"...aren't we glad for Joni?" (Those radio ads are TOO much!) Bob, we got the stuff, and we are loving it! (Mr. Muller sent Ken and me the Hissing Demos and other cool stuff.) (Cool sticker!) My (two-cent) commentary: There wasn't much left by Joni for the other musicians to develop on Hissing, was there? The songs seem to be fully (or almost fully) formed. I caught some lyric changes, notably in Shades of Scarlet Conquering. Fire is better than flames for that first line. Less sing-songy. And she reversed the order of greed and need: "To walk around with so much greed, to carry the weight of all that need..." (The final version is more elegant and poignant, methinks.) It is so nice to hear different vocal versions of these incredible songs. Do any of you who sing (or like to sing) perform "Shades?" Have you noticed that the melody lends itself to wonderful reinventions, my favorite being inverting the notes from a downward, falling pattern to a rising one in places that occur throughout the song, such as: "dark things she feels" "cast-iron and frail" "covers her eyes" in the X-rated scenes "man in the world" holding out his arms" In these places, Joni brings the melody downward in a "hook." Now I need to go back to the Demos and notice if she sings them differently there. Minutiae, to be sure, but God is in the ... Steve _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
