Boney Joan Returns!

[koganbot]

Sometimes the 'Net is a great place. I received this email the other day from someone who'd found her way to my old Las Vegas Weekly column about the Boney Joan Rule:

Email from Diana from NYC:

Dear Frank,

I came across your amusing article about the Boney Joan rule by chance on the 'net.

Maybe you dislike Joan Baez's singing not because of your parents but - because she's the WORST SINGER EVER?

My two cents.

Truly, I have never heard such bad singing, ever. And I've heard a lot of singing. She doesn't sing the song - she sings her voice. Every goddam song it's the same thing: "listen to my gorgeous voice! Listen to my amazing vibrato!!"

Well her voice isn't gorgeous and her vibrato sounds like Tiny Tim on acid. I have no idea what anyone "heard" in this voice.

My suspicion is that she came along at the right time and the right place and had the right look. She was very beautiful when young women were sick of teasing and spraying their hair. In that her impact was exactly the same as Mary Travers, another bad singer. But the flowing blond natural hair was gorgeous.

Regards,
Diana from NYC


koganbot replied:

You made me smile.

Despite Joan's horrid singing, and despite her not writing many songs herself, she surely inspired a lot of women to get into music who might not have otherwise, was at the headwaters of the female singer-songwriter wave that hasn't yet subsided, including women with less impressive voices who sang a lot better. (Taylor Swift is my favorite singer at the moment, despite a lot of obvious weaknesses in her instrument, which weaknesses she turns to expressive effect; I don't know if she'd trace any of her musical ancestry back to Baez, but she should, Baez is in there, not in the sense of Taylor singing in anything like the style of Baez, but rather in conveying a type of femininity that was developed by Janis Ian and Judy Collins (whom I did like, and she kept changing her hair color, like a '60s Ashlee Simpson!) and Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro and on from there.)

Also, some songs Baez sang were worth hearing on their own account. That record that my parents brought into the house was the first I heard "Banks Of The Ohio" and "Long Black Veil."


Diana from NYC replied in return:

Hi Frank,

Baez always had superb taste. Can't fault her there. The Anglo-American folk ballads she chose were hauntingly beautiful. While it may not be totally accurate that she "discovered" Dylan she sure gave him a huge boost and i think it's fair to say his career wouldn't have gone in quite the direction it did if she hadn't helped him.

Did she inspire loads of women to become singer-songwriters? I am not as sure as you, but I think it's a fair supposition.

I have a confession to make. I used to like Baez. I fell under her aura as an adolescent and for a short time acted like a mini-Joan, including lecturing people about non-violence. So, sometimes I think that my dislike of her is somewhat unfair. Then I give her another try, an honest try...and I end up in the same place: she sucks!

Listen to her butchering that gorgeous song, AND THE BAND PLAYED WALTZING MATILDA (on Youtube, replete with fake-a-zoid Oirish accent). Listen to her flabby gutless JOE HILL on the Woodstock DVD.

Bad, bad singing.

One thing I'd like to point out. I am not an opera singer but I have taken singing lessons. Baez's voice is nothing like a trained opera singer. The point of opera singing isn't to create an artificial instrument, but to free up the breathing mechanism, coordinate the muscles, and create a gorgeous big piping wind instrument capable of running the singing marathon known as a full length opera.

In this it is very like marathon running. Running is a totally natural movement. Running a marathon takes training. But the movement itself is completely natural. Same goes for opera singing. There are many pop singers who do all kinds of crazy shit with their voices into a microphone - this is unnatural. A great opera singer at full blast is completely natural.

What Baez did was unnatural. Her vibrato was forced and pinched. Her sound production was forced. If you consult the Woodstock DVD in which she sings JOE HILL you'll see what I mean. There are half a dozen instances where she does her patented glum stare and keep a note going a beat longer than it has to (distorting the song), through half-parted lips, just to show us what amazing breath control she has.

It's unbearably awful.

Regards,

Diana from NYC

PS

To give you examples of smooth, easy, unaffected (and unshowoff) singers whose music I don't necessarily listen to:

Tony Bennett
Bing Crosby

Like butter.

D

Comments

[koganbot]

First thing that comes to mind is that there's a Mariah Joan species of the Boney Joan Rule, given that Mariah in my favorite period of hers was continually singing her voice rather than the song, was complete animal spirits, me me me, and this was terrific (though the songs came through nonetheless, and I wouldn't be surprised if she did a lot of work to make them come through; but to me, the story really was her voice and its sea-diving-plus-aeronautics display).

Second is that to my youthful, defensive early '60s ears, opera sounded stylized, hence emotionless. So even if it made sense to the singers, and to listeners used to the musical language, to me it was forbiddingly dressed-up in strangeness.

I know just what Diana means about the smooth, easy, unaffected Tony Bennetts and Bing Crosbys, except that for me that singing still sounds like "proper singing," so still at a distance in comparison to all the shit we hear today. That's not Bennett's or Crosby's fault, of course, and I like Crosby fine (and really like Fred Astaire, whose singing I'd considered nebishy when I first ran into it in old movies). But that style, as natural as it may be to sing, sounds strange to hear, when modern-day singers try it.

Don't know if Baez's problem was so much her being a showoff as she couldn't unlock herself from her own style. Could her style have been an elaborate, subconscious attempt to put stage fright at bay?

Shakira! What about Shakira, her vibrato? I wouldn't say she's showing off her chops with it any more than I'd say Charlie Chaplin was showing off his mustache. It's just, weirdly, her, sometimes to fine effect, sometimes not.

[koganbot]

Here are links to my other Rules Of The Game columns, should any newbies want to peruse my days of '07.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

You probably know this and may have thought it through and dismissed this,
but a Kogan book on this whole story* would be both interesting (obviously)
and very pitchable -- you'd probably have to shape into a bogus journalistic
"narrative" at the time of the pitch ("how a new kind of women's singing
found the light and lost it again and found it again", or whatever), but
this could be junked or complicated beyond recognition in the book itself

*ie a book to explain to ashlee why she should trace her ancestry back to
baez, by detailing same

i'd actually really like to see a book that ran this story in parallel to
the tales of the rise, tribulations, oedipal splintering and etc of the
various waves and factions in feminism (political ratyher than academic),
but that may not appeal to you so much! though i think you'd do it very well

[koganbot]

THIS BOOK CLEARLY NEEDS TO COME INTO EXISTENCE,

but...

I'd not thought of writing such a book at all, myself, actually, since I don't know a lot about many of the female singer-songwriters (you know, the Alanises and sub-Alanises and all the post-Bjork quirk girls in Britain and Sweden and Australia), and also, my general feeling is that most of them are substantially full of shit, sometimes lovably so and to good aesthetic effect, often not, so I'm not sure I'd want to write such a book, though editing an anthology on the subject could be interesting, as would learning about all of these full-of-shit singers. I also don't trust my meager knowledge of feminism to write the "relate-it-to-feminism" version of the book, but indeed that would be a fine book, if we can find someone to write it. Feminism has always had a fraught relationship with femininity.

But anyway, THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF BOOKS THAT NEED TO COME INTO EXISTENCE, NOT JUST THIS ONE. So, a call to my readers: what music stories need to be told that aren't getting told?

[koganbot]

Obviously Ashlee herself is not full of shit.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Not answering yr last question here, but Mark's book suggestion reminds me of a book published in 1986 by Wilfred Mellers called 'Angels of the Night: Popular Female Singers of Our Time'.

Synopsis on Amazon.co.uk: "Looks at the development of jazz, Gospel, blues and rock music, describes the role of women singers in shaping modern music, and discusses the work of specific performers."

I only read this because (a) Mellers was on the panel for my viva voce at uni, and (b) he mentioned that his book was imminent at said interview (aside: my final year thesis was on INDIE and I must have mentioned the Cocteau Twins in it, whom he'd come across as part of his research for the book - although Liz Fraser was dealt with in one sentence in it IIRC).

It occurs to me that reading the Mellers book will get you nice and annoyed and want to write the book that Mark suggests ;)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

and more to the point, I wouldn't worry that:

I don't know a lot about many of the female singer-songwriters (you know, the Alanises and sub-Alanises and all the post-Bjork quirk girls in Britain and Sweden and Australia)

cos Mellers just wrote about the singers he did know, although all were obv canon, and just paid lip service to the ones he didn't

[koganbot]

Problem here is that the concept of the book isn't "Women singers whom Frank would like to write about" but rather "convincing Ashlee that she should include Joan Baez in her ancestry." Now if I were doing Book One I might include a chapter about X Ray Spex, and one about the Runaways, but, while Poly Styrene and Joan Jett would definitely be part of Ashlee's ancestry, they're not part of the line of descent that I'm tracing to Joan Baez.

As I understand the line of descent from Joan Baez:

Joan Baez --> Mary Travers --> Judy Collins --> others (e.g. [or i.e.] Janis Ian) --> Joni Mitchell --> Pentangle and Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span and all that, plus solo careers, and any woman who sang with Richard Thompson, extra points for singing on a Led Zep album --------> Carly Simon, who sang "You're So Vain" and another hit too --> anybody remember Dory Previn? and what about Marianne Faithfull? --> can we sneak Patti Smith in here because she writes poems? --------> Stevie Nicks (plus someone else in Fleetwood Mac, perhaps) ---------> women in the '80s, right?, like Rickie Lee Jones, though she starts in '9, right? and Indi(e)go Girls, or were they '90s? --> Teena Marie wrote poetry, therefore she counts --> I don't suppose we can count Axl Rose, however -------> people like Erykah Badu, possibly, except I know fuck all about her --> Sophie, Sheryl, Tori, Alanis, Courtney (Courtney's probably borderline as belonging to this line of descent, but if we want to convince Ashlee, we'd better include Courtney, since we're not going to be able to include Gwen) ------> Lilith Fair, whoever --> Buncha other people I've not heard of --> Bjork!?! -------> M2M --> I'd really like to count Britney, but I don't think I can get away with it --> Oh my, there's Nelly Furtado --> Michelle and Pink and Vanessa C. and Avril and Lillix (I can't get away with Shakira, either, can I?) --> Lucy Woodward and Kara DioGuardi and ASHLEE SIMPSON and Kelly Clarkson and Trina and New Era and Lindsay Lohan and eventually Hilary Duff qualifies herself too (and maybe I can sneak Paris Hilton in here) --> godawful (oh, all right, some of it's good) quirk stuff in a range from Tashbed to Amy and including screechers and annoyingly twee lilters from Sweden and Britain and Australia and Canada --> Lily Allen --> Aly & A.J. and TAYLOR SWIFT --> I'd really like to include Lovefoxxx from Cansei de Ser Sexy but that's cheating (otherwise I could just go back and wade in and include Nina Canal and Lydia Lunch and Adele Bertei and Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Susie Timmons and Charlotte Pressler and Kim Gordon and the Raincoats and the Slits and the Bush Tetras etc. etc., who'd certainly belong in Book One but not in this one) --> the saga of Brooke White on American Idol --> Jenny Lewis and Neko Case and other people who are probably a lot worse.

Anyhow, you all should tell me who else belongs, since you're going to write the book and I'm not.

[koganbot]

like Rickie Lee Jones, though she starts in '9, right?

In '79, that is.

Counterpoint: We don't get to hurt anybody

[koganbot]

Just posted this on Bluesky:

I was hard on Joan Baez's singing back when I wrote The Boney Joan Rule. But this morning I heard her speak briefly at a resistance webinar & she was the right person at the right time: "You can't match their ugliness, can't match their power. We don't get to hurt anybody, can't get to kill anybody"

— Frank Kogan (koganbot) April 13, 2025 at 8:10 PM

This is The Boney Joan Rule
https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/jul/12/the-rules-of-the-game-no-6-the-boney-joan-rule
And this is a Joan Baez song I've always liked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7bnthnLa2Q

[image or embed]

— Frank Kogan (koganbot) April 13, 2025 at 8:10 PM