19 y.o. Joni Mitchell and baritone uke tapes

bbkobabe said:
That's the Wollensak reel to reel machine I mentioned in my (above) post that Joni is recording on in the picture in this post... KCPR had upgraded to professional quality two-track ALTEC machines by then, and Weird Al's first two songs were played straight off the master reel-to-reels made there on Dr. Demento's live show out of Los Angeles on KMET-LA. (Their jingle was: "Little bit of heaven - 94.7 - KMET! Tweedledee!") Weird Al had interned with The Good Doctor back when both of them were still developing their personas... This happened at KPPC, a tiny station out of Pasadena.

(Seriously? It takes me half a minute to recall my kid's birthdays - but the KMET jingle pops into my mind instantly... Memory is such a weird thing...)
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Your memories are fascinating!
 
TimWilson said:
I don't know that the song would have happened at all if she'd been there. … It's the "not having experienced it" aspect that's at the core of the song. … Imagination was the thing. The song Woodstock, and almost everything about it, grew because of what we saw, yes, but also because of what those sights inspired as visions, a combination of nostalgia for something that never happened but might have, and for a future that seemed impossible, but might be possible.… So it's not ironic that someone who wasn't there wrote the ultimate ode. It's inevitable. It's essential to that version of the song, because that version is about longing.
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Tim, thank you. This is why I love these forums.
 
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fowl said:
Back in the mid 70's we listened to Dr Demento every Sunday night.
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In Los Angeles, the Dr. Demento show ran for four hours... EVERY SUNDAY!!!

I used to babysit for some of my parent's friends almost every Sunday (1974-5), and I would listen to the show as I watched the kids and finished my homework...

I wonder what those kids thought of it!?!
 
Patty said:
Your memories are fascinating!
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Thanks! It's amazing how fresh these memories are...

Weird Al was on KCPR (Cal Poly Radio- a college station with a great transmitter) from 8-10 on Sundays, recreating the Dr. Demento show that we both grew up with in Los Angeles... I would come in early, do the fake newscasts, and produce silly jingles and ads in real time. Al would play them during his show...

Then I came on at 10pm with the Sunday By Request show... practically every student at the university would hear us since everyone was cramming for tests and getting their homework finished on Sunday evenings... We had the two most popular shows of the week, and we were both well known at school at the time...

I remember walking down the streets of San Luis Obispo with my grandparents at the time, and having someone come up and say HI! every couple of minutes. My Grandpa asked me "Are you some kind of celebrity here?" I sort of was... but I was riding on the coattails of Weird Al...

Ironically, one of my former students, who was a huge Weird Al fan and highly skeptical that my stories of our times together were true, did a deep dive into the Cal Poly archives and found some of the tapes Al and I made together. For some odd reason a compliation tape I made of my various production work I did there ended up in their audio archives. It was just dumb luck that it was one of the things selected for posterity... and my student was finally convinced that I wasn't just making this all this up!

Al and I also both wrote for the short lived LISTEN! magazine in the mid-eighties, right before his career took off...

What an amazing time!
 
bbkobabe said:
And not only that... If she hadn't played that mountain dulcimer on California and a couple of other songs we probably wouldn't even recognize one if we saw it: She rescued that instrument from obscurity!

I first heard her play the dulcimer when she played a couple of duo shows with James Taylor in London... a partial video available on youtube last time I checked...

But I first heard that show when I was working at radio station KCPR in 1979...the very same station where Weird Al made his first two recordings that launched him to fame... (Well, technically, they were recorded in the bathroom across the hall from the studio... I need to see his movie and find out if that part is shown accurately... we had two 100' microphone cables that ran from the production room... out the front door of KCPR... and into the men's room. We had someone stationed in the hall to make sure no one tripped on the cords or tried to use the bathroom... but that's another story!).

Back to Joni: I was looking through a box of old reel to reel tapes trying to find some tape we could bulk erase and record over for my radio production class. This was back when editing was done with a razor blade and splicing tape. After a while, the tape we used had so many splices put into them you had to find some fresh tape and start over...

Anyhow: Out of the box popped a reel from an old show called RetroRock, a syndicated show that - I think - was sponsored by Ivory Soap?... a soap opera? The RetroRock series specialized in sending out obscure concert audio for radio stations to play with the ads baked in... it's easy to tell the source when you hear one of these old tapes. We were supposed to mail them back after airing them, but I guess someone didn't have the heart to return this one and so it sat in this box for years and years.

I slapped that big real onto the old Wollensak T-1500 reel player in the preview room and was blown away... it was the first time I had heard her live!

I transferred the tape to a cassette, which I still have. It sound awful FYI but I still listen to it from time to time for the nostalgia blast...

Joni talks about her dulcimer and names it's maker, and then launches into Carey and California. I'm not sure if that part of the show makes it onto the youtube video... I'll have to watch it again and see.

What an amazing talent... A prototype for Taylor Swift? Maybe... They both rose to fame with songs about their ex-boyfriends, if nothing else!
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I hope you transfer the cassette tape to a CD before the print through makes it unlisten-able. Very cool that you have it. Love hear about your experiences.
 
fowl said:
I was living at a trailer park in the mid 70's. I opened the door and cranked up the speakers so the neighborhood could all hear the Dr.
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There was nothing else like it! Did you live on LA where we got the full four hour show?
 
I live in central Indiana. As I recall, the show we picked up on the radio was about 2 hours.
 
(sorry for the thread drift)

Dr Demento was on WKDA FM in Nashville mid '70s ~2 hours every Sunday night.
 
TimWilson said:
I don't know that the song would have happened at all if she'd been there. Nobody else that I can recall wrote a song about being there, at least not that I can remember. It certainly wouldn't have been the same song, or likely anywhere near as good….
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Great perspective! Got me tracing music and events before my time…

Well before Woodstock in 1969 Joni was earning a good income from many of her songs being sung by well known performers. (Some song writers live well on *one* hit song)

Her appearance would have made her ‘Queen of Woodstock’, but she was advised that traffic jams leaving the site would make her miss her national TV debut on the Monday Dick Cavett show.






en.m.wikipedia.org

Woodstock (song) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
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casualmusic said:
Her appearance would have made her ‘Queen of Woodstock’
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She kinda is anyway, no? :) I mean, Janis, Grace, Joan, and some other women had dandy performances at Woodstock, but I bet that Joni is the first woman who comes to mind when you hear the name "Woodstock".

The song made its public debut at the Big Sur Folk Festival, September 13-14, 1969, and was included in the 1971 documentary of that year's edition of the festival, Celebration at Big Sur. Really terrific lineup - CSN, Joan Baez (the festival organizer; it ran from 64-71), John Sebastian, Flying Burritos, and more.

Anyway, here's Woodstock.

 
Volume 3: Asylum Years

(Sorry, can’t make the link work..)

Go to :
YouTube
@JoniMitchell
Releases

This volume seems to be sketches, with best songs appearing in her albums.

.
 
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