GREAT post, Jim. I love it when JMDLers are able to explore how tracks
interact together on albums....
However.... one thing bothered me. How do we know that the snake on the
front cover is dead? Perhaps it is very much alive-- and the primitives on
the cover are tansporting it out of the city into the suburbs? or out of
the jungle-- into the city. If we see the snake as a symbol of sin--- then
the idea of re-introducing sin into what is seen as a perfect area-- the
suburbs-- could factor in, couldn't it? If the snake is dead-- then sin is
dead, too, and I don't see that as possible on this album.
eric
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim
L'Hommedieu
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2001 6:01 AM
To: _JMDL - June 98; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Jungle Line, ~~ an essay, very long, 100% Joni Mitchell
Content!!
Tanya, in NYC (at least for another week) said in Digest #18 on Saturday
morning,
> I just can't make it through
> Jungle Line. It's just so
> different from anything she
> did before it, I think it's
> just not speaking to me and
> I'm not getting it. The rest
> of the album, I get - - beautiful.
> It's funny because when I first
> heard Hejira I thought it was
> the wierdest thing Joni had
> ever done - now I get it, it
> speaks to me and I love it.
> Will the same thing happen
> with Jungle Line?"
Hi Tanya,
In a word, "Yes". You _will_ get "The Jungle Line". It's not so different
from the rest of Joni's songs. She's working with several new media but
there's nothing new about that!! Her trademark attention to quality shines
through. Don't let those drums throw you!
When I read your post, I thought, "Oh good! A chance to talk about _The
Hissing Of Summer Lawns_." I love this album. I've been singing the songs,
reading the lyrics, jumping around to the drum tracks, examining the
artwork, humming the tunes, soaking it up, pondering it, and most of all,
celebrating it since it was new. I've even participated in a discussion
list on the Internet about this album. :) I apologize in advance if I
sound like a know-it-all. I've been accused of that in the past. I'm not.
I'm just gonna be myself and use my own words, okay? Here goes:
~~
To understand "The Jungle Line", you have to understand the album as a
whole. You have to be open to the idea that a CD can be as great as a book.
Just like any great piece of literature, each element, each chapter defines
part of the whole.
The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a masterwork. There is no "fat" on this
album. Everything is there on purpose and serves to support the whole.
Joni has masterfully built an exquisitely detailed, multimedia work that
begins with the fold open cover. So, the themes on the cover are the themes
of the album. Let's open up the double-square cover and look at it as the
_rectangle_ that she intended.....
You can "read" the cover from left to right. On the left, you see a wealthy
person's home in some hills, complete with a "blue pool" in the backyard.
It's quite far from everything else. From this, I surmise that it's
possible that some of the characters on this album are modern and wealthy
and very much in their own world. <Or maybe that the author lives in Bel
Air and thinks of herself as an observer, held apart.....> :)
There's a Christian church that is separate from all else. Separate from
the home with a pool, separate from the modern world, separate from the
jungle figures. The church is a concept unto itself.
Lastly, we get to the heart of the matter. Two things- juxtaposed
vertically. In the foreground is a group of primitive people, fresh from a
kill. These folks are the only people in the picture, as if we are all
African no matter where we live. They have slain a snake, a symbol of evil
to Christians. Uh-oh, the themes are interacting already. They are
familiar with death.
In the background is the ordered modern world, both suburban and urban. We
are observing the primitive and the modern simultaneously.
While writing this post, I just found something brand new in this 25
year-old graphic. Long ago I noticed that Joni used blue in only two places
on the whole cover. It's in the wealthy person's home on the left. Look at
the other end of the picture, at the _other_ use of blue. Check it out.
Isn't it striking how this small war-era building looks like the childhood
home in Maidstone, Saskatchewan Canada of a certain under-appreciated,
multi-talented master that we all know? Did anyone "get" this before?
Judge for yourself- Ashara generously shot Joni's Maidstone house for
posterity and included it at 1 hour, 57 minutes into JMDL Video Tree #2
(tape #1). It was shot on a windy July 1, 2000. Thank you Ashara. Okay, I
admit the windows are different but many, many of the other details match
like a hand and its shadow.
IMO two of Joni's homes are right there- highlighted in blue, bookending the
cover at the extreme left and the extreme right. I'm not saying that these
are literal representations- only that the author may have used architecture
familiar to herself and that we are privileged to look over her shoulder in
this small way.
Anyway, this graphic sets the themes. Enough about the cover. Let's pop in
the CD and listen to the first track. I think of "In France They Kiss On
Main Street" as classic Joni. It's sort of about young people partying.
Every thing's primary colors. There are "Kisses like bright flags hung on
holidays". It could be a track from Court and Spark, the preceding studio
album. The listener has something familiar to enter with. It's a
throwback. It's an introduction to the album. It's about kids raised in
"middle-class circumstance" who have gone to the City to become young
adults. It's about youthful exuberance and the lack of experience that
makes partying seem harmless when you're in your twenties. These are
partiers who haven't seen a friend die of drunk driving.... There are no
dead junkies on this track.
If this album was a book, the next chapter would be "The Jungle Line". The
second chapter begins abruptly. The suburban kids are gone and we listeners
are alone, confronting something ancient, primal, and as we will see,
deadly. We are in the African jungle listening to.... war drums. There is
no narrator. Nothing familiar to the westerner, just the frenetic beat of a
big gang of hand-made drums, calling for war. The drums are in the
foreground. We are thrown into a strange land wondering what the hell is
next. This is like the huge jump-cut in an American film, "The Deer
Hunter". <Hi Barbara.> One moment you're observing every tiny, tiny detail
at a friend's wedding. The next millisecond you're over wartime Vietnam,
staring out the open door of a roaring American helicopter, wondering where
the snipers are......... "We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
About the drum track, Joni said that she owns an album of the Burundi
'warrior' drummers and liked to dance to it. As I recall, she said that she
hears a Bo Diddley figure in there, but she may have been talking about the
later "The Tenth World". (See Tape Tree #5, complied by Simon, "My Top
12" - from BBC Radio 1, London, England - broadcast May 29, 1983.) In fact,
at the time, she include the Burundi drummers as one of her top 12 tracks of
biggest influences!
So I guess she started with the rhythm track and built it up from there. If
there is a single key to liking this track, maybe it is picturing the author
dancing to the drums in her kitchen with her cats. As the camera pulls
back, out the kitchen window and up, you can see an aerial view of the
Spanish compound on the cover. :) Imagine that she's dancing to the African
drums, thinking about the primal pleasure of live music in a nightclub, the
dangers of the drug culture, and in contrast, the simplicity of a distant
church. All of the rest of the stories on the album flow out of these
images. Together they form a classic Joni duality- the jungle within the
city. She's been writing about these things from the first album, observing
first the country, then the city.
Anyway, when HOSL was released, drums had never been so prominent on one of
her studio albums. Here's a new color on Joni's palette. The drums reflect
the African influence on the cover and the song's title. She used layers of
ominous sounds from a pioneering electronic instrument called a Moog
synthesizer. This was a huge departure too. "The Jungle Line" signals that
this album is not "Court and Spark 2, The Sequel".
So, here she is, a folk singer no more. A pop singer no more. She's not
only playing a Moog, she's _layering_ it on top of a African rhythm track.
She's composing with layers; she's now become a record producer. But not a
_folk_ producer. She's not putting dulcimers on top of nylon strung
acoustic guitars. She's not putting strings on top of jazz-pop songs (as
John Lennon suggested) like on Court and Spark. This is something new yet
again.
She's juxtaposing African rhythms with synthesizer! The ancient/primitive
with the modern/electronic.
Amazing in itself. All the more amazing when you realize that she did it in
1975! You gotta realize this was before Paul Simon was lauded for inventing
"World Music". Before Sting was celebrated for hiring Branford Marsalis.
Anyway, like the cover, the primitive is in the foreground and the urban is
being observed from a distance.
The words on The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Oh, the words! If there was any
doubt before, it is now clear that Joni is a deep thinker. On "The Jungle
Line", the words borrow the ambiguity of "Sweet Bird" (also on this album).
It's more of a scene than a story. Joni, (the narrator and a painter
herself), is looking over the shoulder of another painter. This time out
it's Rousseau. Rousseau is painting an urban scene, a nightclub. There's
lots of excitement in the air, (live music, a low-cut blouse, beer) and more
than a hint of danger. The narrator enters the painting and never leaves.
The rest of "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns" is all about this one painting.
It's people. About the primitive world in the city. About danger. She
never goes back to the innocent, youthful partiers. As Springsteen
observed, "there's a darkness on the edge of town." She never calls for a
return "to some semblance of a garden".
The narrator notices that the waitress is working among "cannibals" who
might "eat a working girl like her alive". Then the danger theme is
duplicated in an image of a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb- a drug death.
She works these images into a Tangled (hi Victor!) vine near the end,
intertwining poison (the jungle's danger) and mouthpiece spit (the
vulnerable, primitive musicians), and the nightclub (the urban scene).
Then the "camera" pulls back, still inside the Rousseau painting, and we go
"steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge", as if to say "There are a million stories
in the Naked City." We go traveling, traveling, traveling in New York City,
to look for the next chapter in this book about dangers and compromises and
paradoxes of the twin worlds.
We witness Edith and the Kingpin locked in their awful yet perfect embrace
where meeting your mate is also meeting your match. A new adult world in
which every blessing is a curse. Where benefactors kindly offer perils yet
parasites carry blessings. A world where hostages are forced to do the
unthinkable.... to smile for the camera.
All of the themes from the cover except the church are right there in "The
Jungle Line". This is not a minor work. This album is the work of a
multi-dimensional Master at the top of all of her games simultaneously. A
masterwork.
Now Tanya, will you give "The Jungle Line" just one more try?
All the best,
Lama
PS- Thanks for the bandwidth Les. Without you, for whom would I write?
