So I've done this sort of Norman Rockwell near high school portrait of myself, and I'm losing interest in it very quickly and thinking -- wishing that I could run back to my colored ink and washes, things like the last album cover, which is the kind of thing I like to do. That's the style that's -- in a way that's the style that the POSALL and all these drawings I told you about are written. And I like to do drawings and then sort of like mythical drawing and then figure out what it is, like write a poem after I've done the drawing. It was from the drawings that I got the idea -- I wrote the sentence "perhaps our souls are little ladies" and realized that it spelled POSALL. And then I realized that you could make just wonderful words by making sentences, you know, by raising them that way.
"Sisotowbell Lane" means "somehow in spite of trouble ours will be everlasting love." And I just took a thought and then kept working it until the vowels made a nice-sounding word, you know.
Doug - who's still looking for the HDCD vaersion of Song To A Seagull
Little Bird wrote:
What a beautiful experience it was to listen to Song To A Seagull at full volume on this bright spring day!
I had, previously, not really given that album too
much attention but something about the swirly,
colourful drawings on the cover lured me in for a
closer look.
I was stilled by it. I was absolutely moved by its purity. Joni's voice is in its prime here - that unetched, sterling silver quality that she became famous for. Granted, the production of the album is a bit hissy (and I know that Joni and Mr. Crosby know that) but it still shines and radiates with beauty.
I think David Crosby described listening to the album
as a "poetic experience" in the "Life & Times" bio and
he was so right. It's poetic lyrically but also
musically: The simple but elegant arrangements of
Cactus Tree, I Had a King and The Dawntreader, the
playful piano on Night in the City and the meandering
guitar work on Sisotowbell Lane. Wow! It's a gorgeous
album.
I have been submerged in Joni's post '74 work for so long that I had forgotten about her first forays into recording and I was so pleased this afternoon to hear the youthful wisdom of the early Joni shining on this album.
-Andrew
PS: What does Sisotowbell stand for? I know it's in O'Brien's bio, but I don't feel like looking it up. Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
