Track Listing

1. You Turn Me On I'm A Radio
2. Big Yellow Taxi
3. Rainy Night House
4. Woodstock
5. Cactus Tree
6. Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire
7. Woman Of Heart And Mind
8. A Case Of You
9. Blue
10. Circle Game
11. Peoples' Parties
12. All I Want
13. Real Good For Free
14. Both Sides Now
15. Carey
16. The Last Time I Saw Richard
17. Jericho
18. Love Or Money

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32088 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Customer Reviews

...my ten-year old's a more sensitive editor...
I only liked half of this album on vinyl ... the latter half.
And if the performance had been transferred from the vinyl version, I'd give it three stars.

BUT

This 'transfer' from vinyl to CD is a SUCH a hack job. One can easily hear the crude edits. The intimacy of the dialogue from the original recording was slashed.

Truly, my little boy could have done a better remastering job.

For shame.

One of my favorite live albums
How many high points is one artist allowed? In Joni's case, a whole pile. She gives a lot of the hold hits an extreme makeover, which in my mind is what all artists should do when they make live albums: the jazz fusion "Woodstock" has little to do with either her original studio recording or Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young's rock cover. That's the most extreme example, but "Big Yellow Taxi" (redone as a blues-rocker), and the Miles Davis-influenced "Rainy Night House" are barely recognizable. Which is what playing live should be about: being spontaneous. After "Woodstock", everyone runs off to get high or something and they come back with "Cactus Tree" - one of my favorite Mitchell tracks, but presented in drab form here. Actually, a lot of the acoustic songs are lesser ("Woman of Heart and Mind"; and god does that buzzing on "A Case of You" get old fast - the solo piano treatment suits "Blue" and "For Free" well, but those tunes are hard to screw up). "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire" works a lot better, and the jazz-pop treatment fits it well. And the spoken intro "The Circle Game" is funny, though I still hate the off-key chorus. Oh, I forgot to say how much I like this jazz version of "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio". Lots. It's simply beautiful. And "Carey" sounds fantastic as a Steely Dan-like rocker. To top it all off, the album ends with two songs you at the time couldn't find anywhere else: "Jericho" (which eventually found its way on Don Juan's, in a far superior arrangement) and "Love or Money". "Jericho" is nothing special, but the keyboards on the funky "Love or Money" rule, and it's got an awesome sax solo too. If that weren't good enough, it's also got a cool wah guitar solo! Seriously, why wasn't that put on a studio album?

LA Express is a fine band
I don't really understand the critism os the band here. Yes, 30 years later, it sounds cheesy in parts, but remember that they were representing a sound at that time. And remember that this is essentially the same band that just months later went on to make Court and Spark w/ Joni. Plus this is not a studio album - of course they are going to try to dress up the songs a little bit.

I own almost all of the Joni albums and this totally worth getting.

- Z