Joni Mitchell triggers hi-fi porn

I got the Shadows and Light DVD, a nice extended concert. I don't want to believe Jaco Pastorius is dead! Then listened to Blue on vinyl, so incredibly alive, raw, perfect. It's a drug, I want more sonic pleasure, or the echo of someone else's orgasm. I know it's wrong and I'll go blind but:

• Custom-built music room; "my turntable weighs 550 pounds". (I knew I'd want my living room to be the music room, I didn't want to divide my life between living and music.)
• 36 hours setting up The Walker Audio Proscenium Gold Signature Turntable System; "The Proscenium's plinth is composed of an amalgam of lead, crushed marble, and epoxy, and is bloody inert. IN-ERT."

Even by Court and Spark, also engineered by Henry Lewy, the sound flattens. Or maybe it's my equipment.

music: Hejira, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius

I used to listen to my cassettes in alphabetical order, out of a nearly perverse loyalty to the artists. I would get anxious when the 'M's came up, because that meant Joni Mitchell and I knew I'd be an emotional wreck, climaxing with "Hejira", her moody masterpiece of isolation and travelling.

On re-listening, it's not quite as great as the musical Kryptonite of my memory, though the iconic pain of "Amelia" had me sobbing gently. But Jaco Pastorius' fretless bass playing is fabulous. On songs like "Hejira" itself, the acoustic guitar just builds and builds, but there's never a trite release into a "rock-y" guitar solo, instead he plays such liquid, musical lines. It's like a submarine or a whale making its presence felt and briefly seen.

Categories: music, Hejira, JoniMitchell, JacoPastorius