Joni Mitchell: "Hits" Reprise, 46326 (60 mins)
Dial-a-track code: 1201
Joni Mitchell: "Misses"
Reprise, 43658 (67 mins)
Dial-a-track code: 1311
You want to know how to be really cool this Christmas? Just amble into your local record store and say "I've never really been into commercial music, so give me the new album of Joni Mitchell's flops". And that, dear readers, is exactly what Joni has released one album of "misses" to accompany the more predictable, and long overdue, compilation of her greatest "hits". However when the artist in question is arguably one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the past 25 years, even her "failures" rate higher than a lot of what passes for classic pop these days.
Take, for example, The Magdalene Laundries, which was apparently inspired by Mitchell's reading about such an institution in Ireland. "Most girls come here pregnant/some by their own fathers/Bridget got that belly/By the parish priest" she sings for the "woebegotten daughters" who were "sentenced into dreamless drudgery" and ended up "planted in the dirt". Social realism also slices to the fore in Sex Kills, with its merciless focus on "all these jackoffs at the office/The rapist in the pool/Oh and the tragedies in the nurseries/Little kids packin' guns to school." Similarly powerful are songs like Hejira, Harry's House/Centrepiece and The Beat Of Black Wings, though earlier recordings like The Arrangement and even the wonderful A Case of You seem relatively one-dimensional when set alongside, the more recently written misses
As for the "hits", well, I need hardly recommend an album that has sublime songs such as Free Man in Paris, Raised on Robbery, Help Me, California, Carey, Big Yellow Taxi and the less well known Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody. The latter leans back in the direction of her 1972 song, The Last Time I Saw Richard, and shows that Richard was wrong when he told the singer that all romantics "meet the same fate", drunk and boring someone in some "dark cafe". Not Joni and her friend Carol, both of whom, instead, sit and listen to Unchained Melody on the jukebox, reflect on adolescence and still manage to see that "Christmas is sparkling". A superb set of compilations, though they hardly can take the place of every album Joni has released and which I heartily recommend.
Stevie Wonder: "A Greatest Hits Collection"
Motown, 530 757 (78 mins) Dial-a-track code: 1421
Stevie Wonder is another of rock's greatest songwriters, even if that fact isn't always acknowledged by those who tend to overlook Tamla Motown tune smiths when drawing up such lists. Yet Motown was his home when he kicked off at the age of just 14, writing hits like Uptight and, soon afterwards, I Was Made To Love Her, My Cherie Amour and Signed, Sealed And Delivered, I'm Yours. Even more impressive were the producing and arranging skills that surfaced through compositions like Sir Duke and Living For The City, from seminal albums such as Songs In The Key Of Life and Innervisions, respectively. It was with such masterworks that Stevie Wonder also influenced generations of musicians with his high hat parts as a drummer, complex keyboard licks and harmonica lines. And that positively joyful voice. A master musician, even if he did exhibit a gross lapse of taste when he wrote Ebony And Ivory with Paul McCartney.
Jimmy Durante: "As Time Goes By" Warners, 45456 (33 mins) 1531
Jimmy Durante gets a boot back into the spotlight as a result of the Boots the Chemist's Christmas advertising campaign, which uses his song, Make Someone Happy very cute. And though clearly released to cash in on that fact, this album actually is a delight. Probably best known for ditties like Inka Dinka Do, here we have a more contemplative Durante half singing, half speaking predominantly reflective tunes such as September Song, Smile, Try A Little Tenderness and I'll See You In My Dreams. Plus Sam's theme song from Casablanca, the ever resonant As Time Goes By. Hardly neo-lounge music but, yeah, sure to make someone happy, as a Christmas present. Season's Greetings to all readers, especially those who take the time to write in during the year. Cheers.
