At 01:54 PM 1/17/2003 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
one of the earliest LP's I bought was Elton John's Greatest Hits, and while it's certainly a fine collection of songs it's not as satisfying as the whole series of albums...eg ALL of Honky Chateau, not just "Honky Cat", etc.
BUT, and this is getting back to Joni's "Hits" as a gateway, starting off with the Greatest Hits encouraged me to go back and plunder the entire back catalog of his work.
Apologies for not trimming the above completely, but this post has gone back and forth between "JC" and "NJC." Since *this* post will have some JC, I have removed the "NJC" from the header and therefore had to leave in the first paragraph to (hopefully) tie it all together. Whew! :-)
Lama brought up an interesting point...a person buys Joni's "Hits" and ends up buying most or all of her back catalog because he loved that introduction. His message to the record company, and to Joni, seemed to be "wake up." I had always been a bit proud of Joni for *not* releasing a "greatest hits" disc, buying into her argument that it would "kill her catalog." And I think it added an aura, a mystique, that she was "above" releasing a greatest hits set. I suppose I believed that her albums were to be taken as a whole, and her career shouldn't be condensed into one disc's worth of "greatest hits." Too, as she has self-effacingly stated before, she "never had any hits." I believe this refers to no "top-of-the-charts" singles, which are the usual mainstays of any musician's "greatest hits" album.
Nevertheless, I couldn't fully understand her reasoning, and still don't, if her stance on the issue is the same. Here we have living proof of someone getting acquainted with her craft through the "Hits" disc and having it propel them deeply into this world of Joni appreciation. I do wonder, though, for each person like our new poster who started with "Hits" and purchased most/all of her other albums, how many started with, say, "C&S," or "Blue," or even something later, like "TI," and really liked the material and then went out and bought from her back catalog. Probably enough so that she *has* and *can* continue to resist putting out the typical "greatest hits" disc.
I guess the question is, how to you get someone who isn't familiar with her work to take that first step, and which album should they be steered toward. What are we trying to accomplish? We want to not only enjoy the music ourselves, we want to turn others on to it, help sell more records, and thereby support the artist as best we can. For Joni Mitchell, is the best vehicle for all of this a "greatest hits" album or is it an individual "whole" album? I surely don't know! While the record companies must love these stories about someone going out and buying 20-plus albums, I like to think that for Joni, it's not just the sales of these albums, it's the converts.
Scott
