Joni Mitchell - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: Old Grey Whistle Test, New Victoria Theatre, London, Britain, 4-22-1974

In 1974, Joni Mitchell arguably reached the pinnacle of her commercial success. She released the album "Court and Spark" near the start of the year. It reached Number Two in the US and sold a couple million copies. For all her previous album, she'd generally stuck to a solo acoustic sound, whereas this one was rocking, with a full band. For her next few albums she would turn more towards jazz, so this was the closest she got to a conventional rock sound. 

Towards the end of the year, she released a live album, called "Miles of Aisles," which was recorded in August 1974. It was a good time for a live album for her, allowing her to do her earlier acoustic songs with a full band. However, it only contained one song from her hit album "Court and Spark," and it was "People's Parties," which wasn't one of the album's hits. Furthermore, there was almost no banter recorded between the songs.

Unfortunately, there are almost no truly excellent sounding bootlegs from her 1974 concert. In fact, the only one with a soundboard level quality that I know of is this one. However, there are problems. About 45 minutes of this show was broadcast on the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test." I think more of it was broadcast for BBC radio. Three of the songs seemed to have not been bootlegged at all. Ditto with the banter between songs. 

So I've had to cobble this together from different sources. The "Old Grey Whistle Test" songs all sound great. But they were selected as highlights from throughout the show, rather than being a bunch. The rest generally sound almost as good, but there are some exceptions. There were some sonic flaws here and there. For instance, for the last song, "Twisted," there were about ten seconds that were all messed up, so I patched that with a version with a lot lower sound quality. Also, there was no applause at the end. So again I patched in a different version for the very end, allowing me to include all the cheering after the song. I had to do a similar patch for "(He Played Real Good) For Free." That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. There are a couple other spots with minor problems that I decided not to fix, since using a lower quality patch probably wouldn't sound any better.

I also decided to do something about the three songs that didn't get bootlegged:  "This Flight Tonight," "Woodstock," and "Jericho." For those, I used the best alternate versions I could find, which was a concert in Ambler, Pennsylvania, in August 1974 for the first two, and one in Seattle, Washington, for the last one. For the banter, I used additional bits of the concerts from Ambler and Seattle. But I listened to several bootlegs of her 1974 concerts, and there just wasn't that much banter.  For instance, for most of those concerts, she played the first six or so songs without any talking at all between songs. So this recording reflects that, with banter only before some of the songs. But she did talk extensively in a few cases.

I expect that in the next year or two, Mitchell will release her third "Archives" box set, which will include this time period. So hopefully we'll get a full version of a 1974 concert. Until then, this is the best version out there.

This concert is an hour and 47 minutes long. That makes it significantly longer than "Miles of Aisles," which is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 talk (Joni Mitchell)
02 This Flight Tonight (Joni Mitchell)
03 You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio (Joni Mitchell)
04 Free Man in Paris (Joni Mitchell)
05 The Same Situation (Joni Mitchell)
06 talk (Joni Mitchell)
07 Just like This Train (Joni Mitchell)
08 Rainy Night House (Joni Mitchell)
09 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
10 talk (Joni Mitchell)
11 Cactus Tree (Joni Mitchell)
12 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
13 talk (Joni Mitchell)
14 People's Parties (Joni Mitchell)
15 All I Want (Joni Mitchell)
16 talk (Joni Mitchell)
17 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
18 talk (Joni Mitchell)
19 Jericho (Joni Mitchell)
20 talk (Joni Mitchell)
21 For the Roses (Joni Mitchell)
22 talk (Joni Mitchell)
23 Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire (Joni Mitchell)
24 Blue (Joni Mitchell)
25 [He Played Real Good] For Free [Edit] (Joni Mitchell)
26 Trouble Child (Joni Mitchell)
27 Help Me (Joni Mitchell)
28 Car on a Hill (Joni Mitchell)
29 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
30 Raised on Robbery (Joni Mitchell)
31 The Last Time I Saw Richard (Joni Mitchell)
32 Twisted [Edit] (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.imagenetz.de/files/b7373b6fffb53f0562198d681bed3edb.zip

The cover photo actually comes from a Joni Mitchell concert at this exact venue in April 1974. But apparently she played there a few nights, because the photo is from two days earlier, April 20th.