| Joni Mitchell – Edith and The Kingpin Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Hissing intially did well but chilled out because of un-astute reviews. The only Joni album I listened to more than this was For the Roses... (BarandGrill and Electricity motivated me to learn open D tunings (not dropped-D but full blown Open D so that every fingering changes!) on guitar...). The song ends with them staring eye to eye and daring not look away, which is almost as pregnant a phrase as Dylan's "Two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl..." They are at the threshold of a relationship that is already fraught with danger... they are "Romantic and snowblind"... good luck guys! The song is a still life of how the promise of intimacy is challenged by the very social scenes necessary for people to meet. What makes a man desirable in that milieu? Well, he's a Big Man, an alpha male, on the hunt, and he's back in the same woods where partners from previous trysts (that did not grow into long-term or he would not be back on the hunt) make up a kind of public foreplay for being chosen, which involves the passed-over girls giving Edith the heads-up and his gangster moves... and the toxic risk of getting involved with a coke-king and his "aging-powder"... every line in the song shades the subtext of what this scene is... I love the reference to her song "Electricity" (which is basically a schematic of a real good erotic circuit board) with the line "the wires in the walls are huh-hu-huh-hummmming"... and the closing line leaves us with a tableaux of the two of them and a future both anxious and hopeful... |
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