Joni Mitchell is one of the two women I fell in love with by just listening to her voice. She is also one of the handful of musicians I had to buy everything which she had released after I heard her music first. The others I can think of right now were Neil Young (a delay of about ten years between first listen and record buying craziness though), Joy Division, Yo La Tengo and Giant Sand. My first Nick Drake was Fruit Tree, the complete works without demos and rare stuff. What did I want to say? Oh yes, I discovered a demo version of The Hissing of Summer Lawns over at the BigOZine blog. And I prefer it to the original. Which always bothered me a little because of the orchestral production. It is part of the phantastic run of studio albums from 1971-76: Blue, For the Roses, Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and finally Hejira. The first five songs of Hissing just on acoustic guitar and piano, that's a dream come true for every Joni Mitchell lover.