Joni Mitchell Gets Her Just Desserts In New York Tribute Concert
April 7, 2000, 11:15 am PT
Joni Mitchell
After more than 30 years in the music business, Joni Mitchell is
getting her just desserts. Her colleagues and admirers gathered
to pay tribute to the singer-songwriter at New York's Hammerstein
Ballroom on Thursday (April 6), and there was nothing but love in
the room.
Taped for broadcast on April 16, the TNT Masters Series concert
featured some of today's most respected songwriters. The natural
inclination would be to invite only folk artists, and Shawn Colvin,
James Taylor, Richard Thompson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock
certainly fit the bill. But the point of the night was to highlight
Mitchell's talents as a songwriter of immeasurable intellectual and
musical curiosity. Cyndi Lauper, the '80s bad girl of pop, found
inspiration in a woman who wrote and played her own songs. "When I
was a little girl, there weren't that many," said the subdued Lauper
after her subtlety nuanced performance of "Carey," from Mitchell's
Blue. "[Her music] really defined my life. She was a gypsy, and she
was always beautiful."
"As a guitar player, she has great instincts," Richard Thompson added
later. Said k.d. Lang, who slayed the celebrity-heavy crowd with her
full-bodied rendition of "Help Me": "It's a very proud thing to be a
Canadian singer-songwriter. There isn't a Canadian songwriter who
doesn't cite Joni as an icon."
Accolades aside, the evening was about music, and, for the most part,
the performers delivered, molding Mitchell's songs to fit their musical
personalities. James Taylor injected his sunny melancholy into "River."
Sweet Honey in the Rock gave "The Circle Game" African percussive
accents, and their voices, otherwise unaccompanied, rang out in
celebration. Cassandra Wilson, with eight horns in tow, mined for
meaning and minor jazz scales in the multi-layered "Dry Cleaner From
Des Moines." Elton John turned in a spirited "Free Man in Paris," and
"You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)" became a honky-tonk-worthy anthem,
thanks to the spunky Wynonna. Thompson subbed for the no-show Stone
Temple Pilots, imbuing "Woodstock" with an irony as only a Brit can.
The only misses were the duets. Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter
turned in a surprisingly flat performance of the "Chelsea Morning" /
"Big Yellow Taxi" medley (even Taylor's harmonizing on the latter
couldn't save it). Wynonna and Bryan Adams opened the night with
"Raised on Robbery," and the pair's contrasting style (she's a little
bit country, he's a little bit rock and roll) never meshed.
But the real draw was Mitchell's performance of "Both Sides Now." It
was the album of the same name that brought her the first of many real
raves from colleagues, critics, and fans alike, and she has reworked
her song for a reinvention called -- duh -- "Both Sides Now," with a
full orchestra behind her. Mitchell and producer Larry Klein kept the
song's orchestral arrangement simple, and Mitchell, whose strength
among strengths was always her liquid poetry, mines the depths of her
experience to strip her lyrics raw. It was a typically bravura
performance from an artist who ain't done yet.
--
gender is just an excuse, relationship shouldn't just be an excuse,
love is often an excuse, although sometimes these excuses are all
we have to hold onto,
death is the reason and living is the celebration
- Beth Orton
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.twbbs.org)
◆ From: 192.192.49.71