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Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Ladies of the Canyon
  • Artist name: Joni Mitchell
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Reprise Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: probably my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $60.00

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never listened to this Joni Mitchell record, but I do recognize some of the songs on it. It will be the fourth by Mitchell that I have reviewed, and the other three were:

What I expected

Folk.

What it was actually like

Joni Mitchell still has a very nice voice, and I still find her music mostly ok, but not great.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the two songs on this record that I enjoyed the most were her two most famous songs, that were also relatively different from most of the others, and which were also the two most radio-friendly. Big Yellow Taxi was the best, and The Circle Game was the only song with another vocalist, and therefore the only one with any vocal harmony, which I thought elevated it substantially.

Another of her famous songs is Woodstock, which I thought was pretty boring. When I reviewed Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I wrote:

I’ve never really gotten the success of Woodstock. I’d characterize it as an ok-to-good-enough song, but for whatever reason it’s become one of the anthems of its era.

Blue Boy was also boring in that way.

Willy, on the other hand, reminded me a lot of Songs to Aging Children Come, which I mentioned when reviewing Clouds.

Several of the songs on this record had a really excessive use of piano, which I felt detracted from them a lot, perhaps because I’ve always thought of Mitchell as a folk singer and because I would have expected a folk singer to use an acoustic guitar and not much else. Examples included The Arrangement, Rainy Night House and For Free, which also might have featured an oboe, but I could not be sure.

The Priest had no piano, but did not have much of a melody, either. I thought it was maybe a little better than those few.

The two songs that I disliked the most were Morning Morgantown, which had some weirdly atonal parts, and Conversation, which was more folk rock than the other songs and turned into more of a rock song as its tempo increased, but which had both flute and saxophone that ruined it.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Of Love and War by Randy Burns (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Of Love and War
  • Artist name: Randy Burns
  • Year: 1966
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: ESP-Disk
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $45.95

Of Love and War by Randy Burns

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t think that I’ve ever listened to this Randy Burns record, but I have previously reviewed two of his:

What I expected

Folk.

What it was actually like

This was folk music at its very mid 1960s essence, not unlike Dylan’s music of a couple of years earlier, but Burns was certainly a better singer than Dylan.

There was not a lot of complexity or originality to his songs, though: when one line ended with the word “sorrow,” for example, it was not exactly a challenge to predict that the next line would end with “tomorrow.”

Parts of this record definitely reminded me of this classic scene from Animal House (and I also reviewed the Animal House soundtrack).

The songs were all extremely consistent in style, and very minimal, with guitars and vocals, but for some reason the producers put all the vocal track into one channel and split the guitar track between both channels, so it kind of sounded like Burns was singing directly into my right ear, and I had to move all the way to the left side of my living room to listen without going insane.

If I had to pick a favorite, I would go with Sour Grapes, while Thoughts of Spring was slower than most of the other songs, and Coming of the Roads and Mr. War were the most boring.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Wings over America (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Wings over America
  • Group name: Wings
  • Year: 1976
  • Number of discs: three
  • Label: Capitol Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Buy it on Amazon: $49.96

Wings over America

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am not familiar with this live Wings record, but it will be the eighth post-Beatles McCartney record that I’ve reviewed. The previous seven were:

What I expected

Because this is a live record and because it has some Beatles songs on it, I’m optimistic that it might be pretty good, and may break the streak of McCartney making ok (but not really good) records in the early 1970s, but not doing anything worthwhile after 1975.

What it was actually like

This was a really, really long record. Three LPs (six sides) was about three times the amount of material that would actually have been necessary to get their point across.

Despite that, I thought the concerts sounded fun, and that the harder rock sound on most of the songs was generally good (other songs had more of an acoustic sound, and they weren’t necessarily worse).

I liked the electric blues sound of parts of Spirits of Ancient Egypt, but did not like the awful chorus.

Medicine Jar was pretty good, and I enjoyed the strong bass line and loved the guitar.

Bluebird was not a particularly good song, but I would not have minded listening to it if the saxophone solo had been left out. I also hated the saxophone on Silly Love Songs.

You Gave Me the Answer was the most goofily Oompa Loompa song on the record, and My Love was unusually boring and slow, but neither of these was representative of the overall record.

I wrote recently about The Long and Winding Road that it was “certainly one of the worst Beatles songs,” and it was a low point of this record, too.

The up tempo version of Lady Madonna was quite strong, however.

I’ve Just Seen a Face was the record’s best song, but of course I would have loved a song from Help! (as long as it was not Yesterday; in fact, Yesterday on Wings over America was just as bad as every other version of it).

Blackbird, for that matter, was fine, but nothing special.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Songs in the Attic by Billy Joel (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Songs in the Attic
  • Artist name: Billy Joel
  • Year: 1981
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Distinguishing characteristics:
    • Scratched into side one of LP: AL 37461 2J
    • Scratched into side two of LP: BL 37461 2B
  • Buy it on Amazon: $18.00

Songs in the Attic by Billy Joel

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am not familiar with this record, but it’s the third that I’ll have reviewed by Billy Joel. The other two were:

What I expected

This is a compilation of songs from his earlier records that were recorded live during a tour in summer 1980. I guess I expect some piano ballads, saxophone and other soft rock accoutrements.

What it was actually like

This was much more of a rock record than I expected.

Some of the songs definitely were close to what I imagined they would be, especially on the second side: She’s Got a Way, I’ve Loved These Days, You’re My Home, Captain Jack and The Ballad of Billy the Kid. All of these, however, at least had a recognizable rock sound, though it was not the dominant sound.

Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway) started out sounding like it was going to be a boring piano ballad, then turned into a rock song with a great tempo, and the vocals were dumb, but it was not a bad song.

Everybody Loves You Now also had a fast tempo that I liked, except acoustic, and was also all right.

I did not like the piano on Summer, Highland Falls, but it was another ok rock song, as was Los Angelenos.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood would have been good, but was ruined by an unnecessary saxophone solo.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Live 1975–85 by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Live 1975–85
  • Group name: the E Street Band
  • Artist name: Bruce Springsteen
  • Year: 1986
  • Number of discs: five
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Selman
  • Buy it on Amazon: $64.99

Live 1975–85 by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never heard this record before, though I’m familiar with a bunch of the songs on it. I’m not much of a Bruce Springsteen fan, and have previously reviewed:

What I expected

This is a five LP set with 40 live songs from different performances over a ten year period from 1975 to 1985. I guess I expect it to be like Flat Top and Pin Drop, except much better produced, because Springsteen was already a star when he was doing these concerts (many of which were in huge arenas), and because the record company’s producers would have had plenty of material from which to choose the best.

What it was actually like

This was a lot of Bruce Springsteen, far more Springsteen than I’ve ever consumed before in my life, and far more than was necessary to get the point. I’m sure his fans went wild for this box set, though, because it had a bunch of his hits and everything sounded solid, and it was put together pretty nicely.

It occurred to me while listening that I think Springsteen is a terrible singer, and I can not stand his voice. I wonder if this is why I’ve heard that people think it makes sense to compare Springsteen with Dylan, or why Springsteen has intentionally cultivated the idea that he could be compared with Dylan – as a guy with a guitar who can’t sing very well, but can write very personal songs. Either way, if I were Springsteen, I definitely would not want myself compared with Dylan, considering how unfavorable those comparisons would be.

Another really annoying thing about Springsteen is his tendency to tell stories in the middle of his songs – for example, while the piano is playing a riff, so the song is kind of still going on, but also kind of paused. Maybe the producers should have put all the stories onto just one LP and then kept the other four LPs exclusively for music.

And of course, the saxophone. I’m not 100% sure, but it did sound to me like there might have been a saxophone solo in every single song, but for sure it was in most of them. The worst offenders were: Spirit in the Night, Paradise by the “C”, Independence Day and Darlington County. By the end of it, I wanted to yank his bandmate’s saxophone away, break into pieces over my knee, and shove it… into a place that would be family friendly, since ColossalReviews.com is a G-rated website.

The most boring songs on the record were: Backstreets, Independence Day, all of side 6, My Hometown, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Racing in the Street (which was also way too long), No Surrender and Jersey Girl.

His cover of Woody Guthrie‘s classic This Land Is Your Land was uncommonly and almost impossibly terrible, so here are other versions from Peter, Paul and Mary and The Avett Brothers. On the other hand, I thought his cover of War was great (and I forgot again that it was a Temptations song before it was an Edwin Starr song).

Some other songs that I liked were: Growin’ Up, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), Raise Your Hand and Cover Me.

Born to Run was done well, and I thought it would have made a bigger impact by being placed last.

I always assumed that Because the Night was a Patti Smith song, but apparently it started as a Springsteen song. This version was good.

I loved the beginning of Hungry Heart when the crowd (at Nassau Coliseum on 28 December 1980) sang the first verse.

Born in the U.S.A. is probably the Springsteen song that I hate the most, as it’s the most anti-melodic and generally unpleasant.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me