Christmas may be months away, but for the record business it actually began a few weeks ago. The opening shots of what is the most crucial time of year — for an industry that could use all the help it can get right about now I might add — were actually fired with the much ballyhooed release, and subsequent competition, between Kanye West and 50 Cent.

Now, nobody actually believes 50 Cent is going to retire, even though Kanye looks to be wiping the floor with him at the moment. But you can bet the record industry was watching the numbers of those two releases — as well of those of country boy Kenny Chesney — that week, and will continue to do so right up until Santa comes down the chimney in December.

So, let the games begin.

You see, the record industry — and by that, I mean the people who still actually sell CDs — does most of its retail business for the year in the last quarter during Christmas time. This year is especially crucial, since pretty much everybody seems to sense that change (to say the least) is in the air, as far as the future of the CD is concerned.

So that means, for the next several weeks leading into Christmas, you are going to see the labels rolling out all their big guns as far as new releases are concerned. Next week it's Springsteen, the week after that it's Neil Young, the next it's — well, you get the picture.

This week however, it's all about Joni Mitchell, who releases her first album of brand new material in nearly a decade with Shine.

This is also Mitchell's first album for Starbucks Records — err, I mean Hear Music — where she joins labelmate Paul McCartney on the coffee counter's new music imprint. I've actually been sitting on a review copy of Shine for about a week, but was waiting for a special moment to sit down with a nice glass of wine (or at least a cold microbrew), to properly savor it. I also for some reason thought that it wasn't coming out until October. Which means I better order up that microbrew pronto, since today's actual release means the review was technically due something like yesterday.

So I haven't heard Shine yet, but it has a real pretty cover and the buzz is that Mitchell was artistically invigorated when she recorded it. I've also been told that her voice sounds better here than it has in years. I do know that it has an updated version of her classic song "Big Yellow Taxi."

Personally, I've always liked Mitchell's so-called "jazz period" best, when she was making albums like The Hissing Of Summer Lawns and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, in the seventies with people like Jaco Pastorius and The Brecker Brothers. For that reason, I'm pretty excited about this week's release of Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters, where the jazz keyboard great does an entire album of music either written or inspired by Mitchell. Hancock is joined on the album by musicians like Wayne Shorter, as well as vocalists Norah Jones, Leonard Cohen, and even Joni herself.