Joni And Bowmore: Two perfect things to shut up about.
30 Aug
I have been busy these last few days so imagine my surprise when I emerge from my cocoon of bluster to find everyone sniggering about some newfangled urine based whisky, or ‘Pissky’ as it has been affectionately dubbed. Indeed it has even prompted some deeper philosophical musings of the relationship between whisky and art and even the old chestnut “What is Art?” I have nothing to add to the general chatter, everything witty that could possibly be said has probably already been said by Tim and Serge, what’s more I don’t have the energy to think about the implications of whisky made from juiced grannies right now. One thing is for sure though, I’m in no hurry to try it, the very thought gives me the willies (so to speak).
Joni Mitchell in 1968.
Most of my recent posts have been quite tasting driven since I cleaned up at Whisky Fringe so I’m quite keen to get back into doing some music and whisky parings. Listening to some Joni Mitchell the other day I was moved to do some digging on the tube of you, I wasn’t surprised to find many great videos, as is common for any major artist, but I was still blown away to find this one in particular.
I, like many other occasionally sane people, have a wealth of love for Joni Mitchell. There are many great songwriters and musicians in this world, the problem is that in order to achieve their influence and legend they have to compromise by being a colossal twat in their personal lives. Millions love Lennon and McCartney but they don’t have to deal with their egos, tantrums and general mentalness on a one to one scale. They can sit back and let their music score the pockmarked plateaus of their lives to great emotional effect. Joni Mitchell seems to be one of the few people who actually manages to transcend this rule and has retained a shade of humility and genuine humanity about her. In short, she comes across as a lovely person. However this is just a base attraction, it really is her music that hooks you in. There are so few truly genuine voices in this world, voices that have no artificially implanted vibrato, voices rich in naked honesty, voices that are instruments in their own right. Joni is one of those rare creatures that can stand so unassumingly and casually then she just opens her mouth and this sound comes out, its a rare and breathtaking thing to behold. Those songs she plays in the video are among her most popular but they are also some of the best examples of why she is brilliant. She is a performer who truly understands the idea of the song as a communicative device, she writes very beautiful, evocative lyrics but the expressiveness of her voice seems to bypass all potential boundaries of language. She is one of the few artists where all you need to understand her are a working pair of ears. Here is another one of my favourites from 1970.
She is a mesmerising performer to watch. Her little quirks of humour, a fleeting grin here and there and then back to some deep, focused boil of beautiful sound as she finds new subtle angles on her familiar melody lines. She is also an often overlooked guitarist as well. She is one of the greatest exponents of the alternative tuning on the guitar, throughout her career she must have used upwards of a hundred tuning variations. She is a master of taking a sideways view of melody, the hidden potential in otherwise familiar chords wrought from strings at different tensions and resonances, one of her greatest hallmarks is that it is impossible to sound quite like her. She is one of those musicians that you almost don’t want to share, there isn’t much that needs to be said about her, little to be defended or argued, she’s just Joni Mitchell and she just needs to be listened to. She transcends the arenas of arguments and pub debates that haunt the legend of other famous bands and artists. Sometimes you don’t want to prattle on about what you’re listening to, its much better just to listen to it.
The Bowmore Bicentenary. The 'Joni Mitchell' of malts?
When I do these matching things I usually try and pick whiskies that are not impossible to get hold of/afford/try. However on this occasion I don’t care, I doesn’t matter to me if this bottling is in the realms of possibility for anyone to get. In fact it doesn’t even need to be able to see the realms of possibility, this bottling might as well read to you like bottle number 0 of 0, available only through selected retail outlets. On the moon. This is pointless and verging on cruel but its Joni Mitchell and sometimes you just need one of those whiskies that shuts you up a bit. When you listen to Joni she tends to have that same effect of disengaging your vocal chords for you, the Bowmore Bicentenary is something of a whisky equivalent. Distilled in 1964 and bottled for the distilleries 200th anniversary in 1979, there are several versions available, I’ve tried two different ones so far and I would score them both 94/100 minimum. There is cask strength version too but, in an unusual inversion of bottling strength lore, it is reputedly not as good as the others. More importantly, it is one of those very rare drinking experiences that can change the way you think about whisky. It is whisky of such bewilderingly intense flavour and complexity that people trying it tend to be left more than a little speechless. I watched several people trying it at the Limburg whisky fair the other year and they were visibly occupying a different space to the rest of us, it was as if the thronging mass of nerderati around them had just melted away and they were tripping through a daze of tropical fruit and salt laced, heaven sent phenols. There is something about this whisky, its ability to be so soft yet at the same time bearing such a weighted depth of flavour. its the same sense of awesome humility you get when confronted with anything so perfectly crafted and beautiful. It is whisky that banishes all bullshit, all petty conversations about eras and bottling codes and tax stamps. It suddenly makes all these things irrelevant, just as the simple sound of Joni Mitchell singing and casually strumming a guitar can stop you dead in you tracks and you realise there is no need to say anything, these things exist and we all know how wonderful they are, we don’t need to say anything, to try and put such things into words can only spoil them. So I’ll shut up and we can finish with another video.
Agreed!
Very nice post!