Beautiful? Yeah. There's beauty in it. And fright. Disappointment. Exhilaration. Clarity. Confusion. Syncopation. Swing. There's an *AWFUL* lot here. Today I'm thinking this is the most complex, most layered, most detailed, most varied title yet. I thought this was gonna be a retread. It's emphatically NOT a repeat of anything. It's apparent that Mister Mendoza has given breath to many of Joni's best lines.
Remember the "COURT AND SPARK" collection? At the end of "Trouble Child", there are shimmering musical effect after the line "Trouble child, breaking like the waves on Malibu." Vince has fleshed out dozens and dozens of moments in that spirit. In literature when an author gives human characteristics to an animal, it's called an7thro7po7MOR7phism. Does anyone have a word for using instruments to give sound to a thought? To say that he "orchestrated" these tracks is to understate the way he's extracted juice from them, and given them a new metamorphosis. Some of these thoughts have entirely new context. The other day, someone mentioned that "Woodstock" is now a cautionary tale. Boy, howdy! It sure is. Ya know, Kate Bennett and her band (Jeff, Chris, and Les if memory serves) anticipated this very aspect of "Woodstock" in her take that closed the JoniFest 2002 in Upstate New York. I was hanging around when they were hammering out the arrangement. When they struck upon the idea repeating the chorus and ending on a minor chord, it took on the ominous tone that Vince also saw within it. Am I the only one who now hears this line in a new and disquieting way? Joni wrote: >> I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky>> Admittedly, in Joni's tie-dyed original, she hoped >>>they were turning into butterflies Above our nation.>>> To me, the root of the flower-power thang was a backlash against killing. In later years, like the decades of the 80s and 90s, the peacenik aspect of "Woodstock" took on a soft-focus nostalgia. Since we were no longer at war, and we had the soft-focus M*A*S*H on TV, "Woodstock" became a wishy-washy sentimental tune. No more. We are again looking at the grisly machinery and actively trying to _wish_ ourselves into a brighter, safer world. The whole point to it was "We have to get ourselves BACK TO SOME SEMBLANCE OF A GARDEN." It has been a cautionary tale, lying dormant for thirty-fricken years! Okay. That's one, too-long post about just ONE of Vince's moments. Like I said, there are dozens of moments like that. This album is as much "Joni Does It Vince's Way" as it is "Joni Sings Joni". Like our own David Lahm, Vince "gets" it. Enough for now........ Lama np: "Dead Of the Night" on LP by that Shawn Colvin person. This is a wonderful record. I keep coming back to it. From: "Mark Connely" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: wow, again. >>>>> This may be the most beautiful album yet. God, my heart breaks listening to "Love".
