From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2011 #884 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Website: http://jmdl.com JMDL Digest Wednesday, January 18 2012 Volume 2011 : Number 884 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- what's your "Joni progression?" [Paul Ivice ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:12:45 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Ivice Subject: what's your "Joni progression?" Senior year of high school, age 16, I missed most of spring semester because of mono and had to repeat English in summer school to graduate. While I did my term paper that summer of '71 on H.G. Wells, having just turned 17 that June, TWO of the cutest girls in my class did theirs on the Blue album, which had just come out. So by the end of summer, I had made Blue the second vinyl album I ever purchased with my own money (Simon & Garfunkle's Bookends was the first). While attending a small Illinois college that fall, I had borrowed an 8-track copy of Ladies of the Canyon, which I played repeatedly deep into the night to settle me down as I stared into a fireplace in the student union during my first acid trip. I saw Joni in concert for the first time in February 1972, when I also discovered Jackson Browne, who opened for Joni and whose first album had yet to be released. As I recall, Joni performed Urge For Going that night, but also was introducing some songs from For The Roses, which was released soon after. About the time FTR was released, I picked up Songs To A Seagull and Clouds,so by the time Court and Spark came out, my Joni collection was complete. I saw Joni twice in 1974, first in January at the Chicago Auditorium, then again in a summer outdoor concert at Ravinia in north suburban Chicago. I bought Miles of Aisles as soon as it was released; it was so much like her concert at Ravinia.. I heard HOSL at the home of a close friend when it first came out, and bought it the next day. Hejira came out my senior year in college. Listened to that for the first time at a small party with some friends/co-workers from the college newspaper. I still remember Lori O. and Anna in a friendly argument over whether dreams were false alarms. Lori said not. Hejira was moodier, colder than HOSL and took a little longer to appreciate, though I think Refuge of the Roads was the first song from H that I loved. Today, I would say my favorite song from H is Black Crow. By the mid-'70s I was not only into rock music, but had been drawn into jazz by Weather Report and John McLaughlin & the Mahavishnu Orchestra before exploring more "traditional" forms of jazz, so I loved DJRD and Mingus immediately when they came out, as well as Shadows & Light. When Wild Things Run Fast came out, it was not very popular, but I loved it and defended it against its detractors. It was the last Joni album I really enjoyed. It was the preachiness and arrogance of Dog Eat Dog that turned me off to Joni for a while. I remember watching her on TV performing the title track of DED at that Farm-Aid concert and wondering what had happened to her. It was like she had suddenly become cynical and drunk and was boring everyone in some dark cafC). Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm wasn't much better, though I liked Night Ride Home a little bit. Turbulent Indigo did not grab me the way her earlier albums did, nor did Taming the Tiger, though I bought them all, hoping for a resurgence of the spark I'd seen in her earlier music, but I did not see it in any of her later albums. Paul Ivice ;>) ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2011 #884 ***************************** ------- To post messages to the list, send to joni@smoe.org. Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------