Hello This Is Joni

If any of you have looked at the title of this post and thought to yourself "surely he can't inflict that song on us" - oh yes I can. And worse.

But that is for later. First we must deal with the business of the day.

I don't think it will be seen as courting controversy to say I'm not a big fan of those archive boxed sets that ask you to stump up lots of money for multiple (and usually not as good) versions of songs that you already have, even when they are from artists I like.

Take for example Volumes 3 and 4 of Joni Mitchell's Archives series that between them cover the period 1972 to 1980. Volume 3 came out last year, Volume 4 last month. The combined price is £125 for eleven discs. For that you get six different live versions of "Big Yellow Taxi" which is probably at least five more than anyone needs.

That is not to say there isn't some good stuff tucked away in there. I really enjoyed the early demos of songs that ended up on "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira", my favourite Joni albums along with "Blue". I would happily buy a double album with just them on (which is sort of what I ended up doing by downloading the individual tracks).

Here are a couple of those demos, one each from Volumes 3 and 4 and one each from the two aforementioned albums, with the title track of "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" added on - it seems that it was originally envisaged as a medley with "Coyote".

"Don't Interrupt The Sorrow (demo)" - Joni Mitchell

"Coyote/ Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (demo)" - Joni Mitchell

And now what you've all been waiting for...

... with an extra special treat just for George. After a less than stellar solo career as Andy Andres, which included a German language version of the Paul Evans smash, young Andreas Lebbing became the lead singer of top pop act Wind under his real name. 

The Wind of change paid off for him. In 1987 they took "Lass die sonne in dein herz" to second place in Eurovision behind Johnny Logan. Feast your eyes on the lady with the keytar and the enormous shoulder pads of the man playing the steel drums. And, yes, that is indeed one half of the future Milli Vanilli showing he could mime guitar playing as well as he could mime singing.

Wind had previously finished second in 1985, and remain the only act to finish second twice, but that was before Andreas joined them.