Yeah, I think that the part of her that's telling the story meant "lover". Yeah. But to stop at the surface is to miss tons and tons of stuff! "Blue" has lots of songs about loss. Then there is a song about traveling with a bout of insomnia, and having a lover who stole her camera. "Carey" is not an entirely happy song. Remember that when she put "Little Green" out, Kelly (Kilauren) was a secret. Not that I'm going to get into the personal aspects of this but rather, I'm sticking to the literary critique angle. The song "Little Green" has *vague text* about a private pain.
Let me cite a better example. Think of when Joni's making a phone call from the "Blue Motel Room", and she asking her beau to "Tell those girls you've got German measles." She's not literally asking for that *specific* lie, right? She's using a wee bit of humor. She using an indirect way of conveying something more serious and private. That's an obvious example so let's take one with one shade more subtlety. Drummers have a language to describe the various rolls, and punctuations. We all know what a "drum roll" is. And we can imagine what a "splash" is. We can hear "rattle, splash, tin, tin, boom," in our heads. Supposedly, "boom-boom-pachyderm" is one of those phrases. Now imagine a woman has a long-distance relationship with a drummer. There are always girls in the audience, hanging on his every move, his every gesture. Isn't it arty for that woman to worry about losing him by using these words? "Will you still love me When I call you up when I get back to town I know that you've got all those pretty girls coming on Hanging on your boom-boom-pachyderm Will you tell those girls that you've got German Measles Honey, tell them you've got germs." Joni's using "boom-boom-pachyderm" BECAUSE it's an arty way of expressing herself. She's using that phrase BECAUSE it has a double meaning. Just as she doesn't want him to tell lies about his health *exactly*, she's also asking him to shake of the hangers-on. To dismiss the double meanings is to lose an incredible amount of richness in her lyrics. So, in my opinion, when she turns in "Blue", a collection of songs about how she's loved and lost, about how she's been rejected, about how her ex can never be happy in a house with a percolator, about how she's rejected others, about how she made her baby cry, she's not talking about one thing. In "Blue", maybe more than in any other collection, she's always talking about everything at once. What I'm trying to say is that when Joni says "percolator" she usually, in her poet's heart, means "home". Lama [EMAIL PROTECTED] said, >>>>I think Joni just uses baby as slang. It was a popular word of her era (of many eras) ... and Joni uses slang (bigwig, darling). Hate to be a mean old daddy -- but sometimes things are just that simple.>>>>>
