I got Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark at Turn it Up on Monday. It is nearly perfect. The first five songs are particularly great. Why did I wait so long to own this album? I blame my mother for this one. Unlike many parents of friends that I know, mine liked popular, modern music. So it's taken me a while to feel comfortable liking some of the bands they liked while I was growing up. Call it an extended adolescence that's been isolated inside my music fandom. Simon and Garfunkel, Simon solo, Joni Mitchell, Elton John; they all seemed terribnly square when I was a teen, just because my parents owned their records. The Beatles got a pass, of course, as did bands whose albums they really shouldn't have owned, such as Queen and The Cars.

Anyway, Court and Spark has been playing over and over at my house and I'm enjoying the happy, slightly familial mood it's been putting me into. I'm listening to it and it is sounding so familiar, yet new, because I've never paid any attention to the lyrics before. Now I listen and try to piece together the deeper reasons my mom felt such a connection to this album during a period in her life with two difficult children, a husband who hated his white collar job, shitty part-time jobs at the local university, and traveling in a half-broken car to Newark all the time for work.