Acid booze and ass, needles guns and grass…

If there was ever a woman who could hold her own with the machismo idiots of the Laurel Canyon world it was Joni Mitchell.

If you listen to her lyrics you get the sense that she would turn most young men inside out, use them and spit them out the other side with no compunction. No shrinking violet in the decidedly male world of rock and roll music. Joni seems to have more than held her own, pushed the envelope and strutted her stuff often with a maniacal hearty guffaw, looking at the world through a decidedly female sense and uncompromising.

Blue is one of those albums you begin and you are in for the whole album, there is no stopping half way. You’re along for the whole ride. Which as the album documents two of her relationships seems to be how Joni sees things, you’re all in or you’re out.

An album about love and relationships and the mess they create as well as the joy.

“Got to him, stay with him if you can. But be prepared to bleed.”

When I listen to Joni I get the urge to run, go somewhere exotic, envelope myself in my relationships and let those I love know they are loved. Her music inspires something wild and reckless in me. An understanding that all things are possible and even fuck ups are worth the pain for the joy. Of course then the record ends.

I have a memory of flying into San Francisco one night as This Flight Tonight played on my discman with those horrid over the ear headphones letting the noise of the airplane in. It was 1997 and I was on my way back from my dads by-pass operation, maybe thats what inspired me to get Blue out again as I prepare to fly home for another parental emergency, who said the decisions we make get easier with time? Not me.