Joan Baez C/D

I know how she can probably grate

read this as "I know how she can probably gyrate unless take in chunks..."

is this really the only thread about this chick?

There's been a very strong backlash against her from early on. She hits all the "revival" false notes that one can imagine, from her "proper" voice applied to folk material (akin to, but less idiosyncratic than, John Jacob Niles or Richard Dyer-Bennett) to the perceived sanctimony of her political stance, etc.

Maybe because this backlash has gotten so familiar, I've tried in recent years to appreciate her music more. I've said, on occasion, that I like her earliest albums, and I suppose I can admire her renditions of e.g. "The Wagoner's Lad" in principle. But to be honest, I can't listen to her for more than 15 minutes or so. It just seems so overwrought -- her vocal performance turns up to "11" about 30 seconds into each song and stays there. She applies the same approach to the singer-songwriter material she handles later in her career and it seems even more deadly.

As for her duetting with Dylan, honestly however important she was to him personally and professionally they just don't seem to make good duet partners to me. She ends up overpowering him, and the overall effect just seems dissonant in non-intriguing ways.

i LOVE the night they drove old dixie down. way more than the band version. i love nothing else. that i've heard. maybe i will love something else someday.

diamonds and rust is good
this is her finest moment

lol already posted

I have the Complete A&M box. The Diamonds and Rust songs are great, but what a lot of shit surrounds them. The 21-minute sound collage/hippie poetry collection "Where are you now, my son?" has got to be heard to be believed.

i quite liked "play me backwards" from the early nineties. how is the new one, "day after tomorrow"? and of course her version of "the night they drove old dixie down" is beyond classic.

i'm not the hugest fan, but i saw her at that pete seeger birthday concert this month and she sounded great. (and looked great. talk about aging gracefully.) plus, some friends saw her play in knoxville a few years back, and then after the show they ran into her and her band at bar downtown, where joan hung out and drank and talked to people and apparently got up and danced on the bar. so that seems pretty classic.

joan didion's '60s profile of her is good, mostly for the clash of sensibilities. (i haven't read it in a while, but my recollection is that didion is deeply skeptical but also sort of charmed.)

I like her country-folk period the best, say 1968 to her first album for A&M. She used a lot of the same Nashville musicians that appeared on John Wesley Harding, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Bradley's Barn and so on.

To tipsy mothra: I agree. Both her voice and looks have aged REALLY well.

a pretty haunting Joan Baez tune imo

(w/ commentary from Bob who calls her "staggering")

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

as a folk fan, I would call Joan Baez a "classic" in the American folk cannon
but with a few reservations. I typically can't listen to more than one album without tiring of her singing style.

my favorite record of hers is

http://decibelmagazine.com/admin/assets/uploads/karl_noel1.jpg

in which she sings trad. xmas ballads

more like Joan BADASS:

http://i.imgur.com/IbSyvxn.png

very cool

to be honest she takes it back shortly after

http://i.imgur.com/3vLzMGT.png

So I picked tonight to get into Joan Baez. I'm running through the A&M albums at the moment because the little I'd heard before was a) from the 60s the timbre of her voice had a quality I didn't exactly love and b) A&M records made everyone sound brilliant from about 1970-75.

My instincts were right. This shit totally works for me.

Diamonds and Rust is my only exposure to her 70s output ... what else?

I started with Come From The Shadows, which was her first for A&M in 1972, and so far I've loved all of them. I'll branch out either backwards or forwards soon. Gulf Winds, despite its corny cover art, has some delightfully funky-smooth arranging.

The earliest album that I remember best (and still enjoy hearing in my head) is Joan Baez 5 (1964)---good presentation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez/5 (says Top 12 alb Us, Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune" Top 10 UK, move over Merseybeat!) Also points out this was her first evenly split between trad and originals---although the originals incl. some settings or elements of trad, hell they prob all do---from Cash and Dylan and R. Farina ( his incisive "Birmingham Sunday," re still-recent, notorious event) to deep UK, African-American and Latin ballads, Villa-Lobos for that matter, but it all works. Her more genteel, high-flown tendencies have to mix w earthy eloquence, deeper singing. Overall, kinda cosmic.

On One Day At A Time (1970) she's waiting out her husband's prison time for draft resistance, mixing w A-list Nashville cats, title track then a fresh sentiment and well=written by then mostly unknown-beyond-Nashville Willie Nelson, frequently in duet w Jeffrey Shurtleff, who was fervent but didn't get in the way, also got "No Expectations," killer "Seven Bridges Road," reissue, which I haven't heard, adds two of Merle Haggard's best (this of course from when he was still best known for trying to cash in on "Oakie From Muskogee" w worse shit: why these were left off, or they just ram out of optimum LP room?)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_at_a_Time_(album) Soulful, sensible, lyrical, goes against bummers-to-horrors of that year.

Also liked this 2005 set, well-produced by Steve Earle, whose writing and maybe suggested selections take her in some unexpected directions at times ("God ain't me/God ain't you.")https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_After_Tomorrow_(Joan_Baez_album)

New doc is pretty good.

Lots of interesting family stuff

Don’t really want to be that guy but, while I kind of admire her technical abilities and find her interesting as a person or personality, something about her performance still doesn’t quite compel me. Do like the song “Diamonds and Rust” at least.