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Forgive me, Great Scott of Rock, I have sinned.
I didn't think it could happen, but it happened.
I will no longer listen to those two together.
In my partial defense, King Vega of Rock, I assure you that those I dealt with were two sorcerers. How can such thoughts be put into the head of a person who has wagered their heart and soul on The Who and Led Zeppelin? And believe me, it wasn't out of frugality that I didn't bet more, it was all I had at the time.
The man, in his earthly form, even had the look of a sorcerer: long, straight, filthy hair, protruding ears, strange headbands, strange sounds he drew from his instrument, an instrument he seemed to have modified as he pleased, as is customary among sorcerers, to make it more effective.
His name was Pastorius, that man, perhaps you've heard of him, oh Great Inquisitor of Rock. Well, I say that if he were a proper American, he would have had a surname like Smith, Ford,... maybe Callaghan at most. But he was named Pastorius, clearly indicating he was hiding something strange.
Now I do not deny that having similar clues regarding the woman would be convenient, allowing me, oh Great Scrutinizer of Rock, to prove more easily what I am asserting. Unfortunately, I have none. I must say she never had anything of the witch's appearance, quite the opposite. And I can't glean much from her name and surname either, quite ordinary.
But perhaps the proof lies in this very lack of evident clues. Is it not true that when it comes to women, everything can become the opposite of everything? It might be that witches should be sought precisely where one would never think to.
Some claimed, which you certainly recall, that the devil is too cunning to make witches with the appearance of witches.
And then there are all those elusive melodies proving me right. Those melodies are a creation of the woman. Oh Man of Monte del Rock, surely there exist not only witches spending time mixing potions? Surely there are some who prefer using music to make victims.
To cut it short, Magnificent Chancellor of Rock, this time the victim was me, the victim of the sound plot created by those two, from the intertwining of her voice and his bass lines. I'll summarize my experience briefly.
Calls from the woman, coming from afar, sliding over imaginary waves created by guitar notes, caressing the eardrums and then immediately returning from whence they came and that, thinking about it now, I would say in terms of fatality they had nothing to envy to siren calls, indeed, I would dare say that's exactly what it was about. During listening, however, one does not notice the danger and proceeds calmly. After a while, the bass comes alive with notes shaking the guts, but at first there are few and quick interventions and so one goes on still unthinkingly. And slowly, without noticing, the two elements close around the mind and one finds oneself along the cotton avenue, and at that point, it's too late.
The boiling of the bass becomes denser, and one surrenders, "Talk to Me," hens, "Jericho," then one reaches paprika plains and the program includes a fantasy of piano and hovering voice, followed by some orchestra, a bit too much orchestra perhaps. As dessert, a taste of weather forecasts. It continues with Otis and Marlena and a good bit of percussion. Then it's the turn of the naughty daughter of Don Juan, of "Off Night Backstreet," and finally of "The Silky Veils of Ardor." The man doesn't intervene in this last piece, only voice and guitar, but the music does not lose one gram of its fatality.
Oh Great Orson of Rock, I can't tell you when it happened, when that thought which is condemning me crossed my mind, I only remember that it happened without me realizing it, without being able to do anything about it: "In the end, for me, all the rest of the music can go to funk-u low."
But it was just a moment, Grand Vizier Detutiterun of Rock, then I recovered, I immediately immersed my mind into "Live at Leeds" and everything returned as before.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Overture / Cotton Avenue (06:41)
A red sun came rolling down a grey sky
And the frogs and dogs and night birds then
Started up singing sweet country lullaby
You see that patch of city lights-
Somewhere in there's Cotton Avenue-
That's where I'm going to take myself tonight
With a spit shine on my dancing shoes
If you got a place like that to go
You just have to go there
If you got no place special
Well then, you just go no place special
I guess it's just the summer in the young blood
Ripe and juicy in the young blood
Teasing to go down to ...
Cotton Avenue
To hear the shiny shiny music
See all the shiny people dancing to it
Anytime you go to ...
Cotton Avenue
If you got a place like that to go
You know you got to go there
If you got no place special
Well then, you just go no place special
You see that summer storm brewing in the southern sky
By the time it hits here I'll be dancing high and dry
To rhythm and blues
On Cotton Avenue
Poor boys'll be hanging around outside in the street
They got all the latest words
They're dancing to the latest beat
While they're hustling and sizing you
On Cotton Avenue
If you got a place like that to go
You just have to go there
If you've got no place special
Well my dear
You just so no place ... special
03 Jericho (03:25)
I'll try to keep myself open up to you
That's a promise that I made to love
When it was new
"Just like Jericho" I said
"Let these wall come tumbling down"
I said it like I finally found the way
To keep the good feelings alive
I said it like it was something to strive for.
I'll try to keep myself open up to you
And approve your self expression
I need that, too
I need your confidence, baby
And the gift of your extra time
In turn I'll give you mine
Sweet darling, it's a rich exchange
It seems to me
It's a warm arrangement!
Anyone will tell you
Just how hard it is to make and keep a friend
Maybe they'll short sell you
Or maybe it's you
Judas, in the end
When you just can no longer pretend
That you're getting what you need
Or you're giving out anything for them to grow and feed on.
I'll try to keep myself open up to you
It gets easier and easier to do
Just like Jericho
Let these walls come tumbling down now
Let them fall right on the ground
Let all these dogs go running free
The wild and the gentle dogs
Kenneled in me.
04 Paprika Plains (16:21)
It fell from midnight skies
It drummed on the galvanized
In the washroom, women tracked the rain
Up to the make-up mirror
Liquid soap and grass
And Jungle Gardenia crash
On Pine-Sol and beer ...
It's stifling in here ...
I've got to get some air ...
I'm going outside to get some air
Back in my hometown
They would have cleared the floor
Just to watch the rain come down!
They're such sky oriented people--
Geared to changing weather ...
I'm floating off in time
I'm floating off
I'm floating off in time
When I was three feet tall
And wide eyed open to it all
With their tasseled teams they came
To McGee's General Store
All in their beaded leathers
I would tie on colored feathers
And I'd beat the drum like war ...
I would beat the drum like war
I'd beat the drum
I'd beat the drum like war
But when the church got through
They traded their beads for bottles
Smashed--on Railway Avenue
And they cut off their braids
And lost some link with nature
I'm floating into dreams
I'm floating off
I'm floating into my dreams
I dream paprika plains
Vast and bleak and God forsaken
Paprika plains
And a turquoise river snaking
(Where crows gaze--vigilant on wires
Where cattle graze the grasses
Far from the digits of business hours
The moon clock wanes and waxes--
But here all time is stripped away
Nowhere on these plains
Is a sprout or an egg in evidence
To measure loss or gain ...
Only a little Indian band
Come down from some windy mesa
No women to make them food and child
No expressions on their faces
I'm low in a helicopter
And the wind from whirling blades
Flaps their woven blankets
And flags their raven braids
How came they to this emptiness?
How came they to this dream?
How came I to this view
From a flying machine
Of earth and air and water
And a band of Indian men
Without herds or flocks or crops
Or families or fires to tend?
Like a phoenix up from ashes now
A blanket figure springs
With a fist raised up to turquoise skies
Like liberty
And at the point of vanishing
Where the sky and the earth meet
A bomb blooms
Deadly mushroom
White
Gold
Heat
Like a phoenix up from ashes
Up from violent mysteries
And growing 'till the giant blast
Is to it like a golfer's tee
there comes a child's beach ball
And memory takes me back
to the beach to toss it up
to the garage to get it patched
A pink and yellow beach ball
Rolling
Grand
Detached
Turning the blues and greens of earth
From space probe photographs
I float out of the hovercraft
Naked as infancy
And weightless
And drifting
Horizontally
Like a filing to a magnet
Like the long descent of rain
I am drawn
I fall against the ball
And lose paprika plains
I suckle at my mother's breast
I embrace my mother earth
I remember perforated blinds
Over the crib of my birth
And just as Eve succumbed
To reckless curiosity
I take my sharpest fingernail
And slash the globe to see
Below me--
Vast Paprika plains
And the snake the river traces
And a little band of Indian men
With no expressions on their faces.)
The rain retreats
Like troops to fall on other fields and streets
Meanwhile they're sweet talking and name calling
And brawling on the fringes of the floor
I spot you through the smoke
With your eyes on fire
From J&B and coke
As I'm coming through the door
I'm coming back
I'm coming back for more!
The band plugs in again
You see that mirrored ball begin to sputter lights
And spin
Dizzy on the dancers
Geared to changing rhythms
No matter what you do
I'm floating back
I'm floating back to you!
05 Otis and Marlena (03:58)
Marlena under Foster Grants
She's undercover from the dawns advance
That girl is travel-drained
And the neon mercury vapor stained
Miami sky
It's red as meat
It's a cheap pink rose
Otis in the driver's seat
Watches the street lights fade away
On louvered blocks in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cards
They've come for fun and sun
While Muslims stick up Washington ...
Otis empties out the trunk
On the steps of that celebrated dump
Sleazing by the sea
Bow down to her royal travesty--
In her ballrooms heads of state--
In her bedrooms rented girls--
Always the grand parades of cellulite
Jiggling to her golden pools
Through flock and cupid colonnades
They jiggle into surgery
Hopefully beneath the blade
They dream of golden beauty ...
They've come for fun and sun
While Muslims stick up Washington ...
Marlena, white as stretcher sheet
Watches it all from her 10th floor balcony
Like it's her opera box
All those Pagliacci summer frocks
Otis is fiddling with the TV dial
All he gets are cartoons and reruns
She taps her glass with an emery file
Watching three rings in the sun
The golden dive, the fatted flake
And sizzle in the mink oil
It's all a dream
She has awake
Checked into Miami Royal
Where they've come for fun and sun
While Muslims hold up Washington ...
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
07 Dreamland (04:39)
It's a long, long way from Canada
A long way from snow chains
Donkey vendors slicing coconut
No parkas to their name
Black babies covered in baking flour
The cook's got a carnival song
We're going to lay down someplace shady
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
Walter Raleigh and Chris Columbus
Come marching out of the waves
And claim the beach and all concessions
In the name of the suntan slave
I wrapped that flag around me
Like a Dorothy Lamour sarong
And I lay down thinking national
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
Goodtime Mary and a fortune hunter
All dressed up to follow the drums
Mary in a feather hula-hoop
Miss Fortune with a rose on her big game gun
All saints, all sinners shining
Heed those trumpets all night long
Propped up on a samba beat
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
Tar baby and the Great White Wonder
Talking over a glass of rum
Burning on the inside
With the knowledge of things to come
There's gambling out on the terrace
And midnight ramblin' on the lawn
As they lead toward temptation
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
In a plane flying back to winter
In shoes full of tropic sand
A lady in a foreign flag
On the arm of her Marlboro Man
The hawk howls in New York City
Six foot drifts on Myrtle's lawn
As they push the recline buttons down
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
La, La ...
African sand on the trade winds
And the sun on the Amazon
As they push the reline buttons down
With dreamland coming on
Dreamland, dreamland
Dreamland, dreamland
08 Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (06:36)
I'm Don Juan's reckless daughter
I came out two days on your tail
Those two bald-headed days in November
Before the first snowflakes sail
Out on the vast and subtle plains of mystery
A split tongue spirit talks
Noble as a nickel chief
Striking up an old juke box
And he says:
"Snakes along the railroad tracks"
He says, "Eagles in jet trails ..."
He says, "Coils around feathers and talons on scales ...
Gravel under the belly plates ..."
He says, "Wind in the Wings ..."
He says, "Big bird dragging its tail in the dust ...
Snake kite flying on a string."
I come from open prairie
Given some wisdom and a lot of jive!
Last night the ghosts of my old ideas
Reran on channel five
And it howled so spooky for its eagle soul
I nearly broke down and cried
But the split tongue spirit laughed at me
He says, "Your serpent cannot be denied."
Our serpents love the whisky bars
They love the romance of the crime
But didn't I see a neon sign
Fester on your hotel blind
And a country road come off the wall
And swoop down at the crowd at the bar
And put me at the top of your danger list
Just for being so much like you are!
You're a coward against the altitude--
You're a coward against the flesh--
Coward--caught between yes and no
Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes!
Reckless brazen in the play
Of your changing traffic lights
Coward--slinking down the hall
to another restless night
As we center behind the eight ball
As we rock between the sheets
As we siphon the colored language
Off the farms and the streets
Here in Good-Old-God-Save-America
the home of the brave and the free
We are all hopelessly oppressed cowards
Of some duality
Of restless multiplicity
(Oh say can you see)
Restless for streets and honky tonks
Restless for home and routine
Restless for country-safety-and her
Restless for the likes of reckless me
Restless sweeps like fire and rain
Over virgin wilderness
It prowls like hookers and thieves
Through bolt locked tenements
Behind my bolt locked door
The eagle and the serpent are at war in me
The serpent fighting for blind desire
The eagle for clarity
What strange prizes these battles bring
These hectic joys-these weary blues
Puffed up and strutting when I think I win
Down and shaken when I think I lose
There are rivets up here in this eagle
There are box cars down there on your snake
And we are twins of spirit
No matter which route home we take
Or what we forsake
We're going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And we'll go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style
I touched you on the central plains
It was plane to train my twin
It was just plane shadow to train shadow
But to me it was skin to skin
The spirit talks in spectrums
He talks to mother earth to father sky
Self indulgence to self denial
Man to woman
Scales to feathers
You and I
Eagles in the sky
You and I
Snakes in the grass
You and I
Crawl and fly
You and I
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Other reviews
By London
Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is the album where Mitchell’s music opens to the most genuine contamination of Caribbean and African sounds.
It must be listened to with both mind and body in complete tranquility to truly appreciate all its refinements and sonic details.
