The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is considered one of the most influential artists of the late 20th Century. Her career spans many musical styles, from folk through jazz to pop and electronica, and she has worked with a plethora of great musicians along the way. Musically adventurous, she is known for her use non-standard guitar tuning and harmonic innovation.
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| Joni Mitchell, ‘Hissing Of Summer Lawns,’ North American Tour, 1976. |
The 1975 album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns comes from the period in her life where she was starting to embrace jazz. On Harry's House/Centerpiece Mitchell's lyrics about lonely modern life find the jazz standard Centerpiece by Harry "Sweets" Edison and Jon Hendricks appearing in the middle of the track. Like many of Mitchell's albums it's reception was not unanimously positive - she was ahead of the curve in many ways, but the album's reputation has grown over time.
Taking tracks out of an album best heard straight through at one sitting was never going to be easy, but the opening three tracks of side two make a good sample of the qualities of the album. The lyrics are given below for The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, The Boho Dance, and Harry's House/Centerpiece.
This video is the last outing for my PTP Audio Solid12. In many ways I shall be sad to see it go, but equally I'm very excited about it's replacement . . . watch this space!
Cartridge: Hana EL
Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession MC
Turntable: PTP Audio Solid 12 with SME M2-12-r tonearm
The Hissing The Summer Lawns
He bought her a diamond for her throat
He put her in a ranch house on a hill
She could see the valley barbecues
From her window sill
See the blue pools in the squinting sun
Hear the hissing of summer lawns
He put up a barbed wire fence
To keep out the unknown
And on every metal thorn
Just a little blood of his own
She patrols that fence of his
To a latin drum
And the hissing of summer lawns
Darkness
Wonder makes it easy
Darkness
With a joyful mask
Darkness
Tube's gone, darkness, darkness, darkness
No color no contrast
A diamond dog
Carrying a cup and a cane
Looking through a double glass
Looking at too much pride and too much shame
There's a black fly buzzing
There's a heat wave burning in her master's voice
Hissing summer lawns
He gave her his darkness to regret
And good reason to quit him
He gave her a roomful of Chippendale
That nobody sits in
Still she stays with a love of some kind
It's the lady's choice
The hissing of summer lawns
The Boho Dance
Down in the cellar in the Boho zone
I went looking for some sweet inspiration, oh well
Just another hard-time band
With Negro affectations
I was a hopeful in rooms like this
When I was working cheap
It's an old romance-the Boho dance
It hasn't gone to sleep
But even on the scuffle
The cleaner's press was in my jeans
And any eye for detail
Caught a little lace along the seams
And you were in the parking lot
Subterranean by your own design
The virtue of your style inscribed
On your contempt for mine
Jesus was a beggar, he was rich in grace
And Solomon kept his head in all his glory
It's just that some steps outside the Boho dance
Have a fascination for me
A camera pans the cocktail hour
Behind a blind of potted palms
And finds a lady in a Paris dress
With runs in her nylons
You read those books where luxury
Comes as a guest to take a slave
Books where artists in noble poverty
Go like virgins to the grave
Don't you get sensitive on me
'Cause I know you're just too proud
You couldn't step outside the Boho dance now
Even if good fortune allowed
Like a priest with a pornographic watch
Looking and longing on the sly
Sure it's stricken from your uniform
But you can't get it out of your eyes
Nothing is capsulized in me
On either side of town
The streets were never really mine
Not mine these glamour gowns
Harry's House-Centerpiece
Heatwaves on the runway
As the wheels set down
He takes his baggage off the carousel
He takes a taxi into town
Yellow schools of taxi fishes
Jonah in a ticking whale
Caught up at the light in the fishnet windows
Of Bloomingdale's
Watching those high fashion girls
Skinny black models with Raveen curls
Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes
Looking for the chic and the fancy
To buy
He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people thirty stories down
Look like colored currents in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper-minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid
Yellow checkers for the kitchen
Climbing ivy for the bath
She is lost in House and Gardens
He's caught up in Chief of Staff
He drifts off into the memory
Of the way she looked in school
With her body oiled and shining
At the public swimming pool ...
The more I'm with you, pretty baby
The more I feel my love increase
I'm building all my dreams around you
Our happiness will never cease
'Cause nothing's any good without you
Baby you're my centerpiece
We'll find a house and garden somewhere
Along a country road a piece
A little cottage on the outskirts
Where we can really find release
'Cause nothing's any good without you
Baby you're my centerpiece
...Shining hair and shining skin
Shining as she reeled him in
To tell him like she did today
Just what he could do with Harry's House
And Harry's take home pay
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