Intro to The Circle Game Songtext
von Joni Mitchell

I guess my best ambassador is a fella named Tom Rush
Who does my second song, "Urge For Going", and uh
And he also does this one
So I′m hoping that maybe you've heard it before
And you′ll know the chorus
Because it's great to get a whole room full of people singing on it

It's a song all about the carousel of time, and uh
It has a line in it which goes
"The painted ponies, they go up and down"
And the funny thing is that, this year in Canada is expo
That′s the 100th birthday of Canada
And everyone is madly being vеry-very patriotic
And promoting their own peoplе
So as a result I′ve been getting a lot of television work, and uh


I did one part of a series called, "Shaun's Songs"
Which is being shown in Canada
And filmed with two people in each of the provinces
A French Canadian singer, and an English Canadian singer
So that the English Canadian singers for the first time have to watch
The French Canadian singers in order to see who they want to see
And the French Canadians have to sit through me
In order to hear Jean Paul, who′s also on the show
It's very diplomatic

But the thing was that they flew the French Canadian performed in and out
Before I got there and I noticed that
While I was there, they had French and English biffy′s on the set
"Biffy," that's a Jon to you
But uh, that′s our own little form of segregation up there
It really isn't all that bad, I guess

But the amazing thing is that the crew were French Canadian
And the director was a French Canadian Dutchman
By the name of Antoinette van de Water
Who had the most peculiar accent I've ever heard
And I can′t reproduce it exactly, but, anyway

I came to filming this song "The Circle Game"
And I thought it would be fun to go to Calgary
To the city there and, and go to the zoo where they have, uh
A merry-go-round and film it with the painted ponies going all around
And lots of kids in it and everything


And he said, "Well, they have merry-go-rounds everywhere
You know, you don′t need to Calgary
We have to have something local colour, you know?"
And uh, so I said "Well, gee, why don't we go out to a dude ranch?"
′Cause Alberta's a ranching province
And we could have them drive horses around
Or I could ride a horse, or something like that

And he said, "Well, that′s a very good idea
Except, Jean Paul, he got the horses
I tell you what, we'll-we′ll give you the cows"

I didn't think it was so funny
But there I was standing out in the middle of a field
Well, the dude ranch operator insisted that his cattle were all show cattle
And they were used to going 'round in circles
So they gathered them all up into a big herd
And they drove them around me in circles

And everything went alright on the first take of the song
Except that my guitar flashed into the sun a couple of times
And there were big glares on the screen, so we had to do a retake
And at this point there was, uh, a young bull and an older bull
And the young bull kind of liked the older bull

As a matter of fact, he liked him right on camera
So we had to do a third take
And then on the third take the cattle decided
They just didn′t want to go around in any more of those stupid circles
And they all started spreading out and
And they had to be all rounded up
And herded up and circled around again

And I discovered a very interesting fact at that point
And that was that
When you stampeded cattle around in a circle more than three or four times
They become very regular

And I had three places that I was supposed to walk to in the course of the song
And they were white-washed stones
And they were marked point A, point B, and point C, and everything
And uh, I couldn′t find them
So I ended up standing right in front of the camera all the way through the song

It's very interesting though, I think
It′s too bad that you can't get some of the new shows
That are coming out this year up there
Maybe you could go up to Toronto
Anyway, this song is called "The Circle Game"