From: owner-joni-digest@smoe.org (JMDL Digest) To: joni-digest@smoe.org Subject: JMDL Digest V2011 #5 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 Website: http://jmdl.com JMDL Digest Friday, January 7 2011 Volume 2011 : Number 005 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- RE: Gerry Rafferty RIP NJC [Bryan ] Joni Mitchell Music Box [Susan Tierney McNamara ] Re: Joni Mitchell Music Box [Bob.Muller@Fluor.com] RE: Joni Mitchell Music Box [Susan Tierney McNamara ] RE: DJRD thread [Susan Tierney McNamara ] RE: Moon at the Window ["Robert Sartorius" ] Re: Theater of Mind, njc [Jim ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 05:49:55 -0800 (PST) From: Bryan Subject: RE: Gerry Rafferty RIP NJC Subject: Gerry Rafferty RIP NJC Sad to learn that Gerry Rafferty has died (yesterday) at the age of 63. Beautiful song, Baker Street, will remain one of my favourite songs, now and then. love, Mags Yes -- Always liked his stuff. News reports said alcoholism played a big role in his life (and possibly his death? just speculation), and as a (now sober) alcoholic myself I think that's one reason Baker Street really grabbed me (lots of references to a., some subtle, other not so). If you get a chance, track down and listen to "Moonlight and Gold," one of his songs from his post-heyday years (late 80s, I think). A Seattle radio station I used to listen to played it for several months and I always found it to be quite listenable and moving. Bryan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 09:45:58 -0500 From: Susan Tierney McNamara Subject: Joni Mitchell Music Box Here is a video of the Christmas present I bought myself. It's a Japanese music box that plays "Both Sides Now." When I bid on it at ebay, I was worried it wouldn't meet my expectations, but I was so happy when I got the package yesterday. The lid is a wood carved, painted yellow finch, and the music sounds beautiful. I'm so happy! Yellow finches fly around my house in the summer all the time, and I started a painting of one on a stalk of corn which I hope to finish soon. I posted the video to the Facebook JMDL group, but I also put it on my knitting blog if others that don't have facebook want to see it. http://cloudheights.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-favorite-christmas-present.html Take care, Sue ___________________ /___________________\ ||-------------------|| || Sue Tierney || || McNamara || || sem8@cornell.edu || ||___________________|| || O etch-a-sketch O || \___________________/ "It's all a dream she has awake." - Joni Mitchell ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 10:03:38 -0500 From: Bob.Muller@Fluor.com Subject: Re: Joni Mitchell Music Box It looks really pretty Sue - I won't be able to see/hear it in action until later since all that Facebooky stuff is firewalled here. Congrats on winning a cool item. Ebay is fun when you can score something like that that you'd never find anywhere else. Maybe I need to add "Sue's Music Box" in our list of BSN covers. :-) Bob NP: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, "Love To Burn" - ------------------------------------------------------------ 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: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 10:11:44 -0500 From: Susan Tierney McNamara Subject: RE: Joni Mitchell Music Box That's cute! If there was anything that I'd change about it, I wish it would play the chorus too. It just plays the verse over and over, but it's still very sweet!! :) From: Bob.Muller@Fluor.com [mailto:Bob.Muller@Fluor.com] Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 10:04 AM To: Susan Tierney McNamara Cc: joni@smoe.org Subject: Re: Joni Mitchell Music Box It looks really pretty Sue - I won't be able to see/hear it in action until later since all that Facebooky stuff is firewalled here. Congrats on winning a cool item. Ebay is fun when you can score something like that that you'd never find anywhere else. Maybe I need to add "Sue's Music Box" in our list of BSN covers. :-) Bob NP: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, "Love To Burn"------------------------------------------------------------ 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: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 16:02:39 -0500 From: Susan Tierney McNamara Subject: RE: DJRD thread Wow, I really enjoyed reading this Bob. I'm hopelessly behind in posts since I was offline for two weeks. Don Juan's Reckless Daughter was always amazing to me. After Court and Spark I bought and deeply listened to each subsequent Joni release until Wild Things Run Fast, which really disappointed me. I then fell into a hole and didn't emerge until Turbulent Indigo blew my world apart and reintroduced me to why I loved Joni so much. She was always creating above the stratosphere where I love to be taken when listening to music. I then had to go back and re-appreciate WTRF, Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm and Night Ride Home. I still am not crazy about WTRF but I think Moon At The Window is an amazing song that would have sounded great with the Shadows and Light team. Take care, Sue - -----Original Message----- From: owner-joni@smoe.org [mailto:owner-joni@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Robert Sartorius Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 11:38 AM To: joni@smoe.org; onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: RE: DJRD thread Jack wrote, as part of this excellent thread: "I think Joni was at the height of her musical powers during this period, and to me, DJRD represents her musical peak (though nothing can touch Hejira from a lyrical perspective). Her interplay with Jaco is just amazing on DJRD. How I wish they made a few more albums together." Catherine's comments re the role of Tenth World as dream-connector between Otis&Marlena and Dreamland were also typically right on target. In a sense, Bob M's reaction to (Russ's?) comment re DJRD's listenability triggered this discussion - probably as designed. As a listenter, I have run the entire gamut of reactions to DJRD. I have been a real Joni "fan" since 1970, but struggled with her post-Court and Spark records at the time of their release(s). I confessed even then that my reaction stemmed from my own limitations as a listener to absorb the more complex musical forms contained in these then-newer works, but in my ignorance I strongly suspected that Joni just wasn't "that good" at the more jazz-inflected style of music she was now proferring. It was not until this century that my tastes / ability to absorb musically had advanced sufficientlly for me to appreciate how wrong I was about my aforementioned suspicions. And so, I have had two periods of Joni discovery (feeling like I was just being born) - the early 70's and the early 00's. Even so, I came to embrace Hejira and Hissing markedly before DJRD. Then, at some point, DBJRD really sank in. I was crazy about the record for a full year (listening to it more than any other Joni by far), and I continue to do so. I concur that it was her musical peak. Even after I first embraced it, though, I was ambivalent about Jericho, Paprika Plains and Tenth World. In fact, I was openly critical of Tenth World. Of course, as usual, I misunderstood its role in the work of art. Now I think I understand. And, I think it needs to be 7 minutes to serve its purpose. Taking a broad view of the record, I see it as beginning with three vignettes depicting more or less conscious, everyday challenges - finding a special place to be yourself and escape from life's day-to-day, finding someone to talk to and share your experiences with, and finding someone to love and connect with amid life's demands, even if it means speaking of love in terms of "compromise and sacrifice" - to quote from a later revisitation of this theme. While I continue to find Jericho a bit shallow in perspective - - "try" being a weak word of semi-commitment IMO - Joni's perspective is probably more realistic than my own romantic one, and more universal. Still, it is the commitment to "do" rather than merely "try" that brings success, perhaps even in a love relationship. But I digress. The record then changes direction into its dream quatrain - PP, O&M, TTW and Dreamland - out of which emerges the blazingly epiphanous DJRD - real and visceral, yet strung together via nearly-out-of-control imagery. Then "back to earth" with Off Night Backstreet and Silky Veils of Ardor, and we have returned full circle to Joni's earlier themes. I am spent. Can you imagine how she must have felt producing this record? It is magnificently structured. A day in the life, or perhaps a month, or a year. Throughout, the music fits the lyrical feel, and vice versa. "I feel your fingers touching my face - there are some lines you put there, and some you erase." So, I certainly agree with Bob - it is a challenging record. But it can keep you up at night, restless for ..... And I certainly agree with Jack - Joni had really "taken off" - almost 'out of orbit' - at that point in her artistice journey, and her collaboration with Jaco was a catalyst for that. I recall having posted a few years ago that I found Mingus to be an interruption of that other-worldly phase of her journey - where might it have led had Mingus not called? But others felt otherwise - if I recall correctly, David Lahm (whose musical instincts I am in no position to challenge) felt Mingus was a natural next stop in the journey. To me, however, the difference was that DJRD was all Joni's music, and Mingus was not. I would have been interested in the next step of Joni as composer. By the time Mingus was done, Joni may have felt spent and/or pressure to re-connect with her base, so we never really found out (few would see Wild Things Run Fast as the extension of DJRD). But we did get the Shadows and Light tour to complete the circle, and who would have wanted to have missed that? Finally, I agree with Bob M that Travelogue is challenging to listen to. However, for me it has been well worth the dozens and dozens of listenings - each one rewards in a new way for me. Maybe it's just the time of life - if you weren't in your 50's (or even perhaps your 60's) when you first heard it, I suggest you give it another shot when you get to "your right time". Bobsart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 21:32:00 -0500 From: "Robert Sartorius" Subject: RE: Moon at the Window Sue replied: "I think Moon At The Window is an amazing song"...... I agree ! That Joni included it in her "Painting With Words and Music" setlist affirms IMO the importance in her mind's eye of that song in her body of work. "that would have sounded great with the Shadows and Light team." Probably true. But I was pretty content with Larry Klein's bass line on that one, and think it was an artistic success all around. Bobsart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:24:20 -0500 From: Jim Subject: Re: Theater of Mind, njc It's not often that something in Columbus, Ohio makes international news but this happened right here. I heard about this on the local rock-oldies radio station, on the morning of the day that it went viral. The CBS evening news even covered it. Katie said, "What a great story," but then she says that every night, about every soft-news story. Like everyone else, I hope he stays clean. Jim L'Hommedieu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYUYVGTpjL8 Catherine McKay, always the voice of reason said, >I just saw a headline on yahoo news that says he has been offered a job. Talk about yer voice not matching yer look! I would never have expected that voice from someone who looks like him. I hope he gets the job and keeps it and gets his life back on track.> ------------------------------ End of JMDL Digest V2011 #5 *************************** ------- To post messages to the list, send to joni@smoe.org. Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:joni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe -------