The great Leslie Nielsen, who was my neighbor in Fort Lauderdale, is from Regina a few miles from Saskatoon.
That's basically me too. My tastes run completely in a different direction than most of her music, but there's no doubt she is incredibly talented. I'd say I think of her as a deserved all-time great, but not an all-time favorite for me personally.
Just short of a miracle that her sensitivity survived such exposure & she was able to contain so much of what she felt and give it back in song. Listening to Blue and Court & Spark is like watching someone climb Everest, terrifying/thrilling, death-defying, almost impossibly courageous. Two memories: An older girl at summer camp taking out her acoustic and playing All I Want until I fell in love with her; hearing People's Parties/Same Situation at 15 and realizing that I wasn't alone. A top 10 all-time great.
And I'm pretty sure he'd tell you that although the're only about 150 miles apart, to people in SK the're two different places and a fair bit of rivalry exists. I lived in Saskatoon for roughly a decade and visit often but have been in Regina exactly once. Also the bit about Gordie Howe was a bit of an inside SK joke because every time her name comes up on nostalgia for S'toon sites, Gordie gets brought up by people who don't like her for various reasons, including her calling Saskatoon 'a racist little town'.
Not only his this spectacular, how about that Pat Metheny solo partway through? One of his best solo breaks, in my opinion.
I think Joni’s great but I think her best songs have melodies that follow a standard folk/rock/pop/whatever you want to call it - path. Unfortunately the ‘jazz’ melodies in a lot of her songs seem all over the place to me. One second there’s a Am, the next a half diminished 7th in another key. Personally I find it a bit jarring.
What a wonderful post. Thank you for sharing those wonderful associations. In my experience this is the kind of depth of feeling that Joni’s music brings out. A rare and beautiful thing.
I think the exact opposite. I like but don't really love her early folk-influenced stuff, even the often-cited "Blue." "Court and Spark" is a little pop but becomes very enjoyable, and from "Hissing of Summer Lawns" onwards, she becomes the artist I really love.
What you find jarring is exactly what I love about her and I think defines her genius. Suspend expectations - and let the music take you where it will. After the first few records she never let any rule or convention control her - tunings, chord voicings, time signatures, phrasing, you name it - all of it she bent to her will rather than the other way around. It’s not “better” than a musician really mastering the conventional approaches which is also hugely impressive - but it is awe inspiring and rarely achieved or even attempted as an alternative - and far from random and uninformed meandering. Definitely methods to her “madness” and often driven by very practical issues like having small hands/fingers which made chords in conventional tuning difficult. Answer? Joni tunings, which of course not only make chording more approachable but completely changed the sound of the chords, making them “hers.” Also - to me a key to understanding her music is listening to vocalese jazz - Lambert, Hendricks and Ross - and before that 1940s and 1930s vocal and instrumental swing. Those multitracked Joni harmonies that sound like the Andrews or Boswell sisters come out of this and so do a lot of the phrasing and harmonic structures of her pieces. “Twisted” on Court and Spark is a key piece on this regard, and stuff like “Dry Cleaner from Des Moines” on Mingus. “Cotton Avenue” on Don Juan. And so on. It’s really all there and clear.
With regard to "Mingus," I'd agree with you. That just didn't come together. But her other albums that use some of the jazz idiom aren't really jazz at all and don't even pretend to be. I don't think she'd call it that either. And I think those were her highest achievements. But if you think of "Mingus" or "Dog Eat Dog," those may have been missteps. From there, she kind of consolidates her strengths, fusing the late 70s chord progressions with some more "inside" melodies on the Larry Klein-produced albums. Those are good, too, if not so ground-breaking. I think a criticism one might level at her is in the use of alternate tunings, she's a little bit more on feel than on application. (Although she usually feels it really well). Michael Hedges, for example, would tightly compose his alternate tunings so the tuning really served the song. The tuning itself was not normally the thing driving all else. With Joni's "strrumming" alternate tuning stuff, you got the impression that she found the tuning, found something she liked, and then built the song around that. Which could mean a limitation later in the song. But then she often had highly trained bass or keyboard players with her to bring out some key notes, if needed. I still think that stuff tended to work really well. But it's not quite Michael Hedges or Pierre Bensusan, guys who absolutely slay the alternate tune stuff. Although I did not prefer Hedges' vocal songs to Joni's, I probably prefer his instrumental work to ANYTHING in her catalogue, and I love her catalogue. That's how highly I rate Michael Hedges.
Its kind of hard for me to not see her as one of the all time greats. David Crosby said he though she was 10 times better than Dylan. When he discovered her, she was walking around with a little notebook that already contained 2-3 albums worth of songs. All that material just needed to be recorded. She wrote Court and Spark in a week while Crosby jealously lamented that he agonized over songs for weeks on end. Its safe to say she was a goddess/genius to CSNY. (EDIT: Dylan and Joni did not have kind things to say about one another. Bob said she had the personality of a guy. Joni said Bob was a plagiarizer of Appalachian music styles)
She has always been a unque and extremely talented artists. Her mouth does her few favours, but that´s beside the point. Her contributions to music are immense, and I am grateful for all the music she composed and performed - some of which I get, some of whch I don´t. But I still recognise her as a major talent. I don´t really believe in rating artists. But she is one my favourites, and someone who seems to be driven by her muse - and ambition.
Huge Hedges fan here - but I honestly don’t think he was anywhere near Joni’s league for overall artistry. As a technical guitarist, yeah, definite advantage - but that’s it. Very much suspect he would have agreed actually. No way could he hold a candle to her as a composer of all time classic pieces.
What I'm saying is his instrumental work, which I do hold in MUCH higher esteem. It's some of the best ever done. With you for when he started writing songs, with vocals. But I think the instrumental artistry of stuff like Aerial Boundaries, Two Days Old, or Rickover's Dream is yet another level higher.
