From: les@jmdl.com (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2003 #5 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 Monday, January 6 2003 Volume 2003 : Number 005 Sign up now for JoniFest 2003! http://www.jonifest.com ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- NY Time Review of T'log ["Kate Bennett" ] Joni & Leonard - Suzanne and the Wizard ["michael o'malley" ] Re: NY Times review of Travelogue [FredNow@aol.com] Today's Library Links: January 6 [ljirvin@jmdl.com] Re: NY Time Review of T'log ["kakki" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 14:08:46 -0800 From: "Kate Bennett" Subject: NY Time Review of T'log it's one thing not to like a record but this guy is pretty cruel... it is hard to believe him as a long time admirer of joni when he says this: "That said, restless experimentation also suggests a quality of unwelcome self-indulgence that has always marked her music and her personality. When one confronts the really naove paintings that proliferate in the lavish booklet with which these two CD's are packaged - let alone the rudimentary "multi-media content" on the one "enhanced audio CD" - one has to wonder whether Ms. Mitchell has slid too far into her own world. There is usually some kind of healthy link between creator and public, or at least imagined public, a link that sustains even the most private artists and helps dampen the temptation toward vanity projects like "Travelogue." & for someone who claims to know her work, you'd think he'd remember that joni likes to include her artwork on her albums...& as to what the heck he means about a healthy link between the creator & public, well that is one of the most idiotic ideas i've ever read in a review! ******************************************** Kate Bennett: www.katebennett.com Sponsored by Polysonics/Atlantis Sound Labs Over the Moon- "bringing the melancholy world of twilight to life almost like magic" All Music Guide ******************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 19:03:17 -0500 From: "michael o'malley" Subject: Joni & Leonard - Suzanne and the Wizard I don't know if this has been discussed here before, but listening to a bootleg recording of Joni at the White Swan in Leicester, England, dated 1967, I was struck by the blatant similarities between her unreleased song `'Wizard of Is` and Cohen's `Suzanne`` released in 1968 on his album `The Songs of Leonard Cohen``. We know Joni & Leonard spent time together at folk festivals in Newport and Mariposa, and they were also photographed together in Greece in 1967. By many accounts, they were quite an item and she credits him as being a mentor of sorts (O'Brien p.62). I have always thought that A Case of You, written during this period, was written for him. However, I suspect that Wizard followed Cohen's Suzanne, because Cohen released his song commercially and Joni never released Wizard. But do we know if Wizard was written in response to Suzanne, or vice-versa? Michael in Quebec ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 03:56:52 +0000 From: "c Karma" Subject: re: NYT review of Travelogue Greetings from New York! Joni, I would be happy to run out on my lunch hour tomorrow and ask John Rockwell to kiss my ass in liew of yours, if you're not available. What a feeble excuse for a writer he has become, devoting 9 paragraphs to expound on his own "simple taste" to register his disappointment for a version of a single song within the collection. Pitiful. That he has elevated himself to also judge visual art is laughable. Mitchell has never called herself a master, she is content to be a student of life, music and painting. If Rockwell ever considered the words in "Borderline" or especially "Both Sides Now" and truly heard the performance of Joni's last recorded reading he could begin to have some kind of understanding, but to him Art has become a deadline. His projected advisements to Joni prove he knows nothing of creative process, and that hardly qualifies him a curator. I'm one among others here who knows that Joni has quite a healthy link with "her" public. And we are not as Rockwell would contest, "imagined." No, Joni. Rockwell is not God chasening and correcting. He's simply an asshole misusing his venue. He's the one who should get out, not you. Pointing fans to your characature proves the fraud he is. There is irony only in that Mr. Rockwell has led me to conclude that rather than the subject of his article, it is he who should get over himself. And that is just desserts. CC _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 23:24:20 EST From: FredNow@aol.com Subject: Re: NY Times review of Travelogue "PAUL PETERSON" writes: >Here's a piece by John Rockwell, someone with a history of personal = >antipathy towards Joni's art. Actually, Rockwell's history is that of admiration, as he writes: "As a longtime admirer of Ms. Mitchell ... I thought of her song 'Amelia,' which was once my prime evidence when I called her a 20th-century American Schubert." >The idea that John Kelly is a better >singer than Joni, past, present or future, is absurd! He doesn't say that at all; he clearly writes: "Right now, the best live Joni Mitchell is the countertenor-falsettist-drag artist John Kelly in his periodic revivals of his Joni Mitchell act, fabled in downtown Manhattan. Mr. Kelly sings Ms. Mitchell far better than she sings herself now." For what it's worth, John Rockwell is one of the few music critics I've admired, and although there are things about Travelogue I enjoy I do share many of his reservations about it, chiefly that at its worst it is bloated and self-indulgent. - -Fred P.S. Rockwell mistakenly attributes the arrangements to Larry Klein instead of Vince Mendoza, and I wrote to the NYT to inform them of the error. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 02:07:14 -0500 From: ljirvin@jmdl.com Subject: Today's Library Links: January 6 On January 6 the following item was published: 1974: "Joni's Songs Are For Everyone" - New York Times (Review - Album) http://www.jmdl.com/articles/view.cfm?id=815 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 22:38:21 -0800 From: "kakki" Subject: Re: NY Time Review of T'log Kate wrote: > it's one thing not to like a record but this guy is pretty cruel... Quite. The more I read, the more I recoiled. It struck me as incredibly bitchy. Some of these really nasty reviews make me wonder if the people writing them have some kind of real or imagined personal grudge with Joni. Yeesch! Kakki ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2003 #5 ******************************* ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she? (http://www.siquomb.com/siquomb.cfm)