeks’ album. Van pens it, gets it down in the studio with Jay Berliner and others, and then walks out with a light heart and a smirk of self-satisfaction on his face (you literally get to see it with Paul Simon during the earliest recordings of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’).

I am having trouble remembering the first time I ever heard the album. By 1984 I was buying each new Van album when it was released. Fortunately, he had the type of 80’s that very few of his contemporaries had. So I listened to this and others throughout the 80’s and I remember living in Adelaide for a while during 1986, and I think this was the time it meant the most to me. The evocative walking up Cyprus Avenue, the ballerina stepping lightly but not like Degas, the sheer joy of having someone you love sitting beside you, walking with abandonment drinking cherry wine, the euphoria of driving down the street in a chariot, the smell of sweet perfume, and then the abrupt, tragic death, ‘I know you’re dying and I know you know it too.’

These thoughts sustain and carry me. They are what make you an individual. They are what nobody else understands. We all have them. You can only hope to feel things, keenly. You don’t want robotic anything. You want a heart and a pulse. No empty spaces. And then one day, when you’re seventy…

Looking for Joni

 

 

IT was in the stillness of the car, driving along Bell Street, where something happened to cause me to take a sharp, inward breath. A was rustling in one of the back seats and I had the radio playing. The afternoon news. Half listening. Drifting slightly, but still concentrating. The speaker on the radio mentioning something about Joni Mitchell. Joni is never mentioned on the news. It suddenly hit me that she might be dead. Then it registered. No, not dead, but ill, in hospital, some sort of a collapse, like fainting perhaps. It sounded ominous in its own way- it was big enough news to make it on Melbourne radio, after all- but at least it wasn’t fatal.

I spoke to A in the back seat. A, although she is only six years old, has her own special connection to Joni. She listened in her own vague semi-conscious six year old way. She understood I was feeling stressed and concerned and wanting to tell other people, adults, right away. “Oh my God, I thought he was going to say she is dead.”

Naturally, after this, in fact for the next few weeks leading up to today, April 22, I have been, in a sense, contemplating life after Joni. The quietness about what has happened is extraordinary. No-one is saying anything. Joni has been in hospital at least three weeks and no-one knows anything. Every day I look at newspaper reports across the globe. These are either infrequent or are saying the same thing. Privacy is a wonderful thing, and in a way it is extraordinarily good that the whole world is dumb about this. But on the other side of the coin, for me, it is troubling. I would just like to know. I would like to be there, or at least send a message. Is Joni dying? Or is she really recovering ok as www.jonimitchell.com would have you believe.

Joni feels like some kind of relative. I have thought of her every day during this ordeal. The self-portrait of her wearing her heart on her sleeve on the cover of her orchestral album (Both Sides Now) is on my screensaver. Her songs are in my head. I fancy that I know her or have met her…

The closest I ever came, and ever will come, to meeting Joni Mitchell was when I was in London in 2002. I heard somewhere that she was leasing George Martin’s AIR studio in Hampstead for this aforementioned record. i soon discovered that I was two weeks too late. The man in charge saw that I was dejected by this news, so he took me to the vocal booth where she had sung so many of her songs just days earlier. “See”, he said, laughing, “you can still smell the smoke from her cigarettes!” I then met one of the mixing men, who explained that the songs were still in the stage of being finished. He played me the orchestral beginning of one song, but I couldn’t make it out. “I must be tone deaf”, I said. It turned out to be ‘The Circle Game’ which should be fairly recognisable.

So I play her songs like I have, often, since about 1978. Discovering new little things along the way, reading the book by Katherine Monk called ‘Joni’, which was ok but a bit disjointed and a bit gossipy, hearing the song ‘Man From Mars’ in a new way, knowing now that it is was written about her missing cat, Nietzsche, who appears on the ‘Taming the Tiger’ cover, and generally waiting and waiting, and hoping for good news, and wondering about the silence, reading about Morgellon’s disease, thinking that ‘there’s comfort in melancholy, when it’s so hard to explain.’

 

1990's JONI MITCHELL- NIGHT RIDE HOME

'Because Elvis gave them cars

You think I'm cheap...'

  

                                              

 

I DISCOVERED Joni Mitchell late, at an unfortunate time. It was in the early 80’s and the 80’s wasn’t, in my opinion- others will differ- a kind decade for her. The 70’s were, alternatively, a glorious time. It culminated in the more experimental records like ‘Mingus’ and ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’ which were triumphs of courage as much as anything. She knew, and the record producers were telling her, that she would lose a lot of her loyal ‘Court and Spark’ and ‘Hejira’ fans, simply because these albums were risky and breathtakingly different. Perhaps the 80’s albums were different too, but I have never been able to get into them. They include ‘Dog Eat Dog’ and ‘Chalk Mark in the Rainstorm.’ I suppose Joni Mitchell’s career threatened to suddenly end then. A great period from the late 60’s, when she began, and a brilliant decade throughout the 70’s, and then music oblivion. This would be different to her contemporaries, like Van Morrison, who, in my opinion, had a decade in the 80’s very much as successful and creative and full of wonder as the 70’s.

Thankfully, there were three excellent records created by Joni in the 90’s, as a kind of comeback from unsuccessful 80’s experimentation. The first of these, ‘Night Ride Home’, from 1991, has been on my record player a lot lately, as I sit at the long table in the kitchen, or the leather couch in front of the stereo. I find myself humming the tunes all the time, and thinking about them, lyrically especially, as lyrically is probably all I can do. Don’t expect me to be discussing harmonic palettes, or dominant and non-dominant chords, for that matter.

‘Night Ride Home’ has ten songs, and is quietly inspired. It is produced by Joni and her then husband, bassist Larry Klein, and guest artists include Michael Landau and Wayne Shorter. The first song, the title track, is a relaxed and lovely paean to a simple night drive next to the person you love. The chorus features the simple refrain: ‘I love the man beside me/ We love the open road.’ It is the 4^th of July holiday and the couple have been on the road, escaping from the madness of being weighed down by phones-‘No phones till Friday’- which is reminiscent of ‘Court and Spark’s song ‘The Same Situation’ where the speaker is ‘tethered to a ringing telephone.’ The imagery is smooth, and relaxed, and lovely, as the poet recalls the various highlights of their trip away- the surreal ‘big blue moon’, the fireworks and ‘the ukulele man’, the way the powerlines gleam silver from the beams from the headlights, and (my favourite image), the majestic and mysterious ‘big dark horse’: ‘Red taillights on his side/ Is keeping right alongside/ Rev for stride.’ This is the most gentle and assured of all the songs on the album, with its absence of any noticeable tension. There are even soft, sibilant sounds of chirping crickets on the soundtrack. It is a mature couple’s celebration of peace and fulfilment.

Several tracks later ‘Nothing Can Be Done’ appears, and with it all the tensions that can exist in relationships. Joni shares the vocals with somebody with a young, strong voice called David Baerwald. The lovely surreal blue moon has been replaced bed as being y ‘graffiti ruins.’ A tender and loving heart is now described as ‘a smoking gun.’ The speaker’s lover suddenly leaves in anger, running red lights, accompanied by ‘trash-can-rock-band-pounding.’ Middle age is uncertainty is creeping in- ‘Oh I am not old/ I’m told/ But I am not young/ Oh and nothing can be done.’ This song has a harder edge, the male vocal emphasising a certain kind of moodiness and soft aggression. A part of it seems to be about regret. The words are quite simple, but the arrangement is interesting with the layered vocals and heavy percussion.

‘Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac’ is probably the weakest song, but it’s fun, and a return to the lightness of mood. It is the second last song on the album and has a catchy refrain, based around its title. There are a couple of songs on this album that conjure up the past. Here, the singer sings of her rock ‘n’ roll days, of romance in the back of the Cadillac, and the ‘pink fins’ of the car ‘in the falling rain.’ Ray’s dad, it seems, is her ‘math’ teacher and she is no good at math. Her mind is on other things, rather than school. She wants to escape. She dreams of ‘blue runways’ and ‘Blue lights out on airport road’ and the bolts and ‘tire treads’ of low planes. For Joni, the past is often about romance, and music, and dreams of escape- an ‘urge for going’ which she often explored.

The past, and boys, and romance comes up again in the longest song, the charming ‘Come in From the Cold.’ In ‘Turbulent Indigo’, recorded a few years later, and one of Joni’s best records, she sang and wrote mostly about contemporary issues, like domestic violence and natural justice. On ‘Night Ride Home’ Joni is still singing about the past and reminiscing about rock ‘n’ roll and her youth when she was discovering new things. This song, ‘Come in From the Cold’ is an excellent example.

The listener is transported back to 1957 where potential young lovers were kept ‘a foot apart’ at dances by adults holding rulers ‘without a heart.’ These ‘wise guardians’ were unable to prevent the occasional touch of a fingertip, or legs touching under the table, and the sensation of experiencing something innocent but still forbidden is captured beautifully by Joni when she sings of contact with another making ‘our circuitry explode’ and how she feels ‘renewed’ and ‘disabled’ by these ‘bonfires in my spine.’ In ‘Down To You’ from ‘Court and Spark’ the touch starved adult is startled by the close proximity of another: ‘In the morning there are lovers in the street/ They look so high/ You brush against a stranger/ And you both apologize…’, however this experience is different. It’s all about innocence and new experiences, and finding your way and discovering who you are. There is an echo of Van Gogh (like there is on ‘Turbulent Indigo’), when Joni talks of being ‘flesh and blood’, and ‘not some stone commission/ Like some statue in the park.’ Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo with similar complaints about his desperate need for affection and intimacy from another human being. There is also something cerebral about the whole thing as well. Amidst tactile images about wanting to make physical connections, Joni sings of what was on her mind and the thoughts that dwelt in a 1957 mind: ‘We really thought we had a purpose/ We were so anxious to achieve/ We had hope/ The world had promise/ For a slave/ To liberty.’

Next there is a reality check on the album when the listener is taken away from the idealism of the past into the rude awakening of the present. I have read somewhere that Joni had a housekeeper that ripped her off and even tried to sue her, and ‘The Windfall (Everything for Nothing) clearly comes out of that. The song is bitter and accusing, even if it is saved from a morbid vengefulness with the humour in its opening lines:  ‘Because Elvis gave them cars/ You think I’m cheap / And you’re hard done by.’ There is a lovely lilting sing-song sound in its melody that also belies the acrimony on display, in lines that are spat out like ‘Oh I’m tangled in your lines/ Your scam/ Your spider web/ Spit spun between the trees/ Doors slam/ You want my head/ You’d eat your young alive/ For a Jaguar in the drive…’

If we believe the lyrics, the housekeeper was a rapacious parasite, and Joni meanwhile looked after her generously and fairly throughout, paying for trips to ‘tropic shores’ and allowing her access to a ‘big blue pool’ and ‘clothes from fancy stores.’ The song becomes a rant against justice and the judicial system of lawyers and in the end it’s a very nicely constructed song and very musical, but also deeply personal with the feel of wanting to get things off your chest.

Much more universal is the charming ‘The Only Joy in Town’, set in Rome, and one of dozens of songs, no doubt, about becoming besotted, as a tourist, by a charismatic figure wandering around a foreign town. Joni gives a convincing female heterosexual slant on things by referring to the wonder boy throughout as the alliterative ‘Botticelli black boy’, a boy that is mesmerizing and lovely but full of self-conceit as he is ‘Breathing in women like oxygen/ On the Spanish stairs.’ I’ve sat on the Spanish stairs and I can easily see just how Joni’s intense and sexual image can be played out, on the first day of Spring, no less. She recreates the place names, and the atmosphere of Rome, with references to ‘Deadpan side-walk vendors’ and ‘Fellini’s circus’ and ‘La Dolce Vita clowns.’ There is a lovely melancholy edge to the whole song, however, with its reference to the empty streets at night- ‘Where does everybody go’, and the fact that, by 1991, the idea of following some charismatic boy around seems ridiculous: ‘In my youth I would have followed him/ All through this terra-cotta town.’ Sadly, he is the ‘only joy in town’, and he is unattainable.

Equally unattainable, it seems, is the mysterious figure from the last song, ‘Two Grey Rooms.’  This song took a while to grow on me, musically, at any rate. But for a long time I have now considered it to be the best song. It, too, is full of melancholy, as the title suggests, an echo of the melancholy book ‘Death in Venice.’  The singer is living in an undisclosed location and is besotted by another figure, this time a man, older, it seems, than the ‘Botticelli black boy.’ The image this time is of masculinity and sexuality: ‘Hot days your shirt’s undone/ Rainy days you run/ Oh and then you fade so fast/ Below my window.’ It’s the story of an infatuated voyeur, and the strings used in the song add a touch of grandeur and a tinge of sadness. This is unrequited love and its painstaking in its obsession. The lyrics also add the idea of it being like some kind of retreat- ‘No one knows I’m here/ One day I just disappeared/ And I took these two grey rooms up here…’  Just to remind us that not all of Joni’s songs are autobiographical, the idea apparently comes from an experience of the German director, Fassbinder, who saw a former lover from his window and became newly hypnotised.

Joni dips into the past again with a beautiful, sad song called ‘Cherokee Louise.’ It seems to be based on her relationship with a childhood friend. Joni’s songs about her childhood past and her young friendships are some of her most haunting. I am thinking of songs like ‘Song For Sharon’ and ‘Urge For Going’ and ‘Chinese Café’, etc, and this one is as good as these. ‘Cherokee Louise’ tells the sad story of a girl running away from her sexually abusive stepfather and hiding in a tunnel ‘in the Broadway bridge.’ It is also a song about ignorance and being ostracized. The poor girl isn’t allowed into the speaker’s house, and gossip and innuendo inflict their usual damage: ‘People like to talk/ Tongues are waggin’ over fences/ Waggin’ over phones…’ Joni contrasts the cruel adult treatment of Cherokee Louise with her own innocent games with the poor victim: ‘Last year about this time/ We used to climb up in the branches/ Just to sway there in some breeze/ Now the cops on the street/ They want Cherokee Louise.’  This song, in its sense of social satire, is reminiscent of certain songs on ‘Dog Eat Dog’, and foreshadows themes that appear on ‘Turbulent Indigo’, such as ‘Not To Blame’, also about assault. The masked sweetness of the song is punctuated by the lovely bursts of soprano sax from Wayne Shorter.

The last two songs up for discussion are, lyrically, the most challenging. The lyrics for one of them- ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’, belong to W B Yeats, not Joni.

Joni is generally cynical about Catholicism- see ‘Shine’ on the album of that name, and ‘The Magdalene Laundries’ on ‘Turbulent Indigo’- these are two examples- and my feeling is that she is probably cynical about religion in general, but I might be wrong about this- at least organised, established religions at any rate. Her most beautiful realisation of religious themes in music is ‘The Sire of Sorrow’ from Turbulent indigo, where she puts herself (as far as I can tell) in Job’s harrowing position. This religious motif is repeated on this album on the  triumphant ‘Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free’). The lyrics are, apparently, an echo from Luke, discussing an encounter a tax collector made with Jesus, when Jesus unexpectedly admitted him into his home. The tax collector’s name was Zacchaeus and he wanted to be seen by Jesus, who was travelling through Jericho, and being short, decided to climb a sycamore tree to enable this to occur. Joni’s words seem to talk of this encounter: ‘I am up a sycamore/ Looking through the leaves/ A sinner of some position/ who in the world can this heart healer be/ This magical physician.’ Then there are perhaps more contemporary references about ‘dirty work’ and slaves, and Mary Magdalene makes an appearance, and somehow Joni weaves thoughts on Exxon Blue into her tapestry. It all makes for a complex but very tuneful song. And a very confident song.

The only song on the album that doesn’t feature Joni’s words is the Yeat’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’, which Joni gives the title ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ (I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Joan Didion wrote a book with the same title in 1968 about San Francisco). The song, and poem, begin with ‘Turning and turning/ Within the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart/ The center cannot hold/ And a blood dimmed tide/ Is loosed upon the world.’

Yeats wrote his poem just after the end of the First War. It clearly still has relevance today. Joni felt, no doubt, that the falcon still could not hear the falconer. It’s not an optimistic song, but there is plenty on ‘Night Ride Home’, including the title track, to counteract any gloomy mood.

 

 

 

Song choice: Amelia

I have set the following task for my students:

Choose a song that you like primarily for its LYRICS. Show a www.youtube.com clip and discuss the words with the class. Place your discussion on your BLOG.

So i thought that I would have a go at as well.

Amelia: Joni Mitchell

I was driving across the burning desert

When I spotted six jet planes

Leaving six white vapour trails across the bleak terrain

It was the hexagram of the heavens

it was the strings of my guitar

Amelia, it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines

Is a song so wild and blue

It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you

Then your life becomes a travelogue

Of picture-post-card-charms

Amelia, it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they've gone

They'll tell you where to go

But till you get there yourself you never really know

Where some have found their paradise

Other's just come to harm

Oh Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight

It's so hard to obey

His sad request of me to kindly stay away

So this is how I hide the hurt

As the road leads cursed and charmed

I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation

She was swallowed by the sky

Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly

Like Icarus ascending

On beautiful foolish arms

Amelia, it was just a false alarm


Maybe I've never really loved

I guess that is the truth

I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude

And looking down on everything

I crashed into his arms

Amelia, it was just a false alarm


I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel

To shower off the dust

And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust

I dreamed of 747s

Over geometric farms

Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms


This song is about the famous aviator, AND the writer- she seems to be trying to make connections between her experiences and those of Amelia Earhart. Therefore, the ‘six jet planes’ and the ‘six white vapour trails’ becomes connected to her experience- the guitar strings (being a musician). This is also apparent in the way the ‘drone’ of the engines becomes ‘a song so wild and blue’, and she really identifies with the aviator when she says ‘like me she had a dream to fly.’ The ‘clouds at icy altitude’ of Amelia Earhart (literal) becomes a metaphor for the singer- her difficulty in finding love or making proper connections. When she wrote this song, she was on the road driving across America, trying to forget her drummer, who she was in love with but who she had just broken off with. Finally, in her dreams she connects with Amelia Earhart as she dreams of ‘747’s over geometric farms.’



My favourite lines are:

I wish that he was here tonight

It's so hard to obey

His sad request of me to kindly stay away

So this is how I hide the hurt

As the road leads cursed and charmed

I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm.



I can sense the pain of how difficult breaking up is for her- it doesn’t feel right for her, but she must do what he has told her. The pain is represented well by the sad, choking of the alliteration in ‘how I hide the hurt.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzjxIIhHYRA 

Joni Mitchell: A Tribute- Melbourne October 23 2009

THE advertisements in The Age newspaper in the month previous filled me with anticipation- a large picture of Joni Mitchell from her ‘Blue’ period with the words ‘Joni Mitchell Tribute- tickets on sale Monday.’ The word ‘tribute’ was unfortunate because it meant it wouldn’t be the real thing. Joni hasn’t toured Melbourne since 1984. I don’t even remember her being here. The closest I have ever come to her is to smell her stale smoke when I visited George Martin’s Air Lyndhurst Studios near Chalk Farm in London in 2002. I saw somewhere that she was recording her ‘Travelogue’ CD here with a large orchestra. Unfortunately I was two weeks late. A man behind the front desk saw the regret written on my face and took me to the tiny vocal booth where she sang her beautiful words. I imagine she’d had a multitude of cigarettes during what would have been marathon recording sessions.

Hamer Hall on St Kilda Rd in Melbourne is an impressive building which encourages fashionable dress and a hushed atmosphere. There was quite a crowd in the foyer about twenty minutes before opening, consisting of mostly middle aged people, the range somewhere between, say, thirty and sixty- sixty five. I looked around to see if I could see someone I knew (I was by myself). My first thought was to be mildly impressed- to see all these people who were interested in Joni, who like me liked her enough to pay $100 to her a tribute. Then suddenly I felt this powerful sense of being alone. Here I was surrounded by so many like-minded people, yet I didn’t know anyone and didn’t feel I could walk up to strangers and say ‘hey, is ‘Hejira’ your favourite album too?’ I think the reason for this weird alienating feeling was that I know very few people who have listened to Joni beyond ‘Both Sides, Now’ and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, and absolutely nobody who likes her as much as me and can recite all the words to ‘Borderline’ and ‘Two Grey Rooms.’ So here I was confronted at last by hundreds of people I could theoretically have a gorgeous conversation with on topics I love for the first time, and yet they all seemed self-contained, introspective and unattainable. Once I entered the Hall, and saw that I was so close to the stage, this feeling quickly dissipated.

Seven women teamed up to pay Joni tribute- some a bit obscure, a few quite well known in these parts. They rotated the songs very well. They either sang solo with simple accompaniment- as in ‘Blue’ and ‘River’, for example, or did backing vocals for each other on more complex arrangements as in ‘Raised On Robbery’, ‘A Free Man In Paris’, ‘Come In From The Cold’, etc. They sang spectacularly well in unison on a couple of occasions. The unexpected opener- ‘Shadows And Light’- was powerful, as was the chorus of ‘The Circle Game.’
The first set was enjoyable, but a little predictable. I didn’t purchase a programme, so I didn’t know which song would be next. However, besides the opener, almost every song came from either ‘Court & Spark’ or ‘Blue’: two great albums, but many great Joni records ignored.
I found the final set more interesting simply because the singers borrowed from a greater range of Joni’s material. This time there was an eclectic mix of songs, some of them my favourites, from ‘For Free’ and ‘Edith and the Kingpin’ and ‘Chinese Café/ Unchained Melody’ to ‘Coyote’ and ‘Cherokee Louise.’

The singers were clearly very involved in what they were performing. These are songs they would have sung countless times either by themselves or in small company. This was evidenced by one song more than any others- the sublime ‘Hejira’ sung by Virna Sanzone, like it was the last song she would ever sing, every line producing a face filled with tortured emotion. The audience warmed up too and more well known songs like ‘Woodstock’ and ‘You Turn Me On (I’m A Radio) received rapturous applause. To the singers’ credit, more obscure numbers like ‘Snakes & Ladders’ and ‘Be Cool’ from the 80’s were also warmly received.
I had an irritating woman behind me who was a self-appointed Joni Mitchell expert amongst her friends. She had evidently sung on stage at Hamer Hall before and knew in some capacity one of the singers. When asked by her friends what made Joni so endurable with her audience, she answered ‘Joni has always had a good manager.’

The singers were: Katie Noonan, Wendy Matthews, Virna Sanzone, Kristen Berardi, Louise Perryman, Rachel Goudry, and Tania Bowra.

The music was beautiful, the songs were sung with deep emotion and appreciation, and the backing band was subtle, right down to the bass player’s impersonations of Jaco Pastorious. A lovely night, but alas, no ‘Amelia’- tut, tut.

Joni Mitchell's top 20

A cold wintry day, the start of holidays, pressed for time, a spare hour suddenly crops up. Joni Mitchell's best 20 songs, in order, in my opinion.

1. Amelia (Hejira)

'I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm.'


2. Hejira (Hejira)

''I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still sometimes the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know- no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone.'


3. Song To A Seagull(Joni Mitchell)

'And the beaches were concrete
And the stars paid a light bill
And the blossoms hung false
On their store window trees.'


4. The Sire Of Sorrow (Turbulent Indigo)

'I've lost all taste for life
I'm all complaints
Tell me why do you starve the faithful
Why do you crucify the saints?
And you let the wicked prosper
You let their children frisk like deer,
And my loves are dead or dying, or they don't come near.'




5. Both Sides, Now (Clouds)

'But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living ev'ry day.'


6. Blue (Blue)

'Blue, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Blue, here is a song for you
Ink of a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in..'


7. River (Blue)

'I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on.'


8. For The Roses (For The Roses)

'I heard it in the wind last night
It sounded like applause
Chilly now
End of summer
No more shiny hot nights
It was just the arbutus rustling
And the bumping of the logs
And the moon swept down black water
Like an empty spotlight.'


9. Down To You (Court And Spark)

'In the morning there are lovers in the street
They look so high
You brush against a stranger
And you both apologize
Old friends seem indifferent
You must have brought that on
Old bonds have broken down
Love is gone
Oh love is gone
Written on your spirit this sad song
Love is gone.'


10. Borderline (Turbulent Indigo)

'Every bristling shaft of pride
Church or nation
Team or tribe
Every notion we subscribe to
Is just a borderline
Good or bad, we think we know
As if thinking makes things so
All convictions grow along the borderline.'


11. Song For Sharon (Hejira)

'Sharon you've got a husband
And a family and a farm
I've got the apple of temptation
And a diamond snake around my arm
But you still have your music
And I've still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I'll walk green pastures by and by.'


12. Woodstock (Ladies Of The Canyon)

'By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation.'



13. That Song About The Midway (Clouds)

'I met you on a midway at a fair last year
And you stood out like a ruby in a black man's ear
You were playing on the horses, you were playing on the guitar strings
You were playing like a devil wearing wings, wearing wings
You looked so grand wearing wings
Do you tape them to your shoulders just to sing
Can you fly
I heard you can! Can you fly
Like an eagle doin' your hunting from the sky.'



14. For Free (Ladies Of The Canyon)

'I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools
I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet, for free.'



15. The Boho Dance (The Hissing Of Summer Lawns)

'Down in the cellar in the Boho zone
I was looking for some sweet inspiration, oh well
Just another hard-time band
With Negro affectations
I was a hopeful in rooms like this
When I was working cheap
It's an old romance- the Boho dance
It has not gone to sleep.'


16. The Same Situation (Court And Spark)

'You've had lots of lovely women
Now you turn your gaze to me
Weighing up the beauty and the imperfection
To see if I'm worthy
Like the church
Like a cop
Like a mother
You want me to be truthful
Sometimes you turn it on me like a weapon though
And I need your approval.
Still I sent up my prayer
Wondering who was there to hear
I said "Send me somebody
Who's strong, and somewhat sincere..'


17. Edith And The Kingpin (The Hissing Of Summer Lawns)

'Edith in his bed
A plane in the rain is humming
The wires in the walls are humming
Some song- some mysterious song
Bars in her head
Being frantic and snowblind
Romantic and snowblind
She says- his crime belongs
Edith and the kingpin
Each with charm to sway
Are straing eye to eye
They dare not look away
You know they dare not look away.'



18. Passion Play- When All The Slaves Are Free (Night Ride Home)

'Magdalene is trembling
Like the washing on the line
Trembling and gleaming
Never before was a man so kind
Never so redeeming.
Enter the multitudes
In Exxon blue
In radiation rose
Ecstasy
Now you tell me
Who're you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?


19. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (Don Juan's Reckless Daughter)

'I come from open prarie
Given some wisdom and a lot of jive!
Last night the ghost of my old ideals
Reran on channel five
And it howled so spooky for its eagle soul
I nearly broke down and cried
But the split tongued spirit laughed at me
He said "Your serpent cannot be denied"'


20. Chinese Cafe/ Unchained Melody (Wild Things Run Fast)

'Christmas is sparkling
Out on Carol's lawn
This girl of my childhood games
Has kids nearly grown and gone
Grown so fast
Like the turn of a page
We look like our mothers did now
When we were those kid's age
Nothing lasts for long...'

Joni Mitchell 1

It is very difficult to write concisely about Joni Mitchell's music, because apart from the fact that it is so good, and you have the desire to write about all the songs you like, there is so much of it. Some would say she is the female Bob Dylan of her generation. I would prefer to say that Bob Dylan is the female Joni Mitchell of his generation. That's how good she is. And I believe her best albums were in the late 60's/ early 70's. She had a definite lull in the 80's where she comes across as less certain and less inspired. Then there are the smallish number of lovely albums in the 90's. Not much after that, in terms of quantity, anyway.

Joni's first album was called 'Song To A Seagull' (1968). It isn't her strongest album but it's a great start. Some of the songs have lyrics that are too abstract or wordy (not features of her best work), but it does contain the beautiful title track. It showcases her lovely, high voice, and has stunning imagery:

'Fly silly seabird
No dreams can possess you
No voices can blame you
For sun on your wings

My gentle relations
Have names they must call me
For loving the freedom of all flying things
My dreams with the seagulls fly
Out of reach out of cry

I came to the city
And lived like old Crusoe
On an island of noise
In a cobblestone sea
And the beaches were concrete
And the stars paid a light bill
And the blossoms hung false
On their store window trees
My dreams with the seagulls
Fly out of reach, out of cry'

It reminds us of later songs like 'Amelia' and 'Black Crow' with its flying imagery and desire for freedom. It is the city that entraps you. And yet the city is portrayed as full of fun loving freedom in 'Night in the City':

'Night time night time
Day left an hour ago
City light time
Must you get ready so slow
There are places to come from and places to go

Night in the city looks pretty to me
Night in the city looks fine
Music comes spilling out into the street
Colors go flashing in time.'

She is capturing the high spirited times perfectly and the music is bouncy and optimistic and matches the lyrics perfectly.

The other outstanding song on the first album is ironic and wry and reveals the sense of humour that we see especially on later albums like 'Court and Spark.' It is about her ill-fated marriage and the humour is in the hopeless mismatch that it had to be:

'I had a king dressed in drip-dry and paisley
Lately he's taken to saying I'm crazy and blind
He lives in another time
Ladies in gingham still blush
While he sings them of wars and wine
But I in my leather and lace I can never become that kind

I can't go back there anymore
You know my keys won't fit the door
You know my thoughts don't fit the man
They never can
They never can.

I had a king in a salt-rusted carriage
Who carried me off to his country for marriage too soon
Beware of the power of moons
There's no one to blame
No there's no one to name as a traitor here
The king's on the road
And the queen's in the grove
'Till the end of the year.'


In 'I Had A King' Joni has 'paisley' and 'crazy' rhyme by delaying the words 'and blind' for half a second. Joni portrays herself as the leather and lace woman who is at odds with the naive or superficial women in gingham who enjoy hearing of wars and wine. 'Beware of the power of moons'- a warning for everybody who acts foolishly and impulsively in 'love.'

The New York times at the time recognised true talent and said 'Joni Mitchell leaps from image to image but seldom leaves you hanging. Occasionally her lyrics seem to lose relevance and become frosting without any cake, but then she's like a sand dune: you like the idea of her' Fair criticism, but something that she could not be charged with again for a long time. The album 'Clouds' (i.e. 'Both Sides Now') was next.