“Taming The Tiger,” by Joni Mitchell

Musically, Joni Mitchell’s 1998 album, Taming The Tiger, feels ethereal and dreamy, almost formless. Reminiscent of classic albums by Pat Metheny, Brian Eno, or even Beck’s heartbreaking, 2002 album, Sea Change. Ditching catchy pop hooks and melodies for atmospherics, on Taming The Tiger, Mitchell weaves a dramatic, often mournful, and sometimes mysterious sonic tapestry. The “samey” tone of the album might make one prematurely dismissive, but that would be a mistake, as Taming The Tiger holds some of Mitchell’s most creative lyrics and striking social commentary. And the similar, sorrowful hues of the album make sense: Tiger tells the story of Joni Mitchell at that particular moment in her life: a woman in her middle age, at the top of her craft - easily producing masterworks on a backstroke, reflecting on her wondrous experiences, reveling in the joys of the present, continuing her thoughtful critique of a civilization in decline, and ultimately, strangely, miraculously feeling peaceful about the entire enterprise.

In the joyous album opener, “Harlem In Havana,” Mitchell depicts a childhood memory of visiting the African-Cuban burlesque review that some suggest to be the beginning of rock-and-roll. Mitchell’s lyrics describe the “forbidden" sights and sounds on the midway, where they played so “snakey,” you couldn’t help how you felt: “Silver spangles, See 'em dangle in the farm boy's eyes...hootchie kootchie, Auntie Ruthie would've died if she knew we were on the inside!” In “Love Puts On A New Face,” Mitchell perfectly depicts the tranquility of a quiet moment with a loved one, “No telephone ringing, no company coming, just the lap of the lake and the firelight, and the lonely loon and the crescent moon, what a pocket of heavenly grace.” Indeed. And in “The Crazy Cries Of Love,” Mitchell joyously recounts two frenzied lovers losing themselves to reckless abandon, with “No paper thin walls, no folks above, no one else can hear the crazy cries of love,” and later in the café, “…they smile ear to ear and eye to eye, ice cream is melting on a piece of pie, oh, my my…” Playful. Truthful. Tender.

Mitchell summons English poet and painter William Blake (her kindred spirit and consistent source of inspiration) in the title track, an apt summation of the music industry in the mid-1990s, as personified, no doubt, by her victorious night at the Grammys a few years earlier, collecting a surprise trophy for “Best Pop Album.” The surprise being that the album, Turbulent Indigo, sold relatively few copies that year, and none of the teenagers buying records in 1994 could have hummed even one of its tunes. Inspired by lyrics from Blake’s poem, “The Tyger,” I’ve often wondered if the song describes her experience at the award ceremony that night as she must have, no doubt, reflected upon how her latest “golden egg” compared to the music of that moment (e.g., Ace Of Base, Coolio, Crash Test Dummies, etc.): a strange juxtaposition.

Another song, I suspect, about her experiences in the dog-eat-dog music industry, “Lead Balloon,” is probably her hardest rocking song, ever. It sounds eerily similar to the well-known story of Mitchell throwing her drink into the face of Rolling Stone Svengali, Jan Wenner, in the early 1970’s, sparking a grudge between the two that lasts to this day. The notorious incident incited what some have suggested a moratorium on all things "Joni Mitchell" in his popular magazine in the 1970’s. In fact, the publication routinely berated Mitchell’s late 1970’s masterworks, which were vindicated over time and are now widely regarded as some of her very best and enduring albums (incidentally, recent Rolling Stone publications have self-consciously corrected these scathing notices).

Taming The Tiger boasts some of Mitchell’s most tender poetry, including a remake of her heartbreaking “Man From Mars,” which was originally featured on a few thousand copies of the soundtrack to the obscure 1996 film, Grace Of My Heart, which borrowed its name from Mitchell's song and presented a fictionalized version of Carole King’s early career in pop music. In it, Mitchell sings about a lost love: “I fall apart every time I think of you swallowed by the dark. There is no center to my life now, no grace in my heart. Man from Mars: this time you went too far…” The version on Tiger is updated and of a piece with the sonic palette of the rest of the album. In the tender cajoling of “Facelift,” Mitchell affectionately recalls an argument with her mother, who disapproved of her “love without a license,” and in “Stay In Touch,” Mitchell describes the excitement, doubt, and hopeful tentativeness of navigating a burgeoning relationship with her (then) new-found daughter, whom she’d given up for adoption decades earlier: “Part of this is permanent, part of this is passing, so we must be loyal and wary
 - not to give away too much, until we build a firm foundation and empty out old habits:
 old habits. Stay in touch. We should stay in touch.”

Mitchell’s sooty vocals have been the brunt of harsh criticism since the early 1990’s, with one reviewer writing of this album, “Meanwhile, her voice has lost nearly all its power: thin and breathy, restricted to the middle of her former range - I wanted to cry listening to it.” Yes, Mitchell’s voice has changed over time, as have all singers still active after many decades, but I believe this is only problematic for artists known for a distinct vocal style or range. Mitchell has never been that kind of artist. Take Whitney Houston, for example. In the 1980’s, her voice could thrill with a whisper and then soar to unfathomable heights, but by the last decade of her tragic life, her once astounding instrument sounded raspy and lacked power, as if fighting back a coughing fit on every note. Mitchell’s voice has been evolving since her earliest, cold-water vocals from the Canyon, her sultrier, jazzy singing through the 1970’s, and her beautifully smoky-voiced style of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

What I love about Mitchell’s voice today is that it’s perfectly attuned to her music and lyrics in the present. She’s no longer the flower-beaded ingénue of the 1960’s or the 1970’s darling of the Hollywood elite. She’s not only survived, but she’s thrived through decades of disposable fashion and pop music trends, creating a classification all her own. In fact, Mitchell’s seasoned voice is now even better suited for some of her classic songs from decades past (e.g., “Circle Game,” “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” etc.). Taming The Tiger received middling to favorable reviews upon release, but all rather tepid from my perspective. That was 15 years ago, and the musical climate was steeped in the “juvenile junk food” of Spice Girls, ‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys, and even rock legend, Elton John’s awkwardly reworked (yet again) “Candle In The Wind,” performed at Princess Diana’s funeral and selling millions of copies along the way. It’s 2013, and like her late-1970’s work, I suspect Taming The Tiger will no doubt be vindicated with time, standing out as one of Mitchell's very best works.

“So Beautiful or So What,” by Paul Simon

Few pop music fans seem to realize that Paul Simon’s 2011 album, So Beautiful or So What, might very well be his best album ever. That’s right. I said it: best album ever. Seriously. Ever. But unfortunately, because it didn’t come out in 1977, and because its singles were up against the high school crap of LMFAO and Katy Perry that dominated the airwaves last year, the album went largely without notice (save for the ENTIRETY of the music critic community, who unanimously listed the album in their top ten album lists for that year). Hosting themes that reflect a man finding life “terribly strange” at seventy, So Beautiful asks questions for the angels about love, mortality, and God. And from listening to the brief album (under 40 minutes of music), one answer to these questions tap at the listener’s ear: love. Seriously, Mr. Simon? “Love?” Huh.

Simple, conventional, and persistent, Simon’s message is singular; he’s a real love-monger on this stunning album. In the tune, “Dazzling Blue,” he pays tender tribute to his marriage to (the remarkable!) Edie Brickell, and in the song, “Rewrite,” he paints a portrait of an American war veteran, who “hasn’t got a brain cell left since Vietnam,” pleading with God for a “rewrite” of his life since the war, “…Help me, help me, help me, help me – THANK YOU! I had no idea that you were there.” In the beleaguered veteran’s rewrite, love makes an appearance and ultimately redeems his life. The veteran outlines his do-over:

I'll eliminate the pages where the father has a breakdown

And he has to leave the family, but he really meant no harm.

Gonna substitute a car chase and a race across the rooftops

When the father saves the children, and he holds them in his arms…

The word “love” permeates the album, prominent in the songs titles or mentioned within the verses (or at least alluded to) on every song. On So Beautiful or So What, it’s all love, all the time. In the world Simon describes on So Beautiful, love is the mortar holding the bricks together, love is the foundation providing strength to the walls, love is the cement filling the empty holes as the musician reminds us to carefully consider our frame of reference: “Life is what you make of it,” he sings, it’s “so beautiful or so what?” I’ll take “beautiful,” thank you...

Death and growing older is another central theme on this exceptional album, and the topic is not a new one for Simon. In his mid 20’s, he reverently wrote about the prospect of growing older. In fact, Simon loosely dedicated an entire side of vinyl (side one) of the classic 1968 Simon and Garfunkel album, Bookends, to the cycle of life, most notably in the sweetly morose, “Old Friends,” in which his vocal muse and “frenemy,” Art Garfunkel sang, “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench, quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy…” and on the side one closer, “Bookends Theme,”

Time it was, and what a time it was;

A time of innocence, a time of confidences;

Long ago, it must be…I have a photograph;

Preserve your memories;

They're all that's left you…

Musings from a young and gifted musician, romanticizing the inevitability of growing older (and exquisitely so). Are such solemn romanticisms fleeting naivety? Are they the privilege of youth? I’m starting to suspect so, as more recently, seventy year-old Simon writes of mutability from a much more dispassionate and droll, albeit musical perspective, sometimes chuckling about the prospect of passing from this mortal coil, and sometimes taking on the voice of God, Himself, pontificating on the state of humanity, on ugly politics and talk-show hosts, on the sad state of popular music, and on the origin of life, itself. Simon sings “as God,”

Big Bang. That’s a joke that I made up once

When I had eons to kill,

You know, most folks, they don’t get when I’m joking;

Maybe someday they will…

And then, of course, there’s Music. Perhaps the world’s biggest music fan, Simon has said that he picked up a guitar for the first time, because he wanted to be Elvis. And following suit, Simon almost always includes musical imagery in his more recent deliberations on nostalgia, death and the afterlife (to wit, in the early 1980’s, Simon referenced everyone from John Lennon to the “Late-Great Johnny Ace,” as well as his evocation of the treasured do-wop groups of his youth, and he also recalled Buddy Holly in the early 2000’s, and on this album, he echoed early rock-and-roll nonsense lyrics on “The Afterlife”). Simon has contemplated mutability throughout his career, but since his 40s, Simon has replaced the sentimental heartache of his youthful ruminations with humor, irony, and derision.

I suspect there’s much to be learned from this philosophical approach, and I’ve been listening to Simon’s So Beautiful or So What almost non-stop for the past few weeks. I find it wholly comforting and relevant, especially as I've recently learned a beloved family member is facing his last months, and by all accounts, he’s addressing the prospect with characteristic humor, grace, and boldness – similar to Simon’s most recent reflections. It’s humbling, his courage. I wish I had it. Maybe it comes with one’s built-in character or personality; maybe some are just born heroic, or maybe it comes from years of hard-won wisdom. Either way, at 41, I don’t have it yet. I wonder if I ever will…

"Close To You," by Carpenters

Some of the greatest albums in the Rock-and-Roll canon were recorded in the early 1970s. To wit, “What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye, “Tapestry,” by Carole King, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” by Simon and Garfunkel, “Dark Side Of The Moon,” by Pink Floyd, and classic recordings by David Bowie, Elton John, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Nick Drake, and James Taylor, to name just a few. One of my favorites from the era, and a remarkably influential Polaroid from that period of popular music, was the second album by the brother-sister duo from Downey, California: Carpenters, Close To You. “Rollingstone” magazine lists the album as one of the “Best 500 albums” of all time - in the top 200 no less! It's also listed in the 2005 book, "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die," which inspired the moniker for this blog. And while not the artistic pinnacle of the duo’s career (that would be two albums later, the 1972 classic, A Song For You), it was one of Carpenters best sellers and the album that launched their highly successful, but ultimately tragic career.

The Carpenter family moved from New Haven, Connecticut to Downey, California in the early 1960’s for a job opportunity for Dad Carpenter and to be closer to Los Angeles, where Richard could be closer to the nexus of the music industry. At that time, Richard was the sole musician in the family, while Karen mostly tagged along behind her big brother, tapping the drum kit grudgingly purchased for her by her parents ("girls don’t play the drums"). It wasn’t until later, when recording demos in a friend’s garage studio that, on a whim, Richard put Karen on the microphone, and he realized his little sister could sing. Karen reportedly wasn’t convinced of her remarkable gift until sometime later, with some close friends suggesting she always thought of herself as a “drummer who sang.”

After a few years of gigging around the L.A. music scene, sending demos to and getting rejections from every major recording studio in the industry, the siblings landed a short-lived recording contract with RCA (the prize for winning the Hollywood Bowl “Battle of the Bands,” contest in 1966). The songs recorded with RCA never saw the light of day, however, and the band was released from their contract, as RCA execs felt the duo were not commercial enough. A few years later, their demo landed in the cassette player of Herb Albert, popular musician and co-founder of A&M Records, and he signed the duo in 1969. Their first album, Offering, was less-than-meteoric (although well-worth seeking out), but yielded their first chart single, a startling re-imagination of The Beatles’ classic, “Ticket to Ride.”

After the single and album finished a brief run on the charts, A&M decided to give the duo one more chance, but this time by releasing a final, make-or-break single. Essentially at their label’s mercy, Richard and Karen agreed to record a saccharine Burt Bacharach song, which had been released numerous times in the previous decade to little success. But Herb Albert felt it would be right for Karen’s voice, and frankly, while not thrilled to do so, the siblings had no choice and recorded that tune with over-the-top lyrics (“On the day that you were born the angels got together and decided to create a dream-come-true, so they sprinkled moon dust in your hair and golden starlight in your eyes of blue.”). After the recording session for “(They Long To Be) Close To You,” Herb Albert and Richard Carpenter sat on the stoop in the A&M parking lot, discussing the potential for the single. Carpenter predicted, “It will either be a #1 hit or the biggest stiff the label has ever recorded.” “Close To You” became Carpenters’ first #1 single, remaining in the top position for a month and catapulting the siblings into instant fame and a whirlwind of recording and promotional activity.

And this is how the Close To You album was born, amidst a flurry of activity in the wake of the “overnight success” of the Bacharach single. A&M wanted to leverage the success of the monster hit song, while Richard and Karen were just grateful to still have a recording contract. But having gone through most of their original material on their first album, Richard was left with the task of finding new songs for the follow-up album. Serendipity intervened. As “Close To You” rose on the charts, Richard saw a bank commercial on late night television. He couldn’t help but notice the background song, written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, about a young couple just getting started, and he wondered if the jingle existed as a complete song. It didn’t, but when Williams and Nichols were contacted about a full-song, they happily obliged, finishing “We’ve Only Just Begun” by adding another verse and submitting it for recording.

The rest of the Close To You album was recorded in like manner: hurriedly, between promotional engagements and concerts, but the results were astonishing, for an album thrown-together in the duos precious free time between gigs. Including a mix of Carpenter-penned originals with Bacharach and Roger Nichols and Paul Williams songs and another Lennon-McCartney cover, the album was probably the last “rock” effort the duo produced, as they spent the remainder of the early seventies focusing on their sublime hit pop singles. Speaking of hit singles, I’ve always held that, while containing two of the duo’s best-known songs, the album could have spawned even more hits, including the Carpenter original, “Maybe It’s You,” and the Bacharach cover of the Shirelles’ 1961 top-ten hit, “Baby It’s You.” The siblings’ demonstrate their lesser-appreciated rock-and-roll leanings with the Beatles’ “Help!” and the grandiose album closer, the spellbinding Carpenter original, “Another Song.”

The album was a monster, selling millions of copies and launching the duo into the chaos that would be the next five years of hits, constant touring, and television appearances. In hindsight, it was too much. I’ve often wondered what might have been, had the duo taken the remainder of the 1970s off after their hits compilation around the middle of the decade. But sadly, they got caught up in the star-maker machinery, unwisely chasing horrid 1970’s pop culture trends, and essentially losing focus. And while the hits never stopped (in fact, the duo enjoyed top 40 hits on every album released during Karen’s lifetime, up to their final hit single, “Touch Me When We’re Dancing,” #16 in 1981), their albums in the latter part of the decade, while always delivering one or two gems (mostly due to Karen’s creamy, alabaster voice), were largely forgettable efforts. But Close To You reflects a moment when the siblings were young and optimistic. They'd only just begun to do their thing, and the album accidentally became an early 1970’s classic.