Good music yesterday is good music today. You just have to let it in. Passively, I mean. Stillness is key. (Speed-walking on a treadmill at 24 Hour Fitness…not so much.) I was reminded of this last night while driving 75 mph in the dark on the relatively uncrowded 405 freeway. It might be the best music-listening activity of all. Especially if the music has the right kind of nocturnal freeway-flow vibe in the first place. Which Joni Mitchell‘s Hejira definitely has. The Wikipage page quotes Mitchell as saying that “the whole Hejira album was really inspired…I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it…the sweet loneliness of solitary travel.” All my life I’ve loved Mitchell’s stuff for all the right reasons, but I was especially impressed last night by the quality and the exquisite recording of the session performances on this 1976 album. The gently layered guitar and bass arrangements are so precisely laid down, and yet with a professional aplomb that’s so swoony and soft and lulling…and yet stirring to the depths. All hail Larry Carlton (acoustic & electric guitars), Max Bennett (bass on “Song for Sharon”, “Furry Sings the Blues”), John Guerin and Bobbye Hall (drums, percussion).