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JONI MITCHELL
Italy 1988 [no label, 1CD]
Live at the Teatro Ariston Tenco, San Remo, Italy; October 22, 1988. Very good audience recording.
Thanks to mauro r and to hanwaker for sharing the show at Dime.
hanwaker noted:
The Club Tenco presented Joni with the ‘Tenco Songwriter Award’ a recognition of the career of artists who have made significant contributions to the world of song. Rai 1 TV San Remo, Italy very likely broadcast the event… but no trace of a video. This here is an audience capture.
Joni is accompanied by her then husband Larry Klein on bass.
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Jim Leahy, jonimitchell.com:
“Jony Mitchell: L’impegno, l’amore” is the title of the Italian TV broadcast of Joni’s mini-concert at 1988’s San Remo Song Fest where she received a songwriting award. This five-song set is a surprisingly taut little gig featuring some of Joni’s best singing ever. Maybe it was that California flu bug she picked up before she arrived that made her voice so pungent and vulnerable; maybe it was the strangeness of the setting and the built-in audience approval that gave her such a relaxed focus.
After a straightforward version of her then-new song “Night Ride Home,” Joni moves into a new minor 7th tuning for a guitar version of “Lakota” from the recently released Chalkmark in a Rainstorm. Gorgeous, passionate phrasing; dramatic and soulful singing; deliberate but mesmerizing momentum; percussive guitar licks punctuated by aggressive attacks of harmonics - I never realized the song could be so moving.
Joni then sings Hejira and Number One, followed by the presentation of the award and a bouquet of flowers from Antonio Silvia and Bruno Valenciano. But the real treat, the one that ends the show, is a “work in progress” - a song that would eventually become one of her most elliptical and enigmatic song-poems: Passion Play. Just guitar chords and Italian-sounding syllables: “bom de dom dom day… bella dom dom day” with a few words: “It’ll take time, but time brings changes.” Peaceful, almost meditative - this kind of committed singing you can’t fake.
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Lineage:
aud ( very low… if not from the master) unknown transfer > wavs > flac
- channel volume corrections
- lowering applause
- smoothing some coughs and other hick-ups
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
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Track 01. Lakota 7:45
Track 02. Joni talks 1:28
Track 03. Hejira 6:57
Track 04. Joni talks 0:37
Track 05. Number One 4:15
Track 06. Joni talks 0:19
Track 07. 4th of July/A Night Ride Home 3:19
Track 08. Premio Tenco - Award Presentation 1:45
Track 09. Joni talks 0:19
Track 10. Speechless (cuts near end) * 4:01
31 mins
* A wordless version of the song that became “Passion Play” (When All The Slaves Are Free)
Click here to order Joni Mitchell releases.
