TS: Joni Mitchell - 'Hissing of Summer Lawns' vs 'Hejira'

I like the Herbie Hancock album. I think the guest stars are fairly understated, and Tina Turner's rendition of "Edith and the Kingpin" is pretty fantastic actually.

Yes, what I've heard from that album was actually very good. Need to pick it up.

Awesome link by the way. Thanks! Can't wait to hear these.

Wow - the guitar demo for Harry's House is awesome.

So... Whatever happened to those remasters?

they happened already dude

[reads upthread]

oops i thought you meant the remasters from 2 years ago or whatever

They are still nowhere to be seen around here. Other than up to "For The Roses" that is.

both of these are so good. long time coming. i feel like those last two tracks on 'hejira' bring it down a notch. too cute. need more digesting time though. i love joni right now, probably too much.

but i'm thinking 'hejira' ftw

"Refuge of the Roads" is cute?

yeah. not 'cute,' but not 'black crow,' you know? cute.

1+ fretless bass
1- chords, song

1++++ fretless bass.

these are the clouds of michaealangelo
muscular with darts

fuck this, this is no contest, i'm just loving joni more and more.

For me, 'Refuge' is both the essence of the album and its natural conclusion.

I mean:

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads

Weird - listened to "A Song for Sharon" this morning. I don't know anyone who can write these melodies for these polysyllables, or have the inspiration to use high-pitched whoops for emphasis.

I love the way those lines build up to "Or me here least of all..."

It's amazing how many self-puncturing references the album has to Joni's own self-absorption.

on that topic, a pretty interesting background note on that song (and teh overall topic of self-absorption): http://jonimitchell.com/research/g_entry.cfm?id=16

That last paragraph from 'Refuge' I alread quoted ALWAYS slays me.

Fabulous.

In case someone is interested in hearing the Travelogue version

no, thanks. when she released travelogue for me she lost the last bit of credibility she had. what a syrupy piece of overproduced crap.

travelogue = killing your own babies.

I don't mind the version you've linked baaderonixx, but I don't know if that sort of treatment can do much for Hejira songs. Whereas I love the similar treatments of "Both Sides Now" and "A Case Of You" that she did previously.

or travelogue = flooding your kittens in strings.

I still have very mixed feelinsg re. Travelogue. Often I feel that it's very close to being brilliant, the nearly-noirish vibe, the husky late night voice ... but it kinda falls short and ends up being, yes, sirupy and "grown up".

wtf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kins8_pA9M4

well that was random.

he pretty much follows the original arrangement.

She does that, though, she gets you used to being uncomfortable, to the point of gaining a taste for it. The first time I played myself her Mingus album, the group chorus on 'boogeyman' was so howlingly contrived I felt myself trying to draw a line, "no no no, this is objectively bad, I musn't follow her here..." A day later, sure enough, the verse melody had hooked itself in my head... listening to these records can be complicated.

i find some of lou reed's records to work in a similar fashion

otm

loving this part lately

I pulled off into a forest
Crickets clicking in the ferns
Like a wheel of fortune
I heard my fate turn turn turn
And I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues

travelogue = killing your own babies.

― alex in mainhattan, Thursday, November 13, 2008 8:59 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

Listen again it's actually awesome

poppy poison
poppy tourniquet
it sliiiithers away on brass like

mouth

piece

spit

^^^ next level rhymes

i've been listening to Hejira a lot, lately, and when it finishes or half-way through i think about listening to HOSL, but my copy's far away, and now Hejira is starting to sound to me like the desire to listen to HOSL.

this thread is such a delight.

I'll defend Mingus, even though I haven't listened to it for over a year. It takes a few hundred listens to sink in, but from the first it's under your skin... I always found it quite unsettling, especially The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey. Apart from The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines, which is hella fun.

― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, August 1, 2003 2:35 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark

it takes a few hundred listens to sink in! <3

this was a good thread!

i keep venturing tentatively into 80s and 90s joni, then retreat. why? it's not like the albums are that bad, just kind of hit and miss.

I feel a Joni period coming my way. Good weather and mild depression always put me in the mood for Hejira & Hissing

I've spent all day listening to Hejira -- and I have to say, I absolutely love that it's pretty much 90% guitars and fretless bass sloshing around with her singing these free flowing melodies over the top which perfectly complement the road theme. Notwithstanding "Blue Motel Room," these songs almost entirely feel of a piece. Only "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" has really captivated me from HOSL by comparison, but I'm willing to give it time.

Interesting how no one has mentioned Shadows and Light -- the live record from this era that features Metheny, Jaco, Don Alias and Michael Brecker, I believe. Is it just that her live performances coudn't match the atmosphere of the originals?

remember watching the video version of shadows and light that showed up on cable a lot when i was a kid. really dug it tho i didn't know anything about joni at the time

Interesting how no one has mentioned Shadows and Light -- the live record from this era that features Metheny, Jaco, Don Alias and Michael Brecker, I believe. Is it just that her live performances coudn't match the atmosphere of the originals?

― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 31 January 2013 4:20 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, I think. There's very few stylistic variations on Shadows and Light that I think actually improve the originals.

In general I tend to think that Joni is a much better arranger than improviser, and her efforts to recreate the spontaneity of live jazz don't really win me over (one reason why I find HOSL much better than DJRD). The pristine perfectionism of HOSL and Hejira gets lost a bit on Shadows and Light, I find.

shadows and light to me sounds more like a fusion record, the essence of joni watered down. hejira is an album with a very strong flow which shadow and light obviously isn't as there is a mix of songs from different albums on it. miles of aisles is her best live album i think but that was before hejira. i really like her banter and intros to the songs on that one.

Hejira is def the way I'm getting into Joni as performer after long being a fan of her as songwriter

I spent a lot of this weekend listening to Shadows and Light in the car...and it's started to win me over. The bass n' brushes version of "The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines" in particular is less over-produced than the Mingus version and just as lithe.

In fairness, a big piece of my enjoyment of this is that I'm a Metheny fan -- and Shadows and Light is kind of a dream lineup in some ways (Joni, Metheny, Mays, Jaco, Don Alias, and Michael Brecker). When Metheny breaks out a typically billowy solo on "In France..." it just feels natural. There are moments on this record that just ebb back and forth between Joni's schtick (which admittedly isn't that different than her studio versions) and something off of Metheny's live Travels album.

If anything, it's a little disappointing there isn't more of Metheny on this (Brecker is the dominant soloist, which isn't altogether a bad thing). He only has a handful of solos (tho he has one cut all to himself) and Mays is mixed down really low. More of Metheny accompanying Joni on the Hejira material in particular (which itself sounded like a first- or second-cousin of his debut w Jaco, Bright-Sized Life) would have been interesting to hear. Part of me wonders if he was holding back a bit given that he wasn't the star Joni was in 1979 (tho in jazz and pop circles, he pretty much would be just two years later).

been obsessed (again) w/ "boho dance" lately. seems like the kind of song that would just be flattened by a politically-correct hot take (just like a lot of "hissing"), since the worldviews the song explores are not really there to be accepted or dismissed, since what the song best expresses is ambivalence--both that of the narrator and the (male?) hipster she's describing. the delicacy with which joni describes those worldviews is rather astonishing, isn't it? also the way the distinction between the worldviews is explored through subtly gendered metaphors ("The cleaner's press was in my jeans/And any eye for detail/Caught a little lace along the seams"). later the clothing metaphor is inverted to suggest the opposite ("A camera pans the cocktail hour/Behind a blind of potted palms/And finds a lady in a Paris dress/With runs in her nylons"). in other words, she doesn't belong completely in either milieu. this concludes with the "stricken from your uniform" and "not mine, these glamour gowns" phrases.

also, "another hard-time band/with negro affectations" is basically blueshammer, right?

also if you ever want to be reminded what an extraordinary arranger joni was, listen to the demo of "boho dance" (on the "seeding of summer lawns" boot) and compare it to the finish product. it was always a great song, but the full arrangement contributes so much, adds greatly to the sense of wistful ambivalence.

one last thought -- joni mitchell and paul simon seem to be the two late-60s singer-songwriters who quickly outgrew the folk template of their earlier work and sought out, above all, new textural and rhythmic influences. joni wasn't as determinedly eclectic as simon, but i think it's fair to say that her rhythmic sense is even more sophisticated.

I've been carrying the studio version of this tune in my phone for a few weeks. I love this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6d2RG2Rl64