Watch “Joni Mitchell Wild Things Run Fast (1982)” on YouTube

For every album you can name by Joni Mitchell, I wager there are two and a half more albums per unit that you do not know. And, for every song, several variations: studio cuts, recorded live when she toured the album, recorded live years after, made to look as though filmed live.

And there are paintings for most too.

Found my worn Anthology of her Sheet Music copy-right 1983 Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

Check it out cuz She’s Playing Real Good, For Free at her own digital domain.

Here is info on the title track of Wild Things Run Fast here.

A song of tradition and tribes.

Here are the lyrics…..

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He came/she smiled.

She thought she had him tamed, but he was just as wild, eatin’ from her hand, at last.

Wild things run fast.

In the dark he could see the trap that wzs lyin’ in her sweet company,

eatin’ from her hand at last.

Wild thing run fast.

Winter beat the pines about.

He heard the heater cutting in and out

while she dreamed away.

In the night, it snowed:

Fast tracks in the powder white leading out to the road,

winding from her tender grasp.

Wild things run fast.

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But wait? Did you hear it? My ears missed it entirely until I read the lyrics, saw these words, Backed-up the track (fka ‘rewound) and listened hard for it.

Uh. Sounds a lot like she is givin’ it back to tunesmith Chip Taylor’s Wild Thing (I think I love you), popularized by The Troggs, a band paving the way for garage rock, proto punk, and the lo-fi scene.

I forgot to mention, the tune-smith’s real name in James Wesley Voight, brother to actor Jon Voight, and apparently Angelina Jolie’s uncle as well.

Wild Thing has been coveredby The Jay Five, The Kingsmen, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Runaways, Chevy Chase, X, Sam Kinison, and Kermit the Frog, to name only a few.

Metamusic. Dig it much.