I want to say a few more words about Court and Spark.
I bought her first album, Song to a Seagull, in 1969. I honestly don't think a lot of people were listening to her in the U.K. at that point (can't speak for the U.S.A.) Certainly, I didn't know anyone around me who had that album. I thought it was very finely crafted — excellent lyrics, extraordinary dissonant, jangly chords — as has often been noted, by Crosby among others. Strong, individualised songs, albeit perhaps rather one-paced.
I'm afraid I did not — and still do not — like Clouds or Ladies of the Canyon very much, and I'm also afraid that I'm not as enamoured of Blue as everybody else seems to be. Yes, I can hear that the songs are strong. But her voice seems to have this whiney quality to it that just gets on my tits after a while. Still, to this day. Others have praised its naked confessionalism, too. I find it very, very self-absorbed.
I am well aware that this is heresy — I shall be burnt at the stake — and that it's generally considered to be a masterpiece.
I missed out on For The Roses, not sure why. Later went back to it, and actually bought it about twenty years ago.
When I heard Court & Spark, all that summer in ’74 I felt actually jubilant. I felt like hugging the girl. It seemed to me that she'd finally shucked off this rather prissy “high priestess of folk” mantle that I, for one, had grown to find rather wearisome. She'd started to rock, she'd started to roll, she'd even started to cautiously introduce elements of popular jazz (she invited Annie Ross on stage with her at Wembley, that autumn, although frankly almost nobody in that huge audience knew who the hell Annie Ross was! Incidentally, I was there, and I think she did a set that was slick, professional, and utterly dead. She seemed bored out of her skull, barely communicating with the crowd). She'd branched out, and in fact she'd gone back to things that she'd always liked, had grown up with.
I loved the album, and played it into the ground.
When I (much) later went back to For The Roses, I could hear clear signs that she was already “ returning to myself the things that you and I suppressed” (if anybody recognises that quote — we'll certainly come to the album it's off).
Don't want to anticipate, but those albums of the mid-seventies are the work that I most treasure. I got interested in Joni again, and stayed interested till the end of the seventies.
(Decades later, bought Both Sides Now, which is a moving way of reframing your old classics. Not, I think, to everybody's taste).
