I guess what I meant was that in spite of Rockwell's enthusiasm for Hejira, his praise has always been measured with a condescending tone , as if he is slightly ashamed of liking Mitchell's music, and so needs to either put her down personally or quote the attiudes of others who do. For example look at these quotes:
Miss Mitchell's basic vocal color is schoolgirlish and dull. But she has worked on her phrasing and on certain tricks of vocal coloration The new Mitchell album's very title will annoy those who think of her already as a shallow and self-indulgent mannerist - it's called "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," and includes a narcissistic photo of the singer on the inside, floating embryonically in a swimming pool, surrounded by saccharine prose. And along with the same brittle, rhythmically displaced music is the same humorless self-absorption that has always marked Miss Mitchell's work, the same periodic blunt sermonizing (a song called "Harry's House" especially) and the same vocal mannerisms - she really ought to cast whole-note slides up to principal notes out of her arsenal of tricks forever. It's easy to get testy about Joni Mitchell. Originally yet another strumming folkie from the Village, she moved out to Southern California and steadily transformed herself into a mythological, icy glamour princess. Her album covers were testimonials to a grandiose narcissism, and her poetry and her music evolved inexorably into nervously self-absorbed introspection. But since then her delicate balance between art and artifice has tipped disturbingly toward mannerism and hollowness Another problem was her professional and personal liasions with a group of studio musicians whose jazzy backings enlivened "Court and Spark" but who seemed on repeated expoure to be simply facile. Now about John Kelly: Whether you want to split hairs about Rockwell's praise of John Kelly or not, the fact is, any comparison of John Kelly with the real Joni Mitchell that finds John Kelly even remotely approaching her artistry IS absurb. Have you ever actually heard this guy? His screeching, forced, often off key nightmare of a voice is an excrutiating ordeal. As a parody or a drag act, he may be entertaining, but to suggest that the voice I heard a couple of years ago on the Both Sides Now tour is not the best live Joni Mitchell, but that John Kelly is, may be a matter of taste to be sure, but not the taste of someone who should be reviewing Joni's latest CD.
