Monday 4th April

I have always loved Joni Mitchell ever since I saw her on Sight and Sound early in the Seventies.  I have all her records and recently I joined her Facebook fans page.  Someone posted a whole album’s worth of remixes by modern bands and DJs of some of Joni’s songs and it was offered as a free download.  Now, I am not a fan of downloads generally, but this was one of those rare exceptions where this material will never be available to buy on a CD so I downloaded it, not expecting to be that impressed.  My daughter Laura is a great dance music fan and has introduced me to Massive Attack, Groove Armada, Faithless and a few other artists and I like lots of it; this is not music I would normally buy and it simply re-affirms my belief that all music is good music, there is just some I am less familiar with.

So, the Joni remixes.  I straightaway burnt these tracks onto a CD, and the kind contributor had also supplied a printable CD cover and sleeve.  I started listening recently and all I can say is “Wow”.  Joni started off as a fairly conventional singer-songwriter playing guitar and piano and Appalachian zither but by the mid-seventies she had drifted into jazz.  I have one interview tape of her where she says she was always looking for a different sound.  She stopped recording in the mid-nineties but I am sure that she must actually like what some of these DJs have done with her music.  There is a certain element of repetition in most dance music which can be quite entrancing at times but this album has six versions of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ which can get a tad boring.  However I really love this record, these ‘new’ versions of old songs are simply wonderful.  They are given a new life completely and I am sure Joni would love them, even if she may have been a bit reticent to let them ‘mash-up’ her songs so much.  The great thing about these remixes though is that it is still Joni’s voice and words shining through all the ‘beats’ and other noises going on.  It makes you realise just how she might have sounded had she emerged in the noughties rather than forty years earlier.

So, a welcome addition to the ever-growing Joni catalogue; I have just ordered a new 3cd set of radio performance she made over the years – quite a few unrecorded songs are listed, so I am really looking forward to it.  I never tire of Joni.