If someone would have asked me say ten years ago what artist's oeuvre I would take with me to a desert island, I would with dead certainty have answered: everything by Joni Mitchell, please. I'm not so sure anymore, although it could well be that I, when push comes to shove, would still make that choice. So it may not come as a surprise now that for a long time my all time best album was one of Joni's, Don Juan's Reckless daughter, where her cooperation with Jaco Pastorius
really took off, for instance on this song where she's questioning her love for a man who's new sweety has already moved in while still keeping poor Joni (assuming the song is sort of autobiographical) on the side as his Off Night Backstreet. Jaco's warm bass carries the whole song and is almost like a second voice to Joni's singing, it blends marvelously with her cold metal guitar, some nice echoey and
spacy flageolets too, great additional vocals - "Backstreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!"- by JD Souther and Glenn Frey, drums by John Guerrin, subtle and tight.
PS Be warned that the soundfile is quite big (500 Kb).
The first track from the first of Joni�s �jazz� LPs of the late 1970�s is all about opposition and equilibrium, (as are all her songs from this period). It is both richly melodic and dense/chant-like in structure, empty and lush in arrangement, its propulsive/hypnotic groove studded with Jaco Pastorius� weird, atonal bass speed bumps. Joni�s words/voice/performance is likewise wildly romantic and knowingly jaded simultaneously. The song is the sound of best singer/songwriter ever elegantly/effortlessly pushing the envelope.