Earlier this week, Fred wrote (in reply to some other posts):
> For what it's worth, John Rockwell is one of the few music critics I've
> admired, and although there are things about Travelogue I enjoy I do share
> many of his reservations about it, chiefly that at its worst it is bloated
> and self-indulgent.
>
> - -Fred
>
> P.S. Rockwell mistakenly attributes the arrangements to Larry Klein instead
>
> of Vince Mendoza, and I wrote to the NYT to inform them of the error.
>
>
Fred - I do not often read Rockwell's reviews, and I have great respect for
the opinions you post here on the list (I too have reservations about T,
including those you share here). However, my view of this review is that he
should be fired for it (not because of the bottom line - he thought T is
terrible - but because of the way the review was written). This was an
atrocious piece of writing and review work. I have fallen a week behind in my
posts, so this could be a horse beaten to death over the past few days. But
when a friend at work forwarded the text (which I had already read once) to
me after hours, I felt the urge to respond to him with my (undedited)
comments interspered. I kept getting more apoplectic, until I eventually
started calling him names. I mean, this is the NY Times - there should be
some standards. If this review is representative of his work, I am shocked
that you admire his work (not necessarily shocked that you admire his
opinions, just the way he expresses them). Grossly unprofessional.
Anyway, attached is my reply to my colleague (I have edited out some of the
libelous vituperatives, even though I believe that I would prevail on the
grounds that the truth is a perfect defense). I repeat the whole review so
that my comments can be taken in context (my insertion of (?) indicates my
dissatisfaction with an often pathetic choice of words - either wrong in
context or 'effetely' sarcastic - how's that for a word choice ?):
JONI MITCHELL'S new "Travelogue" isn't billed as a farewell, but it's hard to
see it any other way. Ms. Mitchell is 58
(no - she is 59),
and her once-girlish soprano is now a frail and unsteady mezzo. This
personally (not to say idiosyncratically) chosen,
(well of course it's personally chosen - if it is idiosycratic to his ears, I
think it is because he quit on her after Hejira in 1976 and does not really
know or appreciate the later work)
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.
(It may be true that she is impervious to the criticisms of others, but she
is not hermietically private - in addition to the openness of her art, she
has given many interviews over the years, including the ones he refers to
later in this review).
But in addition to this quasi memorial to herself (Nonesuch, two CD's)
(clearly, this citation belongs in line 1 of this review),
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."
(Of what relevance is this comment to this review) ? It does not belong here,
in any event. Perhaps later, as part of his summation or commentary about the
source of the problem as he sees it. But first, lay out the problem.
Having now fled her longtime base of Reprise, she didn't flee too far,
however, since Nonesuch is also part of AOL Time Warner.
(What a god-awfully written sentence - not really even a sentence - and who
cares, anyway ? By the way, I do not believe she had complete control over
which label she was put under. Will one of our grammar experts please
critique this sentence for the class, please ?)
As a longtime admirer of Ms. Mitchell - I even lived in her Laurel Canyon
neighborhood in the early 70's -
(is he kidding ? does that mean they were personal friends, or that he moved
there to be around her ?)
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.
(If he once called her that, then does it not make at least some sense to try
to see if her work is strong enough to stand up against an orchestral
arrangement ? I think this project was a good idea, even if one thinks it
failed).
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
(surely "likens' would be a better word)
herself with Amelia and with Icarus, "ascending on beautiful foolish arms."
"I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes," she muses.
(No, she is really musing about "Maybe I've never really loved" - which
immediately precedes this incompletely-quoted line - he left out the words
'in clouds").
"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."
(This strikes me as an inordinate amount of time to spend on a single cut
from this album. Of the 22 songs on the album, at least half of them are
considered by fans to be among her finest work - many are closing songs or
title songs, for example, and she does not choose those placements casually).
And not a single mention of any of the other 21 cuts !
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.
(this is an ignorant remark - she uses almost exactly the same guitar
arrangement for her part on both records, but on the live version she has Pat
Metheny coloring her work with beautiful slide work, especially at the end of
the song. Hardly folk-like).
The new version, indeed the entire album, comes dressed (overdressed) in
orchestral /soft-jazz arrangements by Larry Klein.
(If he had said classically orchestral, I would have felt better about it -
some of them are quite good. However, the arrangements were done by Vincent
Mendoza, not Larry Klein. Klein co-produced it, and provided some artistic
direction - but the arrangements were Mendoza's by and large. I believe that
Joni allowed Shorter and Hancock and probably Klein to do their own thing on
their parts of the arrangements)
Mr. Klein and Ms. Mitchell were married for eight years
(I believe that they were married for 11 or 12 years, but I could be
mistaken),
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.
(Well that's nice - you are reviewing it in the New York Times, after all. Of
course, being the great critic that you are, a single listening is more than
sufficient to write your review. After all, the person you once described as
a modern day Schubert only put 2 years of her sweat and blood into it. What a
dope).
One must make allowances for an artist's right to evolve
(nice of him to give her a little space)
and for fans' right to cling, even unfairly, to what they once loved
( I assume he is referring, unflatteringly, to himself here).
And one must concede a certain winsome communicativeness in Ms. Mitchell's
vocal weaknesses.
(Is he saying that she is singing sort of like Sinatra, but that since
Sinatra never had a voice to lose in the first place, there was never any
great tragedy about that ?)
But I still think this set is pretty terrible.
(Well finally a sentence I cannot complain about. He states it as his
opinion, and he is clear about it).
Part of the problem is simple taste. I personally have little use for the
kind of bloated symphonic jazz heard here.
Another honest concession. On balance, this is symphonic, but not jazz
(except for a couple of cuts). It is really basically 'classical' in
content-does he listen to / review classical music much ? If so, I am
surprised.
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.
To repeat oneself no doubt has risks - including being perceived as a hack.
One does not become a hack doing so, however. And Joni is not repeating
herself at all with this record - these are truly re-interpretations. People
who put out multiple greatest hits albums and lots of concert albums, and
stick with the same formula album after album, are hacks.
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.
(What's this with the word presumably - couldn't he have thrown in an
'ostensibly' et al along the way ?)
That said, restless experimentation also suggests a quality of unwelcome
to whom ? to you - or to her fans who don't want change and new art ?)
self-indulgence that has always marked her music and her personality.
(He calls her self-indulgent - "her personality" - I doubt that he even
knows her - what an ass)
When one confronts the really naove
('really' - what a breathtaking adverb - and now he is the NY Times art
critic, too, having shown so many of his own paintings - oh, I forgot, his
name is Rockwell :~))
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.
(She has done the artwork on virtually every one of her previous 20 odd
albums - this is an epiphany for him ?)
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."
(Here, he probably is at least partly right - I think she did do this as a
self-tribute of sorts, hoping to show the world that her work would stand up.
But she is a truly committed artist - everything she touches, she does her
best on, and tries to make art without worrying about record sales. Vanity
may be a component, but it is not the sole motivation behind this project, I
am certain).
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.
(He must be referring to the series of records Hissing of summer Lawns,
Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus - with some spillover into
the 80's alubums. These were not at all improvisational. And they were far,
far more than honorable efforts, - they were arguably her most artistic
endeavors. It took me 20 years to appreciate them. But not Charles Mingus,
who asked her to collaborate with him on his deathbed project. Nor Shorter,
nor Hancock, nor Pastorius, nor Metheny, nor Michael Brecker, nor Tom Scott -
and the list goes on of top jazz performers who were willing to play on her
records and in some cases ask her to reciprocate with an appearance on
theirs. This guy is really a pompous ass).
One fears that this album marks some sort of aspiration to "art" in the
classical, formalized sense.
(Who is 'one' - him? The one who likened her to a modern day Shubert ? How
hypocritical of him to call her on aspiring to levels he himself praised her
for achieving 25 years earlier !)
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.
("essence of the idioms". (?) Pitiful writing. And is one supposed to end
one's sentences with prepositions ?) And one does not "aspire for" something,
one "aspires to" or "after". Really, he could use an English 101 refresher.
That said, I agree that it was utterly unwise for Joni to have selected For
the Roses as a cut on this CD - a song with the lines "I heard it in the wind
last night" and "Remember the days when you used to sit and make up your
tunes for love, and pour your simple sorrow to the soundhole and your knee "
and "The lights go up, and it's just you up there". These lines are screaming
for just the singer and her guitar - which is how she did the original. It
was a blunder to add an orchestra to this theme. Similarly, she was on shaky
ground with The Circle Game - although the song's lyrics are so universal
that I can understand her wanting to memorialize it on this recording. A
brighter tempo and a real choir for the chorus might have helped what turned
out to be a poor result, IMO. And, she closed the record with TCG. Too bad.
Above, I called her singing inimitable.
No, you did not. Patheticcally sloppy.
But of course it isn't, quite. Right now, the best live Joni Mitchell is the
countertenor-falsettist-drag artist (?)
(I do not think the second dash is correct - blame the editor, I suppose)
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.
A fine place for a plug for a first rate drag queen, who has been doing his
Phony Mitchell act for years. That said, it is a joke to compare Kelly's
imitations to her originals. Rockwell's vision/version of JM cannot be caught
in person any more. If this guy wants to hear a 25-20 year old Joni with a
25-30 year old voice, he will have to settle for her old records like the
rest of us. That said, there is much to criticise in Travelogue - and much to
praise, too. That's because there is a lot there - much more than he has
addressed in this review. A truly dreadful piece of work. He should be
ashamed. This review was not just a total hatchet job - it was a total hack
job by a reviewer who, I must assume, is a genuine hack.
