rockofallages81-tvgda

In a 1985 interview with Rolling Stone journalist Neal Karlen, Prince was asked if there were any current groups he liked. Prince said no, adding that the last album he loved all the way through was Joni Mitchell’s album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, which was released a full decade earlier in November 1975. It should be noted that Prince was a huge Joni Mitchell fan. However, I am not. Or rather, I love her early folk albums, but not so much her jazzier material from the mid-to-late Seventies. Her previous studio album, 1974’s Court Of Spark, was a massive critical and commercial success, but I don’t think I loved it when I heard it last. They’re not bad albums by any means; they just don’t click with me as much as they should. That said, I felt myself growing to appreciate The Hissing Of Summer Lawns more on re-listen. It has a few experimental moments that set it apart from its predecessor. For example, there’s track 2, “The Jungle Line,” with soft tribal percussion and a Moog synthesizer preset that help the song live up to its title.
However, I could’ve done without the use of the phrase “Negro affectations” in “The Boho Dance.” Adding to the discomfort is the fact that Joni has used blackface on multiple occasions throughout her career. I am shocked she hasn’t been cancelled for that, but then again, she isn’t the only famous Canadian to have worn blackface. And as I said before, the public has overlooked much worse. That apparently included jazz legend Charles Mingus because he was working on an album with Joni before he died in 1979.
Moving on, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns had only one official single: the opening track, “In France They Kiss On Main Street.” It did not get very high on the Hot 100, but I believe it was decently popular on the AOR stations. Another song that got airplay was the title track, co-written by Joni Mitchell and percussionist John Guerin, who had already played on Court And Spark. He was incredibly prolific, working with dozens of artists from the Sixties up to his death in 2004. He also dated Joni for a time, which is what originally influenced her to move away from her folk roots towards jazzier, more experimental material. This makes it even funnier to learn that John played on Joni’s next album, 1976’s Hejira, which had multiple songs that Joni wrote about their breakup. It was just like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, except Hejira came out three months earlier.
Sorry for the tangent, but we won’t be talking about Hejira on its own, so I had to bring it up here.
I was going to say The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is better than I remembered, but then that one lyric made it difficult for me to recommend. Instead, you should listen to Court And Spark and maybe you’ll enjoy it more than I do.