Blue [The Desert Island Collection]
Sep. 17th, 2003 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearSongs are like tattoos
This morning I went along with what my ipod gave me, absorbing each track no matter how strange they fit together. Dirty Vegas to a lecture on tonglen meditiation to Braveheart Party to a Beethoven adagio to Suzanne Vega. Somewhere along the way was a Joni Mitchell song. I never skip over those even when my ipod seems quite fixated on her. I can't blame him.
Here is a song for you
I don't remember exactly when I bought my tape of her album "Blue" but it was somewhere around the holidays and I remember the store and the shopping mall and I was at least 16 because I drove there myself. I removed the plastic while sitting in the parking lot and put it immediately into my car stereo. Later I would bring it into the house to listen on the tape deck in the bathroom while showering, then take it back with me to the car.
An empty space to fill in
I don't even know why I bought that album -- though I know I stumbled upon it on my own, through a magazine or a book because most people in my life as a teenager thought my music obsession was weird. Folks around me either stuck to what was on the "alternative" radio station or stayed within their genre of choice that matched their lifestyle: metalheads or b-boys or goths or even the people who didn't seem to listen to any music. I was an anomaly because I listened to it all, plus stuff that wasn't cool to like. I was starting to play acoustic guitar more and hanging out with other players who shared an obsession with local folk musicians. I suspect that somehow led me to Joni, though it could also have been I saw Amy Grant perform live at Six Flags and she did a cover of Big Yellow Taxi. I often stumble onto great works of art through completely random and unexpected means.
You've got to keep thinking you can make it thru these waves
Her personal lyrics went well with my adolescent pain and angst, but something told me this was more than moody music and went much deeper. I didn't understand most of the things she talked about: I had no old man, I'd never been to California, I'd barely flown on a plane, no one had loved me so naughty it made me weak in the knees, I had not given a child up for adoption, hell, I didn't even know what being born in the moon in Cancer meant, since I barely paid attention to astrology. Granted, I haven't experience the adoption part, but whatever.
Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
The album is unbelievably short. Less than twenty minutes on each side of the tape. My version was even messed up because the side labeled "A" really played side B, so I was confused by song titles for the first couple weeks. A year or two ago at some sale I finally bought a remastered version on CD, but I still have that original tape. It survived my car which tended to eat cassettes, it survived dorm rooms and half a dozen apartments and sits safely in a box right now, waiting to be unpacked. The CD is neatly alphabetized on the shelf and should be next to "Court and Spark" except I lost that in a break-up a few years ago.
There is your song from me
I initially wanted to learn to play all the songs on guitar, but then I learned about Joni using dozens and dozens of alternate tunings in her music and I'm way too lazy to do alternate tunings on my guitar. If I can't use a capo, I won't play it. But I can sing every song on the album, backwards and forwards, I know every word, every note. But I still stop and listen whenever a track appears on my ipod, a radio, a friend's house, a store, or even as background music on a cable special. But even though it has a permanent place in my brain, I put it on my top 10 list of CD's I'd hold onto no matter what.
This morning I went along with what my ipod gave me, absorbing each track no matter how strange they fit together. Dirty Vegas to a lecture on tonglen meditiation to Braveheart Party to a Beethoven adagio to Suzanne Vega. Somewhere along the way was a Joni Mitchell song. I never skip over those even when my ipod seems quite fixated on her. I can't blame him.
Here is a song for you
I don't remember exactly when I bought my tape of her album "Blue" but it was somewhere around the holidays and I remember the store and the shopping mall and I was at least 16 because I drove there myself. I removed the plastic while sitting in the parking lot and put it immediately into my car stereo. Later I would bring it into the house to listen on the tape deck in the bathroom while showering, then take it back with me to the car.
An empty space to fill in
I don't even know why I bought that album -- though I know I stumbled upon it on my own, through a magazine or a book because most people in my life as a teenager thought my music obsession was weird. Folks around me either stuck to what was on the "alternative" radio station or stayed within their genre of choice that matched their lifestyle: metalheads or b-boys or goths or even the people who didn't seem to listen to any music. I was an anomaly because I listened to it all, plus stuff that wasn't cool to like. I was starting to play acoustic guitar more and hanging out with other players who shared an obsession with local folk musicians. I suspect that somehow led me to Joni, though it could also have been I saw Amy Grant perform live at Six Flags and she did a cover of Big Yellow Taxi. I often stumble onto great works of art through completely random and unexpected means.
You've got to keep thinking you can make it thru these waves
Her personal lyrics went well with my adolescent pain and angst, but something told me this was more than moody music and went much deeper. I didn't understand most of the things she talked about: I had no old man, I'd never been to California, I'd barely flown on a plane, no one had loved me so naughty it made me weak in the knees, I had not given a child up for adoption, hell, I didn't even know what being born in the moon in Cancer meant, since I barely paid attention to astrology. Granted, I haven't experience the adoption part, but whatever.
Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
The album is unbelievably short. Less than twenty minutes on each side of the tape. My version was even messed up because the side labeled "A" really played side B, so I was confused by song titles for the first couple weeks. A year or two ago at some sale I finally bought a remastered version on CD, but I still have that original tape. It survived my car which tended to eat cassettes, it survived dorm rooms and half a dozen apartments and sits safely in a box right now, waiting to be unpacked. The CD is neatly alphabetized on the shelf and should be next to "Court and Spark" except I lost that in a break-up a few years ago.
There is your song from me
I initially wanted to learn to play all the songs on guitar, but then I learned about Joni using dozens and dozens of alternate tunings in her music and I'm way too lazy to do alternate tunings on my guitar. If I can't use a capo, I won't play it. But I can sing every song on the album, backwards and forwards, I know every word, every note. But I still stop and listen whenever a track appears on my ipod, a radio, a friend's house, a store, or even as background music on a cable special. But even though it has a permanent place in my brain, I put it on my top 10 list of CD's I'd hold onto no matter what.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-17 12:14 pm (UTC)joni <3<3<3
Date: 2003-09-17 06:02 pm (UTC)But I've since made a point of collecting most of Joni's output on CD. I can burn you Court & Spark and most anything else if you want - just say the word.
oh also
Date: 2003-09-17 06:05 pm (UTC)