Joni Mitchell - The Studio Albums 1968 - 1979

Oh dear!  It is becoming increasingly apparent that I have reached the sort of age where the attractions of the Box Set are almost too much to ignore.  Despite the slightly grim aura of marketing hanging over such offerings I have now succumbed to both the Argent and Pink Floyd sets as described in this blog earlier.  In my defence I would contend that at the right price, this is a good way to pick up complete collections after the event (especially if they are all remastered).  The latest addition is from Joni Mitchell and comprises her first 10 studio albums from the 60s and 70s starting at the beginning with ‘Song To a Seagull’ and ending with ‘Mingus’ (leaving out the live double set, ‘Miles of Aisles’).

Whilst I have vinyl versions taken from the middle of this run (‘For the Roses’, ‘Court and Spark’ and ‘Hissing of Summer Lawns’) I have only dabbled with her early work and have nothing after ‘Lawns’ save a couple of below par 80s efforts, so this purchase was a good opportunity to review what I believe to be her best period.  Perhaps predictably, there were no real surprises.  The early folk albums are very fine but when compared to her subsequent work, not the ones I’d rescue from a burning building.  ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ is an unexpectedly welcome return to my collection (since I sold the original vinyl in the great late 70s clearout) but I still find ‘Blue’ curiously inconsistent despite what everyone else says.

The best stuff is undoubtedly contained within the albums I already own and the remainder is interesting but not essential.  I still can’t really warm wholeheartedly to ‘Hejira’ or ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’ and I don’t like Jazz enough to appreciate ‘Mingus’.  Nevertheless, the Big Three (‘Roses’, ‘Court’ and ‘Lawns’) are giants in the pop Parthenon and no mistake.  Genius is an overworked word but I’m tempted to use it here.  These are albums that everyone should hear – especially ‘For the Roses’ which to me is a work of unparalleled depth.  Coming between the confessional folk of ‘Blue’ and the blossoming pop of ‘Court and Spark’ its hybrid folk/pop arrangements cradle a set of lyrics that sit in your soul forever.

So where does this leave me?  What this series of albums does do is show the remarkable musical progression from folk through pop/rock to jazz.  These albums form the links in a ten album unbreakable chain where each individual work contains elements of both its predecessor and its successor in a way that reveals a relentless drive from one genre to the next.  It makes me struggle to think of another artist who has managed this feat with such dexterity and mastery of each form and over such a long period.  Perhaps Bowie?

One other thing – lyrics.  Has there ever been anyone else who has such mastery of song lyrics?  If nothing else, Joni Mitchell showed how it was done to the extent that a lyric sheet was an essential part of her albums.  They are still albums where I actually listen to the lyrics with rapt attention.  In the history of popular music, these albums are probably essential.

The Legacy of HMV

Whatever the eventual future of HMV, you can’t help feeling that it brought a whole load of trouble down on itself.  I have sat on the sidelines and watched with mounting frustration as the monolith that is HMV first, put all the independents out of business and then having achieved a monopoly position, it slowly but surely cocked it up big time.  For example:

Stock – there was a time back in the dim and distant past when the London Oxford Street flagship HMV store sold music above all else and stocked virtually everything.  No matter what I went in to buy, there it was, nestling in the racks.  As a compulsive buyer of music for over 40 years, I am in a group of consumers that doesn’t only buy in the mainstream, we look at the fringes both past and present.  HMV catered for my gang, but not now.  Its stock has contracted massively and the space has been turned over to the attempted sale of gadgets and T-shirts.  No-one has been persuaded that HMV is the number one stop for Gadgets and T-shirts hence it has both alienated my gang, its original core consumer and failed to lure any new ones with extended stock lines.

Price – This really bugs me.  I am prepared to accept that there is a premium to be paid for the benefit of leaving the store there and then with your purchase rather than waiting days for the post to arrive.  But not double (or treble) the on-line price.  HMV has been massively overpriced for years – even its ‘sale’ items are above on-line prices, for heaven’s sake.  Also, I am not prepared under any circumstances to pay £10 (or above) for 40+ year old albums.  Don’t tell me they are ‘re-mastered’ and therefore cost more.  Re-mastering should be done as a matter of course when the CD is first released.  LPs were RIAA encoded to make best use of the width of the vinyl groove and the potential length of a disc. Similarly, why shouldn’t the master-tapes be properly prepared to make best use of the CD medium on day 1?  Not 30 years later.

And another thing: there is no pricing consistency.  I found a 10cc album (‘How Dare You’) the other day at a reasonable £4, yet ‘The Original Soundtrack’ was in the racks at £10.  Same label and release date so what’s the difference?  It drives me potty.  The heart-breaking irony is: despite the pricing and convenience of the internet, I would still buy from HMV if only it sorted out its stock, chucked out all the gadgets, remainder books, T-shirts and other paraphernalia and priced things sensibly and consistently.  In other words; became a music store.

T'was in the Year of '77

1977 was an interesting year.  It was the year that The Sex Pistols released ‘Never Mind The Bollocks…’ and bloated corporate rock was blown away forever…allegedly.  Just to underline the brutal military coup undertaken by Punk, Johnny Rotten sported a lurid ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt and dared anyone to defend the old proggers.

1977 was also the year that the said Pink Floyd released ‘Animals’ and pigs flew over Battersea Power Station.  History shows that I bought and enjoyed both albums in equal measure in direct contravention of the Us And Them – Choose Your Side of the Fence Act 1976.  You see, musical genres never allow for this sort of thing.  Backed up by the music press with axes to grind, nobody with any street cred to protect was allowed to like, well, just music, you had to choose.  I definitely felt aligned with the energy that the New Wave brought and to a certain extent agreed that the mid-seventies needed a shake-up, but I still liked some of the bands that were in the firing line so I was a fence-sitter with interests in both camps – it gave you more options.

The reason for my musings on this interesting juxtaposition of styles has been brought about by the purchase of the Pink Floyd Discovery Box Set (all 14 studio albums remastered in a natty box).  Whilst I have many of the Floyd’s albums on vinyl, I never converted them to CD and have never owned, or even listened to, many of their back catalogue so a cheap eBay purchase seemed like the answer.  So here I am in 2012 listening to the Soundtrack album, ‘Obscured by Clouds’ (excellent) and ‘The Final Cut’ (dreadful) for the first time, well,  ever.

But more particularly, I have been listening to ‘Animals’, an album that I have not set on the old turntable since the 80s and my overriding impression is not one of bloated self indulgence, but one of anger.  It is a very angry album indeed, driven by Roger Waters various neuroses.  Which is somewhat ironic, for the punk movement that sought to replace the established bands was based almost entirely on anger.  Yet now by comparison, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks…’ sounds a little tame and its ‘anger’ just false political posturing.  On the other hand, the anger displayed on ‘Animals’ is very real.  The vitriol pouring from ‘Sheep’ and in particular, ‘Pigs’ reeks of a genuine hatred (especially against TV clean-up campaigner, Mary Whitehouse).  Frankly I find Waters far more scary that Rotten, and that’s before you get to Gilmore’s final solo on ‘Pigs’ which slashes at you like broken glass.

Yet, and this is the cruncher, I still find myself in the same position that I was 35 years ago and that is that really, I still like both of them.

Gerry Anderson 1929 - 2012

This is my 300^th post on this blog and it is perhaps fitting that it pays tribute to a man that looms large in my childhood – Gerry Anderson, who died over the Christmas period.

Most will know his work through the iconic ‘Thunderbirds’ but my link goes back further to the dimly remembered late 50s collaboration with children’s writer, Roberta Leigh that produced the strangeness of ‘Twizzle’ and ‘Torchy the Battery Boy’, made with puppets so weird that it doesn’t bear thinking about.  Although these shows were my initial contact with Gerry’s puppet world, it was ‘Fireball XL5’ that really captured my imagination.  I was besotted with this programme and although the delights of ‘Stingray’, ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Captain Scarlet’ were to follow, XL5 remains my first love.  Even today its shiny monochrome world of space adventure still beguiles me.

There is a definable element that pervades the work of Gerry Anderson, from the scariness of ‘Twizzle’ via the live action ‘Space 1999’ and ‘UFO’ to the hand puppets of ‘Terrahawks’ (a million miles away from Sooty) and that thing is integrity.  Everything Gerry touched was stamped with the motto, ‘If you are going to do it, do it well’.  All his products had a sheen of quality, whether it was the tightly drawn scripts, the truly awe-inspiring modelling or the cutting edge special effects.  The live action 2004 ‘Thunderbirds’ movie, which Anderson had no hand in and from which he rightly distanced himself, didn’t have it – and it shows.

This reach for quality can be seen again in the 2005 re-imagining of Captain Scarlet, created using CGI technology.  The series of 26 x 25 minute episodes cost an astronomical £23M but the end result is worth every penny.  The scripts are fast paced and the visuals as inventive and spectacular as always.  Unforgivably, ITV refused to promote the new show and list it as a stand alone but buried it in amongst an existing Saturday morning kids’ show which cut it into two halves with games and adverts between them.  It sank without trace.

Anderson was reportedly furious and I can’t help feeling that it was the beginning of the end for him.  It was desperately sad because ‘The New Adventures of Captain Scarlet’ (now on DVD) is Anderson at his best and a fitting epitaph to a man who had a real pride in his work even if they were ‘only’ kids’ shows.  RIP Gerry.

End of Year Report

2012.  So how was it for you?  From my viewpoint sitting here in the UK, it was probably an above average year as long as you looked in the right places.  Let’s face it, if you concentrate on the woeful economy and miserable weather you’d be marking it down quicker than a GCSE examiner.  So let’s forget all that real world stuff and focus on firstly…sport!

This year served up some bumper sporting moments if you were a Brit and this is something to be savoured as we, as a race, are not used to winning anything – at least since the rest of the world got to know the rules and beat us at everything.  There was Bradley ‘Wiggo’ Wiggins winning the Tour de France, Andy Murray winning his first Grand Slam Tournament, England’s cricket Team gaining World Number 1 status, the Ryder Cup comeback - and that was just for starters.

The jewel in the sporting crown was an amazing Summer Olympics and Paralympics which made household names of the likes of Ennis, Farrah, Wiggins (again), Hoy, Rutherford, Adams, Trott, Dujardin, Adams, Weir, Simmons, Brownlee, Ainslie, Pendleton, and many, many more.

Of course, nothing lasts for ever and it wasn’t long before the Cricket team lost their Number 1 status (but redeemed themselves in India) and inevitably here at the tail end of the year, the England football team continues to struggle in a poor qualifying group for the next World Cup.  Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted.

But what about music?  Sad to say, I’ve found little to titivate my palette and consequently have bought very few CDs this year, preferring to pick up much improved remixed/remastered releases of favourite albums from my past.  If pushed to pick out a new album of the year, it would probably be Marina and the Diamonds’ ‘Electra Heart’ which has been on my ipod since release.  A close second would be either The Bangles’ ‘Sweetheart of the Sun’ or Doris Brendel’s ‘Not Utopia’, but other than these three not much else has really moved me which is a bit of a sad state of affairs and no mistake.  I might have to re-name this blog, ‘Sport Obsessive’.

So how does it all stack up when added together?  Well, on the music front, 2012 has under-performed a bit if you look at new music alone but if you argue that the art of re-mixing and remastering old albums has come of age then it has been a pretty good year with some stunningly revitalised stuff to the fore (yes, I’m looking at you, ‘Aqualung’).

But if you add in a massively dramatic sporting summer, 2012 acquits itself with flying colours and proves yet again that there is nothing quite like the real drama of live sport – there’s never a script and anything can happen.  Hoorah!

See you all in the New Year!

What Value Music?

The other day, in a moment of supreme weakness, I made the mistake of answering my phone without checking that the caller had WITHHELD their number.  This can only mean one thing; a cold call and if there’s one thing I hate it’s a cold caller.  I usually ignore such intrusions but this time I was caught and had to go through the rigmarole of politely telling them to bugger off.  This time it was from an on-line wine seller that I use regularly and whilst it started promisingly with the ‘only available off line to you, mate’ patter, it ended with a price that was no better than their normal on-line prices.  What was the point?

The trouble is, everyone wants something for nothing these days, including me, so ringing me up to offer the same price I could expect to spend elsewhere was never going to hold my interest and what goes for wine goes for music too.  Having said that, I am of a generation that at least expects to pay something for music, unlike many of today’s kids who seem to think it is their birthright to download everything for free, so cheap rather than free is always on the menu.

The old marketing hook of offering stuff at low prices can be a bit hit and miss.  For reasons that I don’t really understand to this day, back in 1973 I declined Virgin Records’s offer of ‘The Faust Tapes’ by Krautrockers, Faust for the miniscule price of 49p – an LP for the price of a vinyl single at the time.  Perhaps it was TOO cheap?  See how difficult it is?  In retrospect this was probably the correct decision as it is a jumble of live off-cuts but nevertheless, at that price who cares?

Yet some years before, in 1971, I had snapped up ‘Relics’ by Pink Floyd, a band I didn’t really know much about, but when it appeared on the cut-price Starline label, I couldn’t resist.  ‘Relics’ is a peculiar mixture of 1967-1969 period Floyd material bringing together the brilliant early Syd Barrett singles, atmospheric tracks from the soundtrack album, ‘More’, a collection of B sides and odd album cuts from their first two albums.  It was my introduction to The Pink Floyd and remains one of my favourite albums of theirs to this day.  As I have mused before, the late sixties was a strange period and the music created against the backdrop of social unrest and end of the Hippy dream still has a slightly haunted quality to it.  Certainly, this has an ambience that no other record I know of has.

So in the case of the budget label release, ‘Relics’ scored a hit and set me on the trail of proper grown-up Pink Floyd LPs.  Just let someone ring me up today and try and sell it to me…grrr.