Comp Geffen Recordings: Joni Mitchell: Amazon.ca: Music

Disc: 1
1. Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody
2. Wild Things Run Fast
3. Ladies' Man
4. Moon At The Window
5. Solid Love
See all 12 tracks on this disc
Disc: 2
1. Fiction
2. The Three Great Stimulants
3. Tax Free
4. Smokin' (Empty, Try Another)
5. Dog Eat Dog
See all 11 tracks on this disc
Disc: 3
1. Number One
2. Number One
3. Lakota
4. The Tea Leaf Prophecy
5. Dancin' Clown
See all 10 tracks on this disc
Disc: 4
1. Night Ride Home
2. Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free)
3. Cherokee Louise
4. The Windfall (Everything For Nothing)
5. Slouching Towards Bethlehem
See all 11 tracks on this disc

Product Description

Album Description

Four CDs sporting Joni's complete recordings for Geffen during the '80s, including all four albums, Wild Things Run Fast (1982), Dog Eat Dog (1985), Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (1988), & Night Ride Home (1991), that she recorded for the label plus some tasty rarities! Like a couple of demos, 'Two Grey Rooms' & 'Good Friends', & a cover of Bob Dylan's 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' that was recorded for the Night Ride Home sessions. & perhaps even more intriguingly for this elusive artist, Joni has provided a personal introduction & in-depth descriptions for each track. Rare photos, original artwork & 24-bit mastering complete the first of what we hope will be several Joni Mitchell boxed sets to come! 44 tracks packaged in a clamshell box. Geffen. 2003.

Album Details

Japanese Limited Edition Issue of her Geffen Label Albums ("Wild Things Run Fast", "Dog Eat Dog", "Chalkmark in a Rainstorm" and "Night Ride Home") in Deluxe, Miniaturized LP Sleeve Replicas of the Original Vinyl Album Artwork, House in a Special Box. Includes Four Cds.

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

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2.0 out of 5 stars For ardent fans only, Jun 15 2004

By

cold as the sea "steelblue" (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comp Geffen Recordings (Audio CD)

If you're new to Joni Mitchell-don't look here.
Apart from Night Ride Home and about half the tracks on Wild Things... this is a poor selection of her talent.
I've never been able to listen to Chalk Mark or Dog Eat Dog albums without cringing, despite the fact that musically Joni is in my top 3 artists of all time.
Only buy this if you want the demo tracks and the packaged photos and notes; otherwise borrow copies of seperate CD's before you decide. To me, it's just a marketing ploy to rake in the dollars for the unreleased demo's. An expensive investment for little return.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, challenging, beautiful - the Geffen years, Mar 26 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Comp Geffen Recordings (Audio CD)

The 4-cd Geffen set presents, repackaged and remastered, Joni Mitchell's post-jazz, return-to-pop period, from 1982 to 1991. True, Mitchell's 80s period is jazzier and more daring than conventional pop music, but these CDs nonetheless mark a major shift from the wordy and impressionistic jazz-rock fusion of her late 70s work to a simpler and perhaps more accessible pop-rock. By nearly anyone's measure these albums do not stand up to her finest work, the masterpieces Blue, Court and Spark, and Hejira. But their extraordinary production value (very appreciated by this fan if not by all), accompanied by some remarkable songs (Moon at the Window, Impossible Dreamer, My Secret Place and Cherokee Louise are the respective highlights, among others) make for intriguing, challenging and beautiful listening. Another highlight: the bonus demo of Two Grey Rooms, a track demonstrating better than any other found here (or perhaps before or since) what for me is the essence of Joni Mitchell's work: sensuality, desire, sophistication, love. I can't respond to another reviewer's claim that this set isn't adequately remastered. I detect a richer, fuller sound than the original CDs, and I'll have to leave it at that. The booklet contains extensive comments by the artist, some insightful, some spiteful, some amusing, all Joni.

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3.0 out of 5 stars NOT REMASTERED !!!, Mar 17 2004

By

"jus_puk" (Finland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comp Geffen Recordings (Audio CD)

The Geffen era is the least liked period of Joni's music. Her early 70s folk fans and late 70s jazz fans (to put it bluntly) found these albums too commercial and overproduced. I'm not one of them! Being a teenager in the 80s, I totally soaked up this kind of sound. Conversely, I struggle with some of her early albums...

"Wild Things" and "Dog Eat Dog" are two of my favourite (Joni) albums. "Chalk Mark" has a few great gems but it is a bit uneven. "Night Ride Home" has more spacious, organic sound and it won back most of the fans. Overall, this is a batch of four very good albums. Still, I only give it three stars out of five.

Here is why. Most of Joni's albums have been re-released recently in glorious remastered HDCD sound and with fully restored artwork. Unfortunately, that proven recipe has not been used when reissuing these four albums. Instead, we get the Geffen box set.

The other re-releases didn't have bonus tracks, these have (except "Chalk Mark"). But that is hardly worth the hefty price of the box though, not even for a Joni fan. Where is the "Shiny Toys" remix, for example? The CD's come in very basic card wallets, neat but a bit cheap. There is a thick 86-page book(let), but is also a bit of a let-down. There is a spread of the unused art for "Dog Eat Dog", very nice. Joni has provided quaint comments for most of the tracks, but it almost seems she had better things to do, the further she got in the process. Only half of "Night Ride Home" apparently is worthy of commentary. Nothing to say about "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"? Astonishing.

My biggest complaint is sound quality. These CD's are NOT remastered (like it says on the top of this page). Nowhere on the box it actually claims this. 'Mastered from the original master tapes' simply means re-using the LP masters. Actual remastering would involve going back to the original multi-tracks and making a brand new mix, with digital playback in mind. That might sound like nitpicking, but the fact is that apart from raised sound level, there is practically no difference in sound - compared to the original CD's. They sound a bit tinny and thin and so do these. There is possibly a bit more bass on the first albums but no difference at all on the last two. I actually fooled myself a couple of times, thinking I was hearing an improvement in sound, when I was actually listening to the original 80s CD...

The Geffen box is one way to get these four albums - in case you're in the market to get them all on CD. But if you already have one of them, I would recommend getting the rest as the original CD's. You won't lose in sound quality and will get the albums the way they were meant to be released in, probably cheaper. If you own the original LP's: hold on to them! With no remastered CD's around - this box probably kills any chance of that happening - the best sound is still in the vinyls.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Joni...
I am 43... I first heard of Joni, for a guy I met that was a day temp worker in a wood products factory in Denver, back in 1979. Read more

Published on Dec 12 2003 by David

5.0 out of 5 stars TREASURES RESTORED AND PRESERVED.
Enough with the eternal effort of trying to categorize her music; anyone even remotely familiar with Joni Mitchell knows she is not a category. Read more

Published on Dec 8 2003 by RALPH PETERS