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The Afterword #62: Blue It’s A Colour So Cruel

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Same day, same idiots aka DFB, Dr Volume and Ganglesprocket try to examine why Mr Dog and Mr G appear to need to like everything – especially if its on a list

This is not an in depth examination of the work of Joni Mitchell because that’s for someone else its just trying to explain why we don’t really get her. Or rather all you need is one album. Or maybe not even that

Maybe you should just follow the Dr Volume prescription of just finding stuff you like and not putting yourself through the mangle desperately trying to convince yourselves to accept an artist into your life

it’s not a matter of life and death but what is?



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  2. Dude! Good editing job! You seem to have cut out my actual rubbish and made me sound semi coherent! Excellent work sir.

    (all kidding aside, seriously, you have a talent for production. And I am putting this on a public forum rather than a facebook messenger thing. Can’t remember what you left in or took out, but three people got a good equal crack of the whip there and all of us sounded pretty good. Nice one.)

  5. For those who only think they like Blue then Court and Spark is well worth a listen, not least for the glorious Free Man in Paris. I saw Rufus Wainwright do it as part of a tribute concert in Toronto a few years back. Lovely evening and I think her last time on stage before her illness. She came on and did a couple of tracks at the end.

    And just the snippet of River almost brought me to tears. So wonderful.

      • I am somewhat with you, liking 2 or 3 more albums than you (and I haven’t heard the rest). But as I became a Canadian citizen last week it is apparently obligatory to buy the complete works box set.

        • I bought that box set a few years ago, because it was on sale. I hadn’t really liked much of what I’d heard before, but I thought perhaps it would all make sense hearing her songs on the albums.
          Nope, it didn’t. Sure, there are individual tracks that are very good, and in theory I can see why people think she’s brilliant, but I just don’t like most of it. She’s very much in the Steely Dan category for me, there’s a slickness and a distance and unnecessary showing off, and I really dislike the way she’ll often sing/speak a monologue at you – I compare it to being cornered at a party by an annoying woman who just won’t shut up about her a-maaaazing life (and never ask how you’re doing).
          She also feels to me like one of those women who doesn’t like other women. The kind that barely speak and looks bored until a man enters the room, when she suddenly comes alive and gives him all of her attention, like a snake charming its prey… 🙂
          But sure, Blue is the keeper for me as well.

          • I love the differing opinions on here! IMHO Blue is her weakest album, saccharin-sweet. Every young woman I knew at the time had Blue and what do young women know, eh?
            Hissing, Hejira and Don Juan are the finest three-belters-in-a-row albums ever released.

            • I’m OK with the first two (well, they both have a couple of good tunes, and a lot of not so good tunes, but I can listen to them if forced), but your third choice is one of the worst albums I’ve ever heard. The only one worse than that one (of hers) is the Mingus album.

                  • Mingus is mixed in execution but is inventive and profoundly imagined. Like Bowie in some ways, Mitchell is not afraid to experiment and, if necessary, to leave her audience behind.

                    The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey is disturbing and affecting and extraordinary. About as far from twee folksy Joni or smooth L.A session Joni as conceivable.

                    • I liked that -thanks, @Fin59. It has some of the same poise and space that appeals to me so much about Laurie Anderson’s music. I bought the box set shortly after joining the Afterword, but have never really done the Tigger 6 listens to any of it, dipping in now and again to play an album and not being convinced. I think one song every now and again would be a better way to appreciate the intensity of her music in small doses.

                  • Really? Plenty of competition in that category. Some Time in New York City (or Two Virgins!), Press to Play, Down in the Groove, Dirty Work, It’s Hard etc etc

  6. Blue is dark and morose more than sweet. Ladies of the Canyon is sweet but also excellent except for that annoying laugh
    Like the jazz stuff but not Don Juan. Got the
    Vinly and gave it another go recently. Nope.

    T’other day I played a radio broadcast from early jazz period and there was this long monologue after which I thought well that was fucking boring.

  7. Thanks chaps, enjoyed both the casts. Lots of good stuff, not least Gangle’s Scott Walker comparison with Henry James. There’s two artists who I feel I should like but somehow can’t. Which brings me to Joni. Well done for trying to explain why you don’t rate her, but I couldn’t disagree more. That run of albums up to Hejira is magnificent. She fits well into another category you discussed, that of artists who never stand still, and never just repeat a formula to keep the record company happy and the money coming in. If she wants to do jazz, she does jazz. If she wants to bring the Drummers of Burundi in, she bloody well will.

    I don’t get the ‘me me me’ reference or the accusations of smugness. Like her contemporaries Dylan, Morrison, Young et al, it seems to me her work is something powerful and crafted out of her own experiences and perspectives. That’s not ‘me’, that’s what art does.

    Yes, she has a distinctive voice and sound which isn’t for everyone – as does Dylan, as does Young, as does Cohen, as does Morrison.

    I don’t think Blue is high in most listings because people feel she ought to be there, or because she’s a woman and they need a woman on the list. It’s there because it deserves to be.

    • Nicely articulated BB.

      For me, Joni Mitchell is underestimated by a predominantly male rock critical base who tend to value vulnerability or victimhood in female artists. She, conversely, tends towards traits perceived typically as masculine. Confidence, composure and control.

      Her work is profoundly poetic in my opinion. Rarely an articulation of the self per se but through use of personae, imagery and metaphor, evocations of desire, aspiration, love and loss. The passing of time and the affect of memory.

      • Yes I agree. Back in the day, She, Carole King and others were put in a box which was that of whimsy, self absorbed feeling, ‘bedsit music’ etc etc. And, of course, a whole heap of the judgement was as much about their looks and sexuality as their music; there can be no question that they were judged in a very different way from that of their male peers. It must have driven them mad. Hopefully things have improved, if not changed entirely.

        • The whole sound of those record is aural smugness – its a physical fog of all pervading self satisfaction. I value mental damage and spiritual vulnerability in all genders as it goes

  8. Great pod, gentlemen!

    I too have tried to get Joni. But the music just doesn’t move me. And that’s what I want from music. She tries too hard to show me how clever and intellectual she is.

    I’m sure she IS clever and intellectual and keen on not repeating herself musically, and I appreciate and respect
    all that. But I still don’t like the music.

    Cue “But but but you should listen to The Hissing Of Don Juan’s Hejira Of The Canyon.” I have and I won’t do it again. Sorry and thanks for your time.

    • I don’t think she’s trying to be clever and intellectual at all. I think that’s you over-interpreting the fact that you just don’t like her music.
      That’s OK.

      The amount of vitriol in this thread is edging into the weird, IMO.

      • I don’t see a lot of vitriol at all, I just see a bunch of people who understand why she is a great musician and respect her talent, but struggle to enjoy much (or any) of it, and are trying to explain this inability to others and themselves. And, perhaps, failing! 🙂
        I don’t dislike Joni Mitchell, I just don’t want to put on any of her albums at home. If I’m a guest at someone else’s house, and they put on Joni, I don’t start throwing shoes at their head or anything, I’m awfully well behaved…promise.

      • If I didn’t enjoy over- interpreting culture and my relation to it, I probably wouldn’t be here. So you’re most likely right.

        Also, the pod perfectly summed up my feelings in this case (of you).

        I had no intention of being vitriolic though. Sorry if my post came across that way.

      • One of the most original artists ever. Her guitar playing, her lyrics, the musical styles she traverses. She criticised Dylan as a plagiarist and I get that , you don’t say ‘that sounds like” when listening to a Joni record. But having partied up on the Rolling Thunder Tour with Bob and the gang I thought that was a bit crass.

        The album I return to most are For The Roses and Court and Spark .The latter has wonderful playing and such openness to the sound

        He was sitting in the lounge of the empire hotel
        He drinking for diversion
        He was thinking to himself

        Great

  11. Interesting listening back to this – I didn’t contribute much to this segment of the ramblechat as I’m not familiar with much beyond ‘Blue’ so I let the other two get Joni off their chests – but the other reason is DFB and Gangle are massively more tuned into the lyrical side of things – whereas for me it’s all about the music and the overall effect music has on me regardless of what the person is singing about – I suspect I’d quite like some of the other Joni albums the other two boys have no time for especially if they get a bit jazzy as I don’t mind a bit of that and they come highly recommended by Pencilsqueezer sometime of this parish so I shall investigate…

  12. I totally get that you might not like the music.

    But I’m really puzzled about comments re: intellectualism, coldness, lack of vulnerability or emotion; it’s there in spades. And ‘Blue’ is anything but ‘sweet’.

    I could give lots of examples but I guess I won’t change anyone’s mind; but try ‘Lesson in Survival’/‘Let the Wind Carry Me’ from ‘For the Roses’.

    Anyway I have had this argument many times in real life (which is interesting in itself) so I give up.

    • Don’t give up. It’s impassioned argument for or against an artist that interests me. Fire away. You will find many supporters here (and some detractors, but politely so).

      • Joni is an absolute giant with as body of work that rivals anything else in popular music. For me the pinnacles are Hissing & Hejira but surely it is an indicator of her greatness that someone like Ruby can champion the likes of Spark & Blue?

          • The dangers of texting or whatever this medium is…. not being sarcastic in any way. I genuinely love Joni and ,rather like Dylan, I love that her range is so wide that there is so much room for people to say “Blue is her best” only to be countered with “Mingus is a masterpiece” (neither of which statements I agree with) leaving the rest of us to marvel at one of popular music’s most enduring stars.

            • Ah, I see! Apols. Yes I agree, and I marvel that some love ‘Blue’ and hate ‘Mingus’ and vice versa, and various other combinations of love/hate.

              What I don’t get are people who don’t like anything she has done; people who you usually have a lot in common with (musically at least).

              • That was precisely my point on the podcast – Joni is always mentioned in the same breath as Dylan, Cohen etc as ‘well if you like those then ‘ and it doesn’t always go that way. And I know and respect the POV of people who rate her but (apart from that one album) it just doesn’t click

  14. A really interesting listen – thanks! I like it when these things make me think about my opinions, and I found myself agreeing that I find JM quite hard to get into, despite really loving Blue. For me, I think it might be an age thing, or rather when I first heard her. I was familiarish with Blue, and then I met my future wife in 1976 and she had it in her collection, so I got to really hear it a lot (as we did in those days), and I ‘got it’. I bought Court and Spark a little later, which a mate had introduced me to, but all the others came in the box set a few years ago….and I didn’t find another Blue or anything approaching it. However, I think this may be because I’m trying to catch up at 60 something years old rather than listening to them in the 70s when I was 20 something…?

    • I don’t think it’s an age/time thing. I didn’t listen to any Joni until the early 90s (my early 20s), apart from hearing BYT on the radio. A friend did me copies of the first few albums and I didn’t like any of them apart from Blue (which I really like). I bought the box to give them another go, and I still don’t.

      She’s in a list of artists I can appreciate are good at their craft but I can’t get my head round – Springsteen, Floyd, Dylan, Dire Straits, etc. I’ll get me coat.

  15. I still don’t know if I like her or not. The songs are good, but it is mainly covers of her songs I prefer, even if i cannot understand why it is always River and A Case of You that get covered the most. I suspect it is her voice, which is why the lower register Both Sides Now on the Love, Actually soundtrack that suddenly alerted me she might be better than I had given her credence for.

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