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Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

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    Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

    This is an amazing album. There is real menace in tracks like The Jungle Line and Edith and the Kingpin, and the arrangements are intense but gorgeous.

    The primal violence of urban life and how this carried in the nightlife of New York of the late Vietnam era:

    There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
    There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
    Poppy poison-poppy tourniquet
    It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
    And metal skin and ivory birds
    Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
    They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
    Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line

    #2
    EATK is one of my favourite songs, anywhere.

    The Jungle Line influenced you know who, by the way, with the tribal drumming an'all.

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      #3
      The source of the Burundi drums - “Musique du Burundi” (Ocora OCR-40) - is discussed here:

      https://thelastgreatrecord.wordpress...e-jungle-line/

      Specifically this:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVsq-9XUnNQ

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        #4
        Many people prefer the earlier folky Joni of 'Blue' and 'For The Roses', but for me this album and the three that followed - 'Hejira', 'Don Juan's Reckless Daughter' and the under-appreciated 'Mingus' (all of which featured Jaco Pastorius) are her best work.

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          #5
          I loved all Joni's LPs from the beginning up to and including Hejira. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter was the first one I didn't bother with, being fully in thrall to Punk/New Wave by that time. Almost certainly a mistake on my part. Mingus passed me by completely-again something I should rectify as I'm pretty sure I would like it very much today.
          Having said that I really didn't like the record where she re-recorded her old classic songs in a smoky jazzy mode with her voice sounding fairly shot.

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            #6
            'A Strange Boy' from Hejira is a gem. I love her phrasing of words like "foolish and childish".

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtzCbHp3uAU

            A strange boy is weaving
            A course of grace and havoc
            On a yellow skateboard
            Through midday sidewalk traffic
            Just when I think he's foolish and childish
            And I want him to be manly
            I catch my fool and my child
            Needing love and understanding
            What a strange, strange boy
            He still lives with his family
            Even the war and the navy
            Couldn't bring him to maturity
            He keeps referring back to school days
            And clinging to his child
            Fidgeting and bullied
            His crazy wisdom holding onto something wild
            He asked me to be patient
            Well I failed
            "Grow up!" I cried
            And as, the smoke was clearing he said
            "Give me one good reason why!"
            What a strange, strange boy
            He sees the cars as sets of waves
            Sequences of mass and space
            He sees the damage in my face
            We got high on travel
            And we got drunk on alcohol
            And on love the strongest poison and medicine of all
            See how that feeling comes and goes
            Like the pull of moon on tides
            Now I am surf rising
            Now parched ribs of sand at his side
            What a strange, strange boy
            I gave him clothes and jewelry
            I gave him my warm body
            I gave him power over me
            A thousand glass eyes were staring
            In a cellar full of antique dolls
            I found an old piano
            And sweet chords rose up in waxed New England halls
            While the boarders were snoring
            Under crisp white sheets of curfew
            We were newly lovers then
            We were fire in the stiff-blue-haired-house-rules

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