From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2014 #867 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://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Tuesday, June 24 2014 Volume 2014 : Number 867 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Late Joan [Catherine McKay ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:14:44 -0700 From: Catherine McKay Subject: Re: Late Joan I've been meaning to let you know just how much I enjoyed and appreciated your posts about the "lesser-loved" later-period Joni albums and songs. I love the idea you propose that the sonic layering she uses is similar to visual art. Although "Chalk Mark" is not my favourite Joni album, I do like most of it, particularly "The Beat of Black Wings". I also quite like "A bird that whistles (Corinna, Corinna)". ________________________________ From: "johncalimee@frontier.com" To: "joni-digest@smoe.org" Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 2:17:42 AM Subject: Late Joan Hi again, I think there's a strong connection between the visual art Joni was creating during the period before Chalk Mark and the music that resulted from the same period. A lot of the images are very abstracted and layered in a collage like manner. These new photo images bear the influence of Larry Klein. She's not shooting alone but shooting a lot of imagery with him and then creating new forms by layering his photography into hers. The same could be said for most of the music during their time together. Chalk Mark is just that, carrying the collage from the its functional dimension in studio arrangement (stacking guitar strums to give body to the sound as an example) to becoming the whole force of the arrangements to begin with. It begins with the collage of My Secret Place and ends with the collage (brilliant as anything in her body of work) Corrina. If one were to make a YouTube video of CM songs with her mid 80's artwork, it would be clear how seamless the two are. As a painter who loves nearly every era of painting (save the Baroque and the frilly, French Aristocracy nonsense), it is easy on my eyes and ears to take in collage work. How wonderful is it? That's a matter of personal taste. I for one thrill to both the opening track of CM and the closing track of CM. Even my not very Joni loving partner sets aside his doubts about her music when he hears the fluttering aria Joni pieced together from Wayne Shorter's takes. I imagine things get dodgy for most folks in the middle. Just how interesting a piece of writing Lakota is can be seen from the live take she did in Italy. It's a very rich and haunting song, almost a lament. Perhaps the studio version would have fared better taken down a notch in tempo and with a wider, lower register. As it stands it like a song zipping along on Red Bull instead of Red Bull. If you catch my drift. Still, I enjoy it so much for the complex rhythms in the piece. I imagine the drum tracks are a mix of takes spliced together. But they are place together so perfectly it sounds like a single take. And the complexity of it. I try tapping to the beat and I can't keep up. It is always alive and fresh when I listen to the song. But getting back to the original subject that drew me in.... Imagine how Passion Play would be more likely revered if it were released during the era of FTR??? God Must be a Boogie Man if it replaced Centerpiece on Hissing? If we got 'Stay in Touch' on Blue instead of Little Green? Can you imagine the weeping, tears and reverence Stay in Touch would have received following River, Blue, The Last Night? She stoked so much innovation in those early years, the later stuff can seem stagnant by comparison. The logical progression of the thing demands that one part be the way it is, and the other part logically grows out of it. so the music couldn't be in any order other than what it is. But place some of the later efforts against the former, I think they hold up. It's only my opinion. But I'm absolutely certain Joni shares it. She may not have written releases that move people here the way the middle period greats moved people. But the individual pieces shine brightly in my eyes. Thinking forward, I'd like to see her stoke even more ground. If the voice is gone, why not speak it? I for one would love to see something Aaron Copland-esque come out of her. Where the music takes that flat land feel of hers and really tests it's mettle. She could weave pockets of poetry into it, spoken word and song. ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2014 #867 ***************************** ------- To post messages to the list,sendtojoni@smoe.org. Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------