Hi. It’s JF.
Jane is on vacation. She planned a quick blogpost about Joni Michell’s 1975 album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns. This is how it started:
“It’s still summer, and I have p-t-o to burn. So I’m going to post a quick thing about a seasonally-titled record with which I’m not super familiar by an artist of whom I’m enamored (big caveat coming), and head out on vacay. A girl needs fresh air with her pal and her pups.
Joni Mitchell is a legend. She’s also a bitch. Which is cool. I’m a bitch. But I’m also something that Joni is not: A proud feminist.
In a 2013 CBC interview with Jian Gomeshi (a real piece of human shit, who got canned in 2014 for sexual assault of his gf, which he conveniently documented on his work phone – call him patient zero of #metoo), Joni distanced herself from the movement. Here’s the exchange, cut and pasted from her archive:
JG: Well, do you feel like – do you feel then, and especially doing this all as a woman too and what you just talked about in terms of the terms of your contract that Neil and others were followed in your footsteps, do you accept that you were a pioneer?
JM: Oh, yeah. Sure. I blazed a lot of trails. Mm-hmm. Self-publishing. A lot.
JG: And a lot of that as a woman but you don’t like to be called a feminist, correct?
JM: I’m not a feminist.
JG: Where’s that line for you?
JM: I don’t want to get a posse against men. I’d rather go toe to toe myself. Work it out.
Hm. Decontextualized, that’s ok. Fight your own fights, sure. She doubled down, though: ‘I’ve got a lot of men friends. Too many amazons in that community. The feminism in this continent isn’t feminine, it’s masculine. Our feminism isn’t feminism, it’s masculinism.’
That’s problematic.”
Agreed. And explaining why was also problematic. That’s the wrong word. It wasn’t problematic; it was time-consuming. Jane and I discussed the post at length. She was passionate and articulate and funny, as always. (She’s LN Executive Editor for a reason.) Her rebuttal of Joni’s statement would have been long, and challenging – bell hooks, difference theory, intersectionality, and other vital theoretical and real life points (like how maybe office fave Joan Didion might not be a feminist, either, so we should reconsider the lobby placement of the near-lifesize pic of her next to the Corvette) that deserve to be discussed. Together, we decided that maybe making her flight, rather than her self-imposed deadline, was more important. And she decided that I should just cover this record like any other. This is a music blog, so focus on the music?
Right on. Let’s talk about summer and grass.
Joni Mitchell was riding high in 1975. Her 1974 album, Court and Spark, was nominated for four Grammys. She won one – Best Arrangement, whatever that means. Court and Spark is one of the best adult (an adjective that wasn’t as pejorative then, as it is now) records of the ’70s. Impeccably produced, for sure. Critically received, for sure. And popularly consumed. Cooler than Seals & Crofts, and more cerebral, but in the same general ballpark. If you were a kid back then, you heard the single “Help Me” regularly on AM radio. And the record is one that your cool aunt and uncle had in their vinyl collection to play on the hi-fi for the grownups smoking crooked cigs during fondue or curry parties, while you and your cousins were screwing around in the back yard and didn’t notice. Court and Spark was/is foreground and background, depending on your situ and mood. It’s aggressively L.A., like the Eagles’ Hotel California, but totally different. (The culture-change from ’74 to ’76 was seismic. I was there, and I could tell.)
Court and Spark laid a foundation for Joni to explore even further her version of proto-adult-contemporary. Some people call her stuff from this period jazzy – mostly because there are jazz instruments backing her, I think. What’s jazziest, though, is her vocals. Her approach is sui generis. Joni’s most famous song, “Big Yellow Taxi” from 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, follows a traditional verse-chorus-verse pop-rock structure. So do “California” and “A Case of You” from 1971’s all-time classic Blue. Much of her output from the mid-70s, however, is an extended argument against that form.
Take a sorta well-known track like “You Turn Me on I’m a Radio” from 1972’s For the Roses. It’s a vocal riff over a strummy guitar and harmonica background. The melody stays the same, but she refuses to give us anything lyrically to grab and hold. Nothing repeats. She sounds like she’s making shit up in a heady, controlled way. (A compliment, not a slam.) She never scats; her words in her voice are just light as air, and they float like the sound from a sax or a trumpet. The Hissing of Summer Lawns isn’t the culmination of that style (her 1978 album Hejira, featuring bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius, probably is), but it’s a statement of purpose. As in, you guys liked “Help Me”? Well here’s more of that, only weirder. Light up and sit back. She’s got you.
I’ve grown to love this record. I’ve listened it at least ten times for this post. It’s not as good as Blue or Court and Spark. (On a road trip last weekend, my best friend checked out on THoSL around the middle of what would’ve been side two.) But it’s more interesting, and it’s thematic for our purposes here – whose lawns aren’t hissing for more water in late August? Worth a spin. Key tracks: “In France They Kiss on Main Street,” which is a deeper dive in to the vibe of Court and Spark‘s “Free Man in Paris;” “The Jungle Line,” which samples field recordings of drummers from Burundi; the title track, which oozes cool; and “Harry’s House – Centerpiece,” which is a single-track song-cycle that’s almost indescribable. Anyway, here’s the widget.
More soon.
JF
Liner Notes 