Wonders never cease. Today I ran across an interesting perspective on Dog Eat Dog by
the music critic for the Rocky Mountain News, one Mark Brown. He wrote a column
lamenting how great music sometimes ends up in music store discount bins selling for
peanuts. To wit:
<<...Often the bins are so full because the record companies had such high hopes. The
$1.99 Joni Mitchell CD was actually one of a bunch of cutouts, brand-new and unopened,
enthusiastically pressed in large quantities by Geffen Records in 1986 when the label
realized Mitchell had hit another artistic height. But sadly, no one listened.
So here they are - a bunch of overlooked works of brilliance, all of which you can
easily pick up for $5 or less in used CD bins. When you're looking around for
something to buy, give one of these a shot. You can always sell it back.
* Joni Mitchell, Dog Eat Dog: Her surprisingly accessible 1986 epic is worth full
price just for the exquisite title track, chronicling the rise of the dirtball nation
and, as she sings, "the land of snap decisions, the land of short attention spans" and
"whitewashed hawks who peddle hate and call it love." Her take on society, justice,
the media and more seems all the more prophetic when you realize it was written before
O.J., before Survivor, before Dubya...>>
He makes an excellent point, I think. DED has turned out to manifest more of Joni's
gift for prophecy. I think of the way she wrote "Woodstock" as an early example of
that phenomenon. Many of her songs have a touch of that magic. Those images from DED
seem to be spot on in terms of what's going on these days. DED has got to be Joni's
most underrated disc, don't ya'll agree?
-Julius
np: Rainman, the movie
