I think my 15 year old son who can't stand Joni would have given the album a farer review. Chuck ----- Original Message ----- From: "PAUL PETERSON" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 12:38 PM Subject: NY Times review of Travelogue
> Here's a piece by John Rockwell, someone with a history of personal = > antipathy towards Joni's art. The idea that John Kelly is a better = > singer than Joni, past, present or future, is absurd! > > =20 > > January 5, 2003 > Joni Mitchell's Long and Restless Journey > By JOHN ROCKWELL > > =20 > ONI MITCHELL'S new "Travelogue" isn't billed as a farewell, but = > it's hard to see it any other way. Ms. Mitchell is 58, and her = > once-girlish soprano is now a frail and unsteady mezzo. This personally = > (not to say idiosyncratically) chosen, newly arranged collection of 22 = > of her songs from 1966 to 1994 presumably represents some sort of = > retrospective summa. > > Of course, it's always dangerous to presume anyone's motivations, = > let alone those of an artist as hermetically private as Ms. Mitchell. = > But in addition to this quasi memorial to herself (Nonesuch, two CD's), = > she has chosen to blast the music industry in a recent interview in = > Rolling Stone, denouncing the business as a cesspool and MTV's = > vulgarity, as she sees it, as "tragic." Having now fled her longtime = > base of Reprise, she didn't flee too far, however, since Nonesuch is = > also part of AOL Time Warner. > > As a longtime admirer of Ms. Mitchell - I even lived in her Laurel = > Canyon neighborhood in the early 70's - I must confess that my first = > reaction to this new set was one of horror. Asked recently by WNYC-FM to = > appear on air with some emblematic examples of American music in the = > 20th century, I thought of her song "Amelia," which was once my prime = > evidence when I called her a 20th-century American Schubert. > > The song appears on Ms. Mitchell's 1976 album "Hejira," which is = > full of songs about flight and wandering and loneliness. "Amelia" is = > Amelia Earhart, the doomed aviatrix. Ms. Mitchell's words tie together = > place and heart and mind, myth and history, womanhood and a lost love. = > She starts by evoking the emptiness of the desert and the sky, six jet = > vapor trails "like the hexagram of the heavens, like the strings of my = > guitar." Her "life becomes a travelogue" - you see how central this one = > song is to this new retrospective travelogue of her life in song. > > Suddenly she's missing a lover. She equates herself with Amelia = > and with Icarus, "ascending on beautiful foolish arms." > > "I've spent my whole life at icy altitudes," she muses. "And = > looking down on everything/ I crashed into his arms." > > Finally she pulls in to a desert motel, showers and sleeps "on the = > strange pillows of my wanderlust," dreaming "of 747's/ Over geometric = > farms." > > On the original studio recording, the accompaniment is electric = > guitars and vibraphones, electronically sustaining Ms. Mitchell's own = > inimitable vocals, cool and clipped, and almost pushing this sad, = > intimate, conversational song along to its conclusion. Even better, = > really, is the live version on her album "Shadows and Light" of 1980, = > just as nervously forward-moving but with a guitar backing closer to her = > folkish roots. > > The new version, indeed the entire album, comes dressed = > (overdressed) in orchestral /soft-jazz arrangements by Larry Klein. Mr. = > Klein and Ms. Mitchell were married for eight years, and although they = > broke up domestically in 1994, they have continued to collaborate = > professionally, having now completed nine projects together. > > Having heard "Amelia" in its new guise, I think I called it an = > abomination on the radio. Now I've listened to the whole album. One must = > make allowances for an artist's right to evolve and for fans' right to = > cling, even unfairly, to what they once loved. And one must concede a = > certain winsome communicativeness in Ms. Mitchell's vocal weaknesses. = > But I still think this set is pretty terrible. > > Part of the problem is simple taste. I personally have little use = > for the kind of bloated symphonic jazz heard here. Ms. Mitchell clearly = > does have a taste for it, so much so that she now chops up the urgent = > flow of "Amelia" for soggy orchestral ditherings between the verses. > > Any artist must constantly question his or her past = > accomplishments; to repeat oneself risks becoming a hack. In fairness, = > Ms. Mitchell has undertaken a hejira of her own over some 23 albums = > (depending on how you count). From folk to folk rock to jazz (or jazz = > folk), all with her own highly personal inventiveness, and now to this, = > it's been a trip that has alienated fans along the way, throwing them = > off the curves, as it were. But the journey has presumably helped keep = > her fresh. > > That said, restless experimentation also suggests a quality of = > unwelcome self-indulgence that has always marked her music and her = > personality. When one confronts the really na=EFve paintings that = > proliferate in the lavish booklet with which these two CD's are packaged = > - let alone the rudimentary "multi-media content" on the one "enhanced = > audio CD" - one has to wonder whether Ms. Mitchell has slid too far into = > her own world. There is usually some kind of healthy link between = > creator and public, or at least imagined public, a link that sustains = > even the most private artists and helps dampen the temptation toward = > vanity projects like "Travelogue." > > Her early jazz experiments could be welcomed as the honorable = > efforts of a folk-rock singer to connect with the wider world of = > improvisation in jazz. One fears that this album marks some sort of = > aspiration to "art" in the classical, formalized sense. Nonesuch is, = > after all, AOL Time Warner's prestige label, especially for classical = > music and crossover projects of a certain vanguard sort. But a = > self-conscious aspiration for gentility can kill the essence of the = > idioms that Ms. Mitchell grew up with. > > Above, I called her singing inimitable. But of course it isn't, = > quite. Right now, the best live Joni Mitchell is the = > countertenor-falsettist-drag artist John Kelly in his periodic revivals = > of his Joni Mitchell act, fabled in downtown Manhattan. Mr. Kelly sings = > Ms. Mitchell far better than she sings herself now. If you want her = > unadulterated, buy albums like "Ladies of the Canyon," "Blue," "Court = > and Spark" or "Hejira." If you want to see her in person, catch John = > Kelly. =20 > > > > > =20 > > [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a name of j.gif]
