This article is reprinted on the JMDL by the kind permission of the author, Sam Broussard. Please visit his website.

(This section contains a rant.)

Joni Mitchell is. Her craft, elegance, passion, brutal honesty, and her broad musicality have set a standard that few men or women have attained, but at least she inhabits the same world as the rest of us, and she writes about the same things. However, she is an intelligent, complex person and usually writes like one, not bothering to hide behind a facade of some street-wise girl with a matching vocabulary. She can do that and has, but mostly she writes from who she is, creating, for some, a barrier between herself and street-wise people with limited vocabularies.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that more women than men write about love and relationships. A woman's biology constantly whispers "reproduce" whether they give in to it or not, and more of their thinking is occupied with finding a suitable mate to help them fulfill this noble directive. (I read things like this from women's magazines in waiting rooms, so it must be true.)

Joni could write well about anything, but she's down to earth. She writes about love, and just like most rock-and-roll guys she aims at the beginning stages of a relationship when the fires are hotter and closer to the surface. Like me she has spent most of her life unmarried, so this is not a phase that needs to be dredged up from her memory. I could almost choose any song at random:

"The Same Situation"
from "Court and Spark"

Again and again the same situation
For so many years
Tethered to a ringing telephone
In a room full of mirrors
A pretty girl in your bathroom
Checking out her sex appeal
I asked myself when you said you loved me
"Do you think this can be real?"
Still I sent up my prayer
Wondering where it had to go
With heaven full of astronauts
And the Lord on death row
While the millions of his lost and lonely ones
Call out and clamour to be found
Caught in their struggle for higher positions
And their search for love that sticks around
You've had lots of lovely women
Now you turn your gaze to me
Weighing the beauty and the imperfection
To see if I'm worthy
Like the church
Like a cop
Like a mother
You want me to be truthful
Sometimes you turn it on me like a weapon though
And I need your approval
Still I sent up my prayer
Wondering who was there to hear
I said "Send me somebody
Who's strong, and somewhat sincere"
With the millions of the lost and lonely ones
I called out to be released
Caught in my struggle for higher achievement
And my search for love
That doesn't seem to cease

Joni Mitchell was an icon even before her nude pose inside a '70s LP, and that says something. She had already made a name for herself with Judy Collins' version of "Both Sides Now," and like Dylan, her popularity was sealed by songs that were unfashionably wordy. They were great songs, and this wispy, blond Canadian arrived at a great time.

Along with Dylan, she helped make lyrically dense songs acceptable to a radio audience. Her voice was beautiful and distinctive, ethereal yet strong and convincing. Her melodies were by turns radio-memorable or too complex for that little candy store, but they were always gorgeous. (I'm speaking of her in the past tense, but I'll get to that elsewhere.) She could fit within the pop framework when she wanted to. She was poetic, but her poetry was understood easily enough. She was high-minded and unapologetic about it - very risky for pop people. The confessional style was raging in the poetry world, and she spilled her guts with eloquence and wit. She branched out from her "folk music" confines (she wasn't really a folk artist) to a neo-jazz harmonic structure, and the instrumental arrangements she wrote with cohorts like jazzman Tom Scott were the kind of sonic landscapes that a visual artist like herself would create. You got the feeling she could do anything, although she said in interviews that she didn't know what chords she was using - she worked from patterns and shapes on piano and on her alternate-tuned guitar. She knew what she was doing. A natural, she did what she wanted and matured as an artist, and her faithful fans followed. For a while.

She still has plenty of fans, but times have changed. During her heyday, Joni's concerns dovetailed perfectly with the eternal theme of pop, which she accurately named in her album title, "Court and Spark." If we live in a culture that has or permits popular music we carry out our courting to its soundtrack, most of which reflects our successes, failures and hopes for success. But when we find mates, get married, have kids and get serious - well, we don't buy so many records. The next generation of the record-buying public wants new faces, ones that look like their own - what can this woman in her thirties or forties or (gasp) fifties possibly have to say that will interest me? Fortunately the current group of successful female artists don't fall prey to this narrow thinking - they are heavily influenced by Joni, and they'll tell you so.

Before I type out one of her brilliant lyrics, I'm going to say a difficult thing: I don't believe that we have new writers as good as her or some of the other composers mentioned here. If other Jonies exist they're choosing to obscure their eloquent highmindedness by writing as Everyman or Woman.

I'll back up a bit and say that maybe changes in style obscure the fact that there are many who are as good - it's hard to judge deliberate vagueness. A prevalent style (not a new one) is obscurity, or chaotic nonsense or the surreal or unstructured emoting, or whatever you want to call it. It's been around a long time, but unless you're Dylan or Lennon, be carefull in your rewrite of "Chimes of Freedom" or "Strawberry Fields Forever." I know I'm a nobody and I have no right to say these things, but it's just that I notice a lot of money being spent on artists who don't try very hard - and in their interviews it seems that they expect to be taken as seriously as artists who did.

"Hejira"

I'm travelling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shellshock love away
There's comfort in melancholy
When there's no need to explain
It's just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today
In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I surpressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a ballroom girl
You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
They're either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen ...
Strains of Benny Goodman
Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees
I'm porous with travel fever
But you know I'm so glad to be on my own
Still sometimes the slightest touch of a stranger
Can set up trembling in my bones
I know - no one's going to show me everything
We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone
Well I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality - to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for my immortality
In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There is the hope and the hopelessness
I've witnessed thirty years
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone
White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of a hotel room
I'm travelling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

Okay, that's wordy. Wordy and real fucking good, excuse my Anglais. Phrases like "tributes to finality" seldom pop up in conversations or songs. This kind of thing is particularly awkward in songs, but not in books. And here it is, just an accurate, opinionated line using a couple of fat words. She did that a lot, and made it swing, hallelujah. I use these fat constructs sometimes because they convey a lot in a short space, and the jarring contrast with plainer language can be arresting. But most of us don't want to sound like eggheads, like we really should be writing a book. But that was often Joni's style, the aim of which was to convey a lot of stuff in a short space. Emotional stuff. You got a lot for your money, these big, complete stories that were mirrors for lots of listeners who identified, who felt understood.

We're only particles of change, I know, orbiting around the sun. A friend of mine would say, "She's letting us know that she read a book on cosmology. Egghead." I don't think so. I think she read a book on cosmology and found some inspiring poetry in the dance of subatomic particles. Hey, I'm letting you know that I read a book too. Lots of Joni's fans read books and they knew where she was coming from. "We are stardust, we are golden," she sang in the song "Woodstock." A book once told me that we are carbon-based lifeforms constructed from the same elements that make stars. Hmm. I only had a year of college, but I educated myself quite well. I lived in a trailer park and read some Hesse and Sartre. And stuff. So I like that line.

Many writers read lots of books yet write in the language of an average person, but a very smart average person. Average, yet smart. What? Most songs are written in a style I call Wise Farmer. "Grandpa never went to school, but he knowed I was headin' down the road to ruin," sings somebody who never spoke like that in their lives. There's some kind of unwritten rule in songwriting at work here, but I'm not sure what it is. Rough talk makes you sound more believable? Maybe it's this: you can write something that goes by their heads, but not over them. Joni broke that pissant rule and wrote like a real smart person. Like herself. Like an egghead.

These days she writes as well as ever, and often she writes from her outrage, and usually quite simply. She writes unflinchingly about problems in relationships and in the world. She does what she wants.

Look, the woman is truly great. If you're so inclined, go listen to her if you haven't already. This is from '98's "Turbulent Indigo."

"Magdalene Laundries"

I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries

Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridgit got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten daughters
In the streaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me -
Fallen women -
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity
Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole!
Surely to God you'd think at least some bell should ring
One day I'm going to die here, too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring
No, not any spring
Not any spring

That's good. It's all that good.

Here's a little anecdote wherein i meet Joni: A long time ago we were both at a recording studio in Colorado; I was working, she was visiting.

On an offnight I was playing in a jazzoid band with her friend, humiliating guitarist Robben Ford. She came to the club. Someone suggested that she play a song with us. This was a terrible idea. For reasons I won't go into here, you don't jam with Joni Mitchell. But she's nice. She got up there with us and we proceeded to butcher "Furry Sings the Blues," a song none of us had heard. I have good ears, but ... I was out of my element. So was Robben and the jazz guys with their good ears. Maybe I have the wrong song, because she sang a line, "the band sounded like typewriters," and I don't see that line in "Furry." Anyway, after she sang that line she turned to us and said, "no offense, guys."

Do I know her? No, not really. I talked to her several times over the next few weeks, and she was truly gracious and as articulate as one would expect. I was young and intimidated, but she drew me out. I have a soft spot for her, so sue me. Yeah, I've met her, but I wouldn't remind her of this magic moment in Show Biz. Even though I don't know her, I'm going to rant about Show Biz here in the Joni section, and I doubt she'd mind.

RANT:

Joni used to be bigger than she is. She was subversive in that her very existence promoted smarter than average songwriting, but being big means being part of the norm, and norm means conform - and non-conformity is now the chief consumer posture, says Tom Frank, author of "The Conquest of Cool," a book about "the colonization of counterculture by corporate advertisers." This is why so many fine, seasoned artists are not supported by their record companies; their advertisers urge them not to. And it's these advertisers - not the record companies - who understand youth culture to the extent that they're creating it. Joni is supported by her maison des discs, but not as a hot property. She had her day in the sun, in the twilight of a time when people became popular often because they were good. Those days aren't gone, but lots of entities are trying to kill them.

Joni broke out of folk into the mainstream by virtue of her music and the reaction of the press. She was never much of a presence on the radio, but she was an Artist. She had no serious imitators. Her success was such that she was known to the average consumer, and for some artists that's the beginning of the fall. Tom Frank: "Youth culture is the more or less permanent style of consumer culture now. It's the verbal and graphic language of creativity, and it solves the basic problem of consumer culture, which is the need to make the old shit obsolete and replace it with new shit that seems authentic."

The few women artists who even remotely mine Joni's style for their own, well, their authenticity is along the lines of massive drama, like very-loud to very-soft, or unclassifiable musical and lyrical nebulosities. It's done expensively and well and it sounds good, even to me, and it appeals to those who see nothing strange about a deodorant called "Extreme." These artists often use shocking personal revelations (shocking confessionalism isn't dead), but Joni was more subtle. And more thorough. She examined the inside stuff, described it accurately, then named it. She was always an adult, and that is another way of articulating why she isn't allowed to sell so well anymore. What does it mean that the lyrics I've printed here are not considered part of the current "authenticity?"

I said that record companies don't understand youth culture: Artists who sell hugely early on will usually level out to selling respectably. This is just an averaging of the situation, because some may sell even more, or not at all. But selling respectably isn't good enough anymore, because the bean-counters who run Show Biz are in general a bunch of ignorant businessmen who know nothing about youth, music, or any other kind of art, they just know values from value indicators like market research. And market research is as unreliable and dumb as the people who rely on it for musical trends. Oh, there are smart younger people up the ladder who are changing things, but they won't change what I'm talking about here.

"We don't know what we're doing", a very major-label VP told me two years ago. And a French record producer told me, "They sell round things." Not to mention that the bean-counters often invest their profits poorly - Russian dental insurance or bands with disposability or obsolescence built in - thereby creating a situation where only explosive sales figures matter. The VP said that "a couple of big-sellers are supporting the rest of the roster." Makes sense, because the bulk of the roster is is composed of either pale imitations ("they sound like ... ") or artists too hard for the staff to get some kind of fix on ("I don't know what to call it ... aw hell, they don't sound like anything").

And then there's the truth of Woman's Complaint #6: Tom Waits or Sean Connery can get grizzly, chiseled and grey and still get offered parts in movies, and Tom's ravaged voice will keep him sounding authentic, because "ravaged" equals "authenticity." Joni is still presentable to say the least, but she's not trying to fool anyone, and probably won't be doing any more nude poses - so how can she be packaged? How strange that this is a real question.

The next retro phase of corporate advertising may give Joni back her "authenticity."

And (news flash!) most of the record-buying public, especially the boys, is composed of a bunch of attention-deficient sheep who care only for content that stops them from thinking. This from a survey conducted some time ago, wherein "it stops me from thinking" was the most common answer from guys to the question "Why do you like your favorite songs?"

I'll use anything to make my point, even unreliable surveys, even if I'm wrong, but I'm not. Two Cal State professors did another survey: "Less than 3 percent of all teenagers devote their full attention to lyrics." No surprise, but what's the percentage of adults, I wonder? I know five people who listen to mine, and I'm including my family. The survey adds that "most teens use rock music as 'background noise,' and that teens can't accurately describe their favorite songs because they lack the literacy skills necessary to understand concepts like metaphor and symbolism." Here is your consumer base, as if you didn't already know.

Most teenagers aren't allowed to do anything, like screw or break things, but somehow they get enough money from their parents to buy music and magazines aimed at them. The people who sell these products get very rich and will sell whatever the teenagers want; they don't really care, and I hope that their sons and daughters cause them enormous grief.

William Greider once said that corporations don't have grandchildren. So these corporate folks spend obscene sums of money to hire clever advertising people who shove more things and stuff down the hungry young throats and into minds and ears and up butts and any orifi presented. The ad people do this by co-opting pop culture at its street level origins, and then presenting it in superficially creative ads that make the kids believe that this continuing cycle of crap made and bought was their own idea. And at the start, it was. Lots of smart young people know what's happening, but this tease-and-jerkoff marketing has been part of their soundtrack since MTV, and they grew up with MTV. It's just part of the landscape.

Ralph Nader pointed out a rather large irony in a recent article in Rolling Stone. He said that corporations, the bedmate of self-styled conservatives, are on a collision course with conservative principles. True conservatives don't like the size of corporate welfare handouts, and they certainly don't like to go home and hear their kids beg them for the latest extreme toy or toy idea that was just rammed up their curiousity by some ridiculously funded psychology-savvy ad campaign. Yes, they hire psychologists.

It may not be like this at all, but this is how I see it. And fuck it, I'm right. And the music, etc. isn't all bad, of course, but so much of it is allowed to be by everyone concerned. People will buy anything, and our culture constantly tells us that new things are more authentic. Joni isn't new, she's a continuing vitality like George Jones or Ricky Skaggs or Merle Haggard, but most of her fan base is busy trying to figure out how to punish or love their kids, and Show Biz hasn't cared to figure out how to present her as something cool to the unbusy.

Do you align yourself more or less within the folk or the country tradition? If so, good for you. We don't have these problems quite as much. If we have any fans they will grow with us as we grow, and few critics will be confused ( = bad review) when we decide to do an album of cover tunes.

Maybe at our height we'll sell as well as her worst. Not bad.

Copyright ©2000 Sam Broussard. All Rights Reserved. Contents may not be reproduced without written consent.