I don't get it...Exile on main Street-Blue


I love to listen to great podcast/interviews with great musicians. Last night i listened to Rick Beato interview Maynard from the great band Tool. Besides being a fantastic conversation, Maynard told Rick the two most influential albums for his music inspiration are Joni Mitchell Blue, and Black Sabbath's first self titled record.

I understand and love Black Sabbaths first record, but I have listened to JM Blue countless times and just don't understand what the hype is. Full disclosure I love female vocalists, and I also love Joni's  Court and a Spark. With that said I have heard many musicians rave about Blue. Please enlighten me-what am I missing ?

The other head scratcher for me is Exile on Main Street by the Stones. Again I have heard many musicians rave about this double album. I don't get it... Beggars Banquet-Let it Bleed-Sticky Fingers are so much better in my opinion, but just like Blue, It seems like musicians much prefer Exile on Main Street.

I know its all subjective...but these are two records I have never learned to appreciate. Thoughts ?

krelldog

I’m not a troll and I don’t like conflict. Opinionated and intense, yes, but not a troll and I don’t like conflict. As such I’ve been thinking about my contributions to this thread quite a bit.
I think I was still “on one” from the previous Taylor Swift thread and would have been well-advised to not drag that energy into this thread, and foist such negativity with the hectoring tone of the first half of my first post on this thread.
For this, I apologize.

I love both LPs in question, and there are plenty of widely-praised things that I either “didn’t get” until relatively late in life (jazz music being a big one - it was mid-30s for me with that) or still “don’t get.” If something doesn’t move you, it doesn’t move you. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s entirely possible that at some point in life, it will.
Side note: the YT vid of Joni on the BBC, a 1970 performance that includes many “new” songs soon to be released on Blue, left me amazed and deeply moved.
One of the great artists in pop history in her prime, captured beautifully by the BBC technical staff.

 

I’d love to hear a Taylor Swift covering Joni Mitchell album!

Those two bimbos rock! You know, as much as they can for being women...

I think when seemingly every media outlet lavishes something with effusive praise, I go into it with a certain expectation that causes me to be disappointed sometimes.
In that situation, I feel like my ability to take the thing on it’s own terms is compromised.
I also think time/place and how I’m exposed to something effects how I feel about it. If something is associated with a very negative experience, it’s hard for me to appreciate it.
With these particular LPs, they were released a decade before I was born, so it wasn’t like, “oh, Joni Mitchell and the Rolling Stones have new LPs out.” I just sought them out from the perspective of “these LPs came out 30 years ago,” or whatever. They were obviously not contemporary releases.
In that scenario, I just thought they were both absolutely brilliant.
With Exile on Main Street, not only do the songs seem to attain a unique, hard-to-define kind of soulful, scuzzy majesty (‘Tumbling Dice,’ ‘Torn and Frayed,’ ‘Let it Loose,’ ‘Soul Survivor,’) but there’s real diversity between something like “Rip This Joint” and “Torn and Frayed,” between “I Just Want to See His Face” and “Sweet Virginia,” between “Ventilator Blues” and “Let it Loose,” etc. etc.

Blue is just genius to me.
The combination of highly sophisticated harmonic composition with such intense emotion and poetry is just masterful to me.

I’d love to hear a Taylor Swift covering Joni Mitchell album!

Those two bimbos rock! You know, as much as they can for being women...

@thecarpathian  , you are the one who rocks!

Well, as a huge fan of the run spanning Beggar's Banquet through Sticky Fingers, my reaction to Exiles was the same as yours.  I WANTED to like it, I believed it when people so much smarter  than me told me I was SUPPOSED to like it, but I just couldn't break into it.  Over the years, I've owned 3 or 4 copies, all of which I played in depth, and then finally gave up and sold.  There's obviously something there, but other than maybe 2 or 3 tracks, nothing to compare with the accomplishments of the preceding albums.

As Kavi says, to each his own.