From: les@jmdl.com (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2001 #14 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: les@jmdl.com Errors-To: les@jmdl.com Precedence: bulk Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/onlyjoni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com Unsubscribe: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe onlyJMDL Digest Sunday, January 14 2001 Volume 2001 : Number 014 The 'Official' Joni Mitchell Homepage, created by Wally Breese, can be found at http://www.jonimitchell.com. It contains the latest news, a detailed bio, Original Interviews, essays, lyrics and much much more. The JMDL website can be found at http://www.jmdl.com and contains interviews, articles, the member gallery, archives, and much more. ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: january 13!!!!!! ["John van Tiel" ] Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! ["] Joni's self portraits - help needed ["Raffaele Malanga" ] But to me it was just skin to skin ["william" ] Berets off to Joni ["william" ] Thanks for the Willy comment [jonifan@clearsong.com] Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! [T] Re: politics and our rigidity (md) [MDESTE1@aol.com] MG, Nikki and the Davis Gang. (Hardly any Joni content.) ["Russell Bowden] Charity / Cherokee [Emily Kirk Gray ] RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! ["] RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! ["] Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! [] RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! ["] RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! ["] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 11:20:23 +0100 From: "John van Tiel" Subject: Re: january 13!!!!!! It must have been the tofu, Wally. What say you, deep-South James? Claud? From the coast of Holland, with a view on a dyke ... John wallyk wrote: claud 999, i miss you too, and i'm kicking myself for not spending more time with you last september. but then, jimmy and van tiel monopolized you so, you were practically sandwiched between the netherlands and the deep south!!!!!!! happiness and love, wally ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 07:01:00 -0500 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Tanya, in NYC (at least for another week) said in Digest #18 on Saturday morning, > I just can't make it through > Jungle Line. It's just so > different from anything she > did before it, I think it's > just not speaking to me and > I'm not getting it. The rest > of the album, I get - - beautiful. > It's funny because when I first > heard Hejira I thought it was > the wierdest thing Joni had > ever done - now I get it, it > speaks to me and I love it. > Will the same thing happen > with Jungle Line?" Hi Tanya, In a word, "Yes". You _will_ get "The Jungle Line". It's not so different from the rest of Joni's songs. She's working with several new media but there's nothing new about that!! Her trademark attention to quality shines through. Don't let those drums throw you! When I read your post, I thought, "Oh good! A chance to talk about _The Hissing Of Summer Lawns_." I love this album. I've been singing the songs, reading the lyrics, jumping around to the drum tracks, examining the artwork, humming the tunes, soaking it up, pondering it, and most of all, celebrating it since it was new. I've even participated in a discussion list on the Internet about this album. :) I apologize in advance if I sound like a know-it-all. I've been accused of that in the past. I'm not. I'm just gonna be myself and use my own words, okay? Here goes: ~~ To understand "The Jungle Line", you have to understand the album as a whole. You have to be open to the idea that a CD can be as great as a book. Just like any great piece of literature, each element, each chapter defines part of the whole. The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a masterwork. There is no "fat" on this album. Everything is there on purpose and serves to support the whole. Joni has masterfully built an exquisitely detailed, multimedia work that begins with the fold open cover. So, the themes on the cover are the themes of the album. Let's open up the double-square cover and look at it as the _rectangle_ that she intended..... You can "read" the cover from left to right. On the left, you see a wealthy person's home in some hills, complete with a "blue pool" in the backyard. It's quite far from everything else. From this, I surmise that it's possible that some of the characters on this album are modern and wealthy and very much in their own world. :) There's a Christian church that is separate from all else. Separate from the home with a pool, separate from the modern world, separate from the jungle figures. The church is a concept unto itself. Lastly, we get to the heart of the matter. Two things- juxtaposed vertically. In the foreground is a group of primitive people, fresh from a kill. These folks are the only people in the picture, as if we are all African no matter where we live. They have slain a snake, a symbol of evil to Christians. Uh-oh, the themes are interacting already. They are familiar with death. In the background is the ordered modern world, both suburban and urban. We are observing the primitive and the modern simultaneously. While writing this post, I just found something brand new in this 25 year-old graphic. Long ago I noticed that Joni used blue in only two places on the whole cover. It's in the wealthy person's home on the left. Look at the other end of the picture, at the _other_ use of blue. Check it out. Isn't it striking how this small war-era building looks like the childhood home in Maidstone, Saskatchewan Canada of a certain under-appreciated, multi-talented master that we all know? Did anyone "get" this before? Judge for yourself- Ashara generously shot Joni's Maidstone house for posterity and included it at 1 hour, 57 minutes into JMDL Video Tree #2 (tape #1). It was shot on a windy July 1, 2000. Thank you Ashara. Okay, I admit the windows are different but many, many of the other details match like a hand and its shadow. IMO two of Joni's homes are right there- highlighted in blue, bookending the cover at the extreme left and the extreme right. I'm not saying that these are literal representations- only that the author may have used architecture familiar to herself and that we are privileged to look over her shoulder in this small way. Anyway, this graphic sets the themes. Enough about the cover. Let's pop in the CD and listen to the first track. I think of "In France They Kiss On Main Street" as classic Joni. It's sort of about young people partying. Every thing's primary colors. There are "Kisses like bright flags hung on holidays". It could be a track from Court and Spark, the preceding studio album. The listener has something familiar to enter with. It's a throwback. It's an introduction to the album. It's about kids raised in "middle-class circumstance" who have gone to the City to become young adults. It's about youthful exuberance and the lack of experience that makes partying seem harmless when you're in your twenties. These are partiers who haven't seen a friend die of drunk driving.... There are no dead junkies on this track. If this album was a book, the next chapter would be "The Jungle Line". The second chapter begins abruptly. The suburban kids are gone and we listeners are alone, confronting something ancient, primal, and as we will see, deadly. We are in the African jungle listening to.... war drums. There is no narrator. Nothing familiar to the westerner, just the frenetic beat of a big gang of hand-made drums, calling for war. The drums are in the foreground. We are thrown into a strange land wondering what the hell is next. This is like the huge jump-cut in an American film, "The Deer Hunter". One moment you're observing every tiny, tiny detail at a friend's wedding. The next millisecond you're over wartime Vietnam, staring out the open door of a roaring American helicopter, wondering where the snipers are......... "We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto." About the drum track, Joni said that she owns an album of the Burundi 'warrior' drummers and liked to dance to it. As I recall, she said that she hears a Bo Diddley figure in there, but she may have been talking about the later "The Tenth World". (See Tape Tree #5, complied by Simon, "My Top 12" - from BBC Radio 1, London, England - broadcast May 29, 1983.) In fact, at the time, she include the Burundi drummers as one of her top 12 tracks of biggest influences! So I guess she started with the rhythm track and built it up from there. If there is a single key to liking this track, maybe it is picturing the author dancing to the drums in her kitchen with her cats. As the camera pulls back, out the kitchen window and up, you can see an aerial view of the Spanish compound on the cover. :) Imagine that she's dancing to the African drums, thinking about the primal pleasure of live music in a nightclub, the dangers of the drug culture, and in contrast, the simplicity of a distant church. All of the rest of the stories on the album flow out of these images. Together they form a classic Joni duality- the jungle within the city. She's been writing about these things from the first album, observing first the country, then the city. Anyway, when HOSL was released, drums had never been so prominent on one of her studio albums. Here's a new color on Joni's palette. The drums reflect the African influence on the cover and the song's title. She used layers of ominous sounds from a pioneering electronic instrument called a Moog synthesizer. This was a huge departure too. "The Jungle Line" signals that this album is not "Court and Spark 2, The Sequel". So, here she is, a folk singer no more. A pop singer no more. She's not only playing a Moog, she's _layering_ it on top of a African rhythm track. She's composing with layers; she's now become a record producer. But not a _folk_ producer. She's not putting dulcimers on top of nylon strung acoustic guitars. She's not putting strings on top of jazz-pop songs (as John Lennon suggested) like on Court and Spark. This is something new yet again. She's juxtaposing African rhythms with synthesizer! The ancient/primitive with the modern/electronic. Amazing in itself. All the more amazing when you realize that she did it in 1975! You gotta realize this was before Paul Simon was lauded for inventing "World Music". Before Sting was celebrated for hiring Branford Marsalis. Anyway, like the cover, the primitive is in the foreground and the urban is being observed from a distance. The words on The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Oh, the words! If there was any doubt before, it is now clear that Joni is a deep thinker. On "The Jungle Line", the words borrow the ambiguity of "Sweet Bird" (also on this album). It's more of a scene than a story. Joni, (the narrator and a painter herself), is looking over the shoulder of another painter. This time out it's Rousseau. Rousseau is painting an urban scene, a nightclub. There's lots of excitement in the air, (live music, a low-cut blouse, beer) and more than a hint of danger. The narrator enters the painting and never leaves. The rest of "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns" is all about this one painting. It's people. About the primitive world in the city. About danger. She never goes back to the innocent, youthful partiers. As Springsteen observed, "there's a darkness on the edge of town." She never calls for a return "to some semblance of a garden". The narrator notices that the waitress is working among "cannibals" who might "eat a working girl like her alive". Then the danger theme is duplicated in an image of a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb- a drug death. She works these images into a Tangled (hi Victor!) vine near the end, intertwining poison (the jungle's danger) and mouthpiece spit (the vulnerable, primitive musicians), and the nightclub (the urban scene). Then the "camera" pulls back, still inside the Rousseau painting, and we go "steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge", as if to say "There are a million stories in the Naked City." We go traveling, traveling, traveling in New York City, to look for the next chapter in this book about dangers and compromises and paradoxes of the twin worlds. We witness Edith and the Kingpin locked in their awful yet perfect embrace where meeting your mate is also meeting your match. A new adult world in which every blessing is a curse. Where benefactors kindly offer perils yet parasites carry blessings. A world where hostages are forced to do the unthinkable.... to smile for the camera. All of the themes from the cover except the church are right there in "The Jungle Line". This is not a minor work. This album is the work of a multi-dimensional Master at the top of all of her games simultaneously. A masterwork. Now Tanya, will you give "The Jungle Line" just one more try? All the best, Lama PS- Thanks for the bandwidth Les. Without you, for whom would I write? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 12:41:23 From: "Raffaele Malanga" Subject: Joni's self portraits - help needed I am writing a dissertation on portraits and self-portraits, and would like to include a few references about Joni's painting. In particular, I am thinking about the Van Gogh style self-portrait on the cover of Turbulent Indigo. Could anyone help me in tracking down articles and interviews where Joni talks about it? I'm sure I read something about the meaning of depicting herself without an ear, and about what Van Gogh means to her. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts about any Joni lyric that would best be described as a self-portrait in words (and music). Song for Sharon? Woman of heart and mind? Raffaele (London) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 08:03:13 EST From: Lmpeakes@aol.com Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Great post, Jim - lots of careful thought - how do you make the time to write it all down? I remember taking the Burundi drummer disc (on the Lyrichord label) down from a library shelf (Dartmouth) and thinking it looked interesting. I slapped it on the turntable at the library and the first track was instantly familiar - I smiled and thought "so THAT'S where she got it from" - this was the late '80s, after "sampling" as a concept had become a mainstream device - It's true for me, too, that the "Hissing" cover is beautifully simple - Jim was able to find a lot in it, because the symbols are so loaded. - Lisa P. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 09:21:40 -0500 From: "Diane Evans" Subject: RE: The Party (SJC) & JazzFest Dave (and Paz), Wait, wait! If you have discussed this before, please be patient. I'm still a fairly new lister. You wrote: >Wonder whether Joni will ever make another appearance at the Fest, >heard >she had a tough time w/ her new axe last trip. Is there a chance she may show up?! I've wanted to go to the JazzFest for years and just booked/paid for our rooms and airfare for this year's festival. It would be the ultimate treat to see her there...:-D Dreamin like I do, Diane _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 23:21:46 +0700 From: "william" Subject: But to me it was just skin to skin ... and it howled so spooky for its eagle soul, I nearly broke down and cried, the split tongue spirit laughed at me he said your serpent cannot be denied. I touched you ... You and I you and I you and I, oh yo-o-o-o-ou and I, eagles in the sky you and I. Possibly my favourite Joni song. Just felt like saying it. Anyone know how to play it in standard tuning? Can do Otis +ACY- Marlena and Coyote in standard so I'm sure where there's a Willy there's a way. Thanks Alison E and Michael P for your info on prospective JoniFests in Noo Yawk and N'awlins. I cannot wait as alas some times time doesn't move so swift. But hey+ACE- Happiness sure is the best ....... Willy the Shake ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 00:23:25 +0700 From: "william" Subject: Berets off to Joni Who else has had such a run of class? Dylan and the Beatles aside. I mean Blue through to Don Juan's. FTR, C&S, MOA, THOSL, Hej oh the Hej. All this talk about THOSL now must be the start of the latest style. Help me I think I'm falling in love with Joni every time I re-new. The Jungle Line? What a song! Prince ain't wrong. Yeh, he bought her a diamond for her throat. Had never really thought about that before. The throat I mean. The woman is endlessly interpretable. Hejira berets off to Joni. In the squinting Indonesian sun ... Willy the Shake ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 11:27:31 -0600 From: jonifan@clearsong.com Subject: Thanks for the Willy comment There's a RealAudio and mp3 sound file of my version of JERICHO which I do with just piano and bass kind of nightclub setting and very much inspired by Shirley Horn who is probably my favorite singer. http://www.clearsong.com/sounds for the Jericho files as well as the Willy cover in Real and MP3 _____________________________________________ Richard Isen Clearsong Records . . .because a song is like a good companion. please visit http://www.clearsong.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 12:36:27 EST From: TanyerSCO@aol.com Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Thank you so much! I will be sure to keep listening and keep this all in mind. And thanks to everyone who has been so generous with their responses. I'm enjoying reading about everyone's personal experiences with HOSL. I think I'll bring it on the road with me and listen to it a lot. Usually Hejira gets a lot of play on the road, but I'm intrigued enough to make the switch for the next couple of months. Don't think I'll leave Hejira behind though! : ) tanya in NYC ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 13:21:39 EST From: MDESTE1@aol.com Subject: Re: politics and our rigidity (md) In a message dated 1/13/01 6:26:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, yharlap@channelsinternet.com writes: << most of the articulate and vocal people (whether civil or downright rude) about politics and social issues on this list - and I include myself in this philosophical wondering - seem like we are not open or willing to accept information that makes us reconsider our positions. >> The actual problem is that one side either has no facts to provide or they have been unwilling to provide facts. They have relied in many cases on wild assertions clearly disproven by many facts available. I am on record as absolutely eager to know any additional "facts" but the discussies for their own reasosn would rather deny actual information that exists in lieu of retaining their subjective opinions. Example: I sent on lister an atrticle (3 actually) that contained well documented list if the events that have created the middle east issues. He hasnt responded back. I can only assume he has no alternative historical evidence. So you tell me who wins that argument. But this isd the way much of the JMDL discussions have gone. Thats the record. The record isnt the refusal to accept new information it is the failure to provide new information. marcel ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 10:39:00 -0800 From: "Russell Bowden" Subject: MG, Nikki and the Davis Gang. (Hardly any Joni content.) Gang, Russ reporting from San Francisco......The small, but very cool, Joni-fest in Davis, CA (hostessed by Mary Grace and Nikki) was a fun, warm eveing of good music (thanks Nikki and Marcel) and WONDERFUL food by the Tres Charment MG. Michael Paz and Wally K. were kind enough to join us via satellite hook-up from New Orleans and Buenos Aires, respectively. For the first lucky few in LA next week; get a garment from Nikki!!! Supplies are limited so get there early. Thanks MG for a great evening. Russ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 14:21:43 -0500 (EST) From: Emily Kirk Gray Subject: Charity / Cherokee hi all. i'm listening to TI now, haven't in a while... it's a gorgeous, moody, troubled album. her voice is so pained here. anyway, just now as i was playing "magdalene laundries" at the part where she sings "our lady of charity -- oh, charity" with a planet full of anger, regret, and sadness all in that last word -- well, i suddenly heard the last word as "cherokee," very clearly. although i know that's not what she sings. and it made a perfect connection to me with "cherokee louise" -- as if the story of these helpless women echoes and links and reminds her of that other, horrifying, particular story of "my friend" louise. just a thought. has anyone else heard this or thought it? maybe we've already discussed, and i missed it. - --emily NP: "not to blame" ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 13:33:27 -0600 From: "Eric Wilcox" Subject: RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! GREAT post, Jim. I love it when JMDLers are able to explore how tracks interact together on albums.... However.... one thing bothered me. How do we know that the snake on the front cover is dead? Perhaps it is very much alive-- and the primitives on the cover are tansporting it out of the city into the suburbs? or out of the jungle-- into the city. If we see the snake as a symbol of sin--- then the idea of re-introducing sin into what is seen as a perfect area-- the suburbs-- could factor in, couldn't it? If the snake is dead-- then sin is dead, too, and I don't see that as possible on this album. eric - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@jmdl.com [mailto:owner-joni@jmdl.com]On Behalf Of Jim L'Hommedieu Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2001 6:01 AM To: _JMDL - June 98; TanyerSCO@aol.com Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Tanya, in NYC (at least for another week) said in Digest #18 on Saturday morning, > I just can't make it through > Jungle Line. It's just so > different from anything she > did before it, I think it's > just not speaking to me and > I'm not getting it. The rest > of the album, I get - - beautiful. > It's funny because when I first > heard Hejira I thought it was > the wierdest thing Joni had > ever done - now I get it, it > speaks to me and I love it. > Will the same thing happen > with Jungle Line?" Hi Tanya, In a word, "Yes". You _will_ get "The Jungle Line". It's not so different from the rest of Joni's songs. She's working with several new media but there's nothing new about that!! Her trademark attention to quality shines through. Don't let those drums throw you! When I read your post, I thought, "Oh good! A chance to talk about _The Hissing Of Summer Lawns_." I love this album. I've been singing the songs, reading the lyrics, jumping around to the drum tracks, examining the artwork, humming the tunes, soaking it up, pondering it, and most of all, celebrating it since it was new. I've even participated in a discussion list on the Internet about this album. :) I apologize in advance if I sound like a know-it-all. I've been accused of that in the past. I'm not. I'm just gonna be myself and use my own words, okay? Here goes: ~~ To understand "The Jungle Line", you have to understand the album as a whole. You have to be open to the idea that a CD can be as great as a book. Just like any great piece of literature, each element, each chapter defines part of the whole. The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a masterwork. There is no "fat" on this album. Everything is there on purpose and serves to support the whole. Joni has masterfully built an exquisitely detailed, multimedia work that begins with the fold open cover. So, the themes on the cover are the themes of the album. Let's open up the double-square cover and look at it as the _rectangle_ that she intended..... You can "read" the cover from left to right. On the left, you see a wealthy person's home in some hills, complete with a "blue pool" in the backyard. It's quite far from everything else. From this, I surmise that it's possible that some of the characters on this album are modern and wealthy and very much in their own world. :) There's a Christian church that is separate from all else. Separate from the home with a pool, separate from the modern world, separate from the jungle figures. The church is a concept unto itself. Lastly, we get to the heart of the matter. Two things- juxtaposed vertically. In the foreground is a group of primitive people, fresh from a kill. These folks are the only people in the picture, as if we are all African no matter where we live. They have slain a snake, a symbol of evil to Christians. Uh-oh, the themes are interacting already. They are familiar with death. In the background is the ordered modern world, both suburban and urban. We are observing the primitive and the modern simultaneously. While writing this post, I just found something brand new in this 25 year-old graphic. Long ago I noticed that Joni used blue in only two places on the whole cover. It's in the wealthy person's home on the left. Look at the other end of the picture, at the _other_ use of blue. Check it out. Isn't it striking how this small war-era building looks like the childhood home in Maidstone, Saskatchewan Canada of a certain under-appreciated, multi-talented master that we all know? Did anyone "get" this before? Judge for yourself- Ashara generously shot Joni's Maidstone house for posterity and included it at 1 hour, 57 minutes into JMDL Video Tree #2 (tape #1). It was shot on a windy July 1, 2000. Thank you Ashara. Okay, I admit the windows are different but many, many of the other details match like a hand and its shadow. IMO two of Joni's homes are right there- highlighted in blue, bookending the cover at the extreme left and the extreme right. I'm not saying that these are literal representations- only that the author may have used architecture familiar to herself and that we are privileged to look over her shoulder in this small way. Anyway, this graphic sets the themes. Enough about the cover. Let's pop in the CD and listen to the first track. I think of "In France They Kiss On Main Street" as classic Joni. It's sort of about young people partying. Every thing's primary colors. There are "Kisses like bright flags hung on holidays". It could be a track from Court and Spark, the preceding studio album. The listener has something familiar to enter with. It's a throwback. It's an introduction to the album. It's about kids raised in "middle-class circumstance" who have gone to the City to become young adults. It's about youthful exuberance and the lack of experience that makes partying seem harmless when you're in your twenties. These are partiers who haven't seen a friend die of drunk driving.... There are no dead junkies on this track. If this album was a book, the next chapter would be "The Jungle Line". The second chapter begins abruptly. The suburban kids are gone and we listeners are alone, confronting something ancient, primal, and as we will see, deadly. We are in the African jungle listening to.... war drums. There is no narrator. Nothing familiar to the westerner, just the frenetic beat of a big gang of hand-made drums, calling for war. The drums are in the foreground. We are thrown into a strange land wondering what the hell is next. This is like the huge jump-cut in an American film, "The Deer Hunter". One moment you're observing every tiny, tiny detail at a friend's wedding. The next millisecond you're over wartime Vietnam, staring out the open door of a roaring American helicopter, wondering where the snipers are......... "We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto." About the drum track, Joni said that she owns an album of the Burundi 'warrior' drummers and liked to dance to it. As I recall, she said that she hears a Bo Diddley figure in there, but she may have been talking about the later "The Tenth World". (See Tape Tree #5, complied by Simon, "My Top 12" - from BBC Radio 1, London, England - broadcast May 29, 1983.) In fact, at the time, she include the Burundi drummers as one of her top 12 tracks of biggest influences! So I guess she started with the rhythm track and built it up from there. If there is a single key to liking this track, maybe it is picturing the author dancing to the drums in her kitchen with her cats. As the camera pulls back, out the kitchen window and up, you can see an aerial view of the Spanish compound on the cover. :) Imagine that she's dancing to the African drums, thinking about the primal pleasure of live music in a nightclub, the dangers of the drug culture, and in contrast, the simplicity of a distant church. All of the rest of the stories on the album flow out of these images. Together they form a classic Joni duality- the jungle within the city. She's been writing about these things from the first album, observing first the country, then the city. Anyway, when HOSL was released, drums had never been so prominent on one of her studio albums. Here's a new color on Joni's palette. The drums reflect the African influence on the cover and the song's title. She used layers of ominous sounds from a pioneering electronic instrument called a Moog synthesizer. This was a huge departure too. "The Jungle Line" signals that this album is not "Court and Spark 2, The Sequel". So, here she is, a folk singer no more. A pop singer no more. She's not only playing a Moog, she's _layering_ it on top of a African rhythm track. She's composing with layers; she's now become a record producer. But not a _folk_ producer. She's not putting dulcimers on top of nylon strung acoustic guitars. She's not putting strings on top of jazz-pop songs (as John Lennon suggested) like on Court and Spark. This is something new yet again. She's juxtaposing African rhythms with synthesizer! The ancient/primitive with the modern/electronic. Amazing in itself. All the more amazing when you realize that she did it in 1975! You gotta realize this was before Paul Simon was lauded for inventing "World Music". Before Sting was celebrated for hiring Branford Marsalis. Anyway, like the cover, the primitive is in the foreground and the urban is being observed from a distance. The words on The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Oh, the words! If there was any doubt before, it is now clear that Joni is a deep thinker. On "The Jungle Line", the words borrow the ambiguity of "Sweet Bird" (also on this album). It's more of a scene than a story. Joni, (the narrator and a painter herself), is looking over the shoulder of another painter. This time out it's Rousseau. Rousseau is painting an urban scene, a nightclub. There's lots of excitement in the air, (live music, a low-cut blouse, beer) and more than a hint of danger. The narrator enters the painting and never leaves. The rest of "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns" is all about this one painting. It's people. About the primitive world in the city. About danger. She never goes back to the innocent, youthful partiers. As Springsteen observed, "there's a darkness on the edge of town." She never calls for a return "to some semblance of a garden". The narrator notices that the waitress is working among "cannibals" who might "eat a working girl like her alive". Then the danger theme is duplicated in an image of a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb- a drug death. She works these images into a Tangled (hi Victor!) vine near the end, intertwining poison (the jungle's danger) and mouthpiece spit (the vulnerable, primitive musicians), and the nightclub (the urban scene). Then the "camera" pulls back, still inside the Rousseau painting, and we go "steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge", as if to say "There are a million stories in the Naked City." We go traveling, traveling, traveling in New York City, to look for the next chapter in this book about dangers and compromises and paradoxes of the twin worlds. We witness Edith and the Kingpin locked in their awful yet perfect embrace where meeting your mate is also meeting your match. A new adult world in which every blessing is a curse. Where benefactors kindly offer perils yet parasites carry blessings. A world where hostages are forced to do the unthinkable.... to smile for the camera. All of the themes from the cover except the church are right there in "The Jungle Line". This is not a minor work. This album is the work of a multi-dimensional Master at the top of all of her games simultaneously. A masterwork. Now Tanya, will you give "The Jungle Line" just one more try? All the best, Lama PS- Thanks for the bandwidth Les. Without you, for whom would I write? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 13:56:03 -0600 From: "Eric Wilcox" Subject: RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! A few more thoughts on your post, Jim: Lamadoo wrote: "Rousseau is painting an urban scene...." Wrong. Rousseau doesn't paint urban scenes. If you'd like to check out some of his work, go to this page: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rousseau/ anyways-- what you will notice right away is taht all of his paintings are set in -- the jungle. So instead of seeing the song through Rousseau's eyes-- lets look at the comparison. Rousseau in his jungle proper, and Joni in her urban jungle. eric - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@jmdl.com [mailto:owner-joni@jmdl.com]On Behalf Of Jim L'Hommedieu Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2001 6:01 AM To: _JMDL - June 98; TanyerSCO@aol.com Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Tanya, in NYC (at least for another week) said in Digest #18 on Saturday morning, > I just can't make it through > Jungle Line. It's just so > different from anything she > did before it, I think it's > just not speaking to me and > I'm not getting it. The rest > of the album, I get - - beautiful. > It's funny because when I first > heard Hejira I thought it was > the wierdest thing Joni had > ever done - now I get it, it > speaks to me and I love it. > Will the same thing happen > with Jungle Line?" Hi Tanya, In a word, "Yes". You _will_ get "The Jungle Line". It's not so different from the rest of Joni's songs. She's working with several new media but there's nothing new about that!! Her trademark attention to quality shines through. Don't let those drums throw you! When I read your post, I thought, "Oh good! A chance to talk about _The Hissing Of Summer Lawns_." I love this album. I've been singing the songs, reading the lyrics, jumping around to the drum tracks, examining the artwork, humming the tunes, soaking it up, pondering it, and most of all, celebrating it since it was new. I've even participated in a discussion list on the Internet about this album. :) I apologize in advance if I sound like a know-it-all. I've been accused of that in the past. I'm not. I'm just gonna be myself and use my own words, okay? Here goes: ~~ To understand "The Jungle Line", you have to understand the album as a whole. You have to be open to the idea that a CD can be as great as a book. Just like any great piece of literature, each element, each chapter defines part of the whole. The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a masterwork. There is no "fat" on this album. Everything is there on purpose and serves to support the whole. Joni has masterfully built an exquisitely detailed, multimedia work that begins with the fold open cover. So, the themes on the cover are the themes of the album. Let's open up the double-square cover and look at it as the _rectangle_ that she intended..... You can "read" the cover from left to right. On the left, you see a wealthy person's home in some hills, complete with a "blue pool" in the backyard. It's quite far from everything else. From this, I surmise that it's possible that some of the characters on this album are modern and wealthy and very much in their own world. :) There's a Christian church that is separate from all else. Separate from the home with a pool, separate from the modern world, separate from the jungle figures. The church is a concept unto itself. Lastly, we get to the heart of the matter. Two things- juxtaposed vertically. In the foreground is a group of primitive people, fresh from a kill. These folks are the only people in the picture, as if we are all African no matter where we live. They have slain a snake, a symbol of evil to Christians. Uh-oh, the themes are interacting already. They are familiar with death. In the background is the ordered modern world, both suburban and urban. We are observing the primitive and the modern simultaneously. While writing this post, I just found something brand new in this 25 year-old graphic. Long ago I noticed that Joni used blue in only two places on the whole cover. It's in the wealthy person's home on the left. Look at the other end of the picture, at the _other_ use of blue. Check it out. Isn't it striking how this small war-era building looks like the childhood home in Maidstone, Saskatchewan Canada of a certain under-appreciated, multi-talented master that we all know? Did anyone "get" this before? Judge for yourself- Ashara generously shot Joni's Maidstone house for posterity and included it at 1 hour, 57 minutes into JMDL Video Tree #2 (tape #1). It was shot on a windy July 1, 2000. Thank you Ashara. Okay, I admit the windows are different but many, many of the other details match like a hand and its shadow. IMO two of Joni's homes are right there- highlighted in blue, bookending the cover at the extreme left and the extreme right. I'm not saying that these are literal representations- only that the author may have used architecture familiar to herself and that we are privileged to look over her shoulder in this small way. Anyway, this graphic sets the themes. Enough about the cover. Let's pop in the CD and listen to the first track. I think of "In France They Kiss On Main Street" as classic Joni. It's sort of about young people partying. Every thing's primary colors. There are "Kisses like bright flags hung on holidays". It could be a track from Court and Spark, the preceding studio album. The listener has something familiar to enter with. It's a throwback. It's an introduction to the album. It's about kids raised in "middle-class circumstance" who have gone to the City to become young adults. It's about youthful exuberance and the lack of experience that makes partying seem harmless when you're in your twenties. These are partiers who haven't seen a friend die of drunk driving.... There are no dead junkies on this track. If this album was a book, the next chapter would be "The Jungle Line". The second chapter begins abruptly. The suburban kids are gone and we listeners are alone, confronting something ancient, primal, and as we will see, deadly. We are in the African jungle listening to.... war drums. There is no narrator. Nothing familiar to the westerner, just the frenetic beat of a big gang of hand-made drums, calling for war. The drums are in the foreground. We are thrown into a strange land wondering what the hell is next. This is like the huge jump-cut in an American film, "The Deer Hunter". One moment you're observing every tiny, tiny detail at a friend's wedding. The next millisecond you're over wartime Vietnam, staring out the open door of a roaring American helicopter, wondering where the snipers are......... "We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto." About the drum track, Joni said that she owns an album of the Burundi 'warrior' drummers and liked to dance to it. As I recall, she said that she hears a Bo Diddley figure in there, but she may have been talking about the later "The Tenth World". (See Tape Tree #5, complied by Simon, "My Top 12" - from BBC Radio 1, London, England - broadcast May 29, 1983.) In fact, at the time, she include the Burundi drummers as one of her top 12 tracks of biggest influences! So I guess she started with the rhythm track and built it up from there. If there is a single key to liking this track, maybe it is picturing the author dancing to the drums in her kitchen with her cats. As the camera pulls back, out the kitchen window and up, you can see an aerial view of the Spanish compound on the cover. :) Imagine that she's dancing to the African drums, thinking about the primal pleasure of live music in a nightclub, the dangers of the drug culture, and in contrast, the simplicity of a distant church. All of the rest of the stories on the album flow out of these images. Together they form a classic Joni duality- the jungle within the city. She's been writing about these things from the first album, observing first the country, then the city. Anyway, when HOSL was released, drums had never been so prominent on one of her studio albums. Here's a new color on Joni's palette. The drums reflect the African influence on the cover and the song's title. She used layers of ominous sounds from a pioneering electronic instrument called a Moog synthesizer. This was a huge departure too. "The Jungle Line" signals that this album is not "Court and Spark 2, The Sequel". So, here she is, a folk singer no more. A pop singer no more. She's not only playing a Moog, she's _layering_ it on top of a African rhythm track. She's composing with layers; she's now become a record producer. But not a _folk_ producer. She's not putting dulcimers on top of nylon strung acoustic guitars. She's not putting strings on top of jazz-pop songs (as John Lennon suggested) like on Court and Spark. This is something new yet again. She's juxtaposing African rhythms with synthesizer! The ancient/primitive with the modern/electronic. Amazing in itself. All the more amazing when you realize that she did it in 1975! You gotta realize this was before Paul Simon was lauded for inventing "World Music". Before Sting was celebrated for hiring Branford Marsalis. Anyway, like the cover, the primitive is in the foreground and the urban is being observed from a distance. The words on The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Oh, the words! If there was any doubt before, it is now clear that Joni is a deep thinker. On "The Jungle Line", the words borrow the ambiguity of "Sweet Bird" (also on this album). It's more of a scene than a story. Joni, (the narrator and a painter herself), is looking over the shoulder of another painter. This time out it's Rousseau. Rousseau is painting an urban scene, a nightclub. There's lots of excitement in the air, (live music, a low-cut blouse, beer) and more than a hint of danger. The narrator enters the painting and never leaves. The rest of "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns" is all about this one painting. It's people. About the primitive world in the city. About danger. She never goes back to the innocent, youthful partiers. As Springsteen observed, "there's a darkness on the edge of town." She never calls for a return "to some semblance of a garden". The narrator notices that the waitress is working among "cannibals" who might "eat a working girl like her alive". Then the danger theme is duplicated in an image of a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb- a drug death. She works these images into a Tangled (hi Victor!) vine near the end, intertwining poison (the jungle's danger) and mouthpiece spit (the vulnerable, primitive musicians), and the nightclub (the urban scene). Then the "camera" pulls back, still inside the Rousseau painting, and we go "steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge", as if to say "There are a million stories in the Naked City." We go traveling, traveling, traveling in New York City, to look for the next chapter in this book about dangers and compromises and paradoxes of the twin worlds. We witness Edith and the Kingpin locked in their awful yet perfect embrace where meeting your mate is also meeting your match. A new adult world in which every blessing is a curse. Where benefactors kindly offer perils yet parasites carry blessings. A world where hostages are forced to do the unthinkable.... to smile for the camera. All of the themes from the cover except the church are right there in "The Jungle Line". This is not a minor work. This album is the work of a multi-dimensional Master at the top of all of her games simultaneously. A masterwork. Now Tanya, will you give "The Jungle Line" just one more try? All the best, Lama PS- Thanks for the bandwidth Les. Without you, for whom would I write? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 12:39:01 -0800 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Great essay Lama! You wrote: > Isn't it striking how this small war-era building looks like the childhood > home in Maidstone, Saskatchewan Canada of a certain under-appreciated, > multi-talented master that we all know? Did anyone "get" this before? > > Judge for yourself- Ashara generously shot Joni's Maidstone house for > posterity and included it at 1 hour, 57 minutes into JMDL Video Tree #2 > (tape #1). It was shot on a windy July 1, 2000. Thank you Ashara. Okay, I > admit the windows are different but many, many of the other details match > like a hand and its shadow. I recall the great thread (last Spring, I believe) which discussed the houses on the HOSL cover and how they may have represented houses Joni lived in throughout her life. When I later viewed Ashara's video of Joni's house in Maidstone, there was that thrill of recognition immediately! Tanya, you may want to do a search in the digests for this thread - it is really fascinating reading. There are also several other in-depth posts from around the same time that greatly illuminate the themes in the HOSL album. Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 16:09:25 -0500 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" Subject: RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Hi Eric, Oh Gawd, thank you Eric. I see what you mean about a live snake. Then the snake is danger en route. Death available for delivery to your enemy's door. If the snake is not evil and death, I guess we agree that the snake is danger or sin, then? Interesting..... I like your interpretation now that I've been exposed to it. To my old thinking, the snake was evil-conquered and converted into something useful- meat. He is danger in the past tense. In your scenario, the snake is dangerous right NOW; the snake is so dangerous that it takes a village to subdue it. It's not been conquered at all. Its just being confronted at great effort and risk. Joni is portraying the _struggle_ with the snake. That fits in much better with the persistent danger theme elsewhere whereas my conquered-danger is just kind of.... lifeless. (Pun intended) This is **EXACTLY** the kind of Lit class interaction that I longed for before I was on JMDL. Thank you. Lama > -----Original Message----- > From: Eric Wilcox [mailto:edwilcox@students.wisc.edu] > > GREAT post, Jim. I love it when JMDLers are able to explore how tracks > interact together on albums.... > > However.... one thing bothered me. How do we know that the snake on the > front cover is dead? Perhaps it is very much alive-- and the > primitives on > the cover are tansporting it out of the city into the suburbs? or out of > the jungle-- into the city. If we see the snake as a symbol of > sin--- then > the idea of re-introducing sin into what is seen as a perfect area-- the > suburbs-- could factor in, couldn't it? If the snake is dead-- > then sin is > dead, too, and I don't see that as possible on this album. > > eric ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 16:41:18 -0500 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu" Subject: RE: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell Content!! Hi Eric, Okay, again, I'm very glad to have this new information, that Rousseau painted jungle scenes. I don't know paintings- I'm a photographer. :) That's very interesting but in Joni's song, Joni's fantasy of Rousseau, he *is* painting the bar scene. Check this: "In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer. *Rousseau* paints a jungle flower behind her ear. With his hard-edged eyes and steady hand *he paints the cellar* full of ferns and orchid vines and he 'hangs' a moon above a five-pieced band." In Joni's fantasy of Rousseau, the jungle painter is in a cellar nightclub, rendering the primitive that he perceives within the urban scene. As if Joni's saying, "If Rousseau was here, here's what *he'd* see. This is what he would notice and capture." Just my two cents. Lama > Lamadoo wrote: > "Rousseau is painting an urban scene...." > -----Original Message----- > From: Eric Wilcox [mailto:edwilcox@students.wisc.edu] > Wrong. Rousseau doesn't paint urban scenes. If you'd like to check out > some of his work, go to this page: > http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rousseau/ > > anyways-- what you will notice right away is taht all of his paintings are > set in -- the jungle. > > So instead of seeing the song through Rousseau's eyes-- lets look at the > comparison. Rousseau in his jungle proper, and Joni in her urban jungle. ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2001 #14 ******************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she?