From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2005 #370 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Unsubscribe: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/joni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Wednesday, September 28 2005 Volume 2005 : Number 370 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Winners! NJC ["Bree Mcdonough" ] RE: ebert on dylan film njc ["Richard Flynn" ] Re: KT / Katie NJC [JasonMaloney71@aol.com] Re: ebert on dylan film njc [vince ] what I am getting Saturday njc [vince ] Re: ebert on dylan film njc [Bob Muller ] RE: ebert on dylan film njc ["Richard Flynn" ] Re: Winners! NJC [LCStanley7@aol.com] Martin Scorsese's gift to music on film, njc ["Jim L'Hommedieu, Lama" ] Re: Close To the Edge/NJC [cindy vickery ] The Late Show - Rickie Lee and nothing but Rickie Lee njc ["Mark Scott" <] Joni bumper stickers ["Kate Bennett" ] Re: organizing CD's, njc ["Kate Bennett" ] Re: Random playlists njc ["ron" ] Re: Subject: RE: DYLAN: MONDAY and TUESDAY NIGHTS, njc ["Kate Bennett" Subject: Re: Winners! NJC Susan Partin's sister. (I went to school with Susan) >Are you sure you didn't mean Polly Dartin? Who is >Dolly Partin? A spoof of Dolly Parton? > > >Catherine >Toronto >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >__________________________________________________________ >Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:56:11 -0400 From: "Richard Flynn" Subject: RE: ebert on dylan film njc Why ever not? I don't comprehend! - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@smoe.org [mailto:owner-joni@smoe.org] On Behalf Of vince Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 9:17 PM To: joni Subject: ebert on dylan film njc after reading this, I did not watch it Vince No Direction Home: Bob Dylan BY ROGER EBERT / September 20, 2005 It has taken me all this time to accept Bob Dylan as the extraordinary artist he clearly is, but because of a new documentary by Martin Scorsese , I can finally see him freed from my disenchantment. I am Dylan's age, and his albums were the soundtrack of my college years. I never got involved in the war his fans fought over his acoustic and electric styles: I liked them all, every one. Then in 1968, I saw "Don't Look Back " (1967), D.A. Pennebaker 's documentary about Dylan's 1965 tour of Great Britain. In my review, I called the movie "a fascinating exercise in self-revelation," and added: "The portrait that emerges is not a pretty one." Dylan is seen not as a "lone, ethical figure standing up against the phonies," I wrote, but is "immature, petty, vindictive, lacking a sense of humor, overly impressed with his own importance and not very bright." I felt betrayed. In "Don't Look Back ," he mercilessly puts down a student journalist, and is rude to journalists, hotel managers, fans. Although Joan Baez was the first to call him on her stage when he was unknown, after she joins the tour, he does not ask her to sing with him. Eventually she bails out and goes home. The film fixed my ideas about Dylan for years. Now Scorsese's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan ," a 225-minute documentary that will play in two parts Sept. 26-27 on PBS (and comes out today on DVD), creates a portrait that is deep, sympathetic, perceptive and yet finally leaves Dylan shrouded in mystery, which is where he properly lives. The movie uses revealing interviews made recently by Dylan, but its subject matter is essentially the years between 1960, when he first came into view, and 1966, when after the British tour and a motorcycle accident, he didn't tour for eight years. He was born in 1941, and the career that made him an icon essentially happened between his 20th and 25th years. He was a young man from a Minnesota town who had the mantle of a generation placed, against his will, upon his shoulders. He wasn't at Woodstock; Arlo Guthrie was. Early footage of his childhood is typical of many Midwestern childhoods: the town of Hibbing, Minn., the homecoming parade, bands playing at dances, the kid listening to the radio and records. The early sounds he loved ran all the way from Hank Williams and Webb Pierce to Muddy Waters, the Carter Family and even Bobby Vee, a rock star so minor that young Robert Zimmerman for a time claimed to be Bobby Vee. He hitched a ride to New York (or maybe he didn't hitch; his early biography is filled with romantic claims, such as that he grew up in Gallup, N.M.). In Greenwich Village, he found the folk scene, and it found him. He sang songs by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others, and then was writing his own. He caught the eye of Baez, and she mentored and promoted him. Within a year he was ... Dylan. The movie has a wealth of interviews with people who knew him at the time: Baez, Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, Liam Clancy, Dave Von Ronk, Maria Muldaur, Peter Yarrow and promoters like Harold Leventhal. There is significantly no mention of Ramblin' Jack Elliott. The documentary "The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack " (2000) claims it was Elliott who introduced Dylan to Woody Guthrie, and suggested that he use a harmonica holder around his neck, and essentially defined his stage persona; "There wouldn't be no Bob Dylan without Ramblin' Jack," says Arlo Guthrie, who is also not in the Scorsese film. Dylan's new friends in music all admired the art but were ambivalent about the artist. Van Ronk smiles now about the way Dylan "borrowed" his "House of the Rising Sun." The Beat Generation, especially Jack Kerouac's On the Road, influenced Dylan, and there are many observations by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg , who says he came back from India, heard a Dylan album and wept, because he knew the torch had been passed to a new generation. It is Ginsberg who says the single most perceptive thing in the film: For him, Dylan stood atop a column of air. His songs and his ideas rose up from within him and emerged uncluttered and pure, as if his mind, soul, body and talent were all one. Dylan was embraced by the left-wing musical community of the day. His "Blowin' in the Wind" became an anthem of the civil rights movement. His "Only a Pawn in the Game" saw the killer of Medgar Evers as an insignificant cog in the machine of racism. Baez, Seeger, the Staple Singers, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary all sang his songs and considered him a fellow warrior. But Dylan would not be pushed or enlisted, and the crucial passages in this film show him drawing away from any attempt to define him. At the moment when he was being called the voice of his generation, he drew away from "movement" songs. A song like "Mr. Tambourine Man" was a slap in the face to his admirers, because it moved outside ideology. Baez, interviewed before a fireplace in the kitchen of her home, still with the same beautiful face and voice, is the one who felt most betrayed: Dylan broke her heart. His change is charted through the Newport Folk Festival: early triumph, the summit in 1964 when Johnny Cash gave him his guitar, the beginning of the end with the electric set in 1965. He was backed by Michael Bloomfield and the Butterfield Blues Band in a folk-rock-blues hybrid that his fans hated. When he took the new sound on tour the Hawks (later the Band), audiences wanted the "protest songs," and shouted "Judas!" and "What happened to Woody Guthrie?" when he came onstage. Night after night, he opened with an acoustic set that was applauded, and then came back with the band and was booed. "Dylan made it pretty clear he didn't want to do all that other stuff," Baez says, talking of political songs, "but I did." It was the beginning of the Vietnam era, and Dylan had withdrawn. When he didn't ask Baez onstage to sing with him on the British tour, she says quietly, "It hurt." But what was happening inside Dylan? Was he the jerk portrayed in "Don't Look Back "? Scorsese looks more deeply. He shows countless news conferences where Dylan is assigned leadership of his generation and assaulted with inane questions about his role, message and philosophy. A photographer asks him, "Suck your glasses" for a picture. He is asked how many protest singers he thinks there are: "There are 136." At the 1965 Newport festival, Pete Seeger recalls, "The band was so loud, you couldn't understand one word. I kept shouting, 'Get that distortion out! If I had an ax, I'd chop the mike cable right now!' " For Seeger, it was always about the words and the message. For Dylan, it was about the words and then it became about the words and the music, and it was never particularly about the message. Were drugs involved in these years? The movie makes not the slightest mention of them, except obliquely in a scene where Dylan and Johnny Cash do a private duet of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," and it's clear they're both stoned. There is sad footage near the end of the British tour, when Dylan says he is so exhausted: "I shouldn't be singing tonight." The archival footage comes from many sources, including documentaries by Pennebaker and Murray Lerner ("Festival "). Many of the interviews were conducted by Michael Borofsky, and Jeff Rosen was a key contributor. But Scorsese provides the master vision, and his factual footage unfolds with the narrative power of fiction. What it comes down to, I think, is that Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minn., who mentions his father only because he bought the house where Bobby found a guitar, and mentions no other member of his family at all, who felt he was from nowhere, became the focus for a time of fundamental change in music and politics. His songs led that change, but they transcended it. His audience was uneasy with transcendence. They kept trying to draw him back down into categories. He sang and sang, and finally, still a very young man, found himself a hero who was booed. "Isn't it something, how they still buy up all the tickets?" he asks about a sold-out audience that hated his new music. What I feel for Dylan now and did not feel before is empathy. His music stands and it will survive. Because it embodied our feelings, we wanted him to embody them, too. He had his own feelings. He did not want to embody ours. We found it hard to forgive him for that. He had the choice of caving in or dropping out. The blues band music, however good it really was, functioned also to announce the end of his days as a standard-bearer. Then after his motorcycle crash in 1966, he went away into a personal space where he remains. Watching him singing in "No Direction Home," we see no glimpse of humor, no attempt to entertain. He uses a flat, merciless delivery, more relentless cadence than melody, almost preaching. But sometimes at the press conferences, we see moments of a shy, funny, playful kid inside. And just once, in his recent interviews, seen in profile against a background of black, we see the ghost of a smile. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:58:23 EDT From: JasonMaloney71@aol.com Subject: Re: KT / Katie NJC KT's Black Horse & The Cherry Tree track does make the rest of the album feel slightly bland(er). But I still love it, and her (damn you Azeem, she's about the loveliest woman in rock/pop/whatever right now.. *sigh*)....anyway...Miss Melua is very pretty (almost too much in fact) but I can't get away from the cloying nature of her recorded music so far. It's all a little too neat and polished, but sometimes it's rather sweet in small doses. Her new album - out this week - will doubtless sell more in its first 7 days than KT's has shipped all year. I wish I could join in on the I-lists, but I still listen to music in the bog-standard way..one CD at a time, or a self-made compilation of tracks...I only figured how to program my discman last week! Jason. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:01:04 -0400 From: vince Subject: Re: ebert on dylan film njc The article did not post as well as I had hoped but, in brief, Ebert said it all, there was nothing to watch other than the moving pictures because Ebert described it so completely. And the reality of all that Dylan is reminds me why I never cared for him all that much (with all respect for his role in music). Vince Richard Flynn wrote: >Why ever not? I don't comprehend! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:11:07 -0400 From: vince Subject: what I am getting Saturday njc http://moonlightersamoyeds.com/ getting my 10th one, born July 20th - his name will be.... Shady. Vince ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:36:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: ebert on dylan film njc I can see why - not enough time to do both. I watched it, it was brilliant. Les Irvin, what say ye? Bob NP: Tom Waits, "Dead And Lovely" (When do we get an American Masters about him?) Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:38:42 -0400 From: "Richard Flynn" Subject: RE: ebert on dylan film njc With all due respect to Roger-- his was a pretty middlebrow assessment of a great film that very subtly catches a former zeitgeist compared to which ours is found sadly wanting--but also shows how inevitable it was that Dylan would be caught up in a myth that he began writing but which would soon write him into a box. There was much to get from this other than moving pictures. But then I truly care for Dylan's music and poetry and though I love Joni--Dylan is more central to an understanding of recent American culture. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@smoe.org [mailto:owner-joni@smoe.org] On Behalf Of vince Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 10:01 PM To: Richard Flynn Cc: 'joni' Subject: Re: ebert on dylan film njc The article did not post as well as I had hoped but, in brief, Ebert said it all, there was nothing to watch other than the moving pictures because Ebert described it so completely. And the reality of all that Dylan is reminds me why I never cared for him all that much (with all respect for his role in music). Vince Richard Flynn wrote: >Why ever not? I don't comprehend! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:42:50 EDT From: LCStanley7@aol.com Subject: Re: Winners! NJC In a message dated 9/27/2005 8:46:26 P.M. Central Standard Time, bree_mcdonough@hotmail.com writes: Susan Partin's sister. (I went to school with Susan) Hi Bree, I knew Steve... Steve Partin. Love, Laura ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:48:51 -0400 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu, Lama" Subject: Martin Scorsese's gift to music on film, njc I heard a story long ago about Martin Scorsese's "The Last Waltz" film. The claim was: "The Last Waltz" was the first mainstream movie in which film and sound were synced using movie technology (a time signal) which locks it all together. As I recall, the techonology allowed Robertson to mix sound freely, without losing the perfect lip synch. Is this true? Jim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:46:18 -0500 From: Michael Paz Subject: Juan's Story (NJC) My friend Juan who started the fundraiser for New Orleans musicians (www.katrinaspianofund.org) was over for dinner tonight and we got to hear the stories of his survival of the storm and his heroic efforts to help his neighbors and fellow community folk first hand live over a meal of hot dogs and chili. After the ordeal a few weeks ago he got out and was at a fest in NE working with our other partner John Klondike and he was interviewed for NPR radio. Check this site out to hear how this city is blessed with someone so amazing it makes me cry just knowing it's all true. http://publicbroadcasting.net/wnpr/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=8 19569 Going to bed smiling tonight. Love Paz NP-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz P.S. Jack came by today and picked up his check from JMDL angels. He was overcome with emotion and over lunch we saluted a community that goes beyond the bounds of friendship and love. Thanks Joan and Les! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:19:11 -0700 (PDT) From: cindy vickery Subject: Re: Close To the Edge/NJC While there are much better prog-rock songs than these 3, the other albums that come to mind (ELP, King Crimson, Genesis) are all flawed in one way or another*. wait one cotton pickin' minute. how is king crimson "discipline" flawed? and you left out "the league of gentlemen," also without flaw. you got some 'splainin' to do! cindy - --------------------------------- Yahoo! for Good Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:07:16 -0700 From: "Mark Scott" Subject: The Late Show - Rickie Lee and nothing but Rickie Lee njc "Welcome to the late show," was the greeting that Rickie Lee Jones gave her audience at Seattle's Triple Door on Sunday night sometime between 10 and 10:30pm. The show had been scheduled for 9:30 so she was only half joking. The Triple Door is a venue that serves food and beverages and consists of tables and banquettes tiered back from the stage. Total capacity is 300. Our server told us that there had been some controversy about wait staff being on the floor during the first show and that there would be no service while Rickie Lee performed. Which is just as it should be, in my opinion. There were also rumors that the evening's first show had not been up to par. There was one person on their way out who hinted that Rickie might have been imbibing before the performance. What with some other reports that people on the JMDL had given, I began to be a bit anxious. And then the delay. Table assignment was a half hour later than what Melanie was told it would be on the phone. Then they were late seating us after the first show was over. Then the start time was pushed back to 10 and when 10 came around, there was still no Rickie Lee. But finally after an announcement asking people to keep conversation to a minimum during the performance (Why do people have to be asked to keep quiet?? This is Rickie Lee Jone, fercrissake!) and another 5 or 10 minute wait, Rickie finally stepped on to a stage that contained an electric guitar plugged into an amp, another speaker or amp next to that, a grand piano, piano bench and not much more. This was the Rickie Lee Jones Late Show. All Rickie Lee. No one else. She seemed very laid back (when isn't she?) and maybe a bit tired. And why wouldn't she be? The woman is around 50 years old, I believe. She had given a show just a couple of hours earlier, performed in Eugene Oregon the night before and in Milwaukee the night before that. I'm 51 and I'd be dead on my ass if it was me. But she picked up the guitar and started in on 'Weasel and the White Boys Cool' and began to cast a spell on the crowd. If energy was a bit low and tempos maybe slightly on the slowed down side, intensity was not spared at all and there was magic to be seen, felt, and most of all, heard. She complained that the guitar was giving her problems, making a joke that it probably thought it wasn't getting paid enough. There were maybe 2 or 3 muffed lyrics during the show. But other than that, she was stellar. The voice that thrilled us on her first album has hardly deteroriated at all and she was employing it's full vocal and dynamic range. This woman is an incredible singer. That voice can cut through to the bone or caress or giggle or smirk or seduce or laugh or cry or express any emotion known to man in the most exquisite ways. She gave heartwrenching renditions of 'Cycles' and 'Last Chance Texaco'. A memory I will carry with me always is watching her stand back from the mic to do the sounds of the cars whizzing by at the end of 'Last Chance'. She looked like she was teasing the audience, knowing we were all waiting for it and knowing she could deliver it perfectly. She also did 'Chuck E.'s in Love' on the guitar, 'Ugly Man' and a haunting rendition of 'A Tree on Allenford.' After she sang my personal favorite, 'Stewart's Coat' I yelled 'thank you!' and omigod, we were close enough to her that she heard me and nodded over her shoulder, acknowledging me! Goose bumps! If the guitar was giving her grief, the piano was a piece of cake. Her playing was flawless. This is the third time I have seen Rickie Lee Jones perform and for me there is always something extraordinary that happens when she sits down at the piano. Maybe it's because the songs she has performed on the piano at these concerts are some of her most beautiful and intense. Something about watching and hearing her sing 'Magazine' strikes right to my gut everytime. The voice reached for those notes 'I don't think you know......You break my heart Car-ol....Car-ol.....oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh' and it was devastating. 'Living it Up' was another one that challenges her full emotional range and she rose to the challenge and more than met it. She made some funny remarks during the final lines of 'The Horses', something like 'I was young myself not so long ago...and I did stupid things too...I don't suppose there's anything you could do that your mother and probably your grandmother didn't do too..' 'On Saturday Afternoons in 1963' was infused with quiet beauty and just a tinge of melancholy. 'Pirates' took her up to bid so long to Lonely Avenue and to every stop in between with ease and grace. And 'Coolsville' had all of it's eerieness and nostalgic regret. She did her usual playing with her voice and with the lyrics on the last lines...'Well I hear you wanna go back to Coolsville...Well come on, I'll take you back....to Coolsville..' You could have heard a pin drop at the end of it. Finally she got up from the piano, acknowledging the applause with a bow and her signature flip of her long blonde hair. She picked up the guitar and said she would play a couple of more songs. 'What do you wanna hear?' Someone asked for 'Company' but she said she couldn't do 'Company', that needed a piano player. Finally someone down front called out for 'Rebel Rebel' and she said ok she'd do that. It was the most uptempo song she had done all night and I suspect it drained off the last of her energy. It was spirited and fun but she didn't do another and we couldn't get her back for an encore. Seeing Rickie perform solo got me to thinking about the difference between this show and the 'Evening of My Best Day' tour when she had a stage full of players and instruments. All of that audience's attention on Sunday night was focused on Rickie Lee. There was nobody to take a solo or add a backup vocal. Nothing to cover up a mistake or give her a small break. What a huge burden that must put on a performer, particularly someone of Rickie's stature whose audiences expect so much from her. For me, she delivered the goods in spades. We could see every emotion and thought that passed across her face and through her body as she performed. Our table was on the same side of the stage as the piano and I could see her face and the upper half of her body the whole time she was at the piano. It was amazing and wonderful. Her voice navigated her complex songs with ease, grace, flexibility and heartstopping intensity of feeling. The show was short, an hour and 20 minutes and there were many, many other songs I would have loved for her to do. But I think I am even more in awe of her now than I was before. She is a great artist and I feel so priveledged to live in her time and to have been able to see her perform on three separate occasions. Each show had it's own atmosphere and flavor and each was special in its own way. This was was no exception and in some ways was the most special of all. Thank you, Rickie Lee Jones. Mark E. (so much in Love) in Seattle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:15:27 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: Joni bumper stickers Marianne wrote> I have wanted one for years that simply says; Joni Mitchell. Preferably in her signature.< Scan the sig from the Mendel art book & go to your local staples office supply store & get those bumper stickers papers you can put in your printer... & voila! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:20:37 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: Re: organizing CD's, njc We have three of those 250 electronic cd holder thingys & then the plastic booklets where you put the corresponding liner notes... I hate the system & wish I'd never thrown out the jewel cases... I always look up the liner notes, find the cd in one of the players & take it out to my car which is where I listen... then I can't remember where to put it back cuz the booklets are so random... once I finish procrastinating on unpacking a few billion boxes of stuff I have forgotten I own from our move 4 months ago I'll get right on that project ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 08:27:37 +0200 From: "ron" Subject: Re: Random playlists njc hi >>>azeem wrote > Anyone else wanna play? ok - 1st 10 randoms are: roger lucey - im alright now (home road) (one of the local protest greats. he gave up music for +/- 15 years during apartheid after numerous brushes with the law. now hes back making wonderful socially conscious music) judy collins - both sides now (the very best of) cowboy junkies - im so lonesome i could cry (the trinity sessions) jimmie vaughn - like a king (out there) cat stevens - the first cut is the deepest (very best of) chris smither - slow surprise (live) (live as ill ever be) cream - im so glad (fresh cream) david grisman & tony rice - vintage gintage blues (tone poems) (a selection of instrumentals showcasing the tones of the great guitars & mandolins - a truly great album) tori amos - your cloud (scarlet's walk) the pretenders - hymn to her (the isle of view) ron ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:33:41 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: Re: Subject: RE: DYLAN: MONDAY and TUESDAY NIGHTS, njc I really loved it... especially the interviews (current time) with joan then bob about their relationship... also the very cool story from al kooper about his organ part on 'like a rolling stone'... & the eloquence of allen ginsberg... & because they surprised me by ending the credits with the Dylan song I always cover that most people don't know is a Dylan song ('lay down your weary tune')... what I missed is mention or footage of the andy warhol daze because so many of his most famous songs were allegedly about that time... also what I loved is that the edits showed me a different side of Dylan, so straight forward currently, so young & honest (& not so caustic) & not getting why all those people were asking him such idiotic questions like what are you trying to say when he already said it in his songs... ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2005 #370 ***************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she? 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