From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2006 #315 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 Website: http://jonimitchell.com JMDL Digest Sunday, September 3 2006 Volume 2006 : Number 315 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- river ["Kate Bennett" ] river ["Kate Bennett" ] Re: Joni's Albums - Concept Albums? [Nuriel Tobias ] re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces [Nuriel Tobias ] Re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces ["ron" ] Re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces [Nuriel Tobias ] Odd Instruments (NJC) [Bob Muller ] Female Bob Dylan [Benedicte Nielsen ] Joni Mitchell, Susan Cowsill, and Michael Paz [Michael Paz ] Re: Maddona is and Artist!!! [Andeemac2006 ] Sarah's version of "River" [Andeemac2006 ] Re: NJC [Bobsart48@aol.com] re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces [Michael Flaherty ] religion & politics oh my! njc ["Jim L'Hommedieu, Lama" ] re: Joni's albums-concept albums? ["c Karma" ] njc njc interesting read very long post ["gene" ] * Perpetual Joni Covers Train: Volumes 61-70 of JM Covers ["Music Is Spec] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 01:15:20 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: river Oh, I got chills, this is sooooo beautiful, thank you bob! Thank you sarah! >It comes out October 17 - but you can hear it right now (and it IS very lovely): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY Bob NP: Sarah, "River" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 01:15:20 -0700 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: river Oh, I got chills, this is sooooo beautiful, thank you bob! Thank you sarah! >It comes out October 17 - but you can hear it right now (and it IS very lovely): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY Bob NP: Sarah, "River" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 01:25:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Nuriel Tobias Subject: Re: Joni's Albums - Concept Albums? I agree with you, Bob. Very interesting, i must say. And Em's post about concept in art (painting, but not only) is a treat - food for thought. Here's what i think. Apart from the albums you mentioned, and maybe my own point of view on 1 or 2 you already did - I agree with everything you said about Travelogue, BSN and Mingus. Good points, Bob. Hejira - I think it's a concept album. It's a story of a journey (like in a road-trip movie), and i know most of us, if not all of us, have experienced that journey-feeling when listening to it as if we're driving with Joni. The Hejira journey is the theme and concept and every song is a station in the road-trip. We "hit the road" when it begins, and we come to a "full stop" when it ends. Every song tells it's own story - but together, as chapters in a book or scenes in a movie of a play, they tell one story. The songs are "chained" to eachother like pins on a map - the Hejira map. That reason alone makes it definitely a concept album. HOSL - Once again, i agree with you, Bob. It's hard to agree, i guess, because how can anyone say it's not a concept album when Joni herself says it's a concept album, but i agree with you. Like you said, the songs are related, but they don't fit together. I can't put my fingure on an overall theme - instrumental, lyrical, narrative and so on - that unifies all of them into a story. Maybe it's a concept album in an abstract way. Trying to find the concept in it leads me to more questiones than answers. It's very confusing, that's all i can say. STAS - I'm not saying it's a concept album. But even if there were no "city" and "seaside" segments, i could easily "read" the story it tells with each song being a chapter or a scene. It's a rare situation where a songwriter managed to combine "random" songs in a way that does that trick. However - reading lots and lots of reviews this last hour, i can tell you that critics claim that Blue, FTR, CAS, DED and TTT are concept albums. You'd be surprised to see what happens when you write "Joni Mitchell Concept Album" in Google search, and if you type "Concept Album" (in general) you may learn a lot ,but beware my friends! - Because once an album is considered a concept album - it, somehow, gets more respect and attention to a degree that it's "automaticaly" treated as a masretpiece, so both critics and fans are debating their souls out in order to prove that an album is a concept album or not. The more i'm learning about it, the more i see it's a war zone. War zones is something i've decided to leave behind. Nuri Bob Muller wrote: > What is a concept album? Do you think that > Joni's albums are concept albums? **In popular music, a concept album is an album which is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical" They are most often pre-planned (conceived) and with all songs contributing to a single overall theme or unified story, this plan or story being the concept.** Now, the bigger question...are any of Joni's albums concept albums? Travelogue would be, the "concept" being Joni's revisiting her catalogue and re-arranging selections for orchestra. Both Sides Now is her performing a cycle of love/torch songs that tells a story - definitely a concept album. Mingus is a concept album, with the exception of "Lindsey" which doesn't really fit the Mitchell-Mingus theme. Hissing of Summer Lawns could be debated as a concept album, given what she wrote about it being 'conceived as a whole' and all that, but I don't think the songs fit together that way, though many are certainly related to one another. Same goes for STAS, even with its "City" and "Seaside" segments. Bob NP: Plastik, "A Case Of You" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 01:47:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Nuriel Tobias Subject: re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces Michael F. claims it's the change given by the vending machine in dimes so there are more coins coming out than inserted. It makes sense - but isn't the song about a machine that is empty and "tells" you that you should try another? Surely you don't get change for something you can't buy. Michael, my dear - you are risking my sanity:) Mia claims it's a machine that has no sense like the one in her work - Thanks a lot, girl - now my sanity is lost for good!:) I've decided to tell the kid that it's a crazy machine that gives you more money than you insert into it and that if he wants to get rich he should start smoking! The smoking thing is no problem because both his parents are smokers. The problem is that i know he's going to spend the rest of his life looking for that machine! Nuri mia _ wrote: << The kid said it didn't make sense because the number of coins insereted into it when the song begins is SMALLER than the number of coins coming out of it by the end of the song. And the kid was right! All you need to do is listen to the sound of coins in the begining and in the end to know that the damn kid was right! Now you tell me - if the machine claims that it's empty (try another) - then how come it gives back MORE coins than insterted? What the hell is going on there?>> LOL, Nuri! It may be that Joni is using the same type of vending machine that we have at my work. Sometimes when I put my .75 cents in, I'll get two bags of Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies instead of one. At other times, I'll get none. Anyway, your neighbor sounds like a really smart kid! Mia - --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2"/min or less. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 02:24:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Nuriel Tobias Subject: Re: religion & politics oh my! njc Randy Remote wrote: > >" originally written down in English?> > > You mean they weren't?? > Next thing you'll be saying that Jesus wasn't a > white boy. > > Bob You mean, like, an Arab, perhaps? How ironic is that?" Jesus probably looked more like an Arab than a "white boy". He was born before the Jews were exiled to Europe. The "white coloured" Jews are the result of generations of interfaith marriage with the Europian "blood and races". But back then, all Jews were still Asian-African, so yeah, he probably looked more like an Arab. Nuri - --------------------------------- All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 12:39:16 +0200 From: "ron" Subject: Re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces hi >>>nuri wrote >>>>>the end of the song. And the kid was right! All you need to do is listen to the sound of coins in the begining and in the end to know that the damn kid was right! Now you tell me - if the machine claims that it's empty (try another) - then how come it gives back MORE coins than insterted? What the hell is going on there? joni was confused & it was actually a slot machine. years later, she realised her mistake & wrote a song about it. only she was embarassed, & instead of just saying that it happened to a friend (she had her reputation as a creative writer to protect) she claimed that it happed to a dry cleaner from des moines. ron (who actually hears 3 coins going in & only two coming out) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 09:07:05 EDT From: LCStanley7@aol.com Subject: Re: Sarah McLachlan's "River" Bob wrote: It comes out October 17 - but you can hear it right now (and it IS very lovely): _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY) Hi Bob, Something about those Canadians!!! Thanks for this. Nice to wake up and hear something so beautiful! Love, Laura ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 06:04:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: Joni's Albums - Concept Albums? I entertained the same thoughts about Hejira, Nuri - either thematically (road tripping) or sonically (the sameness of the Joni-Jaco interplay in so many of the tracks). One could also argue the 'concept' of C&S (the thin line between love and insanity) or DJRD (Duality & Dreams), or the autobiographical nature of FTR. Then again, you could probably debate your way through arguing the concept of every project she's done. Like Em said, every project represents a period and is unlike the records that preceded & followed it. Bob NP: Van Morrison Cover Story on Coverville.com Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 06:40:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Nuriel Tobias Subject: Re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces ron wrote: "ron (who actually hears 3 coins going in & only two coming out)" Thank you for joining the Smokin', Try Another Madness Club, ron. Before you can participate in our activities, we must let you know that WE hear 3 coins going in and at least 5 coming out and if you wait a sec after the machine is closed you can even hear some more. OUR experts have examined it for years and WE are 100% sure that they're right. However, the fact that the machine managed to fool you too makes you worthy of our club and you are now an official member. To start your membership please insert 3 coins and wait for further instructions. Nuri - --------------------------------- Get your email and more, right on the new Yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 06:58:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: Sarah McLachlan's "River" And BIG thanks to whoever put it up on youtube. It may not be there for long. And also coming up soon is Canadian kd lang and Madeleine Peyroux's duet of "River" - should also be killer. Bob NP: My Brightest Diamond, "Gone Away" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 07:00:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Odd Instruments (NJC) See & hear a long list of weird instruments, all of which Victor knows how to play: http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/index.html Bob Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: 02 Sep 2006 16:08:26 +0100 From: Benedicte Nielsen Subject: Female Bob Dylan Hi, I am new to this list, perhaps this is an old topic that has already been banned for further discussion... I read that Joni M protested to being called the female Bob Dylan, because noone would ever call Dylan the male Joni Mitchell - implying that women will always be considered to as secondary. Joni Mitchell is unique and I can see why the remark must have been annoying. I get the point though. I was born in 1965, too late to be part of the Dylan era. I know some of his music, but I cannot really relate to what some people say about him: that although at the time they didn't understand his lyrics, the totally knew what he was on about. That is how I feel about Joni Mitchell though; and I think that what makes the difference is the way she sings from a woman's perspective, that is what makes her songs immediately relevant to me, as opposed to Dylan's. Recently I got quite infatuated by a couple of male singers, but thought that as long as there is Joni, they could never make it to be my number 1's! The best they could ever make was probably "best male" or rather "male Joni M"... This is not an estimation of quality, just of how I relate to them personally; and I guess people relate to music in different ways. Any thoughts? Benie ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2006 10:48:57 -0500 From: Michael Paz Subject: Joni Mitchell, Susan Cowsill, and Michael Paz I am just beside myself with excitement. A dream come true for your old pal Paz. The beautiful and talented Ms. Susan Cowsill does a series once a month called Under The Covers at Carrolton Station. She has done many of them so far where she covers an entire album top to bottom. In the past she has done Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Winigs-Band On The Run, The Kinks, and many more. Tonight she is performing Court and Spark with her band and she has asked me to play with them. I will be playing piano on Court and Spark, Down To You, and Same Situation and guitar on Peoples Parties and Just Like This Train ad well as background vox on Car on a Hill, Raised on Robbery, and Twisted. We had a great rehearsal yesterday afternoon and had a lot of laughs. I can't wait!!! I wish you call could be here. Showtime is at 10:30pm so if you hop in your private jets right now you will have time for a nice dinner before the show. It has been a really incredible week working with Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis, Kim Burrell (who I LOVE), Kirk Franklin, Ray Chew and his band, Yolanda Adams, Mary Mary, Dr. John, and New Orleans Social Club (featuring my friends Henry Butler, Leo Nocentelli and George Porter, Jr. of the Original Meters, Ivan Neville, Cyril Neville, and John Boutte. It was a 2 1/2 hour show that started out to be a 48 input show that grew to 86 inputs after rehearsals. Thank heaven for digital consoles with instant recall. The show was called Rebuilding the Soul of America...One Year Later. I am dreadfully behind on the list, but I hope all are well and happy. Love to you all. Paz NP-I Know This Bar-Ani DiFranco ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 12:23:23 -0400 (EDT) From: notaro@stpt.usf.edu Subject: Re: Joni Mitchell, Susan Cowsill, and Michael Paz Lucky you and lucky audience, Michael. Susan was a highlight for me at Pazfest and I'm sure it will be great! Jerry > I am just beside myself with excitement. A dream come true for your old > pal > Paz. The beautiful and talented Ms. Susan Cowsill does a series once a > month > called Under The Covers at Carrolton Station. She has done many of them so > far where she covers an entire album top to bottom. In the past she has > done > Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Winigs-Band On The Run, The Kinks, and many more. > Tonight she is performing Court and Spark with her band and she has asked > me > to play with them. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 10:26:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: NJC Re: Joni Mitchell, Susan Cowsill, and Michael Paz Be sure to roll those DAT's, Michael - so we can all enjoy it. I actually saw this show advertised this AM, was going to mention it to you and then figured that you were probably already involved. Bob NP: Tyler Yarema, "Big Yellow Taxi" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 19:35:06 +0200 (CEST) From: Joseph Palis Subject: RE : Odd Instruments (NJC) Thanks for the link, Bob. I played a double violin once when I was a crazy teenager. And the sound can either be creepy-sounding (like the dirge-like strings used by Dan Elfman used in Tim Burton films) or richly resonant. I dont see anything like that anymore except on a museum in Winston-Salem. As for Elemento, its a Filipino band that plays "found gadgets" that are strung together. I saw them perform with that avant-garde looking instrument called "Sandata ng Lolo ni Tatay" (translated as "weapon of my father's grandfather" or it can be a play on words where "sandata" [weapon] can stand for male genitalia as it is commonly used in conversations in Manila) and the sound can at first be off-puttingly strident but actually seamlessly flows with the whole music they are playing. Plus its quite cool to play an instrument like the one pictured -- makes you think if that is music instruments look like in the "Blade Runner" period. Thanks for bringing this up. Joseph in very sunny Chapel Hill (watching a football game between Carolina and Rutgers at 2:30 today) Bob Muller a icrit : See & hear a long list of weird instruments, all of which Victor knows how to play: http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/index.html Bob Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com - --------------------------------- Dicouvrez un nouveau moyen de poser toutes vos questions quelque soit le sujet ! Yahoo! Questions/Riponses pour partager vos connaissances, vos opinions et vos expiriences. Cliquez ici. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 11:49:26 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: Andeemac2006 Subject: Re: Maddona is and Artist!!! At his worst... Mathews is a extraordinaire guitarrist. Btw, what do Madonna, Beyonci and Brandy play... Chess? Ding-a-lings? War? Is Matthews a extraordiaire gutiarist by being able to Strum???????? I havnt heard him do any electric Lead guitarist solos, or finger pick his acoustic guitar like Paul Simon used to be able to, and I have not read any Guitarist magazing extolling the virtues of him being one of the top 10 guitarists in the world sorry your wrong. Joni Mitchell is a far superior guitarist than he ever will be and she created her own style And Maddona is a good Keyboard player and Writes all her own songs, which most are very good. This all came from me wanting more original Melodys from artists today, not drone. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 12:00:03 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: Andeemac2006 Subject: Sarah's version of "River" What a great singer she is, a true gem of a talent in todays hum drum Thanks Bob Muller for that link it brightend my day ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 15:04:36 EDT From: Bobsart48@aol.com Subject: Re: NJC Andeemac - Kindly spare us Joni-onlies from your apparently under-medicated (and certainly not peaceful, gentle, meek, merciful, tolerant, humble etc.) rants via use of the NJC tag. Thanks Bobsart Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:30:59 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: Andeemac2006 <> Subject: Republicans and The sermon on the mount You said:-Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. I'd guess a lot of Republicans especially can relate particularly to the above proverbs ; -) I know I do. You must be joking!!!! There not Proverbs this is Jesus Christ teaching us what is right and what is wrong, do you understand this, there is no room for interpertation.Now are you for a National Health service that would benifit all People in the USA not just the people with good jobs, like in all other Christian western Countries round the world, were every mother can go to a pharmacy and get very cheap or in some cases free Medicines for her children instead of having to make decisions Like " Shall i buy them food or Medicines" the US has 43 million people without Health Insurance. Or do you support G W Bush in blocking all cheap drugs being imported from Canada???? Well do you.Or how about him changing the Bankruptcy law to favor the Finance company, This only affects the working classes by the waySurley Republicans hate to the point of viciousness, People critisising there viewpoint, you detest it, and so far Bush has not considerd any Democratic viewpoint in the last 6 years, even though they lost by less than 1.% both elections. Blessed are the Peacemakers ???? are you for the Iraq war??? What part of your party even cares at all for the Poor in the United States of America, ie Katrina in New Orleans, People talk about "Flip flop" you republicans do the ultimate flip flop every sunday you abandon in reality everything in the Sermon on the Mount " from Monday to Sat, then on Sunday you turn 180 and pretend to abide by them, you cant have it both ways. How about, are you in agreement with the notion that Cnn, the BBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, New York Times, Canadian, Australian, British, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Scandanavian, TV and Media outlets are all biast agains the Republican viewpoint and only "Fox News " tells the truth???? well are you answer please. In reality it is true to say that the Republican viewpoint is a isolationist one, 49% detest there viewpoint in the USA. No there is no way you can say that the current Adminsitrations policys and actions over the last 6 years has been a Christian one, I mean resulting to torture???!!!! and abandoning the Geneva convention appauling Hey I say anybody can have there own viewpoint on Politics including G W Bush, but dont hold out a Bible with the Sermon on the Mount within, at the same time and say " I get my inspiration from God" The very notion of insinuation your in agreement with Matth 5-1 beggars belief. How do you know what God says or has said, --Jesus Christ lived on Planet earth, where is the lawfull evidence that God said this and has said that???? and how do you know it to be so???? Just a few Questions nobody seems to be able to answer.I repeat I agree with all of Jesus Christs teachings. not Paul's or Peters or anybody else in the Bible, and there not open to interpertaion at all, nor are they Proverbs this is the Republican way of saying "your not meant to take them seriously." ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 14:04:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Flaherty Subject: re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces Nuriel Tobias wrote: >Michael F. claims it's the change given by the vending machine in dimes so >there are more coins coming out than inserted. It makes sense - but isn't >the song about a machine that is empty and "tells" you that you should >try ?another? Surely you don't get change for something you can't buy. >Michael, my dear - you are risking my sanity:) Obviously, the machine is completely out of order. Lol! We have a machine at work that sometimes gives back different coins than you put in if the drink you want is out, so that's where I came up with my "solution", but it doesn't tell you to do anything. I think it's pretty impressive that this boy noticed all of this--I certainly never did. Michael Flaherty - --------------------------------- Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 14:07:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Flaherty Subject: Re: This Is More Mysterious Than Your Nothces ron wrote: >years later, she realised her mistake & wrote a song about it. only she was embarassed, & instead of just saying that it happened to a friend (she had her reputation as a creative writer to protect) she claimed that it happed to a dry cleaner from des moines. I like everything but your ending--she wrote about the dry cleaner before she wrote about the cig machine. :) MF Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 16:13:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: Female Bob Dylan Hi Benie - welcome to the JMDL, and thanks for the post. Please know that nothing has been banned (although a couple of PEOPLE have been) and old topics come 'round again many times, so feel free to ask/post/discuss whatever you like. It does seem a shame that we feel the need to add a qualifying adjective to Joni and others...best female songwriter, best black vocalist, best red-headed model, whatever. Maybe it's human nature, maybe it's taught, I dunno. And it certainly is silly to label Joni as the "female Dylan" as it's unlikely to see someone called the "male Joni". I have had to unlearn some of that behavior myself and try to think of things on their own terms - this group has had a lot to do with opening up the depths of my perception, that's for sure. Bob Now Playing: Bruce Springsteen, "Tunnel Of Love" Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 19:27:36 -0400 From: "Jim L'Hommedieu, Lama" Subject: religion & politics oh my! njc Or he was a faithful Jew. Jim L. Kate smirked, <> then Bob Muller chimed in, >Next thing you'll be saying that Jesus wasn't a white boy.> ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 11:12:17 +1000 From: Mark-Leon Thorne Subject: Re: Sarah McLachlan's "River" I have extracted the audio from the Sarah McLachlan clip. If anyone wants a copy of the mp3, write to me off list and I'll send it to you. Mark in Sydney PS Happy Spring to everyone in the Southern Hemisphere. It's gorgeous here in Sydney. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2006 01:48:33 +0000 From: "c Karma" Subject: re: Joni's albums-concept albums? I think that Joni always endeavored to include some unifying thread that enabled her individual albums to hang together each like a cohesive work. Sometimes the poetry tied tracks together, sometimes the instrumental arrangements. Her methods varied, changing with the material she was presenting and the prevalent format's time constraints...remember flipping albums? For many AOR artists the arc of playing a side often had a big opening and question mark ending for the first half of the record, a single release opening the second half and the record's most artistically challenging track or mega hit closing it. Vinyl records and the cassette tape formats were often limited to about 45 minutes of material (the tape format became unreliable in longer lengths), so artists (and their record companies) had to be very judicious about how they ordered songs so that the listening experience was paced much in the same way that editing choices allow the action in a feature film to hold the viewer. The reslult being that the listener had reasons for flipping the record, and buying the next one. I don't however think that Joni EVER made decisions on the instrumentation or pace of a specific track because she felt it was destined for a particular place in the song order...no, the poetry was too important and rightly so. Joni never favored hooks over message, God bless her. It was like building a dry wall from field stones...the rock fit the place or it went somewhere else. Of all Joni's albums, I think the one that jumps out to me as a concept piece probably had no intention in achieving such a label. All of "Hejira" has always had a very distinct aural landscape (I think that Eno is using the phrase "sonic landscapes" these days for Paul Simon) that I felt tied perfectly with the package's art direction. I'm sure the case could be made to varying degrees for many of Joni's other albums (especially HOSL, DJRD and BSN) but for me, Hejira's the one that in total seems insular and self-contained, if not conceptual. CC "The toss around your latest golden egg. Speculation, who's to know if the next one in the next will glitter for them so." -- JM ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 20:24:00 -0700 From: "gene" Subject: njc njc interesting read very long post I apologize for this long post----but i know many of you are environmentally concerened----again i apologize for the very long post. gene The End of Eden James Lovelock Says This Time We've Pushed the Earth Too Far By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 2, 2006; Page C01 ST. GILES-ON-THE-HEATH, England Through a deep and tangled wood lies a glade so lovely and wet and lush as to call to mind a hobbit's sanctuary. A lichen-covered statue rises in a garden of native grasses, and a misting rain drips off a slate roof. At the yard's edge a plump muskrat waddles into the brush. "Hello!" A lean, white-haired gentleman in a blue wool sweater and khakis beckons you inside his whitewashed cottage. We sit beside a stone hearth as his wife, Sandy, an elegant blonde, sets out scones and tea. James Lovelock fixes his mind's eye on what's to come. "It's going too fast," he says softly. "We will burn." Why is that? "Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return." Sulfurous musings are not Lovelock's characteristic style; he's no Book of Revelation apocalyptic. In his 88th year, he remains one of the world's most inventive scientists, an Englishman of humor and erudition, with an oenophile's taste for delicious controversy. Four decades ago, his discovery that ozone-destroying chemicals were piling up in the atmosphere started the world's governments down a path toward repair. Not long after that, Lovelock proposed the theory known as Gaia, which holds that Earth acts like a living organism, a self-regulating system balanced to allow life to flourish. Biologists dismissed this as heresy, running counter to Darwin's theory of evolution. Today one could reasonably argue that Gaia theory has transformed scientific understanding of the Earth. Now Lovelock has turned his attention to global warming, writing "The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity." Already a big seller in the United Kingdom, the book was released in the United States last month. (He will speak in Washington, at the Carnegie Institution, Friday at 7 p.m.) Lovelock's conclusion is straightforward. He measured atmospheric gases and ocean temperatures, and examined forests tropical and arboreal (last year a forest the size of Italy burned in rapidly heating Siberia, releasing from the permafrost a vast sink of methane, which contributes to global warming). He found Gaia trapped in a vicious cycle of positive-feedback loops -- from air to water, everything is getting warmer at once. The nature of Earth's biosphere is that, under pressure from industrialization, it resists such heating, and then it resists some more. Then, he says, it adjusts. Within the next decade or two, Lovelock forecasts, Gaia will hike her thermostat by at least 10 degrees. Earth, he predicts, will be hotter than at any time since the Eocene Age 55 million years ago, when crocodiles swam in the Arctic Ocean. "There's no realization of how quickly and irreversibly the planet is changing," Lovelock says. "Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover." Such dire talk no doubt occasions much rolling of eyes in polite circles, particularly among scientists in the United States, that last redoubt of global-warming skeptics. Lovelock's so intemperat e, and more than a few of his peers distrust his preference for elegant nouns and verbs served with no crusting of jargon. His grim predictions tend to be twinned in the press with those of the skeptics, each treated as a radical diversion -- purveyors of "climate porn," an English think-tank called them recently -- from a moderate mean. Lovelock's radical view of global warming doesn't sit well with David Archer, a scientist at the University of Chicago and a frequent contributor to the Web site RealClimate, which accepts the reality of global warning. "No one, not Lovelock or anyone else, has proposed a specific quantitative scenario for a climate-driven, blow the doors off, civilization ending catastrophe," writes Archer. The headline on Archer's essay, which is in fact respectful of Lovelock's science, calls the Englishman a "renegade earth scientist." It's a curious description. Lovelock works independently on various biochemistry projects, in a lab in an old barn behind his farmhouse in Devon. He often quarrels with the scientific establishment, which he sees as crippled by clubby orthodoxy. (Nor does he hesitate to tweak environmentalists -- Lovelock is a passionate backer of nuclear power as a carbon-clean palliative for global warming.) But it's difficult to see Lovelock, an inventor with 50 patents to his name, a fellow in the Royal Society -- England's scientific society -- as a Gaian bandito. What's perhaps as intriguing are the top scientists who decline to dismiss Lovelock's warning. Lovelock may be an outlier, but he's not drifting far from shore. Sir David King, science adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, saluted Lovelock's book and proclaimed global warming a far more serious threat than terrorism. Sir Brian Heap, a Cambridge University biologist and past foreign secretary of the Royal Society, says Lovelock's views are tightly argued, if perhaps too gloomy. Then you dial up Paul Ehrlich, the eminent Stanford University biologist, at his cottage in the mountains of Colorado, where he's been meeting with other scientists. Three decades ago Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb," a best-selling jeremiad in which he warned that the Earth's population was expanding much too fast. Disaster did not arrive precisely as Ehrlich foretold, and he was treated as a doomsayer debunked. Maybe Ehrlich just was too early to the party. __________________ Today Ehrlich sees global warming and population growth, with its attendant pressures on natural resources and demand for oil and gas, as menaces dancing in tango step. "Technically speaking, most scientists I know are scared [expletive]," Ehrlich says. "Lovelock and I are doomsayers because I'm afraid we see doom." "Like the Norns in Wagner's Der Ring des Niebelungen, we are at the end of our tether, and the rope, whose weave defines our fate, is about to break." You read such lines in "The Revenge of Gaia" and ask this wiry Jeremiah: Why so gloomy? Lovelock grins, his face a web of smile lines, and demurs: No, no, no. You have him all wrong. He started a family in the darkness of the London Blitz -- he has nine grandchildren, whom he loves, and a country of which he's very proud. "I'm an optimist," he says. "I think that after the warming sets in and the survivors have settled in near the Arctic, they will find a way to adjust. It will be a tough life enlivened by excitement and fear." That still sounds a tad short of good cheer. Lovelock and Sandy, whom he married after the death of his first wife, take afternoon walks in Devonshire, and he quotes Shakespeare on the joy of finding oxlip by a stream. Lovelock finds too much delight in the mysteries of the universe to call himself an atheist. But he remains at heart a biochemist, a rigorous empiricist who refuses to shrink from the reality of hard times. Lovelock grew up in working-class London. He could not afford Oxford or Cambridge and so attended at night. During World War II Lovelock walked sentry duty with professors on the roof of the lab. They watched the twinkling lights of German V-1 missiles draw close. "A missile would veer off and explode and the professors would feel an immediate need to impart their wisdom." Lovelock chuckles. "It was like a graduate course. Terrible to say, but war makes us more alive." Lovelock was a prodigy, earning degrees in chemistry and medicine. In the 1950s he designed an electron capture machine, which provided environmentalist Rachel Carson with the data to prove that pesticides infected everything from penguins to mother's milk. Later he took a detector on a ship to Antarctica and proved that man-made chemicals -- CFCs -- were burning a hole in the ozone. "Gaia, shmaia," says Ehrlich, the Stanford biologist, who has been critical of Lovelock's latest theory. "If Lovelock hadn't discovered the erosion of the ozone, we'd all be living under the ocean in snorkels and fins to escape that poisonous sun." The End of Eden In 1961 Lovelock worked with NASA. The space agency wanted to design a lander to search for life on Mars. That, Lovelock thought, was silly. What if a lander set down in the wrong spot? What if Martian life wasn't bacterial? Lovelock took a conceptual leap. If Mars bore life, bacteria would be obliged to use oxygen to breathe and to deposit their wastes as methane. Lovelock found that Earth's atmosphere contained massive quantities of oxygen and methane, gases that are the very signature of life. Mars's atmosphere was thick with carbon dioxide, the calling card of a dead planet. That discovery changed his life. He came to see Earth as a self-regulating biosphere. The sun has warmed by 25 percent since life appeared, so Earth produced more algae and forests to absorb carbon dioxide, ensuring roughly constant temperatures. In 1969, Lovelock lacked only a name for his theory. He took a walk with novelist William Golding. A big concept needs a big name, Golding said. Call it Gaia. Gaia proved controversial, and not just because the name made New Age priestesses go weak in the knees. ("Gaia's not 'alive' and I'm afraid I'm not a very good guru," Lovelock notes dryly.) Biologists nearly choked -- they argued that organisms cannot possibly act in concert, as that would imply foresight. Lovelock recalls being denounced at a conference in Berlin. The intolerance gave him a pain. Lovelock said that the world's biomass can act without being "conscious." "The neo-Darwinists are just like the very religious," Lovelock says. "They spend all their time defending silly doctrine." Forty years later, talk of an interconnected planetary system is the lingua franca of Earth science. The queen has handed Lovelock a prize, Oxford has invited him to teach, and his small forest lab had more government contracts than he could handle. (In his lab, the octogenarian scientist follows few safety protocols save the dictates of self-preservation. "I can kill only myself; it's a splendid freedom," he says.) But friends say he's restless. "Maybe Jim thinks the world has gotten too comfortable with his theory," says Lee Kump, a prominent geologist at Penn State. "He sees Gaia treating us as a body does an infection -- it's trying to burn us out." "The meltdown of Greenland's ice sheet is speeding up, satellite measurements show." __________________ The End of Eden "Dr. Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that 'the lock has broken' on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: T he Amazon is 'headed in a terrible direction.' " - -- CNN, 2006 How will our splendid Spaceship Earth so quickly become the oven of our doom? As we sit at his table in Devon, Lovelock expands on his vision. It begins with the melting of ice and snow. As the Arctic grows bare -- the Greenland ice cap is shrinking far faster than had been expected -- dark ground emerges and absorbs heat. That melts more snow and softens peat bogs, which release methane. As oceans warm, algae are dying and so absorbing less heat-causing carbon dioxide. To the south, drought already is drying out the great tropical forests of the Amazon. "The forests will melt away just like the snow," Lovelock says. Even the northern forests, those dark cool beauties of pines and firs, suffer. They absorb heat and shelter bears, lynxes and wolves through harsh winters. But recent studies show the boreal forests are drying and dying and inducing more warming. Casting 30, 40 years into the future, Lovelock sees sub-Saharan lands becoming uninhabitable. India runs out of water, Bangladesh drowns, China eyes a Siberian land grab, and local warlords fight bloody wars over water and energy. Lovelock sees the look on your face and pauses. "Look, this is why it's a gloomy book," he says. "Would you care for some more tea?" The mind reels off objections. Doesn't this amount to a great piling up of what-ifs and could-bes? "The Day After Tomorrow," "On the Beach," Helen Caldicott, Nostradamus, a thousand tipping-point predictions of doom fade into the mists of human history. We humans are clever. We'll send a space shade into outer space to deflect sunlight (as a couple of California professors have proposed)? Lovelock nods, weary; he's heard this before. "We like to think of Hurricane Katrina, or a killer heat wave in Europe, as a one-off," he says. "Or we like to think that we'll come up with a technological fix." Lovelock reminds you that the Mayan seers, to name another maligned bunch of doomsayers, were spot on. Their great civilization died of an environmental apocalypse. He's not romanced by the primitive. Across the world, from the American Indians to the aborigines of Australia to European hunters, research is suggesting that native peoples played a key role in the burning of forests and the extinction of thousands of species. Today the environmentally conscious seek salvation in solar cells, recycling and ten thousand wind turbines. "It won't matter a damn," Lovelock says. "They make the mistake of thinking we have decades. We don't." Lovelock favors genetically modified crops, which require less water, and nuclear energy. Only the atom can produce enough electrical power to persuade industrialized nations to abandon burning fossil fuels. France draws 70 percent of its power from nuclear plants. But what of Three Mile Island? Chernobyl? Lovelock's shaking his head before you complete the litany. How many people died, he asks. A few hundred? The radiation exclusion zone around Chernobyl is the lushest and most diverse zone of flora and fauna in Eurasia. Sir Brian Heap accepts this. But he worries that South Asia and Africa are about to suffer the terrible consequences of First World excesses. What of our responsibility to them? "The poor aren't our problem," Heap says. "We're their problem." Lovelock acknowledges the moral conundrum. But he sees no we-are-the-world solutions. The heat waves that kill millions, the powerful typhoons, the droughts that suffocate cities, will force a retreat to nationalism. After a couple of hours, you wonder about his own good cheer. His internal combustion engine shows few signs of flagging; he wakes up 5:30 a.m. and reads, writes and tramps through the countryside. The studiously polite Lovelock seems a touch annoyed only at the suggestion he's frivolous about what the future holds. "People say, 'Well, you're 87, you won't live to see this,' " he says. "I have children, I have grandchildren, I wish none of this. But it's our fate; we need to recognize it's another wartime. We desperately need a Moses to take us to the Arctic and preserve civilization. "It's too late to turn back." ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 23:54:58 -0500 From: "Music Is Special" Subject: * Perpetual Joni Covers Train: Volumes 61-70 of JM Covers In order to enable latecomers to the list or new traders have a chance of listening to Bob Muller's incredible compilation of covers of Joni's songs here is the latest round of the Perpetual Joni Covers Trains. For those not familiar with trading trains, here is how they work: When the disks come to you, you make copies of as much of the contents as you want, and then you post back to this list offering to pass the disks along to the next person. You do not keep the originals -- you keep the copies you made for yourself. On most trains, the convention is that you make the copies and send the masters along within two days. For these trains, you must agree to turn them around within one week. Sometimes the offer goes unclaimed. Bob and I expect that to happen from time to time. So, by participating, you agree to just hang on to the disks and then make another offer a month or so later (or to respond if somebody posts a grovel looking for them). In theory, if everybody takes good care of the disks, wrapping them well, not letting them get scratched, etc. and passes them along, these covers will run on the tracks for years. Nobody is going to monitor the progress of these trains so if you participate and then lose the disks or fail to reoffer them, you will have kept others from enjoying them. When you post an offer, please include these "rules". One final note, I know a few folks like to compress these into MP3s. If you want to, go ahead but please do not send MP3s to the next person - MP3s permanently delete some of the "data" and sound quality degrades so please pass the masters along. So, anybody who would like to receive volumes 51-60, please send me: 1. Your mailing address and 2. Your promise to reoffer, etc. Enjoy and have a nice weekend, Eric P.S. If you are sitting on any of the earlier rounds, please offer them up again as its been a year and new folks might be interested. Thanks ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2006 #315 ***************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------