Following the early start of a timeless, musical, spiritual, and artistic career, Joni Mitchell released her first album in 1968 titled “Song to a seagull”, her second album ‘Clouds’ followed in 1969 and her third album “Ladies of the Canyon” was released in 1970.
One would think that three consecutive and innovative albums in as many years would leave a person feeling as though they’d been a once plump and ripe orange, squeezed to the point of being left a small reminisce of a dehydrated piece of shriveled nothing! Nope… not this cat Ladies and Gentleman… not this cat.
In 1971 Joni released her fourth monumental album Blue. The recording at A&M Studios in Los Angeles, California, was underway and I highly doubt that anyone had a thought in their minds of how the album would soon and forever impact the lives of so many musical souls and hearts for generations to come. Time would soon prove that this album was as meant as it was amazing. Three months after its debut, Blue rapidly excelled to the top of the Billboard album charts along with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, and countless other classic artists of that early part of the decade.
The beginning of the album opens with All I Want. This is a track with lyrics that can make a person fly away in a dancer’s dreamland. With vocal versatility that creates the mental image of Joni with her head swaying back and forth, I can visualize Joni singing with her head held up high singing to the sky and everything in it. Strumming her guitar in perfect synchronicity with everything around her in a field of tall green grass and oak trees.
When I hear Joni gliding her fingers over the pearly keys of a grand piano, I can’t help but enjoy myself. When I hear My Old Man, it’s perpetual enjoyment alright, as well as being beautifully accented with those impossibly difficult off-tones that she makes sound seemingly natural to her when in fact, anyone else who’d dare attempt it might sound like a fool trying to replicate her beautifully innovative and highly orginal style.
Little Green is a soft track featuring hit you with bullet-to-the-chest powerful lyrics. The crispness of the guitar comfortably startles you just before another verse, and in case you were entertaining the thought of trailing off in its ocean of white capped waves. Carey meanwhile, has always been a track that committed thievery of my attention when I should being offering it up freely.. kind of like now.. as I am straining myself from not jumping about in my chair and drifting away. The entire experience actually creates the feel of being seated in that Mermaid Café; inhaling the freshness of that African breeze while the sound of the bass is rapturously flowing in your veins.
The album’s title song Blue is simplistic splendor with the forceful echoes surrounding the relaxing sail of Joni’s piano-playing brilliance. It's all accompanied by long lasting haunting vocal statements, relaxing the most anxious person in the world with the piercing feat of this lyrical stab at reality’s harshness. Now, I have never been to California but I wouldn’t mind having had the opportunity to visit in this peaceful time frame that, in my eyes, has been deemed a milestone in the musical backbone of history. The upbeat feel of this story told is what makes Joni one who tells of an experience born to keep the listener entertained and in full absorption mode.
This Flight Tonight gives a whole new meaning to feeling lost without really feeling lost. It's a lot like having been stripped of something you was sure you had possesion of in someway or another. There is a hint of regret in these lyrics associated with how that something was lost which is bound to the hopes of how it will be returned. I particularly enjoyed the transformation of mundane to abstract thought in this amazing song that was later covered and made even more popular by the rock band ‘ Nazareth ’.
River is a depiction of the harsh reality of what’s behind normal, everyday, life-orientated things that remind me of what the vast majority of us are guilty of taking for granted. The track’s calm is enough to send a person into the realm of a utopian dreamland where all are asleep on white puffy clouds, dreaming of pretty things with a faint smile on their rosy cheeked faces. The song that follows ‘River’ has to be one of the most beautiful songs in the existence of my musical experience. A Case of You makes me cry so hard I can hardly breathe when it is finished, for the sadness in lyrics, and imagining how a person must have felt to have composed this magnificently right-on-the-soul song. Then, in comes my silly association with being so proud of the fact that I am Canadian. I have never experienced such an amazingly potent tremendousness in my life, and I highly doubt anything will ever top the feelings felt when I feel this piece of musically intense ecstasy.
To sadly but perfectly end this album we have The Last Time I Saw Richard; a prime example of just how brilliant a songwriter this lady really is and always was. The wonderful thing about this song is that sense of wonder of what is going to come is attained. It’s always good to leave a person with something to crave in the closing statement of a monumental album while, at the same time, leaving a comfortable closure to all of what was in the story book you have just been read.
Postscipt:
This album has been by far an incredible addition to music’s history pages and something we should all consider a pleasure to own. We have had it created, composed, and brought to life, in our world of musical expression and insatiable desire.
Joni Mitchell currently resides in British Columbia, Canada, a Province rich with scenic beauty in every conceivable dimension. She now spends here time painting and just being her. I hope that when she is looking through those eyes at what ever she does in life, she realizes how much this album has enriched and influenced the lives of so many and will continue to do so with all of the following generations who tread in our footsteps.
