Joni Mitchell's Mosh Pit

It's a long, long time since I've been to a rock concert. Most of
the people I'd most like to see are dead, musically defunct or in their
dotage, or consider that they are doing their duty by sticking their
famous noses outside of America once every few years and doing a gig in
some monster hall in Paris or Berlin; hence the rise of the tribute
band. Here in Manc land there's somebody impersonating Abba or the
Beatles virtually every day, but, hey what was this? A Joni Mitchell
and Carole King tribute concert? Could be interesting; and on Mother's
Day too; think I'll make it a surprise for Debbie. Having ascertained
her nursing off duty, I rang up the Lowry Centre for tickets the day
before the concert. Yes, they had tickets available at twelve quid
apiece; we could have two together, A1 and A2. Is that by any chance on
the front row? Cool, we're in Joni Mitchell's mosh pit!

The concert was by Blue Tapestry, and was billed in the paper as two
women; one of whom, I assumed would come onstage and pretend to be Joni
Mitchell and the other would do likewise for Carole King.
In actual fact there were two women, but they stayed on stage together;
Julie sang the Carole King numbers and played keyboards whilst Chris
sang the Joni songs and played guitar and dulcimer, and were backed up
by three extremely competent musicians. The concert was held in a small
side-theatre which probably only seated two or three hundred and,
whilst Debbie and I were so close to the stage we could see the lead
guitarist's nostril hairs, everyone in fact got a good view of the
concert. The name "Blue Tapestry" reflects the two major albums of
these prolific songwriters, and although the real artistes have long
since moved on, the tribute band were here to pander to the tastes of
the audience; give us the old stuff, the classics, the things we
listened to on old tin boxes in halls of residence and dingy student
bedsits thirty years ago! And in they poured, bald heads gleaming in
the spotlights, sagging breasts and thickening ankles concealed by
sensible jumpers and long skirts - and that was just the band, you
should have seen the audience! I used to find it incomprehensible how
the senior members of my family could watch rubbish like "All Our
Yesterdays", yet here I was with my baby boomer buddies, people who had
rolled in the mud, high on acid at Woodstock or, more likely, the Isle
Of Wight festival, now politely clapping folk-rock classics, drinking
spritzers in the interval, looking at life from both sides now as they
wonder if their own kids have done their homework.

About twenty minutes into the concert Chris picked up the dulcimer and
started to strum the opening chords of "All I Want", the track which
opens the wonderful album "Blue", and the goosebumps rose as
associations flooded in. "Blue" was Barbara's L.P., and Barbara was my
girlfriend for a period in the late 1970s. I'd go round to the nursing
home at St. James' Hospital in Leeds late evenings and we'd sit on her
bed, drink coffee and listen to Joni Mitchell. And that was it; we
could have gone out and done all kinds of things, but we preferred to
sit around listening to records. And our relationship never went
anywhere neither; I realised, much later, that this was because we were
both melancholics; I was an introverted bad-poetry-imitation of Leonard
Cohen to Barbara's submissive Joni, another doomed relationship which
permeates this album. But, when you're love's got lost and you're
listening to Joni alone in your room again, it sounds so much better.
So does Leonard Cohen, for that matter, in a way that's impossible to
explain, but if you're a melancholic you KNOW. Of course, other
fiercely practical people came along, pushed us out of our shells and
filled both our lives with love and babies and places to go and people
to see, and it was years before I met Barbara again; like myself, now a
parent with a house full of teenagers, lovelorn angst replaced by very
real and present parental fears, no time for self-indulgent posturing.
But when I heard the dulcimer I knew that Barbara, and Joni, would
always be "in my blood like holy wine, so bitter and so sweet".

Last week Debbie interrupted me whilst I was listening to Joni and
resurrecting my bad poet persona for the benefit of ABCTalers; she
wanted to listen to the original version of "Woodstock". Always eager
to contribute to my wife's musical education (an ongoing and far from
complete project) I obliged.

" 'Blue Tapestry' played it much better," she opined. And, needless to
say, she was right!

We are stardust, we are golden;
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden,
('Cos the lawn needs mowing).