As far as I'm concerned, Joni Mitchell is a far more interesting artist than Bob Dylan, the person she is most compared to. Dylan had a purple patch in the middle of the 1960s and influenced a dazzling array of stars, from The Beatles down but never really matured as a musician. Bob does what Bob does.

Joni, on the other hand, is a restless, committed, sonic explorer. No two albums sound the same, she's always trying to find a new angle and while I'm the first to admit that I don't like all her work, there's no denying her bravery and her successes. 

Further, I strongly believe that if you're even slightly interested in understanding how a woman's* lyrics can paint powerful, cinematic pictures, that women can identify with and men can understand, Joni is where you start. In fact, I don't believe I know of any other female songwriter who has written as many powerful songs as Joni has on any one of the reviewed albums below. She's the real deal.

Joni Mitchell on what made her want to sing:

"...I guess I really started singing when I had polio. Neil {Young} and I both got polio in the same Canadian epidemic. I was nine, and they put me in a polio ward over Christmas. They said I might not walk again and that I would not be able to go home for Christmas. I wouldn't go for it. So I started to sing Christmas carols, and I used to sing them real loud. When the nurse came into the room I would sing louder. The boy in the bed next to me, you know, used to complain. And I discovered I was a ham. That was the first time I started to sing for people..." Rolling Stone interview July 1979

Albums:

Ladies Of The Canyon

Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock & The Circle Game...need I say more?

Blue

Blue is one-of a kind album of intense emotional honesty during a frivolous and seemingly destructive part of Joni's life. Are these songs or just words put to music? Even after all these years, I'm not sure...but the effect is still spell-binding.

Though I purchased For The Roses...I never liked it...even though many fans considered it contains some of Joni's best work. However, if I ever get a CD copy and discover that I was wrong, I'll definitely review it.    

Court And Spark

The girl's out on the town, falling in love at the drop of a hat...and beginning to pay the consequences of that kind of lifestyle. These Court And Spark dramas provided Joni with the biggest commercial success of her career.

Joni Mitchell poster of TIME cover, December 1974 

The Court And Spark tour with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express was captured on the LIVE album Miles Of Aisles.

Joni Mitchell LIVE: Miles Of Aisles

"...Every epoch or so a holy spirit infuses the heart, mind and soul of a songwriter compelling him to, say, pick up a lyre and write music intensely personally, yet also universal; music so powerful it can change a person's life. I don't know if Joni Mitchell changed my life the day I sat on my dorm-mate's ratty sofa and first listened to the just released Miles Of Aisles but it sure changed the way I listened to music.

Recorded in 1974 before LIVE audiences in the Los Angeles area, it's one of those rare concert albums that sounds even better than an artist's songs originally recorded in a studio...Her innovative guitar and piano playing - she uses a lot of open fifths and changes keys often gives the double album an Impressionist feel -etheral, but also edgy with dissonance...

...for those of us who turn to music as a way of finding some meaning in the vagaries of life, Miles Of Aisles' will never go out of style..." Amazon reviewer John C. Anderson 

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

Identifying with women who all feel trapped, Joni  plays her most ambitious musical card yet, creating The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, an album that confused critics in the 1970s but is now considered on of the great experimental works in pop music. 

Hejira

The final instalment of her impressive 1970s works, Joni takes an overland trip from L.A. to Maine and writes most of Hejira on the way back, in a stark, adult series of snapshots.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter

Great title...but it's a jazz fusion experiment that I don't connect with.

If you'd live to see Joni's live combo in action, Shadows & Light is from a LIVE 1979 concert with players like Pat Metheney, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker & Jaco Pastorius.

Joni Mitchell LIVE: Shadows & Light

"...For those a bit puzzled by this DVD, I should explain that this was one of the first HBO Music Specials, even MTV was in its infancy. That explains the experimental use of video clips from other than the concert. Remember, this was pretty amazing footage, content and editing when this was first released.

The show is amazing! However, if you love Joni, imagine her at the Santa Barbara County Bowl with Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, and Michael Brecker building their undiluted and exciting plugged-in jazz settings for Joni's charismatic songs including songs from her Mingus album...It starts off with rare footage of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, James Dean and ending up with the acapella and soulful Persuasions.

What a great show! One of my favorite concerts ever. Buy it, Buy it - and thank me later. This is magic!..." Amazon reviewer 'fessor Mojo AKA Bill Donoghue

Joni Mitchell Rolling Stone Norman Seeff poster, 1979

Mingus

Joni's second jazz experiment which again, isn't my cup of cookin' tea.

Wild Things Run Fast

A frivolous, short and reasonably upbeat album about Joni being in love. Like many artists, though, her happiness was less intriguing than her pain. 

Around that time, Joni also recorded a concert LIVE (but without an audience)...and directed the subsequent Refuge Of the Roads DVD herself, which is interspersed with home movies from during the tour. Incidentally, the title of the DVD is from a track from Hejira. Here's an interview from the tour with Joni interviewed by Debi Martin.  

Joni Michell LIVE + extras: Refuge Of The Road

"...An engrossing if a bit uneven snapshot of Joni Mitchell early in her post-pop-star phase. The sound isn't the best, and many of the visuals have a home movie ambience -probably because that's what they are - but the artistry is wonderful...Joni has always seemed much more accessible in LIVE performances than on her beautiful-executed but carefully crafted and controlled albums. Her accessibility and artistry come through loud and clear on this DVD..." Amazon reviewer Mike Harris

Dog Eat Dog

After immersing herself in jazz and the sentimental pop of Wild Things Run Fast, Joni re-entered the fray with the controversial Dog Eat Dog, attacking the 1980s Greed is good me-generation. To this day, many feel insulted by it. Me? I thought it was pretty good! 

Chalkmark In A Rainstorm

In my opinion, Joni's last substantial work. Sophisticated and adult...with Peter Gabriel's drummer who brought a real sense of drama to her work. There are four "duets" with contemporary stars (including Gabriel) which all work well, the result being more complementary than intrusive and while I rate Chalkmark as less "substantial" than some of her other work, e.g. 1971's Blue, there are plenty of delights.

Night Ride Home

Joni pared back the sound, creating an intimate, quiet album for Night Ride Home with some easy listening and three really memorable tracks.

In 1996 Joni released two compilations, Hits, which should really have been titled Well Known, rather than Hits with tracks like Chelsea Morning, Big Yellow Taxi, Woodstock, Both Sides Now, Help Me etc.

Joni Mitchell: Greatest Hits

"...As single discs Best Of albums go, Joni Mitchell's 'Hits' is very well done, collecting 15 of the best and most well known songs of Mitchell's long career...Overall, an outstanding single disc anthology album from an important American popular music artist..." Amazon reviewer Brian D. Rubendall 

...and Misses, which as one astute Amazon reviewer pointed out, demonstrated even better, "...Mitchell's depth, versatility and, yes, genius..." A Customer, June 21 1999. 

Joni Mitchell: Misses

 "...This was the first album of Joni's that I ever bought. I have to say that I wanted to see what an album of her "not-hits" was like. I loved it so much that I went out and bought a lot more of her music...THIS album made me a lifelong, die-hard Joni Mitchell lover..." Amazon reviewer Morphea

N.B.: There's a lovely review of both Hits and Misses at jonimitchell.com from acclaimed writer Barney Hoskins

Turbulent Indigo

Though I purchased the Grammy Award-winning Turbulent Indigo...I didn't connect with much of it...even though many fans considered it a welcome return to form. Like Steely Dan's return with Two Against Nature, the album just sent me back to her earlier releases. 

Both Sides Now

Recorded in 2000, Both Sides Now consists of cover versions of jazz classics with two of her own songs thrown in. The surprise is that Joni's backed by an orchestra...and the results are...interesting.

In 2002, Joni released Painting With Words And Music, a LIVE concert recorded in front of a small audience from 1998, with a prologue consisting of a number of her paintings.

Joni Mitchell LIVE: Painting With Words DVD

"...After reading all of the reviews, I think that some reviewers must have an inferior home theatre system, and /or live in the past. This is 1998 Joni. Not trying to be the cute blonde chick of thirty years ago, but as she is now. More mature, confident, and knowing how she wants to sound and look. I have thirty years of her music, and have enjoyed the progression all the way. This rates as one of my best DVDs. If you love Joni and don't live in The Seventies, you should love this one..." Amazon reviewer G.J. Fitzgerald

In 2003, the biographical documentary Woman Of Heart & Mind was released, to considerable acclaim. It's a full career retrospective from childhood in Canada to the-then contemporary, with four in-concert songs, interviews with her peers (e.g. Graham Nash, David Geffen) etc. 

Joni Mitchell: Woman Of Heart & Mind DVD

"...One of the great talents of her or anyone else's generation gets the royal treatment with this superb two-hour (with bonus material) documentary. It's all here (via interviews, including conversations past and present with Mitchell herself, photos, generous helpings of concert footage, and more):

• her Saskatchewan childhood
• her lovers
• her painting
• her reunion with the daughter she had left behind at age 19... and, of course
• her music, the songs, recordings, and performances...

...so intensely personal yet so universally accessible, that comprise one of the most extraordinarily original and significant (if not always wildly popular) bodies of work any artist has ever produced..." Amazon blurb

Taming The Tiger

In 2005 Joni released a new album, Taming The Tiger, which, for some reason I don't feel the urge to review. Joni's work often works subconsciously on me and when I'm ready, I'll write the impressions that come to me.

However, here's an interview that Joni did with Jody Denberg to promote Taming The Tiger. It's quite varied and includes Joni talking about her:

• weird guitar tunings
• dental problems in the 1980s
• post polio syndrome
• taxation problems
• affinity with black music
• indignation about modern female songwriters &
• touring with Bob Dylan & Van Morrison

During 2005, she also re-released the two DVD above, Painting With Words And Music & Woman Of Heart And Mind as a compilation.

Joni Mitchell: Collectors Edition DVD

Travelogue

As with Both Sides Now, Joni continues her orchestral experiments, this time reinterpreting a double-album's worth of her own catalogue in 2002. As I wrote in the Both Sides Now review, I don't feel qualified to comment on orchestral music, so my review is brief.

...and in 2005, Joni released another compilation, Songs Of A Prairie Girl, with some of her more obscure but favorite tracks.

Joni Mitchell: Songs Of A Prairie Girl

"...This is the best (so far) of the themed reissue collections Joni Mitchell has been curating since here retirement from stage and studio. The songs come from all the phases of her varied career, and share the direct honesty that always marked her more autobiographical writing..." Amazon reviewer Michael Logan

Here's a series of brief interviews that Joni did with Canada A.M. to promote Songs Of A Prairie Girl 

Shine

Shine is Joni's latest release, which I have yet to hear, so there's no review. However, I've collected some interesting Joni baubles about Shine that you may care to peek at.

for more info, see:

• Wikipedia: Joni Mitchell

*Am I being sexist? I don't think so. The best male lyricists, Cole Porter, Hal David, Beatle John Lennon, etc. seldom dealt with the Joni's sphere and vice versa.