A Tolkien Tapestry - Cor Blok

Eh? A non-musical post?

As a life-long lover of Tolkien's vast Middle Earth mythos, I'm always intrigued by artistic developments related to it. For several years I'd been aware of, and very intrigued by, the few and seldom-seen LOTR-themed images by the mysterious and exotically named Cor Blok. Some (e.g. The Game Of Riddles, or The Cow Jumped Over The Moon) I really didn't like, but others (Frodo's Vision On Amon Hen, or The Battle Of The Hornburg II) were tantalisingly compelling.

Every now and again I'd trawl the web in search of more Cor, and every once in a while I'd be able to add another poor quality 72dpi jpeg to my scant collection. I longed to discover a book of Blok's LOTR art. But such a thing didn't seem to exist. Now it does, and now I've got it. My excitement at the prospect was such that I pre-ordered it as soon as I learned of it's existence, before it had even hit the shelves. A slight delay in it's arrival only heightened anticipation.

Well, now that I have it, I must confess I'm a little disappointed. I'd hoped, as had Tolkien before me (Tolkien and Blok corresponded, even meeting once, and Tolkien thought highly enough of Blok's art to buy several pictures, including his own favourite - and one of mine also - The Battle Of The Hornburg II, even considering Blok as a potential candidate for an illustrated edition of LOTR), for more in the vein of the second of his Battle Of The Hornburg artworks. It's no surprise that this piece also adorns the cover; it's probably amongst the best in the book, and certainly amongst those with the broadest appeal. Feedback on the recent Tolkien calendars of 2010 and 2011, both featuring Blok's art (and of both of which I'd been blissfully unaware of!), show that his take on things Tolkienian is not favoured by all. That didn't ever bother me. But, truth be told, even seen in a favourable setting, as here, in a well printed and well put together book, some of these pictures do seem rather poor (Bill Ferny Hit By An Apple is the picture I like least!).

Blok's an interesting, intelligent guy, and his intro to the book is a good, informative read. Some of his ideas and artworks succeed. But some don't. There are several reasons: the method employed for most (but not all) these pictures doesn't always translate brilliantly into print (and these are very good quality reproductions), with the silk-paper layering and underpainting effect not as tangible as might be the case when seen 'in the flesh'. This method also meant Blok's art is all on the smaller side, a constraint which may have fed into another choice he made, regarding his stylistic approach - in essence he leaves out a lot of detail, both in terms of figures and settings, but this is especially noticeable in terms of contextual detail - which I feel is a ploy that's frequently responsible for any weakness these pictures may have, and is at odds with the approach Tolkien took, in which details of character and setting are so important.

Nevertheless, as well as a sizeable chunk of work that I feel is less successful, there are a lot of pretty solid pieces to enjoy here, and some really great artworks. Ironically, given Blok's avowed policy of leaving out 'unnecessary' detail, the aim being to give the viewer more imaginitive elbow room, the pictures I think work best are those depicting events or scenes on a grander scale, in which the figures are smaller. This befits the grand narrative sweep of Tolkien's world. And in fact Blok himself, quite rightly, observes, in a note on the picture titled Weathertop, one of his successes to my mind, that "landscape with Tolkien serves not merely as a backdrop to the action: it contributes greatly to the atmosphere".

Occasionally he departs from Tolkien's narrative 'facts', as in Slaying Of The Nazgul (of which scene there are three versions: interesting in that they illustrate how his ideas evolve), where he has Eowyn slay the Lord of the Nazgul with a spear rather than a sword. That seems like justifiable artistic licence, as it really adds compositional drama. But when, in his second version of The Hobbits Sacking Bilbo's House, he has stairs to a second floor... No, that's just wrong! Remember the description of Bilbo's home in The Hobbit: "no going upstairs for the hobbit"! Nevertheless, the second version of this picture remains the better of the two, with the medieval influence on the composition being an effective idea.

Overall I'm not too keen on how he handles figures. The idea of 'less is more' is great, but I just don't like how he's done it. Learning how this style evolved out of his own invented 'Barbarusian' mythos is fascinating, but it doesn't necessarily cause one to like it any better. This said, there are occasions where the approach he's adopted does work remarkably well, such as 'Gandalf Relates His Adventures'. Undoubtedly though, one of Blok's strengths is how he stands out from the crowds of more conventional 'sword and sorcery' type illustrators. In fact I like him better sometimes the more abstract his figures are: his final LOTR piece, 1962s The King Of The Nazgul, for example, which is almost like a hyper minimalist de Kooning painting (from the latter's brief B&W period, with approx 95% of the detail stripped out) is, to my mind, far better and more sinister than the earlier painting, The Sorcerer King, made circa 1958/9, which looks banal in it's naivety, and ridiculous rather than ominous.

Despite these criticisms, and despite a degree of disappointment, Blok's work remains unique in it's relation to Tolkien, and it has an otherworldliness to it that chimes well with the monumental act of creation Tolkien achieved in building his whole mythos. And on a positive note, there are many delightfully atmospheric pieces here, my favourites, like Amon Hen and Hornburg, but also the previuosly unspublished Weathertop, The Last Bridge, Country Of The Trolls and The Petrified Trolls, depict larger scenes, and include more landscape and context, but even some of the figure based or minimalist paintings work very well to, for example The Firework Dragon II, Gandalf Persuades Bilbo, and the very evocative and highly stylised The Crebain, or the darkly moody Legolas Shoots The Nazgul Down.

As a body of work, Blok's Tolkien Tapestry, gathered together here for the first time, in its most complete (thanks to the arduous sleuthing of editor Pieter Collier, who tracked down several pieces that had gone off the radar) and well printed manifestation ever, is intriguing, perplexing, sometimes dissatisfying, and occasionally brilliant, and I'm really glad Harper Collins put this book out, allowing me to really get to grips with this until now elusive Scandinavian interpreter of Tolkien's bestselling masterpiece.

Can I recommend it? Well, not without circumspection, and a few provisos. But, if you're a Tolkien nut, and open-minded and eclectic in relation to art, then yes, I would recommend it.

Joni Mitchell - Blue (1971)

A Himalayan range of dizzying cloud capped peaks. Music so potent you have to mind how much you dose yourself up on it.

I recently had a couple of separate conversations with two friends in which we discussed different aspects of artistic talent. There was some overlap in things we hit upon. Whilst Tim felt that you could usually quite easily identify an artist's peak achievement, and he used the term in the singular, and that this achievement would kind of sum up all that's best about that artist, Patrick had an even more blunt way of putting it: all the crap that any artist produces is worth it, for the occasional diamonds!

Well, I think there's an element of insight in both these observations. But for me, certain artists - Woody Allen, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell - have a pretty big corpus of fairly consistent excellence. If the average artist can only hope for one Monadnock, standing like an erupted shark's tooth in a plain of otherwise flat less-than-brilliant achievement, there are nonetheless those few who have Himalayan ranges filled with peaks that are so high they seem to threaten to pop our thin atmosphere. And indeed, there is an element of danger in their works, as they cut so close the skin and the bone.

Blue is most certainly such an album. Continuing to enrich her palette with a broader range of sounds, the balance between guitar-based (well, actually several are played on dulcimer) and piano-based songs is, for the first time, about even. Russ Kunkel, the fantastic drummer and percussionist with the famed 'mellow mafia' rhythm section known simply as 'The Section', makes his second appearance on a Joni recording, adding more to this recording than he did to Ladies Of The Canyon, and, Joni herself makes dulcimer a new core voice in her repertoire, with its distinctive jangly sound. There's also a new departure visually, in that the cover is not adorned by a Joni original, but instead features a very stark blue-hued montone full-frontal close-cropped facial portrait. The photograph, taken (acc. to Wikipedia) by one Tim Considine, is perfect, reflecting the melancholy intensity of the music within.

Listening to the album again for the first time in several years, I realised that it wasn't as piano-heavy as I'd recalled, and in fact the Appalachian dulcimer is as strong a musical voice on the album as the piano, eclipsing even the guitar, with 'All I want', 'Carey', 'California', and 'Case Of You' all played on this unusual instrument.

Below is a clip of Joni playing an early version of 'All I Really Want' (commenting "here's another really new one that isn't quite finished"), after a quick lesson on the history of the dulcimer, and a story about the origin of her own instrument. Fab!

Joni plays 'Carey' live in the early 80s.

Performing California for the BBC in 1970.

'Little Green' and 'This Flight Tonight' are the only normal guitar numbers, and given Joni's penchant for unusual tunings, even they are far from ordinary. 'This Flight Tonight' is particularly notable for the very low open tuning Joni employs, and the sliding blues-influenced figure that keeps recurring. Over at jonimitchell.com they break it down as follows:

The tuning for this song is similar to a variation of open G ( DGDGBD )that has the bottom string tuned right down to a very low G. The actual key for this song is Ab though, one semitone above G, so the tuning you need is Ab Ab Eb Ab C Eb.

The resulting drone from the lowest strings gives the song a very distinctive sound and feel. It's a technique she employs elsewhere to great effect, for example on 'The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey' (Mingus), albeit that on that occasion she goes for a very different vibe. Here she is playing 'This Flight Tonight' in 1972:

Jason Ankeny at Allmusic starts his piece on the album thus "Sad, spare, and beautiful, Blue is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album." And he's bang on. It certainly is "forthright and poetic", and Joni's songs really can be described as "raw nerves". In fact the review of Blue is amongst the best review I've read on Allmusic, and I use that site all the time whilst researching my Drummer magazine articles...

One of the things that I've found about this album, as great as it undoubtedly is, is that, of all the Joni albums (talking now strictly about the golden-streak of records starting with her debut and running somewhere into the latter part of the seventies), it's amongst the hardest to take in one sitting. Why? Well, for me, it's the emotional intensity of it. 'Little Green', written for her daughter, given away when Joni herself was very young, simply destroys me every time I hear it.

Child with a child pretending

Weary of lies you are sending home

So you sign all the papers in the family name

You're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed

Little green have a happy ending

I think you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by this song. And, in addition to the emotional punch it packs, it's musically wonderful, her guitar playing like plangent harp, and her vocal lines enigmatic in their mixture of unusual winding melodies, that are yet effortlessly delivered with a voice that seems capable of going anywhere it pleases, with a kind of liquid charm.

Here she is playing 'Little Green' in 1967, four years before it came out on Blue.

It's also some of the more intensely confessional piano ballads that, whilst individually magnificent, can, if taken together, become somewhat cloying. The tendency towards maudlin self-doubt and criticism that began to be apparent on 'For Free', is not just aired here more freely, but is in fact studied, dissected and concentrated, as in the intense closing number 'The Last Time I Saw Richard', in which she sings (from Richard's point of view in the song)

All romantics meet the same fate someday

Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café

You laugh he said you think you're immune

Go look at your eyes they're full of moon

before ending the song with

I'm gonna blow this damn candle out

I don't want nobody comin' over to my table

I got nothing to talk to anybody about

All good dreamers pass this way some day

Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes dark cafes

It's getting pretty bleak! And in the title track, an absolute gem of a song, she sings

Acid, booze, and ass

Needles, guns, and grass

Lots of laughs lots of laughs

before musing

Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go

Well I don't think so

But I'm gonna take a look around it though

In the parlance of the times, this is some pretty heavy stuff, man!

But, at the end of the day, as Jason Ankeny says, over at the allmusic.com preview for Blue, "Unrivaled in its intensity and insight, Blue remains a watershed." Amen to that!

Credits:
Gary Burden - Art Direction
Tim Considine - Cover Photography
'Sneaky' Pete Kleinow - Guitar & Pedal Steel Guitar
Russ Kunkel - Drums
Henry Lewy - Engineer
John Mayall - Composer*
Joni Mitchell - Audio Production, Composer, Guitar, Keyboards, Piano, Vocals
Stephen Stills - Guitar & Bass
James Taylor - Guitar, Vocals
Steve Thompson - Composer*

* Mayall and Thompson share composer credits with Joni on one track, 'California' (credited as Mayall, Mitchell, Thompson), all other songs are solely Mitchell.

Joni Mitchell - Ladies Of The Canyon

The cork's off and the genie's out of the bottle.

Modern music's most magnificent musical goddess takes us all on a trip to musical heaven, expanding her palette as she rapidly matures.

Joni's third album starts with the familiar duo of guitar and vocals, sounding, initially at any rate, very much like her first two records. 'Morning Morgantown', is an evocative, descriptive song, and finds Joni sounding elfin and youthful as she sings "The merchants roll their awnings down / The milk-trucks make their morning rounds". But then piano steals quickly into the mix, as do subtle percussive sounds, already heralding developments which, by the end of the album, make this a real departure from her previously super-minimalist soundscape.

Track two, 'For Free', is newer territory yet, being the first fully fledged piano-based song to appear in her recorded catalogue. It's also the first time we hear Joni sounding self-conscious, guilty even perhaps, about her status in the 'music biz', a theme whose implications she would explore ever more as her career developed. And it also anticipates the rather bleakly melancholy vibe, which, coupled with her distinctive touch on the piano, here taking form as a rolling triplet-based feel, which would be such a characteristic part first really big album sales-wise, the justly lauded and famous 'Blue' album.

'Conversation' adds subtle brushwork drumming to Joni's stealthily expanding palette, also adding recorder and flute ('For Free' already having brought in clarinet) to her own ebullient harmony vocals, and us the first time she sounds a bit catty: jealous of another ladies' man she writes scornfully of her rival "she speaks in sorry sentences, miraculous repentences, I don't believe her"!

Track four, the title track, sounds melodically and harmonically very like earlier songs, but the degree of maturity and sophistication she's attained by this stage is staggering. It's also wonderful for being a celebration of womankind. What a great subject for a song! Clearly showing that she's more than a narrator or purveyor of self-indulgent confessional emotional catharsis, she celebrates a gaggle of her female Laurel Canyon companions. How wonderfully unlike the self-aggrandisement of the seemingly never-ending tides of successive 'me-generation' style rappers and pop tarts this is: these ladies won't pop a cap I'm yo' ass, or diss you cuz you aint got enuf bling or rep or whatever, they'll perhaps bake you some brownies instead. And any song where the lyricist celebrates chubby kids and cats - "all are fat, and none are thin" - is alright with me. Go Joni!

'Willy' presages the piano-centric vibes of Blue, and it's beautiful, but like Blue, it's so shot through with, well, blue. The melancholy edge to much of Joni's music is the aspect I find simultaneously alluring, compelling, and disturbingly narcotic.

The intro to track six hints at things to come, from Hejira to Hissing Lawns and Paprika Lawns. Called the arrangement, the title is clever for not just describing the lyrical content, but also the side of Joni that is pure composer. It's not exactly 'classical' music, but it's certainly boy just pop either. The chord she ends with is sublime, as are the challenging lyrics: 'you could've been more' she admonishes, over a chord that is neither pop, classical, jazz or any other 'type', it's pure music, sound, chemistry, humanity... genius!

The back-to-back brilliance of Chelsea Morning and Woodstock illustrate Joni's effortless seeming excellence: one minute she's, pardon the phrase, tossing off an upbeat acoustic 'folksy' ditty, whose darker message - "pave paradise, put up a parking lot" - seeps through despite the ebullient harmonies and the slightly forced sounding laughter as she delivers the casually brilliant sign off, and the next she's looking to her electric future as she tinkles on (oops, sorry again) an electric piano. Again, whilst she celebrates the blissful innocent apotheosis of the flower power generation at Yasgur's Farm it's already elegaic, and despite the optimism of those times Joni still locates us firmly outside paradise - "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

And all this leads to the masterpiece that is 'The Circle Game'. Not amongst her most famous songs, it's nevertheless amongst her best (mind you, her catalogue is littered with jewels). Where STAC felt self-conscious, TCG feels totally natural and uncontrived, and yet STAC kind of paved the way, preparing the ground, if you like.

Here's a great clip of Joni performing 'The Circle Game' way back in 1966, long before it finally appeared on LFTC.

Joni's first two albums already marked her out as a new and brilliant voice in modern music, and with each new recording she just seemed to blossom and grow. If you don't already own this album, you really have to buy it. And yes, I know, Joni's rich enough to not need your dollar (and often sounds more than a little bitter these days, perhaps making her Starbucks deal strangely appropriate). But art this good deserves recognition and reward, all the way down the line.

Credits:

Terry Adams - Cello, Clarinet

Don Bagley - Cello Arrangement

Milt Holland - Percussion

Jim Horn - Baritone Saxophone

Paul Horn - Clarinet, Flute, Wind

Russ Kunkel - Drums

Henry Lewy - Advisor, Engineer

Joni Mitchell - Arranger, Composer, Cover Art & Design, Design, Guitar, Keyboards, Piano, Vocals

Lookout Mountain United Downstairs Choir - Vocals (Background)

Saskatunes - Vocals (Background)

Joni Mitchell - Clouds

The flowering of a Canadian genius.

Adorned by a beautiful self-portrait, much more successful than the rather more dated (but admittedly sweet) cover she did for her debut, Joni Mitchell's second album, like her first, is dominated by the Spartan combination of her voice and guitar.

The C.S.N. connections of her debut - David Crosby produced it, Stephen Stills plays on it, and she was in a relationship with Graham Nash - give way to a more independent stance. Whilst David Crosby's minimalist production helped establish a template that this album follows, Rothchild's production is, if anything, even starker. Crosby favoured quite a lot of rather wet reverb, most noticeably on Joni's guitar, and all told Song To A Seagull is just a little muddier sonically. Rothchild helps bring Joni's voice and instruments even closer to the listener. Her already superb instrumental skills sound even better as a result, and we can thank Rothchild's production for this.

Whilst Song To A Seagull had a very little bit of piano on 'Night In The City', Clouds is entirely given over to stringed instruments, predominantly guitar, but also dulcimer, and perhaps others, like zither and mandolin. 'Tin Angel' starts the album, and it's a very strong opener. Despite lines such as "In a Bleeker Street café, I found someone to love today", it sounds more like a threnody or elegy than a celebration of new-found love. But that's Joni for you! This only serves to make the striking contrast with the next song even starker. This next song, 'Chelsea Morning', is the first of her more famous numbers, and is the embodiment of joyful simplicity. But it's still Joni, so she plays it in an unusual tuning. The lyrics are fabulous, here's a small sample:

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning

And the first thing that I saw

Was the sun through yellow curtains

And a rainbow on the wall *

Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you

Crimson crystal beads to beckon

Oh, won't you stay

We'll put on the day

There's a sun show every second

© 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

For an explanation of why there's an asterisk (*) in there, go here.

Here's a clip of her playing 'Chelsea Morning'.



Everybody who knows Joni will know 'Cheslea Morning' and 'Both Sides, Now', and both these songs which are not just well-known hits, but small masterpieces. With 'Chelsea Morning' she pulls off an upbeat feel far more convincingly than she did with 'Night In The City' on her debut. 'Both Sides, Now' had been a hit for Judy Collins, before Joni's own career had got off the ground. Indeed, much of the material on her first two albums was already written before she'd released anything commercially in he own right. And until she got her solo career going, she may have appeared destined to be a writer/composer, rather than a performer. I mean no respect to Judy Collins, but compare her version of 'Both Sides Now' with Joni's and Joni's is on an altogether different level. Collins' version is still a good one - it's a great song after all - but it's done just like any other over-produced pop of the day. Mitchell's own rendering is so much more personal, and as a result, timeless.

Mitchell also turns in her first a capella performance, the anti-war song 'The Fiddle And The Drum', which, earnest and well-written as it is, isn't anywhere near as compelling - especially out of it's Viet Nam era US context (one hears the more topical and resonant power it had at the time more potently in some of her live bootleg performances from back in the day) - as the astonishing 'Songs To Ageing Children Come'. Personally I find 'The Pirate of Penance', on her debut, somewhat too self-consciously clever (I still love it, and by anyone else's standards it'd be a masterpiece, but in relation to Joni's own body of work it's less successfull). 'Songs To Ageing Children Come', on the other hand, is not only self-consciously clever, but entirely convincing. Playing in a sonorous and resonant open-tuning (there's a transcription of it here, which I've not tried yet) she harmonises her way through an unusual chord progression. It's certainly very mannered, and I've read many reviews of her albums where people dismiss it. But I think it belongs to her experimental thread, and as an artist this kind of exploration is essential. Sometimes it works, as it does here, and on 'The Circle Game', on Ladies Of The Canyon, or, even more experimentally, on Hejira's 'The Jungle Line', and sometimes, perhaps, it doesn't. But then again, these are perhaps quite subjective judgements. Certainly I think that a sing like 'Songs To Ageing Children Come' pave the way for later songs, like 'The Circle Game', so an experiment expands the palette, and can later be reabsorbed and seem, relatively, more mainstream or 'normal' And that's what great artists do, they expand our consciousness and our perception, they add new faculties to our way of perceiving the world, or rather, they uncover truths we already knew, but hadn't quite articulated so well ourselves.

All the songs on this album are excellent. 'That Song About The Midway', 'The Gallery', and 'I Think I Understand' are all very strong, demonstrating that even the lesser-known numbers aren't filler. Even the songs I'm less keen on, for example the religious/occult themed 'Roses Blue (there's certainly something like a hammer-dulcimer or zither on this one!) are very good. Almost all the lyrics are about personal relationships, and Joni is very articulate on this, her (apparent) favourite subject. But it's also her powers of poetic observation that make the songs so achingly emotionally strong:

Here's the opening two verses of 'Tin Angel':

Varnished weeds in window jars

Tarnished beads on tapestries

Kept in satin boxes are

Reflections of love’s memories

Letters from across the seas

Roses dipped in sealing wax

Valentines and maple leaves

Tucked into a paperback

© 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

And she also gets pretty philosophical. Here's the whole of 'I Think I Understand':

I Think I Understand

Daylight falls upon the path, the forest falls behind

Today I am not prey to dark uncertainty

The shadow trembles in its wrath, I've robbed its blackness blind

And tasted sunlight as my fear came clear to me

I think I understand

Fear is like a wilderland

Stepping stones or sinking sand

Now the way leads to the hills, above the steeple's chime

Below me sleepy rooftops round the harbor

It's there I'll take my thirsty fill of friendship over wine

Forgetting fear but never disregarding her

Oh, I think I understand

Fear is like a wilderland

Stepping stones and sinking sand

Sometimes voices in the night will call me back again

Back along the pathway of a troubled mind

When forests rise to block the light that keeps a traveler sane

I'll challenge them with flashes from a brighter time

Oh, I think I understand

Fear is like a wilderland

Stepping stones or sinking sand

That's some pretty heavy stuff, and certainly not candyfloss pop! And then there are the cosmic ruminations of 'Songs To Ageing Children Come'. Some might think this sort of thing pretentious. Personally I think it's profound, and it really speaks to me. For every insightful and articulate Joni there are legions of mindless pop-tarts dealing out oceans of inane trivia. give me a drop of Joni any time:

Songs To Ageing Children Come

Through the windless wells of wonder

By the throbbing light machine

In a tea leaf trance or under

Orders from the king and queen

Songs to aging children come

Aging children, I am one

People hurry by so quickly

Don't they hear the melodies

In the chiming and the clicking

And the laughing harmonies

Songs to aging children come

Aging children, I am one

Some come dark and strange like dying

Crows and ravens whistling

Lines of weeping, strings of crying

So much said in listening

Songs to aging children come

Aging children, I am one

Does the moon play only silver

When it strums the galaxy

Dying roses will they will their

Perfumed rhapsodies to me

Songs to aging children come

This is one

© 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

Hey Joni (as Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo memorably sang on Daydream Nation), I certainly 'hear the melodies in the chiming and the clicking and the laughing harmonies'. She certainly is "a beautiful mental jukebox"!

The album ends with Joni's aforementioned rendition of her own classic 'Both Sides Now', and rather than Judy Collins' perfectly good but rather dated version, Joni's recording is a true timeless classic. And what a way to end an album! Here's a great version of her playing the song live at '2nd frets', in 1966, in which she tells how the idea for the song was born whilst reading Henderson The Rain King, a book by Saul Bellow. The album version is better, actually, but hearing her sing it live, and tell the story of how it came into being is just wonderful.

Here are the words:

Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds * that way

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels

The dizzy dancing way you feel

As ev'ry fairy tale comes real

I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show

You leave 'em laughing when you go

And if you care, don't let them know

Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now

From give and take, and still somehow

It's love's illusions I recall

I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud

To say "I love you" right out loud

Dreams and schemes and circus crowds

I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange

They shake their heads, they say I've changed

Well something's lost, but something's gained

In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

© 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

Credits:

Henry Lewy - Engineer

Joni Mitchell - Cover Art, Guitar, Producer, Vocals

Paul Rothchild - Producer

Ed Thrasher - Art Direction

Allmusic also credits Stephen Stills (allegedly on bass and guitar, but I can't hear any!), nor do I hear any keyboards, also credited to Mitchell by the allmusic.com credits page. One thing that they certainly get right is that it's a "stark stunner", although I don't think it's so much the "great leap forward" David Cleary calls it. Song To A seagull is a brilliant start, and Clouds is a fantastic development.

Changing up the vibe at SFTFG

I hope some people are still reading my blog? It's been a long while since I regularly posted. Well, in truth, I've never managed to post with anything like real regularity!

I've decided to change the approach to my blog. I started it because I wanted to share music as many others have done, and many still continue to do. However, from an ethical perspective (something a bit like the Buddhist idea of not taking the 'not-given') - never mind the legal one - I feel I can't share copyrighted music. This is basically and fundamentally because I'm a musician, and I myself want, in a world such as ours now is*, to make a living from my own musical 'work'. And so I must respect the work of others. If music is out of copyright, or has never been copyrighted (e.g. bootlegs from concerts), then I might still share it, as long as there are no ramifications to prevent me.

But, as a rule, I'll be aiming, somehow, not exactly sure how yet, to have audio samples that readers can listen to, but not download. There are numerous options for doing this, and if any of you have helpful suggestions (I'm aware, for example, of Soundcloud, but as yet not very au fait with using it), please get in touch and let me know. So far I've updated just a very few posts (Jobim/Aguas de Marco, Beefheart/Decals, and a couple of the Earth Disciples posts), with Soundcloud tracks. I'll try and do more in this vein as soon as time allows.

For those who might be interested, I write a monthly column for Drummer magazine (UK), called 'Recycled', in which I cover a classic or obscure album every month - I'm fast approaching 100 issues/articles, for this esteemed publication - writing about everything from the band to the historic context, but obviously with a drummer's eye view. I'm also an Amazon Vine reviewer, and have written over 150 reviews on Amazon's UK website, ranging from highly informal 'fan-boy' ejaculations, to more 'serious' pieces, most of which are written out of pure passion on my part, but a number of which are part of the Amazon Vine program.

I'm going to attempt to write a short review as often as possible for a period of time, in order to start covering a big chunk of my favourite music, and, once I know how best to, I will aim to include at least one audio track with each post (where that's appropriate). Please do leave comments/feedback!

* Whether or not I think the way the world is now - economically speaking - is the best we could have, well, that's another matter altogether!

Joni Mitchell - Song To A Seagull

Joni: my teenage heroin.

Some might think I misspelled the word heroine in my sub-title: I didn't.

As a teenager I discovered Joni Mitchell through some cassettes my parents had. One in particular featured a compilation of various Joni tracks. I became utterly addicted to this cassette, listening to it compulsively for years. Then, under the pretext of buying my mum birthday and christmas presents, I began to amass what was, in reality, my own collection of Joni's brillliant albums.

Joni developed an amazing guitar technique, partially as a means of coping with having had polio as a child, and the picking and strumming you hear on Hejira and elsewhere is already evident here, along with the harp like arpeggios and unusual tunings. This album is notable in her oeuvre for being almost entirely stripped down to just Joni's voice and guitars, as was her next one, the equally brilliant albeit better known Clouds. There's almost no piano at all - the only piano I can hear is a rather jangly honky tonk part, mixed low in the background of 'Night In The City' - which might seem surprising to those who know Joni best from such albums as Blue. This pared down approach really works superbly well. Thank goodness for David Crosby's sympathetic and sensitive production: Joni is neither drowned in syrupy orchestral settings, nor bolted onto a rock group, to make her more 'now', as so frequently happened elsewhere in popular music!

I have to confess that as much as I still love this music, I can't listen to it as much as I once did. I could quote the magnificent opener 'I Had A King' - "I can't go back there anymore" - but fortunately it's not quite that bad! One reason for this is that this music is so incredibly potent, and, for me at any rate, brings out certain melancholy associations. But I believe that this 'saudade' is actually inherent, even in the harmonies, never mind the lyrics. In recent times this tendency towards the maudlin has made latter-day Joni seem bitter, even sour, at times. But here, as she starts out, the sheer beauty and power is simply enchanting and compelling.

And, as she was keen to point out from the outset, she's no ordinary 'folkie'. She saw herself as a poet, artist and composer, and indeed she was all three. Her lyrics are often beautiful poetry that stands well alone, her cover artworks adorn many of her albums, and are always endearing, engaging, and apt for the records (this particular album's original artwork isn't her best, but it does have a certain period charm), and her music, well, as the title of this review suggests, it's dangerously, powerfully, addictive.

My personal favourites from this album are 'I Had A King', 'Michael From The Mountains', 'Marcie', 'Nathan La Franeer', 'Sisowtowbell Lane', 'The Dawntreader', 'Song To A Seagull', 'Cactus Tree' ... ummm ... As you can see, pretty much the whole album is, to my mind, sublime. Only the slightly more upbeat 'Night In The City' doesn't quite ring true for me, and 'The Pirate Of Penance', pure gold by common standards, is, in Joni's elevated canon, a little too mannered, or 'clever', for my tastes. On her next album she pulls off upbeat ('Chelsea Morning') and clever ('Songs To Ageing Children Come') much more successfully.

For me track one alone, 'I Had A King', would make this album worth having. Joni has said elsewhere that she views her own early work as that of an 'ingénue', and it's certainly true that she matured and broadened her scope in multifarious ways as she progressed. But nevertheless, for a first album this is jaw-droppingly brilliant. Even if the lyrics of 'I Had A King' do display a youthful preoccupation with fashion fabrics - "drip-dry and paisley", "leather and lace" - there's also poetic genius ("I had a king, in a salt-rusted carriage / Who carried me off, to his country for marriage too soon / Beware of the power of moons"), amazing insight for one so young, and musical prowess that, through singularity of melodic and harmonic conception, really make her music stand out from the crowd, then and now. And, as noted earlier, nearly all of this massively underrated album comes up to the high standard of this incredibly strong opener.

Another very strong example of her formidable creative powers is 'Nathan La Franeer': expanded from the observations of a cab ride, it becomes a universal paean to loneliness and alienation, and portrays the urban experience in a way that I, as an ex-Londoner, can all too readily identify with, and yet, all the while, it remains a thing of profound hair-raising beauty. This song also features a wailing noise, credited as a 'banshee', which sounds, just as it should, like a wailing female spirit portending death!

Joni Mitchell is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest female singer-songwriter and poet/composer there has ever been. Only Brazil's Joyce Moreno comes anywhere near her (they share initials: what a strikingly odd, if perhaps meaningless, coincidence!). This is the first nugget mined from a very long, rich vein of musical gold, and for me it's a treasure whose worth is way beyond mere monetary value. Priceless and essential.

Joni playing 'I Had A King', live. You can hear her tuning her guitar before she starts. Joni is infamous for her use of many and varied alternative tunings, which are of course very much bound up with her very distinctive melodic and harmonic style.

Lyrics: I reproduce here the lyrics to track one, 'I Had A King', one of my favourites from this stunning album:

I had a king in a tenement castle

Lately he's taken to painting the pastel walls brown

He's taken the curtains down

He's swept with the broom of contempt

And the rooms have an empty ring

He's cleaned with the tears

Of an actor who fears for the laughter's sting

I can't go back there anymore

You know my keys won't fit the door

You know my thoughts don't fit the man

They never can they never can

I had a king dressed in drip-dry and paisley

Lately he's taken to saying I'm crazy and blind

He lives in another time

Ladies in gingham still blush

While he sings them of wars and wine

But I in my leather and lace

I can never become that kind

I can't go back there anymore

You know my keys won't fit the door

You know my thoughts don't fit the man

They never can they never can

I had a king in a salt-rusted carriage

Who carried me off to his country for marriage too soon

Beware of the power of moons

There's no one to blame

No there's no one to name as a traitor here

The king's on the road

And the queen's in the grove till the end of the year

I can't go back there anymore

You know my keys won't fit the door

You know my thoughts don't fit the man

They never can they never can

© 1968; Siquomb Publishing Company

Credits: (adapted from the Allmusic.com entry on this album)

David Crosby - Producer

Art Cryst - Engineer

Lee Keefer - Banshee

Joni Mitchell - Cover Art, Guitar, Vocals, Banshee

Mark Roth - Photography

Stephen Stills - Bass, Guitar

Ed Thrasher - Art Direction

Lost Earth Disciples album 'Universal Man' rediscovered!

See The Earth In Space by The Earth Disciples

UPDATE: today (8/10/2011) I uploaded the track above - 'See The Earth From Space' - which is the opener from the lost second album Universal Man, by the great band , The Earth Disciples. Followers of my blog will know that I fervently hope for (and am working towards, albeit slowly) a day when the complete Earth Disciples will see the light of day as a de-luxe 'special-interest' re-release.

Wowzers! I'm writing this in a state of high excitement, having just received from the U.S. a CD, thanks to Reggie Austin and Reggie Harris (bassist and drummer respectively) containing recordings taken from an acetate (discovered by Skip Taylor, famous as manager of Canned Heat, amongst others, whose name you can just make out on the publicity photo shown here*) of the Earth Disciples lost 2nd album Universal Man.

Currently playing in my headphones is the opening track, a sprawling 6/8 odyssey called 'See The Earth In Space', the most overtly jazzy tune I've heard by the Disciples so far. A glance over the titles reveals a slightly more overt political consciousness at work: the first album, with titles like 'Serenade Of A Summer Butterfly', 'Spirit Of The Bells', 'La Bahemia', 'Earth Island Ferry' and 'Native Planet', evoked a kind of cosmic eco-consciousness, and a psychedelized summer warmth, where the titles on Universal Man seem to hint at more beneath the skin, 'Coronation Of The Sphinx' contrasting with 'Iberian Peasant', and 'Revolutionary Soldier' sitting right next to 'Lullaby For Little Ones'.

Another title with a political charge to it, and a martial military snare beat as an intro, is 'Portrait Of America', which segues into a jazz waltz after the slightly unusual musical departure of the intro. What this clearly shows is that the band weren't resting on their laurels, but pushing further in their sonic explorations. Rudy Reid (can anyone help us locate Rudy, or find out what's become of him?) plays lovely shimmering jazzy acoustic piano for the first time on this track, having up 'til now chosen to play electronic keys. The music continues to be a very strong alloy of different sources. 'Coronation Of The Sphinx' returns to a more blues rock influenced groove akin to material from the first album, but the production sounds crisper and fatter, and this helps bring out Reggie Harris' beautifully crisp drumming, his deftly articulated rolls around the snare, hats and tightly tuned toms on this tune being a real delight. I really hope they can locate master tapes for this stuff, as it's superb. The psychedelic guitar solo by Jimmy Holloway is awesome, but sadly mixed a little too low for full fat enjoyment.

'Universal Man' enters on a super tight super crisp deep-fried chicken scratch guitar figure, with Austin's drums entering with big beautifully tuned low tom action, and then an ebullient Hammond groove starts driving down your cerebral cortex, with Holloway's cosmic axe once again tickling your synapses beautifully... man, this is some seriously good music! What kind of world do we live in where this gets passed over? Not as immediately homogenous as their first album, I think Universal Man perhaps has more depth and variety, as the band dig in and stretch out. What a shame they didn't get the support they deserved, who knows where they might have gone?

After a long extended intro, in the second (or is it third?) part of 'Revolutionary Soldier', which approaches the density of prog rock or classical music in the scope of the arrangement, comprising many varied sections, the band come as close to a reprise of material from Getaway Train as they get, and are none the worse for it, as their debut is a great lost classic of instrumental psychedelic soul. Five minutes into this number, the magnum opus of the album, the groove goes up several gears, showcasing another fantastic solo from Holloway, but now over a furious 2/4 beat. The enegry is palpably visceral and exciting, the dynamics truly spectacular. Then they come down and out of this sonic epiphany, reprising an earlier section, dominated by melodious guitar and hammond organ, before finally building towards a climactic ending.

After the intensity of 'Soldier' comes the gentle closer, which lives up to the title 'Lullaby For The Little Ones'. Very much a band aware of the nuances of light and shade, with a great dynamic rapport, despite the overall softness of this last number, sadly their last ever tune waxed, they nonetheless wring a deep emotional intensity from their performance. I wonder what the vibe in the band was at this time? Having had one album out already, and undoubtedly aware that it wasn't being pushed as they might wish, did they have any idea this might be their last outing in the studio? It doesn't sound like it, as the music is strong, joyful, and overwhelmingly positive.

I'll be updating this post as more info comes in: the search for the masters of both albums goes on, as the big idea is a 'Complete Earth Disciples' release at some point, with a comprehensive remastering of their whole ouevre. If you have any pertinent info, pics, memories of the band in concert etc, please get in touch.

I won't share this music here without the consent of the band, or proper legal clearance, esp. as the aim is to see all the material re-released. But here's some basic info to whet your appetite for the planned re-release:

Tracklisting:

See The Earth In Space (6:00)

Iberian Peasant (7:12)

Portrait of America (3:34)

Coronation Of The Sphinx (4:35)

Universal Man (6:03)

Revolutionary Soldier (8:07)

Lullaby For Little Ones (2:36)

Personnel (as far as I know, the same as the 1st album):

Reggie Austin - Bass guitar

Reggie Harris - Drums

Jimmy Holloway - Guitar (poss also keys and bass)

Rudy Reid - Keyboards and piano

Any info from any quarter about the dates, location, producer/engineers etc would be greatly appreciated.

* Many thanks to both Reginalds, Austin and Harris, for sending me some wonderful archival pictures (which I hope will see the light of day in an article on the band's history some time soon), of which this is one, sent to me by Reggie Austin in this instance.