From: les@jmdl.com (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V4 #349 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: les@jmdl.com Errors-To: les@jmdl.com Precedence: bulk JMDL Digest Thursday, August 12 1999 Volume 04 : Number 349 The Laborday JoniFest is happening this fall! For information: send a message to Join the mailing list at: ------- The Official Joni Mitchell Homepage is maintained by Wally Breese at http://www.jonimitchell.com and contains the latest news, a detailed bio, original interviews and essays, lyrics, and much more. ------- The JMDL website can be found at http://www.jmdl.com and contains interviews, articles, the member gallery, archives, and much more. ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Resist the Eclipse Hype Part II ["Mark Domyancich" ] Hello from Australia [Bounced Message ] "The Arrangement" [Bolvangar@aol.com] aaron singing theme from Mickey Mouse(NJC) [Michael Paz ] Song to a Seagull (long) [Bolvangar@aol.com] Re: People who like Joni ["P. Henry" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 23:12:32 -0500 From: "Mark Domyancich" Subject: Re: Resist the Eclipse Hype Part II Isn't it "Lawyers and loan sharks are laying America to waste?" >"Lawyers and Loan Sharks are made in America" > > Marcel Deste ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 21:24:46 -0700 From: "Gene Mock" Subject: Re: Cactus Trees and Galleries... Pat, Scott! Please keep the dialogue going, IT'S GREAT! - ----- Original Message ----- From: P. Henry To: Scott Price Cc: Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 5:57 PM Subject: RE: Cactus Trees and Galleries... > > Scott Price wrote: > > <...the overwhelming message, again IMO, is that she was looking back at the men in her life while struggling with the idea of "settling down" as opposed to retaining her freedom..> > > scott, that was beautiful! > > having seen the phenomena of Joni's 'groupies' with their insistance and that glazed over look in their eyes first hand and having to personally 'fend them off', so to speak, I am more inclined to view these lyrics as a very sensitive and empathetic describing of what had been going on... but perhaps you are right. witness the words of another song: > "...there are no strings to hold him I guess you could call him so free... yes he's free to be lonely and empty and lost... just like me" > > pat > > NP: Helpless - Neil and Joni (from TLW) > > > Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 22:26:22 -0600 From: Bounced Message Subject: Hello from Australia From: Ashara@aol.com Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 02:34:59 EDT Hi everyone! Just a quick check in to say G'day! We're 1/3 the way through an incredible trip through the land Down Under. We spent a week with friends that live near Melbourne, and joined Vanessa and one of her "mates" and daughter for dinner. Knowing that Gerald had plans to be at this particular restaurant that evening, we headed for the Continental. I had such an enjoyable evening that night, and no matter how many times I meet fellow listers, I am amazed at how easy it is to fall into a conversation as if we've known each other forever. Vanessa was warm and engaging, and her friend Maggie and daughter Maidlin were delightful. By the end of the evening, as we were having coffee, and still no sign of Gerald. Vanessa got up, and announced she would find him, even though she had no idea of what he looked like. Sure enough, in she came with him, and we were able to have a quick chat before he headed upstairs to see a local band. A wonderful night, and of course, too short. In about a week, I hope to be having dinner with Nicholas, John, and Ange in Sydney. (That is.....if we are still ALIVE after our planned bungee jumping experience in Cairns!) I am so looking forward to the upcoming Jonifest, and really hope that all who are either on the fence, or new to the JMDL and have an interest in coming, make every effort to come to Boston and join us. It really is an incredible experience to get together, and this group is so much fun! Even though I am not presently onlist because of this extended trip, and not able to remind and encourage all of you to come, please consider making the trek to Boston. You'll find it worth your while! :-) I am available via e-mail if you have any questions privately, but not through the list, and the e-mail accessibility will be sporadic since I'm in Aussieland. You can also e-mail the Labor Day list directly and my "henchpeople" can probably answer any questions you have. A reminder to those who are coming: please make sure all your requirements are in, and you've called or e-mailed Laurie if you need a ride to/from the airport. Lastly, I quickly browsed through some of the digests while online, and noticed some newbies. WELCOME!!! I also noticed some requests for video trees. I am very happy to make copies of the video trees for you when I get back to the States, so please be patient, and e-mail me privately after the 25th of August, and I'll be able to help you out. No worries, mates! ;-) Signing off with hugs from Australia, Ashara ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 00:35:10 EDT From: Bolvangar@aol.com Subject: "The Arrangement" Hello all, I hadn't remembered this being mentioned before -- though it probably was, maybe during the thread about Elia Kazan's honorary Oscar this spring? - -- but today I ran across a Pauline Kael review (I've been reading her a lot lately) of a late '60s film called "The Arrangement," adapted by Kazan from his own novel, which seems to be the source for Joni's song on LOTC. Can anyone give more info? From the unfavorable review: "Even more blatantly than the book, the movie is a noisy glorification of anguish over selling out....'You could have been --' Eddie's girl says, and he asks, 'What?' 'What you could have been,' she replies, in an oracular, accusing tone that suggests Alexander the Great or Shakespeare at the very least." (Joni: "You could have been more.") - --David P.S. Some might find it ironic that Kazan, having testified before the HUAC, should get all wrought up about people selling out? NP: John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey, _Dance Hall at Louse Point_ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 00:03:23 -0500 From: Michael Paz Subject: aaron singing theme from Mickey Mouse(NJC) Azeem halts the Aaron-bashing: << Aaron Neville may have made a few bad choices of song and producer, but the man has the voice of an angel, and not just when he's doing that fluttery falsetto>> Hi Azeem- I too love Aaron's voice and he is a wonderful person as well. He is so genuine and true. My wife is forever impressed that he always says hello to us when we are at his shows or meet by accident and even remembers her name. We once heard him at a benefit show at Tipitina's (that Freda designed the poster for) and he sang the theme from the Mickey Mouse club. There were people crying it was so beautiful. I have always thought that he could sing the Real Yellow Pages and make that sound beautiful. I have some amazing outtakes from the Yellow Moon/Brothers Keeper sessions if you are interested. Peace Michael ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 00:13:20 -0500 From: Scott and Jody Subject: Re: Resist the Eclipse Hype Part II (NJC) > From above the clouds at such icy altitudes (it's midsummer, so it wasn't so > cold), you can see the thousands of different angles at which meteors hit the > Earth's atmosphere -- from those that barely skim the highest layers and seem > to bounce off to the ones that look like they are bearing right down on you > before (hopefully!) flaming out. > Sigh... Sounds wonderful!!!!! We just had the pleasure watching them from a field in IL. You were so lucky to experience the Perseus showers in the mountains. A good friend of mine was backpacking in CO during that time. She remembered some madman screaming from across the ridge, that Nixon had resigned. Could that have been you Paul? jody ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 00:15:36 -0500 From: Michael Paz Subject: Vg8 Link Sue wrote: "I recently received an email from Esau Simmons who alerted me to the fact that he has a page at www.vg-8.com where people can download Joni Mitchell tuning patches!! He was very appreciative to Jim Leahy, and our compatriats at the JMDL Guitar Page (me, Marian, Howard and Mark) for giving him the info on the tunings." Hi Sue- I discovered this page some time ago and believe I posted it to the list. I am glad you set it up as a link. I have turned many people on to it that have asked me questions about the VG-8. I have been reluctant to put any of my Joni tunings up on that site, but I of course would be more than happy to share them with any member of the JMDL. Did you hear we are planning a tour of the Parker Factory in Ma. on Friday before we go up to Ashara's. We hope to see the new guitar he made for Joni. Cheers, Michael ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 02:00:05 EDT From: Bolvangar@aol.com Subject: Song to a Seagull (long) I've been listening to STAS lately and I had some comments on it. I like it; in some ways I think it's the best of her first three albums. I've mentioned before how I prefer Joni's later conversational lyric style (which I think starts around _Blue_ and is developed over the course of the '70s), with its free flowing speech-like rhythms, to the contrived, airy images and somewhat stilted rhythms ("as if nothing had happened to English prosody since Wordsworth") of her earlier style. So the lyrics have never spoken to me like some of her later ones do, but there is much else for me to appreciate about the album. I like the telling of the story obliquely, elusively, through two voices, in "Pirate," the way the title character is seen and described only through the eyes of the speakers. I think there's one line that sticks out in a bad way, though: "I tell you I was nowhere near the mentioned murder place," because compared to the tantalizing mystery rest of this song ("I guess but I don't know..." "She knows the answer/I don't know"), this line is like something from a Victorian crime melodrama; and I think the song subtly alludes to the murder (e.g., "He'll leave you drowning in the flotsam of a broken promise in the bay") without needing this line to make it obvious. I like "Nathan LaFraneer" and the piano part on "Night in the City." I think "Cactus Tree" is really wonderful. In some ways it seems so different from the rest of the album that it almost doesn't fit: it might even fit better on FTR (as a counterpoint to "Woman of Heart and Mind"?). "I Had a King" is one of my favorites on the album, with its melody and the chorus's description of the broken relationship. ("You know my keys don't fit the door/You know my thoughts don't fit the man/They never can.") There is also one line that kind of makes me wince; it's "the broom of contempt." I can't help but think, and did he sweep into the dustpan of avarice, or the trash can of despair, or something? It's kind of a fine point, but maybe, by way of what I said above about Joni's earlier vs. later styles, this could be contrasted to her use of similar household items (dishwasher, coffee percolator) in "The Last Time I Saw Richard"? In Richard, she picks on them as telling details, as being symbolic in themselves (of materialistic suburban culture); in I Had A King, the broom is just part of a poetic conceit. I think "The Dawntreader"'s music is some of the early Joni's best. The melody is terse and almost ominous (to me), but still romantic, and it's tightly constructed and builds really well over the course of the verse. And the guitar part contrasts the high strings (like the beautiful little figure that opens the song) and low strings (the edgy scraping in the "The roll of the harbor wake" part of the verses), creating this undercurrent of tension. I like the line from the lyrics, "A dream that you tell no one but the grey sea/they'll say that you're crazy." One interesting thing about this album for me is the contrast between the "city" songs and the "seaside" songs. The city ("civilization") is usually associated with noise ("an island of noise in a cobblestone sea"), chaos ("the bedlam of the day"), modernity ("the blossoms hung false on their store window trees"; "the city grated through chrome-plate"), busy-ness, etc. -- though some of us *like* that about it -- while the country ("nature") is relaxation and simplicity. Yet there's a lot more strangeness (or you could say more freedom) and tension in Joni's music on the "seaside" songs than in the "city" songs: the odd chromatic twist of the melody at the end of the verse in "Sisotowbell Lane," the surprising (almost unsettling) chord change on the word "wonder" (et al.) and the chattery melody in "Pirate," the creeping melody of "Dawntreader" and the contrast developed between the high and low guitar strings in "Dawntreader" and in the title track. Another contrast is between the lyrics' character portraits (Michael, Marcie, to a lesser extent Nathan and maybe Joni herself) and Joni's flowery fantasies (mermaids, seagulls, treasure, flashing colors, wars and wine, etc.), even when the fantastic imagery is applied to everyday life -- like observation (external) vs. imagination (internal). - --David NP: _Dance Hall at Louse Point_ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 23:28:15 -0700 From: "P. Henry" Subject: Re: People who like Joni gina wrote: gina, that's an excellent point! reminds me of the person who recently posted they'd first turned on to Joni thru DED... awesome! pat NP: I Can't Quit Her - BS&T Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V4 #349 ************************** The Song and Album Voting Booths are open! Cast your votes by clicking the links at http://www.jmdl.com/gallery username: jimdle password: siquomb ------- Don't forget about these ongoing projects: Glossary project: Send a blank message to for all the details. FAQ Project: Help compile the JMDL FAQ. Do you have mailing list-related questions? -send them to Trivia Project: Send your Joni trivia questions and/or answers to Today in History Project: Know of a date-specific Joni fact? - -send it to ------- Post messages to the list at Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe joni-digest" to ------- Siquomb, isn't she?