by Joni Mitchell
Downtown
My darling dime store thief
In the War of Independence
Rock 'n' roll rang sweet as victory
Under neon signs
A girl was in bloom
And a woman was fading
In a suburban room
I said take me to the dance
Do you want to dance?
I love to dance
And I told him They don't take chances
They seem so removed from romance
They've been broken in churches and schools
And molded to middle class circumstance
And we were rolling rolling rock 'n' rolling
Downtown
The dance halls and cafes
Feel so wild you could break somebody's heart
Just doing the latest dance craze
Gail and Louise
In those push-up brassieres
Tight dresses and rhinestone rings
Drinking up the band's beers
Young love was kissing under bridges
Kissing in cars kissing in cafes
And we were walking down Main Street
Kisses like bright flags hung on holidays
In France they kiss on Main Street
Amour, mama, not cheap display
And we were rolling, rolling, rock 'n' rolling
Downtown
In the pinball arcade
With his head full of pool hall pitches
And songs from the hit parade
He'd be singing "Bye Bye Love"
While he's racking up his free play
Let those rock 'n' roll choir boys
Come and carry us away
Sometimes Chickie had the car
Or Ron had a car
Or Lead Foot Melvin with his hot-wire head
We'd all go looking for a party
Looking to raise Jesus up from the dead
And I'd be kissing in the back seat
Jungle Line
by Joni Mitchell
Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz
Through I-bars and girders, through wires and pipes
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Through huts through Harlem through jails and gospel pews
Through the class on Park and the trash on Vine
Through Europe and the deep deep heart of Dixie blue
Through savage progress cuts the jungle line
In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
Those cannibals of shuck and jive
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band
He hangs it up above the jungle line
The jungle line the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging chanting down the jungle line
There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
Poppy poison poppy tourniquet
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
And metal skin and ivory birds
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line
Rhine wine
Milk of the Madonna
Clandestine
He don't let up the sorrow
He lies and he cheats
It takes a heart like Mary's these days
When your man gets weak
Boho Dance
by Joni Mitchell
Down in the cellar in the Boho zone
I went looking for some sweet inspiration, oh well
Just another hard time band
With Negro affectations
I was a hopeful in rooms like this
When I was working cheap
It's an old romance the Boho dance
It hasn't gone to sleep
But even on the scuffle
The cleaner's press was in my jeans
And any eye for detail
Caught a little lace along the seams
And you were in the parking lot
Subterranean by your own design
The virtue of your style inscribed
On your contempt for mine
Jesus was a beggar, he was rich in grace
And Solomon kept his head in all his glory
It's just that some steps outside the Boho dance *
Have a fascination for me
A camera pans the cocktail hour
Behind a blind of potted palms
And finds a lady in a Paris dress
With runs in her nylons
You read those books where luxury
Comes as a guest to take a slave
Books where artists in noble poverty
Go like virgins to the grave
Don't you get sensitive on me
'Cause I know you're just too proud
You couldn't step outside the Boho dance now
Even if good fortune allowed
Like a priest with a pornographic watch
Looking and longing on the sly
Sure it's stricken from your uniform
But you can't get it out of your eyes
Nothing is capsulized in me
On either side of town
The streets were never really mine
Not mine these glamour gowns
the Boho Dance, not that she's learned how to do it comfortably herself. Hmmm, is this actually a
song about Joni's relationship to the art world?
Harry's House/Centerpiece
by Joni Mitchell
Heatwaves on the runway
As the wheels set down
He takes his baggage off the carousel
He takes a taxi into town
Yellow schools of taxi fishes
Jonah in a ticking whale
Caught up at the light in the fishnet windows
Of Bloomingdale's
Watching those high fashion girls
Skinny black models with raven curls
Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes
Looking for the chic and the fancy to buy
He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people twenty stories down
Colored currents in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid
Yellow checkers for the kitchen
Climbing ivy for the bath
She is lost in House and Gardens
He's caught up in Chief of Staff
He drifts off into the memory
Of the way she looked in school
With her body oiled and shining
At the public swimming pool ...
... Shining hair and shining skin
Shining as she reeled him in
To tell him like she did today
Just what he could do with Harry's House
And Harry's take home pay
Sweet Bird
by Joni Mitchell
Out on some borderline
Some mark of inbetween
I lay down golden in time
And woke up vanishing
Sweet bird you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time
You must be laughing
Behind our eyes
Calendars of our lives
Circled with compromise
Sweet bird of time and change
You must be laughing
Up on your feathers laughing
Golden in time
Cities under the sand
Power ideals and beauty
Fading in everyone's hand
Give me some time
I feel like I'm losing mine
Out here on this horizon line
With the earth spinning
And the sky forever rushing
No one knows
They can never get that close
Guesses at most
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching