From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2007 #593 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 Monday, March 3 2008 Volume 2007 : Number 593 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Luciana and Larry [] NJC Music Artists and their vote [Monika Bogdanowicz ] covers, bob njc [Marianne Rizzo ] obama's experience, njc [Marianne Rizzo ] Re: Joni Tribute in CT ["Rachel Avery" ] Re: shining hissing smoking [Jerry Notaro ] njc, America music, now Steve Earle & Allison Moorer [Patti Parlette ] Re: njc, America music, now Steve Earle & Allison Moorer [Bob.Muller@Fluo] Re: Fave Joni "guest spot" ["Mark Scott" ] Re: shining hissing smoking [Michael Flaherty ] Re: Fave Joni "guest spot" ["Jerry Notaro" ] 60 minutes NJC ["Kate Bennett" ] I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) ["Owen Duff" ] Re: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) [Jerry Nota] We are all Joni's greatest admirers [David Sapp ] Re: Re: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) ["Owen ] Re: Hillary of Barak, njc [Laura Stanley ] Re: shining hissing smoking [Monika Bogdanowicz ] Re: Hillary of Barak, njc [Laura Stanley ] Re: shining hissing smoking ["Randy Remote" ] New book on Carole, Joni & Carly [Patti Parlette ] Re: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly [Bob Muller ] RE: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly 2nd try ["Richard Flynn" Subject: Luciana and Larry Thanks to Steve Dulson and his friend, musician Ashley Maher, we were clued into a one-night performance of Luciana Souza with Larry Klein and Larry Koonse tonight at the Jazz Bakery. Ahh, my. It was a flawless, compelling and transcendent night of music. I was not too familiar with her and heard mixed reviews here of her performance on Herbie's River and her new album The New Bossa Nova. Still any facsimilie of Brazilian music is my absolute drug and I had to see her. Please try to see them live. You will experience something very brilliant and rare. She said this is only her second night performing with her husband Klein. Maybe he makes the difference. I am amazed to say that as not a great fan, I was totally won over by him tonight. He played acoustic bass frequently like lead, like flamenco at times. He was incredible - and became Larry "Joao" Klein to me ;-) Luciana played a variety of small percussion instruments through the night and covered Joni's Down to You, Leonard Cohen's Here It Is, James Taylor's Never Die Young, Beach Boys God Only Knows, Jobim's Water of March, Pablo Neruda's Love Sonnets 49 and 99 set to music, an original composition collarborated with Klein about a romantic cheater that had the lyric "backstreet" throughout ;-) many Brazilian standards and more. She told a story of being around 10 years old in the 70s and her sister coming home with this "big album" by Joni Mitchell and how it was like nothing she had ever heard before in terms of words of music. She also announced that she and Larry are having a baby. They seem very much in love - you can feel such an affinity and warmth between them and it carries over stunningly in their performance together. I am also struck how much she really sounds very much like the early to middle era Joni but with a jazzy twist. I was somehow lucky to have as my seatmate, Matt Grief, a member of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, who toured and recorded with Luciana the past couple of years and he raved about her. Her website says she is touring to Italy next and then back around the states. She is truly a must see if you can catch her. Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 01:57:17 -0800 (PST) From: Monika Bogdanowicz Subject: NJC Music Artists and their vote Not that this is all too important but in case if you're interested in seeing who a few music artists are voting for: http://www.spinner.com/2008/02/29/campaignwatch-music-stars-take-sides-in-close-democratic-race/ -M - --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:15:41 +0100 From: missblux@googlemail.com Subject: Eric and Joni Kakki, just my words. She doesn't have the range she used to but it is the artistry with which she uses that new, old voice. But I want to add that somehow, the deterioration just emphasizes the history and the experience that is written into her voice and makes the listening more dramatic... somehow. There is something extremely intimate about the late material, particularly seen in the perspective of the early material. I hope you've recovered from that flu! Bene Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 17:01:54 -0800 From: Subject: Eric and Joni Hey Eric, I think 99% of people here love Joni's artistry and would even find gems to discuss at length if she sang the phone book. I love some of her incarnations more than others but I have always found value and intrigue in every piece she creates, whether music or painting. Regardless of personal preferences and favorite eras, can you just imagine if Joni's voice and style had ALWAYS stayed the same? Ugh! We would hardly be giving her the time of day that we passionately do. Whether one likes one Joni era and maybe not another is besides the point that she is great exactly because she does change and evolve. So don't feel frustrated - her changes are exactly what make her the artistic great that she is to us! It's all good and great ;-) Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:36:12 +0100 From: missblux@googlemail.com Subject: Joni a great artist... just how great...? From: Eric Taylor > GEEZ do any of us really realize WHAT A GREAT artist we have in Joni?????? Well... I think we all signed up here because we have an idea that she is pretty good.... But if someone doesn't feel moved by this or that piece she has written, then that's how they feel, and I would hate it if this was the list where everyone had to proclaim that everything she has ever done is wonderful. The discussions encourage me to listen more carefully to tracks I don't like that much, but they also make me think of why I love the songs that I do love. I'm an academic, and just like with an artist I take criticism and praise all the time. Someone will tell me what I have written is revolutionary, someone else will say about the same text that my argumentation is confused and incoherent. There are people who believe in me and people who for all sorts of reasons get off by putting me down. Joni has to endure the same thing, on a larger scale. I feel for her when critics are unkind, but then everybody's lives are like that. Hum, did this sound confused and incoherent...? Bene ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:41:09 +0000 From: Michel BYRNE Subject: the voice... I'm with you on the voice thing, Eric, though not on Joni's attitude to it - and i wouldn't want to place her in some league of greats. I admire the range and warmth of her voice in the pre-Hissing records, but it doesn't get me in the pit of the stomach like her later voice (I'll never forget first hearing the low notes of 'a night like this' in NRH!). And her 'low' versions of Case of You, Both sides Now and Last Time I Saw R, to me beat the originals hands down. What i do love about her high register, though, is the way she could use it as a counterpoint to a lower melody - at its most spine-tingling in Song for Sharon. But like somebody said recently, when she tried the same sort of thing on Come in from the Cold, it sounded pained and strangled (fitting, for the song maybe, but painful to listen to). That said, though, the ease of her voice in the mid-70s IS wonderful - on C&S, HSL and Hejira. I DO mostly like J's voice on Shine, but the vocal of This Place is to my ears painful and ugly - - notes cutting half way, undefined wobbles - it does shock, as the first sung track on the album. No other track on Shine shows quite the same weakness, and I'm surprised she went for that take as the definitive one. What makes things unnecessarily frought in discussing the voice issue is Joni's own defensiveness verging on arrogance. Contrast how relaxed she was about it on the BBC Dog Eat Dog interview - freely admitting she was losing range, and joking that she might be reduced in her later years to talking her songs. Now instead she comes across as self-deluded and arrogant. Regards to all.Mich _________________________________________________________________ Telly addicts unite! http://www.searchgamesbox.com/tvtown.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 06:41:01 -0500 From: Marianne Rizzo Subject: covers, bob njc >As always, plenty to like here - I will come back and supply my liner notes later on. >Bob be sure to come back : - ) _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 06:53:21 -0500 From: Marianne Rizzo Subject: obama's experience, njc From: "Mark Scott" >The Democrats need to >present a solid, united front to get the garbage that is in power now >out. Mark, *excellent point. This should be our utmost priority. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 07:57:24 -0500 From: "Rachel Avery" Subject: Re: Joni Tribute in CT Yes! I'm so glad you posted this Patti, i'd meant to do so last week. Dave Rave is a friend of ours, and he's actually the one responsible for getting me into Joni just over a decade ago. It will definitely be a fun show - everything Dave does is. With the exceptions of him and Lauren, though, i'm not familiar with the performers. Both of their myspaces are linked from the smalltownconcertseries page. Do go if you can! back to lurkdom/exams, ===== rachel "Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more." On 02/03/2008, Patti Parlette wrote: > I just got an email from an old high school friend. Seems like many dim years ago since I saw him face to face, so this is an unexpected pleasure: > > Dear Pattie, > I was recently in Chester CT having lunch with a friend of mine and I spotted the following tribute to Joni Mitchell music series being performed in Chester. Though you'd be interested. > > http://www.myspace.com/smalltownconcertseries > > ***** > > It always warms the cockles of my Joni heart and mind when someone hears something about Joni and associates her with me. Quel honneur, n'est-ce pas? > > Does anyone know these musicians? I'll have to check this out tomorrow. The more Joni fans in the world, the better! > > Love, > > Patti P. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:54:57 -0500 From: Jerry Notaro Subject: Re: shining hissing smoking Sorry, Eric. I like you but the smoke is getting to your ears as well. Both Joan and Judy are older than Joni and tour continually, as opposed to singing in public once every few years. Both of their voices are much more clear and tonal than Joni's is now. That is a physical fact, not an opinion. Now you may prefer Joni's now deepened tones with a smaller range, but that is subjective. And just because some of us recognize this physical change does NOT mean we prefer her earlier work, or don't recognize the genius of her later work. It is just a fact. Jerry > > i don't hear the other non-smoking Joans (Baez & Collins) sound NEARLY SO good ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 14:10:19 +0000 From: Patti Parlette Subject: njc, America music, now Steve Earle & Allison Moorer Since Gene just mentioned: 20. Time Has Come Today, Steve Earle I thought I'd share this little review. Musik Meister Muller, make sure to read the last sentence! Peace, Patti P. Earle Proves Himself The Boss Of Country-Rock Storytellers By THOMAS KINTNER | Special to the Courant March 1, 2008 For local fans of iconic American troubadours, Thursday night presented a difficult choice between Bruce Springsteen's latest Hartford date and an appearance north of the Massachusetts border by Steve Earle. Earle, playing at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton, provided ample rewards to those who chose him with a lengthy trip through some of the strongest entries in his wide range of country and rock compositions. The solo acoustic setting in which he began the show suited the 53-year-old Earle's material, and served as a showcase for the roots-laced texture and down-to-earth clarity of his opener, "Steve's Last Ramble." The gritty sensibility at the core of his storytelling anchored the kinetic bob of "Devil's Right Hand" and fueled the wistful contemplation at the core of the mellow "Goodbye." Politics always come standard with Earle's performances, whether in activist discourse between songs or in his lyrical content, which included the sharp social commentary of the rough-hewn story song "Billy Austin." Similar themes were at the heart of his anthems, whether it was the punchy, bouzouki-propelled "City of Immigrants" or a thumping delivery of the escalating "Steve's Hammer (For Pete)." Earle's crisp acoustic guitar work was a mainstay, but he enhanced that basic sound with the addition of DJ Neil MacDonald, who added thick atmosphere to tunes that included the pulsating "Jericho Road." Earle also dressed up his material with the vocal contributions of his wife, Allison Moorer, who added sultry flair to the duet "Days Are Never Long Enough." She colored the flow of "Down Here Below" with tasteful accent vocals, which complemented Earle's high-tone accompaniment on resonator steel guitar. The 2-hour and 20-minute show included a pair of encores in which Earle stretched both his between-song musings and his tunes, which made for memorable trips through the steady, hopeful "Jerusalem" and a touching rendition of "Little Rock 'n' Roller." He preceded "Christmas in Washington" with a lengthy diatribe about the place of listeners in the political process, a long stretch of preaching to the converted who sounded happy to let him go on all night. Moorer opened the show with a charming eight-song set. Her take on "I'm Looking for Blue Eyes" was pretty and plaintive, and she put a slight spin on "Both Sides Now" that leaned on patience and the earthy Southern character of her voice. ****** _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:21:39 -0500 From: Victor Johnson Subject: Re: Luciana and Larry On Mar 3, 2008, at 2:43 AM, wrote: > > Her website says she is touring to Italy next and then back around > the states. > She is truly a must see if you can catch her. > > Kakki You guys get all the cool shows! I wish I could teleport to California. I visited her website and her stops in Italy will be performances of "The Passion of St. Mark" by Golijav which I saw her in a year ago with the ASO at Emory University. This was my first exposure to her and she was mesmerizing. I would love to have seen her in a jazz club. Looks like she'll be hitting NYC, Chicago, and D.C. It seems like she's in such an unique place in her life, having all these different perspectives of Joni. The whole scenario probably doesn't happen very often. Victor ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:48:25 -0500 From: Bob.Muller@Fluor.com Subject: Re: njc, America music, now Steve Earle & Allison Moorer Thanks Patti - her take on BSN is very nice indeed. Bob NP: Sonic Youth, "Jams Run Free" - ------------------------------------------------------------ The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain proprietary, business-confidential and/or privileged material. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any use, review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, reproduction or any action taken in reliance upon this message is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of the company. - ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:48:04 -0800 From: "Mark Scott" Subject: Re: Fave Joni "guest spot" - ----- Original Message ----- From: "KEVIN DOHENY" >..I had no idea Joni sang with Seal..i am definetly going to check >that out..Love Seal.. I think Joni's duet with Seal on 'If I Could' is my favorite Joni appearance on another artist's work. It's such a beautiful song and the two of them just seem to blend with and play off of each other so beautifully. I get a strong sense that Joni really respects the material she is contributing to and the artist she is backing up. >A close second would be her work on David Crosby's brilliant If I >could only remember >my name.. If my ears don't decieve me "what are >there names" contains what could be a > fantasy pairing of Joni and grace slick.. I bought 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' sometime while I was in college in the 70s for the sole reason that it had both Joni and Grace listed in the credits. At that time, they were my 2 idols. I saw them as completely different and representing 2 distinct sides of my personality. Alter-egos, if you will. lol! I have to admit I never listened to the record more than once or twice and then put it away as a sort of curio. I have often thought about trying to find it on cd to see what I may have missed. I seem to remember seeing it on cd once or twice. Although I like CSN, CSNY, etc, I have never been as big a fan of theirs as some people here. I was always more fascinated and drawn to the female artists. Mark in Seattle ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 06:43:48 -0800 (PST) From: Michael Flaherty Subject: Re: shining hissing smoking >>GEEZ do any of us really realize WHAT A GREAT artist we have in Joni?????? ~MOJO: What about your voice? A lot of critics have complained that smoking caused you to lose your ability to hit the old high notes. Has it?~ WHAT an insulting STUPID question! No, Eric, no one here appreciates Joni but you. The rest of us are just stupid and insult her with our unworthiness. It seems to me that whatever any of us say you're going to read what you believe so ... count me out. A list that's sole purpose would be to see who can praise Joni the highest would be pretty boring, I think. Michael Flaherty (who will be less annoyed by all of this later in the day when he'll think "oh, well, whatever".) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:15:29 -0500 (EST) From: "Jerry Notaro" Subject: Re: Fave Joni "guest spot" Mark Scott wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "KEVIN DOHENY" >>..I had no idea Joni sang with Seal..i am definetly going to check >>that out..Love Seal.. > > I think Joni's duet with Seal on 'If I Could' is my favorite Joni > appearance on another artist's work. As per usual, Mark and I agree on this one. I used to hang at a place that had music videos on a big screen. They had this one and all I had to do was walk near the booth and the DJ would say, "I know. I know. If I Could!" Jerry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 07:20:58 -0800 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: 60 minutes NJC Did anyone catch last nights 60minutes? As a recent topic of discussion here, I thought some would be interested in this very moving piece on healthcare in the USA. It is about RAM, an organization founded to help 3rd world countries with free healthcare, which is now focusing efforts in the USA because of all the working poor who are uninsured or underinsured. Here is the link to the transcript & video. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 14:54:32 +0100 From: "Owen Duff" Subject: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) Okay, I tried to post about this before but it either didn't work or I didn't get the digest it appeared in! I'm a singer/songwriter, very much influenced by Joni Mitchell (hence my presence on this list), and I've just released seven of my songs completely free as an EP... I would *love* for as many people from JMDL as possible to download it, and to hear what they think. The songs are offcuts from an album (my first) which will be released this year - they were mostly recorded on piano, but I have some arrangements with violin, guitar, ukulele, and electronics. They are quiet and contemplative, made for late-night/early morning listening really. If you are at all interested please go to www.myspace.com/owenduff and click on the artwork to download the EP (you can also hear songs that were on my first EP and from the upcoming album in the myspace player). Thanks for your support! Owen Lycos email has 300 Megabytes of free storage... Get it now at mail.lycos.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:11:17 -0600 From: Michael Paz Subject: Re: 60 minutes NJC I saw that and it made my skin crawl. I have been involved with so many groups of doctors going to Honduras thru the Ruth Paz Foundation, International Hospital for Children, and Interplast and know what those medical missions mean to the people of third world countries, but never did it cross my mind that it would have even more meaning for medical missions within our own country. Paz (on my way to Starkville, Mississippi Michael Paz michael@thepazgroup.com Tour Manager Preservation Hall Jazz Band http://www.preservationhall.com On Mar 3, 2008, at 9:20 AM, Kate Bennett wrote: Did anyone catch last nights 60minutes? As a recent topic of discussion here, I thought some would be interested in this very moving piece on healthcare in the USA. It is about RAM, an organization founded to help 3rd world countries with free healthcare, which is now focusing efforts in the USA because of all the working poor who are uninsured or underinsured. Here is the link to the transcript & video. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:46:04 -0500 From: Jerry Notaro Subject: Re: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) Owen, And the link would be where? Jerry > Okay, I tried to post about this before but it either didn't work or I didn't > get the digest it appeared in! > > I'm a singer/songwriter, very much influenced by Joni Mitchell (hence my > presence on this list), and I've just released seven of my songs completely > free as an EP... I would *love* for as many people from JMDL as possible to > download it, and to hear what they think. The songs are offcuts from an album > (my first) which will be released this year - they were mostly recorded on > piano, but I have some arrangements with violin, guitar, ukulele, and > electronics. They are quiet and contemplative, made for late-night/early > morning listening really. If you are at all interested please go to > www.myspace.com/owenduff and click on the artwork to download the EP (you can > also hear songs that were on my first EP and from the upcoming album in the > myspace player). > > Thanks for your support! > > Owen > > Lycos email has 300 Megabytes of free storage... Get it now at > mail.lycos.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:42:36 -0800 (PST) From: David Sapp Subject: We are all Joni's greatest admirers I don't want to start a flame war here but I have to get this off my chest... Eric Taylor I appreciate your wonderful exuberance about Joni and your lively posts... but your constant assertion that you are the only one who truly appreciates Joni's genius is getting a bit overwrought and tiresome. I've been a member of this list since 2000 and have found that each of us are well aware of the genius of Joni and appreciate her in our own way... I believe each of us are her greatest admirers. Everyone have a good day...... signing off for now, Peace, David - --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 19:32:55 +0100 From: "Owen Duff" Subject: Re: Re: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) Hi Jerry, the link is www.myspace.com/owenduff, click on the big orange artwork under the 'About Me' section and the EP should download... I think I need to make that more obvious! Thanks, Owen > From:: Jerry Notaro > To: Owen Duff , Joni List > Subject: Re: I'm going to try this one last time... Free Music!! (NJC) > Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:46:04 -0500 > Owen, > > And the link would be where? > > Jerry > > > > > > Okay, I tried to post about this before but it either didn't work or I > didn't > > get the digest it appeared in! > > > > I'm a singer/songwriter, very much influenced by Joni Mitchell (hence my > > presence on this list), and I've just released seven of my songs > completely > > free as an EP... I would *love* for as many people from JMDL as possible > to > > download it, and to hear what they think. The songs are offcuts from an > album > > (my first) which will be released this year - they were mostly recorded > on > > piano, but I have some arrangements with violin, guitar, ukulele, and > > electronics. They are quiet and contemplative, made for late-night/early > > morning listening really. If you are at all interested please go to > > www.myspace.com/owenduff and click on the artwork to download the EP (you > can > > also hear songs that were on my first EP and from the upcoming album in > the > > myspace player). > > > > Thanks for your support! > > > > Owen > > > > Lycos email has 300 Megabytes of free storage... Get it now at > > mail.lycos.co.uk Lycos email has 300 Megabytes of free storage... Get it now at mail.lycos.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 01:55:24 +0700 (ICT) From: Laura Stanley Subject: Re: Hillary of Barak, njc [TABLE NOT SHOWN] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:54:12 -0800 (PST) From: Monika Bogdanowicz Subject: Re: shining hissing smoking I think you are preaching to the choir when you ask if we can even comprehend Joni's genius or whatever. Perhaps you should take that part of your post to a general music messageboard rather than a Joni Mitchell discussion list. You know? We all came here because of Joni's music, the way it has touched us personally and individually, and to connect with others who know the feeling. You dig? As for people talking about Joni's early work, well I suppose once again perhaps the casual Joni fans (or general public) go on about Big Yellow Taxi and Blue and that's it. I think the JMDL has healthy discussions of all of Joni's work (some favoring some of her early albums, some not digging the early ones as much, some favoring the later ones, some not digging the later ones, etc etc). In fact, I believe there are a couple of people who said they DIDN'T like Joni's voice (early records) until C&S when it deepened a bit. She wasn't really just "folk" by that time. I can't recall anyone saying they don't like a particular album (later album) because of Joni's voice on the JMDL. I believe some songs hit you and some songs don't as people explain frequently on here. As for cigarettes themselves, they are by far not a pollutant to the Earth but yes, they are dangerous to you individually. Sure household cleaners are toxic as well but you're not drinking Draino or inhaling the fumes everyday as a smoker does with cigarettes. That's fine if you want to smoke though. As George Harrison said, "do what you want to do" but cigarettes are bad for your lungs and can cause cancer. That is fact man. My own uncle smoked all his life and died a couple of years ago from lung cancer. That wasn't from anything household. I'm just saying and I mean no disrespect but I won't pretend smoking doesn't cause you any harm. -Monika Eric Taylor wrote: i really enjoy the lively exchange over Joni's pre/post voice! even though it seems like i'm in the vast minority 2 me smoking tobacco has only improved her voice over the past 40 years the smoke-nazis are SO out of touch, blaming nicotine & THC for all our woes when actually most of our household cleaners are far more toxic & cancer causing do fans want or expect Joni to sound the same way she did some 30 years ago??? MY GOD THE WOMAN IS 64 i don't hear the other non-smoking Joans (Baez & Collins) sound NEARLY SO good Lena Horne likewise sounded better at 70 than she did at 20 the MOJO article deserves far more contemplation: ~When I interviewed her in 2004, she spoke openly for nearly six hours about, among many other things, the reasons for her disenchantment with the business, including 'asinine' critics who charged that smokinh had ruined her voice.~ GEEZ do any of us really realize WHAT A GREAT artist we have in Joni?????? ~MOJO: What about your voice? A lot of critics have complained that smoking caused you to lose your ability to hit the old high notes. Has it?~ WHAT an insulting STUPID question! u folk snobs who expect Joni to regurgitate her early work endlessly really grate on my nerves MY GOD PEOPLE do we even begin to comprehend what a TOTAL GENIUS joni is? light up an additive-free cigarette & plant a tree for our poor little planet ET - --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:57:39 -0800 (PST) From: Laura Stanley Subject: Re: Hillary of Barak, njc [TABLE NOT SHOWN] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:04:31 -0800 From: "Randy Remote" Subject: Re: shining hissing smoking Wow...a good dose of twisted logic in this post...(with due respect) From: "Eric Taylor" > 2 me smoking tobacco has only improved her voice over the past 40 years Just your opinion-but we don't know, it might be twice as good if she was not a chain smoker. Anyway, I disagree. I think her voice has deteriorated. I don't find it charming, worldly, or whatever, just less flexible, hence, less expressive. Do I accept it? Yes. I'll take Joni the way she is, what choice is there? > the smoke-nazis are SO out of touch, blaming nicotine & THC for all our > woes Smoke nazis?...Do you think wanting to breathe clean air for yourself and children is nazi-like? > when actually most of our household cleaners are far more toxic & cancer > causing How does that make smoking healthy? > u folk snobs who expect Joni to regurgitate her early work endlessly > really grate on my nerves I have not heard anyone say that, so you are beating a dead horse there. > light up an additive-free cigarette & plant a tree for our poor little > planet Tree, yes. Smoke, no thanks. As an aside-myself and others believe that "virginia cure" tobacco is much more dangerous and cancer-causing than "turkish" because the virginia cure is soaked in sugar, and you know what sugar looks like when it burns. English, French and American cigarettes use this sugar process. Which is not to say that tobacco in any form is not a health hazard, obviously it is. Anything burned and inhaled is carcinogenic, and of course leaves a residue on your lungs, which are designed to deliver oxygen to your blood. Most diseases thrive in a low-oxygen environment, and worldwide oxygen levels are already historically lower than in the past. Do what you want, but don't bullshit yourself. You and Joni against the world is a delusion. You're not any closer to her because you smoke. Defending her chain-smoking does not mean that you care for her more than others do, or "get" her more than the rest of us stupids. Sorry. RR ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 22:34:26 +0000 From: Patti Parlette Subject: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly FYI: From Carlysimon.com: "Carly Simon Biography - Recommended Reading We are pleased to announce that Sheila Weller's new book Girls Like Us - Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation, is a well researched and elaborate biography of her life and career. Ms. Weller (a New York Times best-selling author) writes in a chorus-of-voices style, where friends of each artist tell the stories of their unique experiences with each woman. The format is intimate and engrossing. At 592 pages, Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of these three women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them - confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul. Even if you've read every article and seen every interview about Carly Simon, this is a must read....full of new information and perspective." **** Caroleking.com and jonimitchell.com (hey! xoxox!!) don't have anything about it. Barnes & Noble's website says it will be released April 8th. xo, pp _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 16:05:11 -0800 (PST) From: Bob Muller Subject: Re: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly Are you sure? Check again.... ;o) Can't do anything about Ms King's website but we are up to speed at JM.com, PP - thanks for the scoop, Betty Boop. Bob NP: U2, "Yahweh" ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 19:21:49 -0500 From: "Richard Flynn" Subject: RE: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly 2nd try And the Joni excerpt is very interesting: october 21, 1964: exposing herself "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Half Beat," the young man greeted the tables of patrons, their faces strobed by candle flames spouting from Chianti bottles. There were more than a dozen coffeehouses like this one in Yorkville Village, Toronto's folk music quarter. On any given night the mournful Scottish and English ballads, rousing work songs, and angry protest anthems (courtesy of the Dylan imitators) soared from the lungs of young performers who were hoping to get their breaks -- and hoping to purge themselves of the bourgeois primness of their parents in the provinces. These were the years when folk music was providing the rebellion and authenticity commercial rock 'n' roll had stopped supplying. One of these "folkies" was the delicate-featured, high-cheekboned twenty-year-old in the wings, with feather-banged blond hair curled up in a flip just past her ears and long legs terminating in go-go boots. A Gibson guitar was strapped over her miniskirt, but she also carried a small, mandolin-type instrument, the tiple (tee-pleh). "Tonight we have for your entertainment...Joni Anderson!" the emcee announced. Joni had loved pop music before it had gotten so bubblegum. One of her favorite songs from high school -- indeed, for decades to come, she would call it her favorite song of all time -- was the Shirelles hit of four years before, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." It was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, a married couple who were among a group of barely-out-of-their-teens New York songwriters who mixed a deep infatuation with Negro church music and R&B with a Broadway songwriting style, and turned the results into Top 40 radio. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" had been the first pop song to address the risks of sex in a woman's life -- which was now, as she stood in the wings of the Half Beat, precisely Joni Anderson's dilemma. Carole King had solved the dilemma the way girls always had -- she married the boy who had gotten her pregnant in a big traditional wedding. Joni Anderson was dealing with her pregnancy in a brand-new way: unmarried and alone. She was extremely afraid her parents would find out about her pregnancy, yet she refused to let it stop her life or curb her dreams. "Joni's been appearing here for the last two weeks and will be for the next three weeks," the emcee continued. "Starting next Monday, we have her under contract. We hope she'll stay here. We hope you'll enjoy her as much as we have." Yorkville was Canada's version of Greenwich Village and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where six years earlier, three Boston University coeds, in spontaneous protest, had thrown off their freshman beanies and had become best friends and soul mates. The three -- a Boston Brahmin named Betsy; a Staten Island lawyer's daughter named Debbie; and a California physicist's kid named Joanie -- were one of any number of cliques of folkie girls then asserting their nonconformist sensibility, playing English ballads on their Gibsons and Martins and reinforcing in each other an adventurousness that was otherwise hard for girls to pull off; guys could at least pretend to be romantic wanderers, while rebel girls could just get pregnant. ("There were tears over boys, and a harrowing trip to a doctor who was supposed to be able to 'fix' things," the Betsy of the threesome -- Betsy Minot Siggins -- says today. "It felt like we were both the initiators of and the victims of the sexual revolution.") But this clique turned out to be the clique: the one that advanced the narrative. The Joanie of the threesome, Joan Baez, didn't just achieve stardom; her stardom constituted the first time in the United States that an arcane musical genre was lofted to commercial popularity on the strength of a female performer. Now, four years after her rise to fame and two years after she graced the cover of Time magazine, Joan Baez remained the gold-standard embodiment of the sensitive girl curled over her guitar. It was Baez's bell-clear soprano that Joni Anderson was emulating. "Let's give her a little bit of a welcome now -- Miss Joni Anderson!" Through a round of applause, Joni strode to the chair, sat down, and, in a breathless, Canadian schoolgirl's voice, said: "It's sure refreshing to have a mic to work with for a change" -- a giggle -- "after some of the places I've been in." Sympathetic laughter from the audience. What they (and she) didn't know was that this moment would be one of her last singing songs meant to sound like traditional ballads. In less than a year, she'd begin to offer audiences the original songs of vulnerability, wit, wonderment -- and only retroactively understood sadness -- that she was starting to write. On the heels of those first compositions of hers would come a new wave of songs that, as she put it, were "beginning to reveal feminine insecurities, doubts, and recognition that the old order was falling apart" -- songs that "depicted my times." With that eventual torrent, in six years she would set the bar for emotional self-exposure -- "confessional" songwriting -- just about as high as it would ever be set by anyone. But tonight her self-exposure concerns were literal: She was single and at slightly over five months, visibly pregnant. Already, the small tiple was much easier to manipulate than the guitar. "The first song I'd like to do is a song about when a man becomes so involved in almighty liquor that he begins to think of it as a woman," she said, with a smile in her voice. "And he calls his bottle 'Nancy Whiskey.'" Her real name was Roberta Joan Anderson, and her family hailed most recently from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, eighteen hundred miles north of the North Dakota border. She had come to Toronto several months earlier, taking the train across the prairie with her art school boyfriend. Then he'd split, leaving her a painting of a moon as a goodbye-and-sorry-I-got-you-pregnant gift. She had recently moved to a room-with-shared-bath in a rooming house on Huron Street. It was from this extremely modest base that she was trying to make her way as a folksinger, without money or connections and in deep secrecy about her pregnancy. But if she was self-conscious, she hid it, as she strummed her tiple and gaily sang the traditional Scottish song -- Whiskey, whiskey, Nancy Whiskey The more I kissed her, the more I loved her After the audience applauded her final bars of "Nancy Whiskey," Joni announced: "In 1961 a man named Ewan MacColl wrote a song and entered it into a song contest in England. It wasn't much of a surprise to anybody when it won." What's significant is that she would choose -- of all songs, now -- this violent faux-Child Ballad about the anticipation, birth, and loss of a baby. "It has very, very dramatic lyrics," she warned as she began singing the song. Joni's neighbor across the hall at her rooming house was a young poet from the Ojibway tribe named Duke Redbird. They'd squeeze past each other in the hall -- Duke with his long black braids, Joni with her fl axen hair. He could see that she was pregnant, but he sensed from her attitude not to mention it. "Joni had a stoicism that reminded me of the Indian women I grew up with," Redbird recalls. "When we'd walk by each other's open doors, she never acknowledged her difficulties." Inside her small room, pungent with incense, she showed him her scrapbook, proudly turning the pages and explaining the newspaper clips of her performances at coffeehouses in Calgary, a few in Edmonton, and her real-live TV debut, singing on a Saskatchewan hunting and fishing show. Still, Duke Redbird worried about his neighbor, who was living on pizza and donuts. He mentioned his concern to his brother so much that one day his brother arrived at Duke's door with a bag of apples and said, "Let's give them to that pregnant girl." The two young men knocked on Joni's door and held out the fruit. "They're root, from nature; good for you now," Redbird's brother said awkwardly. Joni gratefully -- and hungrily -- took the bag. There were other signs of her vulnerability. "Late at night," Redbird says, "when Joni's door was closed, I'd hear her playing her guitar and singing: not words, just sounds, like she was using her voice to meditate. I was struck by her melancholy." That same melancholy was in her voice now as she continued to sing what she had identified as the MacColl song (it was actually written by Sydney Carter) to the Half Beat patrons: Rock-a-bye, baby, the white and the black Somebody's baby is not comin' back... After covering a Woody Guthrie number, among other songs, Joni packed up her instruments and exited the club, perhaps stopping to jam at the crash pad of her friend Vicky Taylor, with whom she would soon form a duo. Then it was back to the Huron Street room and her meditative strumming and vocal yodeling. Listening from the hall one such night -- maybe it was even this night -- Redbird was moved to pick up a pen and write a poem, which, though never published, he has kept to this day: A "woman with the cornsilk hair and sweetgrass [incense] in her hand" is on a water journey, navigating a river's "invisible shoals" and "silent rapids" -- the poem was explicitly about Joni's pregnancy, her circumstances. Redbird understood both the risk (those "shoals" and "rapids") and the lack of acknowledgment of and respect for that risk: its "silent," "invisible" nature. Indeed; male folksingers might boast of riding the rails, but few of the young ones, including Dylan, ever did. (Dylan hadn't even hitchhiked to New York -- he was given a ride by a friend.) For girls, the tougher though completely unacknowledged and unsung rite of passage was being pregnant, alone, penniless, and courting scorn in a rented room far from a home that you couldn't return to. Sometimes Duke Redbird would knock on Joni Anderson's door and ask if she was all right. She never said she wasn't. Over the next three years, Joni's life would be typical of many North American women's when the early to mid-1960s -- that Jack-and-Jackie-influenced era of glamorized traditional marriage -- slowly turned into the later 1960s, and a new culture was spawned, both by the neo-Edwardian style of the English groups and by the softer offshoots of psychedelia. Just as some of Joni's counterparts attending college would marry young professors, Joni would marry a man eight years her senior who was already living the life she thought she wanted. But as she pulled ahead of her husband in talent and ambition, she would realize -- as other girls would -- that young marriage to a sophisticated man was not the start of Real Life but, rather, an impediment to it. She would write her prematurely wise song about the cycles of age in part to lambaste Esquire's claim, during those years, that, as she put it, "a woman was all washed up after 21," and she would move to New York in 1967, just when single women were starting to live in cities in a new way: eschewing the old regulating supports -- roommates, day jobs -- for solitary, emotion-driven, night-based experience. Sex was then newly immediate -- an innocent generosity, a basic communication -- but romance was rough and ready laissez-faire capitalism, the only rules of the game being men's rules. Joni's cactus tree metaphor would be a secret playbook and shared record for the relatively few young women who lived in that then vulnerable manner. Joni would leave for L.A. when California dreaming was becoming a reality, and she would become both the It Girl and anthropologist of her newly coined female archetype, a rusticated American version of Left Bank femininity. She would write the haunting national anthem of her generation's most emblematic gathering, and she would play Wendy to three choirboy-voiced Lost Boys powwowed from equal tribes, and with one of them she would legitimize the gallantry of a new kind of intimacy. She would leave this ideal love to set off as a vagabond, living in a cave with a self-made outlaw who "kept [her] camera to sell." Young women who liked "clean white linen and fancy French cologne" had never toured Europe like this before. In 1970 it was the only way many of them would want to do so. Throughout the next decades, the 1970s through mid-1990s -- years when young women would push the limits of independence, ambition, and self-fulfillment as never before -- Joni would compose the bumpy epic poem of that exploration. She would choose the title of the signal album Hejira because she liberally interpreted the Arabic word to mean "to run away, but honorably," something that women were starting to do: even when the After was no better than the Before, when the destination was worse than the starting point. Those songs would echo Joni's own life journey: solitary cross-country road trips and even more solitary months in the woods; a fan-shearing turn to jazz; an almost unceasing, night-crawling workaholism, yielding twenty-one original albums and a "crop rotation" of paintings, as well as a self-assured choice of long-term lovers. These were men who -- since they "mirrored [her] back simplifi ed" and were far less wealthy and celebrated than she -- stood in almost intentionally pointed contrast to her male friends, who were the most successful and glamorous men in Hollywood. In all of this she would turn a new twist on an old type, the "dame," the tough, cranky, boastful woman living for her craft. But where previous versions (Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein) were masculinized, she would remain, illuminatively, feminine. In 1980, Joni would do something familiar to single women then turning forty - -- women wearying of the historically unprecedented time they'd logged as battle-scarred free agents, at the same moment that mating shibboleths were loosening: She would meet a wholesome younger man who was awed to be her lover, and she would marry him, with the male becoming the nurturer of the couple. Then, after a ten-year run, she'd end the marriage with I am who I am; I am not changing. Here was the cactus tree, a quarter century later. Over these last twenty years her puzzling-out of her life and career would feature the same hurt, anger, and heightened self-regard shared by female age mates whose elevated expectations had left them unwilling to be pushed aside in the same "due course" of life that had bound earlier generations of women. Her "An angry man is just an angry man [but] an angry woman? 'Bitch!'" -- sung in a lifetime chain-smoker's raspy alto -- would be a back page of the well-shared hymnal she wrote, whose psalms to ice cream castles in the air had been chorused in trilling soprano. But all of this would come years in the future. Meanwhile, in late 1964, Joni Anderson scraped by in Yorkville. She would perform a few weeks longer; then, in increasing desperation, she'd move into Vicky Taylor's crash pad and later to the closet-sized attic room of a male platonic friend, in a building marked for demolition. Finally, when her labor pains started, two weeks past her due date, she would check herself into the charity ward of Toronto General Hospital -- and there confront what she was singing about tonight: she was having a baby she could not keep and would not keep. Hundreds of accidentally pregnant girls made that decision every day, for the sake of the baby's well-being, their reputations or their parents', and their own desired freedom. But how could they experience the decision without guilt -- or fail to internalize society's judgment of their relinquishment as selfi shness? The burden of both judgments, the internal one and the societal one, would resonate incalculably over two-thirds of Joni's lifetime. As a close confidante of Joni's says, "Everything in Joni's emotional life has been about the baby." During their time on Huron Street, neither Joni Anderson nor Duke Redbird could have any idea that, thirty years later, by multiple coincidences, he would be the one to lead Joni's long-relinquished grown daughter to her. But that was decades down the road. So much of life would be lived in the interim. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@smoe.org [mailto:owner-joni@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Bob Muller Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 7:05 PM To: Patti Parlette Cc: JMDL Subject: Re: New book on Carole, Joni & Carly Are you sure? Check again.... ;o) Can't do anything about Ms King's website but we are up to speed at JM.com, PP - thanks for the scoop, Betty Boop. Bob NP: U2, "Yahweh" ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2007 #593 ***************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------