I recently noticed a serious lack of Joni Mitchell music in my collection, despite my love for the one piece of her work I did have, Blue. I’ve set about remedying that and in doing so I realised that a song I first encountered on A Perfect Circle’s eMOTIVe, The Fiddle and the Drum, was in fact her work all along.
Released in 1969 on her second album ‘Clouds‘ the song is an overt reflection on American foreign policy in places like Vietnam however like all great songs of it’s type, and to some degree regretably, it has just as much potency in today’s climate:
My dear Johnny my dear friend
And so once again you are fightin’ us all
And when I ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum
You say I have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But I can remember
All the good things you are
And so I ask you please
Can I help you find the peace and the star
Oh, my friend
What time is this
To trade the handshake for the fist
And so once again
Oh, America my friend
And so once again
You are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum
You say we have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But we can remember
All the good things you are
And so we ask you please
Can we help you find the peace and the star
Oh my friend
We have all come
To fear the beating of your drum
As an aside, I had to smile a little bit when iTunes, on its completely random ‘shuffle’ mode, lined up Outkast’s ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’ after it recently.