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JONI MITCHELL AND THE PERSUASIONS - OKLAHOMA CITY 1979

December 4, 2020 – 5:47 am

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JONI MITCHELL AND THE PERSUASIONS
Oklahoma City 1979 [Goody Speed/Pitch-adjusted Remaster V2, 2CD]
Opening show of the ‘Shadows And Light’ Tour. Live at the Zoo Amphitheater, Oklahoma City, OK; August 3, 1979. Very good audience recording.

Thanks to davmar77; randall; and to goody for sharing the show at Dime.

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I can’t total up the hours Yer’s truly and our art department has put into this major upgrade, but it’s well into the dozens. Originally provided by davmar77 (he tells me) via trade to ‘randall’ many years ago. My thanks to them! I took a crack at the 1st remaster back then and was rather happy with how it turned out. For this reseed I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit those files and improve them further with some skill-set knowledge gained since then.

While I was doing that, ethiessen1 put together a ‘monsterpiece’ (sometimes pixel by pixel!) to accommodate all y’alls who burn these to audio disc, offering various packaging options. The burning scheme was well laid out in the original remaster’s text - it’ll fit on three discs or you can save one and burn it to two, depending on your personal preference.

On to the show, which brought y’all to the yard today.

I was going to give this a new title, something like “Joni wants y’all to Shut Up and Sit Down” to which I’d probably have added a ‘fuck’ or two but I decided against either one… Yeah - things got quite rambunctious and overly chatty (again, to be very kind to strangers) and you can clearly follow a conversation or two from nearby attendees to the taper along with the general din created by a large part of the audience, making it quite difficult for those among them who came just to listen and bask in the glow (we’ve all been ‘there’, right?) who then added to the noise by trying to quiet the noisy ones down. This caused poor Joni to try to finally wrangle the crowd a few songs into her set by telling them all to just “sit down and shut up”. It didn’t completely do the trick, but there’s a bit more focus even though the din never really dies out.

The tape from which this was transferred had probably developed a bit of a well-played and not exactly well-stored bit of flutter as well, still evident in the previous remaster, but which has now been reduced as best as I could get it, speaking of focus. There is now much less murkiness and mush. I’m making it sound like it’s only a so-so aud, but it isn’t that at all. It’s a very good, well-balanced capture tonally speaking, and it has been restored as close to what I imagine it sounded more like when that tape was newly recorded.

The Persuasions deliver a hot opener and I’ve tried to detail some of the titles more completely, which you’ll also see laid out in the artwork set-list. Joni’s set features a great selection of tunes from across her diverse releases as well as affording much time featuring some of those great cohorts chosen for this tour. Jaco does his dance and even manages to mash-up ‘Black Crow’ with ‘Whole Lotta Love’, Don goes to town on congas, Pat takes a nice ride, Michael has plenty of space to wail, Lyle is the perfect support for all this on his keys. This being the first show of a long tour which has been documented quite well, we get this stuff as it gestates. Joni even asks to begin ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ again as she stumbles on a lyric. That crowd was a major distraction, to be sure… Chalk it up among the things I’ll never understand in life.

So follow the bouncing ball, sing along with the son of Mitch, dance as if your life depends on it.

Yer PervFesser

Thanks so much to everyone involved in the creation and preservation of the source of this great performance, prior to my tinkering with it for the sake of improving upon what circulated previously, as a small way of giving something back in better condition than that in which it was originally shared.

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Thanks also to ethiessen1 for the artwork.

Lineage:
randall’s original lineage: CDR Mail Trade from reputable source (davmar77) > EAC (Secure) > flac (level 8, aligned and verified)
Goody’s additional lineage: TLH (WAV) > Audition (Pitch bender +58 cents; Phase adjusted; Tracking updated; Split single track 18 into new tracks 18 & 19; some mic-bump and wind noise reduction; Levels adjusted; fades) > Capstan > TLH (FLAC Level 8; Align sector boundaries; .ffp) > foobar2000 (tags)

Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.

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Disc 1
The Persuasions
Track 101. Slip Sliding Away 5:36
Track 102. Only Sixteen 2:21
Track 103. Searchin’-The Real Nitty Gritty 5:48
Track 104. Let Them Talk 2:29
Track 105. All I Have To Do Is Dream 2:46
Track 106. Oldies But Goodies Medley 3:32
Track 107. Return To Sender 2:48
Track 108. Stardust 3:47
Track 109. Candles In The Rain 1:29
Track 110. The Lord’s Prayer 3:40

Joni Mitchell
Track 111. Big Yellow Taxi 3:19
Track 112. In France They Kiss On Main Street 4:22
Track 113. Coyote 5:45
Track 114. Edith And The Kingpin 5:34
Track 115. Just Like This Train 4:36
Track 116. Free Man In Paris 4:31
Track 117. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 7:29
Track 118. Jaco’s Solo 6:14
76 mins

Disc 2
Track 201. The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines 6:19
Track 202. God Must Be A Boogie Man 4:46
Track 203. Hejira 7:27
Track 204. Don’s Solo/Dreamland 11:55
Track 205. Black Crow 4:20
Track 206. Help Me 4:35
Track 207. Amelia 6:51
Track 208. Furry Sings The Blues 6:16
Track 209. Raised On Robbery 3:25
Track 210. Shadows And Light 5:45
Track 211. Why Do Fools Fall In Love 3:59
Track 212. Woodstock 6:16
Track 213. Jericho 3:57
76 mins

Lineup:
Joni Mitchell - guitars, vocals
Jaco Pastorius - bass
Pat Metheny - guitar
Lyle Mays - keyboards
Michael Brecker - sax
Don Alias - drums, percussion

The Persuasions:
Jerry Lawson, Jimmy Hayes, Joe Russell, Jayotis Washington, Herbert “Tubo” Rhoad, vocals - Tracks 101-110; 210 and 211.

Click here to order Joni Mitchell’s Shadows And Light.