110. Joni Mitchell, "Court and Spark"

 


I feel like such an idiot for disliking most of Joni Mitchell's stuff as much as I do, but this, her most commercial and probably most accessible album, I even enjoyed in parts.  Look, Joni Mitchell is widely beloved and revered and she doesn't need me or anybody else to like her and I have some glaring musical blind spots and this is just one of them.  Wow I sound defensive but it's just so weird to totally not get something that so many people love so completely.  

There is one song on here I liked unconditionally: "Raised on Robbery," a 50s-tinged boogie about a prostitute trying to pick up a guy at the Empire Hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan (Mitchell, you know, being Canadian and all):

He was sitting in the lounge of the Empire Hotel
He was drinking for diversion
He was thinking for himself
A little money riding on the Maple Leafs
Along comes a lady in lacy sleeves
She says let me sit down
You know, drinkin' alone's a shame (It's a shame it's a crying shame)
Look at those jokers
Glued to that damn hockey game
Hey honey-you've got lots of cash
Bring us round a bottle
And we'll have some laughs

This was the first single from the album, but only got to number 65.  The second single, "Help Me," the only song I recognized when I listened to this album, did a lot better, reaching number two.  (You know, "Help me, I think I'm fallin'/In Love again".)

"Robbery" is probably the only true rock or rock-adjacent song on the album.  Most of it is Mitchell's more or less sui generis blend of folk, jazz, and pop, with wildly unconventional song structures and freedom within the complexity of carefully constructed tracks.  Now that I think about it, maybe I'm just too conventional in my music taste and that's why it grates when she zigs when the listener expects a zag.  It's jarring and, I suppose, beautiful in its way.

Joni was just in the news for making a surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, playing onstage for the first time since she was almost killed by a brain aneurysm in 2015.  One of the songs she played was "Both Sides Now," maybe the only Joni Mitchell song I unabashedly love.  Good for Joni; I hope she keeps playing and doing well.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? As you could probably surmise, no.

Comments

  1. GGJuly 28, 2022 at 4:43 PM

    I don't like Radiohead. You're allowed not to like Joni Mitchell. No shame, man.

    ReplyDelete
  2. StephenJuly 29, 2022 at 11:07 AM

    I also dislike Joni, except for the absolutely perfect Both Sides Now. I especially like the Dave Van Ronk version (there were, like, four different artists who released it in 1967), which he titled "Clouds."

    ReplyDelete
  3. TKJuly 29, 2022 at 12:18 PM

    I’ll always be partial to the Parasites version
    https://youtu.be/UfNkkV3078w

    ReplyDelete

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