In a message dated 1/13/01 1:22:23 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< HOSL has been my fave of all of Joni's work >>
**I feel HOSL is perhaps her most sensual and intimate work, certainly
her first really mature work. I purchased it the day it was released (many
years ago), and I remember the very first time I played it. It was like a
soul drug, illicit and forbidden, and the sensuality just oozed and dripped
from it! "He bought her a diamond for her throat" (notice: throat not neck)
"There's a heatwave burning in her master's voice, and the hissing of summer
lawns." There is a tone of helplessness in that song - but my god the sense
of smoldering desire and captive sexuality is overwhelming. And the
seduction in "Edith and the Kingpin" is fascinating, a little sad, but so
damned alluring - "staring eye to eye, they dare not look away".
I was already very fond and respectful of Joni's work - but when I
finished playing HOSL through that first time - I was transformed into a JM
devotee. I loved her previous show of her mind and her heart - the
intellectual and ethereal nature of Joni's prior work, but on HOSL, she
exposed her flesh. I loved it! It was truly "burning in a ritual of sound
and time", and Joni had become, without a doubt, "coy and bitchy, wild and
fine!" That inside jacket picture of Joni languishing in that "blue pool in
the squinting sun", still gives me rushes.
I felt Joni Mitchell the 'woman' for the first time that evening - I felt
her on my skin and in my bones - in my fantasies - in my soul. I knew we
would grow old together - and we are. BLUE was her first spark of emerging
brilliance, C&S her first big commercial success - but HOSL is, for me, her
first 'masterwork' - her embarkation to mature experience and wisdom.
Everytime I listen to it I hear the genius, the depth, the authenticity of
emotion, and the urgency of passion. It may also be Joni's voice at its most
beautiful, captured on recording for all time. A strange aside - Prince (I'm
not a fan but find his work curious) considers HOSL one of the greatest
albums of all time. I can't say I disagree. If I had to give away every JM
album I have, and could keep only one, by which to know and to feel Joni -
the one I would fight to keep is HOSL!
If it were released today, for the first time, it would still be
pertinent, compelling, luscious, plaintive, lustful, real, and brilliant
(both in its concept and craftsmanship). All these attributes can't
necessarily be applied to every JM album - though I certainly enjoy them all.
The 'of-the-moment, 'non-nostalgic' experience of listening to HOSE today,
in 2001, is proof that HOSE is among the small handful, if not Join's
'ultimate' timeless masterpiece...Rob
