4th of July Night Ride Home

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this Fourth of July
Night ride home

Hula girls
And caterpillar tractors in the sand
The Ukulele man
The fireworks
This Fourth of July
Night ride home

I love the man beside me
We love the open road
No phones 'til Friday
Far from the overkill
Far from the overload

Back at the bar
The band tears down
But out here in the headlight beams
The silver powerlines
Gleam
On this Fourth of July
Night ride home

Round the curve
And a big dark horse
Red tail lights on his hide
Is keeping right alongside
Rev for stride
4th of July
Night ride home

I love the man beside me
We love the open road
No phones till Friday
Far from the undertow
Far from the overload

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this Fourth of July
Night ride home
Night ride home
Night ride home
On a night ride home
On a night ride home
Night ride home

Thank you, Joni.

https://jonimitchell.com/

4th of July Night Ride Home

Amidst the ugliness, here is a moment of beauty...

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this Fourth of July
Night ride home

Hula girls
And caterpillar tractors in the sand
The Ukulele man
The fireworks
This Fourth of July
Night ride home

I love the man beside me
We love the open road
No phones 'til Friday
Far from the overkill
Far from the overload

Back at the bar
The band tears down
But out here in the headlight beams
The silver powerlines
Gleam
On this Fourth of July
Night ride home

Round the curve
And a big dark horse
Red tail lights on his hide
Is keeping right alongside
Rev for stride
4th of July
Night ride home

I love the man beside me
We love the open road
No phones till Friday
Far from the undertow
Far from the overload

Once in a while
In a big blue moon
There comes a night like this
Like some surrealist
Invented this Fourth of July
Night ride home
Night ride home
Night ride home
On a night ride home
On a night ride home
Night ride home

Thank you, Joni.

https://jonimitchell.com/

"Summertime" by Joni Mitchell

I am absolutely blown away by Joni Mitchell's (previously here) voice in this excerpt from her all-star concert tribute when she received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize. It sounds as if, miraculously, she has shaved thirty years off her voice...and considering the harrowing health issues she has been through the last several years, this is especially wonderful to hear. Long live Joni!

PBS stations will broadcast the concert — “Joni Mitchell: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song” — at 9 p.m. ET on Friday, March 31 (check local listings) and on PBS.org and the PBS App as part of the co-produced Emmy Award-winning music series. It will also be broadcast to U.S. Department of Defense locations around the world via the American Forces Network.

Mitchell got her start performing in coffee shops and nightclubs in her native Canada and would go on to become an icon among music makers, setting a new standard marrying music and lyrics. With such songs as “Both Sides, Now,” “Chelsea Morning,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock” and “The Circle Game,” Mitchell became a household name.

Mitchell redefined the role of women musicians. She oversaw all aspects of her albums, including songwriting, arrangements, performance, production and artwork. Her sound crosses musical genres from folk to jazz, classical and rock, and she continues to inspire her fellow artists.

Mitchell is also a talented painter, creating the cover art for many of her albums, and her visual art will be featured prominently in the tribute concert, along with her music.

“I’m a creative person. I like the creative process,” Mitchell said. “I’ve been a painter all my life. I’ve been a musician most of my life. If you can paint with a brush, you can paint with words. … It’s a great honor to join the pantheon of recipients.”

Bestowed in recognition of the legendary songwriting team of George and Ira Gershwin, the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song is the nation’s highest award for influence, impact and achievement in popular music. The honoree is selected by the Librarian of Congress in consultation with a board of scholars, producers, performers, songwriters and other music specialists. Previous recipients are Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, songwriting duo the late Burt Bacharach and the late Hal David, Carole King, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, Garth Brooks, and Lionel Richie.

https://jonimitchell.com/

"Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell at the Newport Folk Festival 2022

In case you missed it in the news, an incredible event in music history just happened a few days ago, July 24th 2022, at the Newport Folk Festival: Joni Mitchell appeared on the Festival stage for the first time in 53 years. Her set was a surprise because Brandi Carlile and friends--billed as The Coyote Jam--were ostensibly performing until Carlile introduced this 78 year-old living legend, and possibly the best songwriter to ever have lived. Joni sang along with several of her own songs, played a guitar solo from "Just Like This Train," and looked like she was having a genuinely marvelous time.

I am a lifelong Joni fan and this was quite a moving event to see, especially since she has not performed in nearly 20 years and suffered a brain aneurysm 7 years ago. But she is still with us, and while her voice might be deeper and a little weaker, the musical power and emotional expression is completely intact. A few years ago, I posted two videos of Joni singing "Both Sides Now," one from 1970 and the other from 2000. I'll post these below Joni's lovely performance of this classic at the Festival. Let's go back in time, from 2022 to 2000 to 1970...to see how the seasons, they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came...

Wow.

https://jonimitchell.com/

"Don't Interrupt The Sorrow"

I have been a lifelong fan of The Smiths and Morrissey, and despite the fact that some of Morrissey's recent controversial--and ill-conceived--statements and beliefs (including aligning himself with For Britain, England's far-right party) have made it very hard to continue to like him, I can't help but be excited about his most current release. "California Son" is an album of covers, something I never would have expected from Morrissey but now that it exists, it makes perfect sense, especially looking at the songs he has chosen to cover. You can't go wrong covering songs from one of the greatest living singer/songwriters, Joni Mitchell (of whom I have also been a lifelong fan). And here he is singing the exquisite "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow" from the phenomenal 1975 Joni Mitchell album "The Hissing of Summer Lawns."

Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right
In flames our prophet witches
Be polite
A room full of glasses
He says "Your notches liberation doll"
And he chains me with that serpent
To that Ethiopian wall

Anima rising
Queen of Queens
Wash my guilt of Eden
Wash and balance me
Anima rising
Uprising in me tonight
She's a vengeful little goddess
With an ancient crown to fight

Truth goes up in vapors
The steeples lean
Winds of change patriarchs
Snug in your bible belt dreams
God goes up the chimney
Like childhood Santa Claus
The good slaves love the good book
A rebel loves a cause

I'm leaving on the 1:15
You're darn right
Since I was seventeen
I've had no one over me
He says "Anima rising-
So what-
Petrified wood process
Tall timber down to rock!"

Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right
He says "We walked on the moon
You be polite."
Don't let up the sorrow
Death and birth and death and birth and death and birth
He says "Bring that bottle kindly
And I'll pad your purse-
I've got a head full of quandary
And a mighty, mighty, thirst."

Seventeen glasses
Rhine wine
Milk of the Madonna
Clandestine
He don't let up the sorrow
He lies and he cheats
It takes a heart like Mary's these days
When your man gets weak

For comparison, here is Joni's original version. Morrissey may have changed a few words here and there and amped up the texture but he kept the sense.

Morrissey actually interviewed Joni Mitchell in 1996. The fascinating, two-part conversation can be heard below.

https://www.morrisseyofficial.com/
https://jonimitchell.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Sweet Bird"

In honor of National Poetry Month, once a week I will be featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

To begin with, I am featuring the work of one of the greatest poets in contemporary music, the legendary Joni Mitchell (previously here and here). This song, "Sweet Bird" comes from her album, "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" stuffed full with gorgeous, evocative, poetic songs, starting with the title alone! The album is not a concept album as much as it is a kind of dream infused with certain ideas, feelings, yearnings, motifs, and truths. In this way, it functions as a glorious whole. Joni says, "This record is a total work conceived graphically, musically, lyrically and accidentally - as a whole. The performances were guided by the given compositional structures and the audibly inspired beauty of every player. The whole unfolded like a mystery."

"Sweet Bird" is a simple but rather devastating ditty, alluding to time, its passing, youth, its passing, and, rippling out from there, untethered to our mortal perception of time as a linear phenomena, the idea that time is cyclical. But no, not cyclical...more like fixed pieces that can be moved around...sets of time and location (tied together) that move around, separated by the branes which quantum physics speaks of, the multi-universes posited as part of the mind-blowing structure of reality...that there is more than one reality. Joni sings that no one can ever get close enough to know the veracity of these ideas. We guess. We posit. Granted, they are educated guesses. But no one has ever traveled to another reality and come back to let us know.

It's not an easy task at all, but somehow, miraculously, Joni managed to write an economical, short piece dealing with physics and meta-physics, with the corporeal and the spiritual, with the now and the forever.

As usual, I am presenting this song (and all songs this month) with lyrics only since that is what I am focusing on. But this is a song where the music--a melancholy melody, and a haunting arrangement grounded with Joni's familiar, measured guitar work--is necessary to get the complete picture. Do Google it and give it a listen.

Sweet Bird
by Joni Mitchell

Out on some borderline
Some mark of inbetween
I lay down golden in time
And woke up vanishing

Sweet bird you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time
You must be laughing

Behind our eyes
Calendars of our lives
Circled with compromise
Sweet bird of time and change
You must be laughing
Up on your feathers laughing

Golden in time
Cities under the sand
Power ideals and beauty
Fading in everyone's hand

Give me some time
I feel like I'm losing mine
Out here on this horizon line
With the earth spinning
And the sky forever rushing
No one knows
They can never get that close
Guesses at most
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching

http://jonimitchell.com/

We Are Stardust

"The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust."
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."
--Carl Sagan

"Everything we are and everything in the universe and on Earth originated from stardust, and it continually floats through us even today. It directly connects us to the universe, rebuilding our bodies over and again over our lifetimes."
--Iris Schrijver, author of LIVING WITH THE STARS: HOW THE HUMAN BODY IS CONNECTED TO THE LIFE CYCLES OF THE EARTH, THE PLANETS, AND THE STARS

"We are stardust/ We are golden/ And we've got to get ourselves/ Back to the garden"
--Joni Mitchell

Images produced by Lematworks
https://lematworks.myportfolio.com/

Joni and Hedi

In case you missed the news, 71 year old music legend Joni Mitchell is the newest face of Saint Laurent via the house's Music Project. Creative Director Hedi Slimane himself photographed Mitchell just this month at her Bel Air home wearing a tunic, fedora, and leather cape created for her by Slimane.

http://jonimitchell.com/
http://www.ysl.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Hejira"

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I will be featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

To begin with, I am featuring the work of one of the greatest poets in contemporary music, the legendary Joni Mitchell. This song, "Hejira" is from her 1976 album of the same name. It touches upon some of the great, large ideas that I often talk about here in things such as my review of "The Tree of Life." She manages to convey these large ideas by using smaller concrete specifics. The result is meaningful, moving, and profound. "I know - no one's going to show me everything/ We all come and go unknown/ Each so deep and superficial/ Between the forceps and the stone." Between the forceps that pull us into life and the gravestone that marks our burial spot... between life and death. It's all right there in that brief line. I mean, really, does it get any more poignant or beautiful than that? The song is full of breathtaking imagery too, like the wax of candles rolling "down like tears," snow gathering "like bolts of lace," and the one that makes me absolutely swoon: "white flags of winter chimneys." *sigh*

Hejira
by Joni Mitchell

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
There's comfort in melancholy
When there's no need to explain
It's just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I'm returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a ballroom girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen...
Strains of Benny Goodman
Coming thru' the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know - no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality - to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There's the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Wave truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of a hotel room

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

 I am deliberately not including the actual song in this post because I want the focus to be on the words.

On the 23rd of this month (April, 2013), Mitchell will release GATHERED LIGHT: THE POETRY OF JONI MITCHELL'S SONGS featuring essays about her work from those who know her and specially edited lyrics by Joni specifically for this book. Visit her website for more info.

http://jonimitchell.com/

...

“We all come and go unknown/ each so deep and superficial/ between the forceps and the stone.”
--Joni Mitchell

Both Sides Now

I've looked at this song from both sides now...

and it's heartbreaking on so many levels.

The legendary Joni Mitchell... I am left speechless and tearful.