From: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2014 #307 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Website:http://www.jonimitchell.com Unsubscribe:mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe onlyJMDL Digest Wednesday, September 17 2014 Volume 2014 : Number 307 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- RE: Joni and the Beatles ["Susan E. McNamara" ] Hejira master tape [kbhla@fastmail.fm] RE: Joni and the Beatles [Betsy Blue ] Got a few extra bucks lying around? [Les Irvin ] Hejira master tape [Dave Blackburn ] Re: Hejira master tape [Scott Price ] Re: Morning [Jimmy Stewart ] Re: Got a few extra bucks lying around? [Anita Gabrielle Subject: RE: Joni and the Beatles In an article written by Dagmar for Music Gig magazine in March 1976, she describes Jonibs encounter with George Harrison b& bWe are watching her through the soundproof glass window of the recording room. She is alone on the other side, singing into a microphone, eyes closed, moving to the beat of the music, looking fragile underneath oversized ear-phones. "Letbs do that again" she says and turns to a piano by her side, trying out a few sound combinations, then singing them. Joni is doing all the voices on the album [Hissing of Summer Lawns], sometimes three and four overdubs on a certain part of a song. Then she comes in to listen to the track, concentrated, sipping a little red wine from a styrofoam cup, taking a puff from a cigarette, putting her head together with Henrybs to discuss a technical detail. There is a knock on the door and in walks George Harrison, who is recording in the studio next door(itbs the A & M studio complex on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood). "I just wanted to say hello" he says and then a strange thing happens. Joni is suddenly shy and this shyness seems to be catching. George seems at a loss for anything else to say. They smile at each other, he listens to the track, then sort of invites her to come to the studio and check out the last cut before he exits. What happened ? Were they in awe of each other ? Nobody else in the room said anything. And because the atmosphere was so strange, I didnbt even dare ask to take a photo of the twob&.Which I regret now, looking back. It might have broken the spell.b http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=111&from=search Susan Tierney McNamara Prospect Research Officer Office of Prospect Development Alumni Affairs and Development Cornell University 349L, 130 Seneca Place Ithaca, NY 14850 phone: 607-255-3871 fax: 607-254-7166 email: sem8@cornell.edu From: Betsy Blue [mailto:betsyblue82@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:43 PM To: Susan E. McNamara; joni@smoe.org Subject: RE: Joni and the Beatles Sue, what is the George Harrison story? It seems that Joni mingled with the McCartneys on several occasions and they sent her a telegram to say they loved HOSL. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Linda took any pictures of her, but their daughter Mary did in 2001, and I think it's stunning. http://tinyurl.com/k6ea6ek On Sep 3, 2014 2:32 PM, "Susan E. McNamara" > wrote: > > She and Chuck Mitchell used to do Norwegian Wood in their club act. That's the only time I can recall her covering a Beatles song. She also had a very poignant encounter with George Harrison in an LA studio once. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 01:34:13 -0700 From: kbhla@fastmail.fm Subject: Hejira master tape I've really enjoyed reading about your great opportunity to listen to the Hejira tape, Dave. Half the time, the intricacies of sound and various technologies is like reading a foreign language to me, but you always write so clearly that I am able to understand a lot of it and learn a bit. I have always felt somewhat like a heretic for not loving Hejira as much as so many others. I always appreciated the incredible lyrics, which were like poetry to me, and also the musicianship but could never put my finger on why it didn't grab me like the other albums that came before and after and wondered what I was missing. When you wrote about her vocals, it was like the lightbulb went on in my head. I really think that was perhaps the subconscious reason I couldn't fully connect with it - it didn't quite sound like the Joni voice I knew on some level and that threw me off it a bit. I always enjoy and appreciate these posts of yours, Dave! Thanks, always! Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 11:43:25 -0700 From: Betsy Blue Subject: RE: Joni and the Beatles Sue, what is the George Harrison story? It seems that Joni mingled with the McCartneys on several occasions and they sent her a telegram to say they loved HOSL. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Linda took any pictures of her, but their daughter Mary did in 2001, and I think it's stunning. http://tinyurl.com/k6ea6ek On Sep 3, 2014 2:32 PM, "Susan E. McNamara" wrote: > > She and Chuck Mitchell used to do Norwegian Wood in their club act. That's the only time I can recall her covering a Beatles song. She also had a very poignant encounter with George Harrison in an LA studio once. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:41:12 -0600 From: Les Irvin Subject: Got a few extra bucks lying around? Buy a slice of Joni history circa 1966! http://ebay.to/1u3EabX ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 08:05:08 -0700 From: Dave Blackburn Subject: Hejira master tape Listening to the Hejira master tape last week was, in many ways, revelatory. The detail that is contained in a source recording played through a no-compromise listening system is remarkable and hearing a recording that is this familiar allows you to appreciate and sometimes re-evaluate it. As you know, I do a lot of recording and mixing myself, so I listen to records often with two sets of ears going at once; the first set let me take it all in and appreciate the music while the second set listens critically - hmmm, I wouldnt have done that or why did they let that take go? We all have playback systems from earbuds to laptops to cars to home stereos these days but were never really sure of whether what were hearing is on the recording or an artifact introduced by the playback system itself, or our room. If something sounds tinny or thin, we might assume its probably cheap headphones or a poor mastering job - should one shell out big money for a newly mastered version? But there are playback systems that cannot be blamed for anything. Every thing you hear on them is neutrally presented with nothing hyped or downplayed. The goal of an audiophile system is a flat response, total neutrality, not, as one might expect, enhancement or euphonic smoothing introduced by the electronics (the exception being the tube (valve) amplifiers). Every component has been chosen towards this goal. Room shaking bass, sparkling highs and such will not be heard unless the mix and mastering engineers put them there. In fact one might be hearing the limitations or tonal anomalies of the speakers the engineer mixed on if there is a consistent troublesome timbre throughout the record. So, how did Hejira sound? The instruments came off best, I thought, especially the bass. All three of the bass players were up prominently in the mix, and Jaco triple or quadruple tracked his bass so his presence was never understated (!) The guitars were also lovely, quite wet with reverb and had that phasey swirl that gives the album its liquid texture. There are also several layers of those. Amelia had, I think, three layers of Joni plus Larry Carltons four takes of reactive improv" and then the vibes from Vic Feldman. Its a dense sound but lush and full of stereo movement because of the looseness of the double-tracking and how the guitars were panned wide. The drums didnt come across as well recorded to my taste. They had a boxiness about them, actually a typical 70s dry studio thud with no room sound or reverb added. On Blue Motel Room, the bass drum, which should be very subtle in a swing ballad, was mixed very hot and in your face. I found it distracting from the mood of the tune. And then theres the vocal. I have always found the timbre of Jonis voice on Court and Spark, Hissing and Hejira to be fairly unnatural and harsh. It works on a car radio or in the supermarket aisle when you hear Help Me, and it certainly cuts through so you can hear the lyrics, but it doesnt sound like Jonis voice really sounds. The master tape proved that that was how Henry and Joni wanted it, or that the A&M monitors didnt reveal this. To me it sounded a little like a voice through a paging system. The low end of her voice was nearly absent, the mids between 800Hz and 2kHz were strident and on the edge of distortion in some passages and the treble was heavily squashed with a de-esser. The net effect was a tone that was harsh and lacking body but had its sibilance and consonants noticeably crushed down. I would attribute some of this to the solid state Haeco console preamps in A&M studios, as Tapestry, which was also recorded in there has it too. Oddly, too, the level of Jonis voice in relation to the band changes radically throughout the album. On Coyote it is buried in the mix and sounds less than captivating but over the course of the album it is brought forward. By Refuge of the Roads it is up high in the mix, a bit too much given the strident tone at times. All mixing was manual back then as automated recall of fader moves was several years off. What you hear from records of this era is a live performance by the engineer trying to balance the shifting sounds and levels in real time. Once console recall arrived you could get a section right, store it, and move on to the next section. By Don Juans Reckless Daughter (also recorded at A&M in the same room) the vocal tone was much improved, whether it was Henrys EQ choices or modifications done to the console through the 70s. I dont know. In conclusion, the master tape revealed things I had suspected as being in the source recording but was never sure: it showed off the guitars and bass tracks vividly but it exhibited enough harshness in the vocals that the gorgeous poetry was, in my opinion, not presented in the most listenable way. The ear needs to be invited in, as it were, and a strident tone tends to do the opposite. Im being critical - its still in my top three albums - but as a devotee of sound, per se, I found some aspects of Hejira to be rather dated and aimed at FM radio play, perhaps not wanting to acknowledge that nothing on Hejira would ever make it to radio given its complexities and long songs. But hey, it is Hejira, after all! Dave ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 20:26:29 -0700 From: Scott Price Subject: Re: Hejira master tape On 9/14/2014 8:05 AM, Dave Blackburn wrote: > Listening to the Hejira master tape last week was, in many ways, revelatory. Great stuff Dave, thank you for sharing your (well-qualified) impressions of this master tape of Joni's master album. You write of the vocal tracks building up through "Refuge" which of course is the final cut on the album. I have always believed that many of Joni's albums built in intensity and reached a climax with a big finale, songs from their respective albums like "Judgement of the Moon and Stars," "Refuge of the Roads," and "The Silky Veils of Ardor" all being soaring summations that explore her duality themes. Is it possible that on Hejira the vocals were mixed in a sort of crescendo, so that by the time that final track (Refuge) is playing, it's like Joni's final emphatic stamp on her craft? I'm delighted that one of the faithful had the opportunity to hear this work in such a pure form, and thanks again for posting in such detail about the experience. Scott ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 11:25:22 -0400 From: Jimmy Stewart Subject: Re: Morning That just put a smile on my face too Jim. It is a Chelsea Morning. I need to listen to that song more. It's so uplifting ;-) ....gesendet von meinem iPhone > On Sep 14, 2014, at 10:36 AM, Jim Mcmeans wrote: > > "And the sun poured through like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses." These have been my morning lyrics for decades. Puts a smile on my face. So a good Chelsea morning to all my joni brothers and sisters. > Boston Jim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:12:38 +0100 From: Anita Gabrielle Subject: Re: Got a few extra bucks lying around? Gotta be a crack pot? Anita > On 16 Sep 2014, at 21:41, Les Irvin wrote: > > Buy a slice of Joni history circa 1966! > http://ebay.to/1u3EabX ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2014 #307 ********************************* ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here:mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe