From: les@jmdl.com (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2000 #305 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: les@jmdl.com Errors-To: les@jmdl.com Precedence: bulk Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/onlyjoni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com Unsubscribe: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe onlyJMDL Digest Sunday, July 23 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 305 The 'Official' Joni Mitchell Homepage, created by Wally Breese, can be found at http://www.jonimitchell.com. It contains the latest news, a detailed bio, Original Interviews, essays, lyrics and much much more. --- The JMDL website can be found at http://www.jmdl.com and contains interviews, articles, the member gallery, archives, and much more. --- Ashara has set up a "Wally Breese Memorial Fund" with all donations going directly towards the upkeep of the website. Wally kept the website going with his own funds. it is now up to US to help Jim continue. If you would like to donate to this fund, please make all checks payable to: Jim Johanson and send them to: Ashara Stansfield P.O. Box 215 Topsfield, MA. 01983 USA ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: # Two ["Kakki" ] Re: Kate,Joni & TNT ["Helen M. Adcock" ] [none] ["william" ] ABBA, Joni and The Verve. ["william" ] First Joni post --(long) [Jeff Clark ] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out [AngelinoCoyote@aol.com] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out [B Merrill ] joni on CBC ["James Phillips" ] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out [IVPAUL42@aol.com] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out ["Steve Mitchell" ] Re: First Joni post --(long) ["Kakki" ] Re: listening to joni when stoned ["Kakki" ] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out ["Steve Mitchell" ] Re: Dr. Junk and Mingus (long) [Matthew Snyder ] Re: The "getting stoned" thread [Mark Domyancich ] Re: listening to joni when stoned [IVPAUL42@aol.com] Re: First Joni post --(long) [catman ] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out [catman ] Re: Closet ABBA fans come out [catman ] re: Marcel and DED, listening to Joni when stoned ["c Karma" Subject: Re: # Two Jim wrote: > #2 Bruce Springsteen > #3 Neil Young Oh, since we're including boys, too, here's my ties for no. 2 and 3: 2. Van Morrison 2.5 Jimi Hendrix 3. Eric Clapton 3.5 Stevie Wonder Do we get to choose yet another category of number twos for bands? ;-) Kakki NP: Joni live in '72 - BSN ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 23:20:13 +1200 From: "Helen M. Adcock" Subject: Re: Kate,Joni & TNT Bill wrote: >First post,but i feel i know you all. Welcome to the list, Bill. It's a wild and crazy place, but we're all relatively harmless (notice I qualified that statement)! Hell _____________________________ "To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman hell@ihug.co.nz Visit the NBLs (Natural Born Losers) at: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hell/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 16:30:53 +0700 From: "william" Subject: [none] A postscript to Joni & The Verve. Somethin' Stupid, For The Roses, Bittersweet Symphony, Carey, Summer Breeze, This Flight Tonight, Evergreen, Raised on Robbery, Delilah, You Turn Me On, With or Without You, A Case of You, Girl from Ipanema, Dean Martin, Cole Porter, Bob's me uncle. Tangled up........ Oh Bob! Played them all like there was no tomorrow. When there's precious little to do you make your own entertainment. Last night par example I was somewhat amused and totally entertained by this Indonesian chap who "was" Mick Jagger. The strut, the attitude, a Jumpin' Jack Flash. Ain't music great! Have a great weekend. Willy the Shake in the southern hemisphere. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 15:58:33 +0700 From: "william" Subject: ABBA, Joni and The Verve. Wow ain't music the best.! Regarding ABBA. ABBA is ABBA is ABBA. Damn good bubble gum with lasting flavour. A friend of mine bought me a 101 Hits for Buskers. Shoo 'nuff there's a few ABBA toons in there. I was at a friend's of an evening. Some hardliners in the company. By that I mean 90's Oasis, Stone Roses, not our ABBA types. Anyway I picked up an acoustic and started to play a chord progression from the aforementioned 101 book. It was an ABBA song I played a la James Taylor but still being left unsung. I let the progression take hold and then began vocally a la JT, "Can you hear the drums Fernando". Mid song I thought "these guys think I'm a wet" but to my amazement they were enraptured as to how an ABBA, of all songs, could be transformed so. I didn't exactly win them over to claim musical asylum in Sweden but it did prove the point that you have to "see" beyond the production and listen to the song. So often we're judgemental about music because of its cosmetics, when all the time there's a tremendous melody underneath the greasepaint. I confess to this shortcoming. We then went on to find common ground in Joni and The Verve. Ain't music the best! ------------------------------ Date: 22 Jul 00 10:18:15 EDT From: Jeff Clark Subject: First Joni post --(long) Hi JMDL! This is my first post. I have been aware of JMDL for about a year but have not posted, mainly because I have not had a computer! I am not particulary "computer friendly" and have not had access to one except for work until recently so it seemed difficult to get into. I realized that I was missing out on too much by shunning technology and am embarking on changing my ways. I must admit (shamefully, shamefully!!) to occasional, random "lurking" in the past, but mainly because I couldn't figure out how to join in. I was brazen enought to attend Ashara's Labor Day Fest last year and so met some of you. As my first post, I tell a little of my intro to Joni. The catalyst was one night returning home from a ski club trip in Ohio my senior year in high school (In Ohio you had to go to Cleveland to ski!) Someone started playing Neil Young's "Live Rust" on their tape deck and I was quite struck with the uniqueness of what I was hearing -- the voice took some getting used to -- but the lyrics were striking. I immediately bought the albumn and became obsessed with singer-songwriters, quickly becomming musically ostracized from my friends for listening to such strange music. (Journey, REO and Styx were the favored bands of the day-- (I shudder to think that they are having something of a Renaissance as I speak! "In every culture in decline...")). I went to the Waldenbooks at the mall and bought New Musical Express' "Encyclopedia of ROCK" (at this time there were about 3 books on rock music available at a bookstore unlike the hundreds available today). This British book (published in 1977) is quite well written and dependable and I would spend hours in my room reading it and plotting what albums to buy next with the money I made working the Drive-thru at Burger King. As I would read about the histories of Van Morrison, Neil, the Rolling Stones, Traffic, etc, I would often inadvertantly stop at a page with a large color picture of a woman with a straw hat, lots of turquoise jewelry and big teeth. I couldn't imagine who this person could be that they warranted such a large picture in this book! I probably had the book for a month before even reading the biography -- yet I kept stopping and staring at the picture. I was vaugely familiar with the name -- I think I thought she was someone like Melanie or I don't know what .. like I was somewhat familiar with Big Yellow Taxi, buy vaugely, and thought of her as something of a one-hit novelty act. When I did read the article I was a bit taken aback by the profoundness of the reviewer's assessment. One paragraph I remember read "Blue, released in 1971 was an incomparable album based mainly around a suite of song to a former lover. From that moment on she has been in a class of her own in the seventies, and only Dylan among contemporary songwriters is as important as her." For some reason I was still reluctant for the longest time to buy something by her. I don't think I even owned one album by a woman at this time! But I kept reading the article and bought a new book "The Rolling Stone Record Guide" to read about her some more. This book gave C&S and Blue both 5 stars so I had to decide which one to get. I'm not sure why I made such a big deal out of which Joni Mitchell album to start with, when with so many other artists I would just go and buy anything without dwelling on it. Anyway I finally decided to buy Court and Spark one day at Coconuts after work and THAT WAS THE DAY IT STARTED. From the first notes on the first song coming out of my Realistic car tape deck I could not believe what I was hearing. I was completely transfixed - -- I had never heard some sublime, deep, wonderful music before. Song after song blew me away -- her singing, her phrasing, those words. I listened to it every day for a year in my car (along with Live Rust, Who's Next, ChangesOneBowie and a few others) as I was commuting between my first year at Youngstown State, Burger King and the bedroom I shared with my little brother. Of course I gradually bought all of the albums (I think Shadows and Light was the one out at the time) As Stephen Holden later wrote on C&S somewhere "(it) contains a lifetimes worth of character and incident" I continually found new and deeper levels of nuance and meaning in the album -- as I was later to find with so many subsequent albums. An amazing facet to Joni's music to me is the way her voice is mixed in her recordings. Even listening to an old scratchy tape on a cheap player there is a quality of her actual voice rising out from this incredibly deep place -- it is actually quite haunting, especially late at night. (Does anyone else notice this?) It was very difficult to concentrate on my college classes at this time as my real interests were clearly elsewhere. I spent endless hours in the University library reading old bound-volumes of Rolling Stone for Joni reviews, articles, etc (So much different then now when one merely clicks on whatever article from whatever publication from any year on the JMDL!) Actually I read almost all of the articles in the old Rolling Stones -- I was something of a music slut back then and still am :-). Being the oldest of four kids I was something of an influence on my younger siblings' choice in music and my younger brother and sister quickly found Joni appealing. I recall laughing with them on lines in California, Twisted, Big Yellow Taxi and just the general style of singing she did ("A Case of You" yodelling out of the bedroom). I remember my brother wondering why she had to go to Spain to get a tan when she lived in California. Interestingly, so many people dwell on the darkness and profoundness of her music, my younger siblings quickly honed in on the humor in it. I have always loved the sound of acoustic guitars and when I started listening to Neil I thought that I would really like to learn how to play these songs. But one night, lying in bed with my headphones listening to "Peoples Parties" on Court and Spark I decided I absolutely HAD to learn how to play these songs. Within days I took all the money I had and bought a Yamaha guitar that has become one of my most cherished possessions to this day -- it has aged and mellowed and on a good day sounds quite a bit like Joni's guitar on the early recordings. It took many years to learn how to play any of Joni's songs-- in the early-mid eighties no one listened to this kind of music. When I transferred to Ohio State my second year, my new, hip roommates were into X, the Clash, Gang of Four the Jam, Pretenders and I showed up with my woooden crates all of Joni, Van, Pheobe Snow(!) (Though I would eventually come to love X). I recall tearing out the picture with the straw hat and turquoise jewelry from my rock book and pasting it on my dorm wall -- also I cut out the gatefold from "For the Roses" and hung that up (tacky?) I thought it was beautiful, my roommate said she had a nice ass. But I would buy a Joni Mitchell song book and the songs were transcribed in these simplistic, standard tuning "cowboy chords" that didn't sound anything like what I heard on record. I eventually found the "Joni Mitchell Anthology Vol 2" Guitar book which had a few songs in their proper tuning, including the beloved "Peoples Parties". But I broke a string the first time I tried to tune to it-- as much as I loved the sounds I heard, I seemed to be tone-deaf in tuning the guitar and was quite frustrated. The music of Joni Mitchell seemed to be permanently shrouded in fascinating yet inaccessable layers of mystery and enigma. It wasn't until I discovered JMDL and the guitar pages that this mystery started to unravel. I owe a Great Big Thanks to Mark, Marian, Howard and Sue and all the others who have contributed tabs -- this has provided endless hours of enjoyment and is much appreciated. And so it as been for about 18 years now. As I write this morning I realize that I dreamed about JM yet again last night. Court and Spark remains my favoite album, the opening line "Love came to my door..." always knocks me out. Whenever I have been in a new relationship over the years and we meet with one of my older friends, the old friend inevitably asks my new friend "So how are you handling the Joni Mitchell thing?" (Can anyone relate?) Usually I am able to win them over. Even in college I remember a triumphant moment when my roommate asked me to make him a copy of C&S. My other favorites are NRH and S&L -- after that I love them all (though WTRF is doggedly taking some extra work). Favorite songs: Passion Play, Help Me, Cactus Tree, Shades of Scarlett Conquering (favorite singing in the shower song-- until the dogs start howling!) [I now remember the dream I had last night -- I was having a conversation with Joni about her early guitar work-- how someone said that her later guitar work was much more intricate and complicated and I was disagreeing saying that I found the early work awfully challenging. I have been trying to learn the intro to "Cactus Tree" as played on MOA and I was saying how the syncopation and off-beat chord changes on songs like that and even on This Flight Tonight were perplexing and very hard for me to figure out and I loved them.] Other favorite artists, Bob Marley, Aimee Mann, Miles Davis, Caetano Veloso (closest thing to a Joni-peer, imo - I wonder if she knows him), Eagle Eye Cherry, Byrds, Nanci Griffith, Heart, Chick Corea, Bob Wills. Also Luka Bloom (guitarists into Joni should really check this guy out, literate, hard-strumming open-tuning musician who wrote a beautiful song about Joni called "To Begin To". If you do not have anything by him let me know and I will send you something. I also have a Joni radio interview on tape from 1985 (DED promo) on a NYC radio station that is quite good .. she talks quite a bit and is very entertaining. I can trade this with anyone who would like a copy). Well its a beautiful, sunny day here in NYC and time to get ready for the beach. Take care everyone! Jeff ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 11:26:47 EDT From: AngelinoCoyote@aol.com Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out In a message dated 7/21/00 6:36:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time, badwolff@angelfire.com writes: << I think it is wise to broaden our scope a bit to include more than just the American perspective, seeing as this list is really international... >> I understand that David Hasselhoff is (was) a huge pop hit in England and Europe. Although all we know him for here in the US is a talking car, Baywatch, skinny legs, and amazing hair and eyes. No regrets, Coyote (Rick) Casa Alegre Hollywood, California I'll be dancin' on a pony keg. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 11:32:01 -0400 From: B Merrill Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out few Americans realize >just how HUGE Abba was in Europe in the '70's... >REALLY huge!!!!!!!!!! > pat >> > on the rock side, another huge Euro-star who >went all but unsung on US shores was the wild >Irishman, Rory Gallagher, though I think he had >one minor hit (Take It Easy Baby(?)) with his >band, Taste, just after they toured the US, >opening for Blind Faith in '69. Or how about the preposterous Gary Glitter, a kind of R&R answer to Liberace, who was a BIG DEAL in the UK and didn't get anywhere in the US?? What conclusions can we draw this? I dunno... Seems to me there is more than enough terrible music (including post-ABBA synthetic Euro-dreck) all over the world to indict all countries and everybody! And also good music here and there... harder to find... where are my glasses...? Bruce ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 17:14:15 GMT From: "James Phillips" Subject: joni on CBC I got this link from the Rickie Lee Jones list. It's an article on Joni Mitchell at the CBC website http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/joni/ James Phillips ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 13:21:37 EDT From: IVPAUL42@aol.com Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out In a message dated 7/22/00 12:47:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time, merrillb@crisny.org writes: << Or how about the preposterous Gary Glitter, a kind of R&R answer to Liberace, who was a BIG DEAL in the UK and didn't get anywhere in the US?? What conclusions can we draw this? I dunno... >> Didn't get anywhere here? I don't know about that. Millions of Americans sing part of one of Glitter's compositions in groups of tens of thousands on an almost daily basis across our fair land. Paul I ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 18:28:52 +0100 From: "Steve Mitchell" Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out AngelinoCoyote@aol.com suggested: > I understand that David Hasselhoff is (was) a huge pop hit in England and > Europe. Although all we know him for here in the US is a talking car, > Baywatch, skinny legs, and amazing hair and eyes. Crikey, if he was a huge hit here - it certainly passed me by! I only remember him being co-star to a black car and Pammie's massive mammaries! - -- Stevie x ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 10:41:30 -0700 From: "P. Henry" Subject: Re: listening to joni when stoned this thread title kinda tweaked me as my folkie days with Joni and all that other great music all preceded that time when marijuana flooded the streets of midwestern America and I recall distinctly that in later years, when I *was* experimenting with all those mushrooms and things, how nothing drug induced could compare to the times when tobacco and coffee were our only 'highs'... pat NP: Bottle Of Wine - Tom Paxton http://members.wbs.net/homepages/b/a/d/badwolff/albums/album1/ Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 11:42:20 -0700 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: First Joni post --(long) Hi Jeff and welcome to the list! What a great post! I found myself nodding my head knowingly throughout it. Another kindred spirit logs in! > An amazing facet to Joni's music to me is the > way her voice is mixed in her recordings. Even listening to >an old scratchy tape on a cheap player there is a quality of >her actual voice rising out from this incredibly deep place -- it >is actually quite haunting, especially late at night. (Does >anyone else notice this?) Yes! I notice this every time, no matter how many listens or how scratchy the tape or vinyl. > Whenever I have been in a new relationship over the years >and we meet with one of my older friends, the old friend >inevitably asks my new friend "So how are you handling the >Joni Mitchell thing?" (Can anyone relate?) Yes, Yes! Also, whenever I see old friends from college, one of the first things they ask is "are you still into Joni Mitchell?" Gee, think if we had computers and internet access back in college in the 70s - we'd have all flunked out no doubt ;-) > Usually I am able to win them over. Me, too! I didn't know you were a guitar player. Are you going to Ashara's Jonifest this year? The musician sign-ups are now in progress for it. Looking forward to hearing more from you, Jeff. Kakki ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 12:00:58 -0700 From: "Kakki" Subject: Re: listening to joni when stoned Pat Henry wrote: > this thread title kinda tweaked me as my folkie > days with Joni and all that other great music > all preceded that time when marijuana flooded > the streets of midwestern America and I recall > distinctly that in later years, when I *was* > experimenting with all those mushrooms and > things, how nothing drug induced could compare > to the times when tobacco and coffee were our > only 'highs'... I traveled through the 60s sans drugs and therefore am the only one who was both there and remembers it. ;-D So much of the music naturally altered my consciousness that I felt like I was stoned anyway when I listened to it ;-) Music that made me stoned in the 60s - Early Jefferson Airplane anything by The Doors Cream - Disraeli Gears anything by Jimi Hendrix anything by Blind Faith It's A Beautiful Day - White Bird anything by Country Joe and the Fish As for the 70s, somehow nothing did the same trick except for maybe Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Now that was far out, man. :-) Kakki NP: Blind Faith - Can't Find my Way Home ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 18:35:30 +0100 From: "Steve Mitchell" Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out B Merrill reminded us of: > . . .the preposterous Gary Glitter, a kind of R&R answer to Liberace, who > was a BIG DEAL in the UK and didn't get anywhere in the US?? What > conclusions can we draw this? I dunno... Gary Glitter was last seen in court for an incident with a PC that was confiscated for the content of it's hard drive (his preponderence for under-aged girls). More monterous than preposterous! > Seems to me there is more than enough terrible music (including post-ABBA > synthetic Euro-dreck) all over the world to indict all countries and > everybody! And also good music here and there... harder to find... where > are my glasses...? I'll drink to that (where're mine?) - -- Stevie x ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 13:27:17 -0700 From: DARICEM@sfpl.lib.ca.us Subject: DED and bargain bins I found several copies of DED on vinyl at Amoeba in San Francisco. Bought one and the the vinyl of S&L; $1.95 for DED $4.95 for S&L. I played the DED telling Les that it was probably the least appreciated Joni album. His comment: It's great to play pool to (while playiong on the NEW pool table taking up the whole living room) Maybe that's the answer: we should all try listening to DED while playing pool? Darice ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 21:31:55 GMT From: "Joni Fan" Subject: The "getting stoned" thread Count my vote that NO music sounds good to me when stoned. One of the worst experiences of my life was getting stoned . . . one I never repeated. And it certainly was not because Nancy Reagan told me to "just say no" . . . it was just a plain awful experience. And no, it was not a bad trip/bad drugs! That experience did teach me the deep value of my own day-to-day consciousness . . . unaltered with chemicals. Not to mention, friends that I saw killed by drugs! If I were young again reading some of the posts lately, it would sound attractive to "get stoned" and listen to Joni. For me, a quiet room, a fine sound system, perhaps headphones, a Joni CD . . . that is nirvana for me! Loree ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 17:32:01 -0400 From: Matthew Snyder Subject: Re: Dr. Junk and Mingus (long) >Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:58:32 -0700 >From: "Kakki" >Subject: Re: Dr. Junk and Mingus (long) > >Thanks for the alert regarding the Mingus bio - no one has mentioned that >here before. It sounds like a good book. I looked it up at Barnes and Noble >and found this info which I thought was interesting: > >Myself when I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus >Gene Santoro The Santoro biography has already come under attack from the jazz research community (people concerned with accuracy in writing, both musically and factually). Santoro's book is apparently riddled with errors that could have been spotted by any skilled editor, and he makes a few major errors when attempting musical analyses. This may not be of much interest to most readers of this list, but those of us concerned with things like this think it's about time that shoddy research and bad writing were treated with the same intolerance in the jazz world that it is in other areas of academic research. Possibly worth the read to see what Joni said, however. If anyone is interested in a musical biography of Mingus, read Mingus: A Critical Biography by Brian Priestley. It's been the standard work on Mingus since its publication in the 80's, and is likely to remain so. Matt Snyder msnyder@dragonfire.net http://msnyder.dragonfire.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 17:08:12 -0500 From: Mark Domyancich Subject: Re: The "getting stoned" thread At 9:31 PM +0000 7/22/00, Joni Fan wrote: >That experience did teach me the deep value of my own day-to-day >consciousness . . . unaltered with chemicals. Not to mention, >friends that I saw killed by drugs! Well this thread is about marijuana, and not one death has been attributed to it in its 3,000 year history. - -- Mark Domyancich Harpua@revealed.net tape trading: http://homepage.mac.com/mtd/ "Close it yourself, shitty!" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 21:52:31 EDT From: IVPAUL42@aol.com Subject: Re: listening to joni when stoned In a message dated 7/22/00 3:15:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, KakkiB@worldnet.att.net writes: << I traveled through the 60s sans drugs and therefore am the only one who was both there and remembers it. ;-D >> And the only one who didn't enjoy it, too, I'll bet! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 03:09:14 +0100 From: catman Subject: Re: First Joni post --(long) Welcome to the list, Jeff. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 03:10:42 +0100 From: catman Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out AngelinoCoyote@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 7/21/00 6:36:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > badwolff@angelfire.com writes: > > << I > think it is wise to broaden our scope a bit to > include more than just the American perspective, > seeing as this list is really international... >> > > I understand that David Hasselhoff is (was) a huge pop hit in England and > Europe. In Europe yes, not in England. he and Bumwatch are considered a joke here. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 03:12:16 +0100 From: catman Subject: Re: Closet ABBA fans come out > > > Or how about the preposterous Gary Glitter, who is in jail. he turned out to be a pedophile. However, some of his songs were fun pop. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 03:47:21 GMT From: "c Karma" Subject: re: Marcel and DED, listening to Joni when stoned Cassy reiterated some very good points I'm sure have been well stated here before about Dog Eat Dog. It truly is a documentary of the times, even down to the drum sounds. There is more Rambo on that record than we realized at the time. I had a short discussion once with Joni about the album. I told her I liked it and she retorted that it was a record that, "everybody hated." I said, "That's not true," and reminded her that People Magazine's "Picks and Pans" had said in a small review," ...you're beautiful when you're angry, Joni as these ravishing songs attest." She seemed unimpressed at the recollection. Not unlike the Eurythmics' score for Michael Radford's "1984" (released about the same time), DED freezes a vision of society. The scariest thing about it, though is that "1984" was written to support fiction, and "Dog Eat Dog" was (is) real. Sadly, I remember Joni having to admonish an audience at the Amnesty International benefit concert to stop throwing trash at her while she sang "The Three Great Stimulants." It wasn't that the songs weren't great, it was that people didn't want to see or hear the truth. Frankly, I think it was the single bravest recording she ever made. An arrogant society drunk with its own power doesn't want to be told it's comprised of "People looking, seeing nothing, People listening, hearing nothing, People lusting, loving nothing, People stroking, touching nothing, Knowing nothing." I wish she could reconcile her misgivings of the whole Thomas Dolby affair with the fact that her rage at being a "caged animal" in the making of this record may have potentiated its vitriol. The image of a big cat agitatedly pacing behind the bars at a zoo not pausing to roar could possibly illustrate her state of mind at the time. Actually, the cover art does it better. Ok, what to listen to when stoned? My favorite choice was Traffic: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Long enough to really catch a good buzz. Of Joni, I'd say that hands down, the studio version of "Shadows and Light" wins. Second behind that is the first side (HA!) of DJRD: "Intro/Cotton Avenue", "Talk To Me", "Jericho." I remember hating to motivate myself to get up and walk to the turntable to hear more after "Jericho"'s harmonics ended. Yes, like Coyote Rick I too am glad that's over. CC PS, "Ethiopia" is a studio MASTERPIECE! "Whatever makes you 'YAHOO'." -- JM ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2000 #305 ********************************* ------- Post messages to the list at ------- Siquomb, isn't she?