From: les@jmdl.com (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2004 #212 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 Tuesday, July 27 2004 Volume 2004 : Number 212 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) ["Steven Polifka" ] Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) [SCJoniGuy@aol.com] Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) [Randy Remote ] Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) [Catherine McKay ] a big blue moon ["Mark or Travis" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:17:48 -0500 From: "Steven Polifka" Subject: Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) I love you man, but it's shear Blasphemy! Heresy I tell you! Night Ride Home parked in a basement? Wild Things Run Fast corralled? What the feck! U R A lunatic! Sheesh, Bob- you've been listening to those 300 some covers of BSN - IN A ROW- haven't you? Huh? Haven't you! It's like a drug- hard to quit and you just want more, more, more! We're gonna take your Joni Covers license away, that's what we'll do. Then tie you up and force you to listen to Dancin' Clown for two days straight. And Billy Idol (with hair SO blonde you will be blinded) will be there to give you an appropriate "take that, Muller," when you think you're just about finished with your punishment... (hee hee) Stevo . >>> 07/23/04 10:02PM >>> **Joni wants to make sure that there are future collections as beautiful as this one's going to be.** Meanwhile, the rest of us would give our eye teeth to see her retire these Geffen recordings forever! End up in Geffen's basement??? The whole damn Geffen catalog got a remastered re-release last year, and now this "best of/worst of" Geffen monstrosity (with monster ghoul hand to match) shows up! No, I won't buy it, I will not Sam I am, and the message I'm sending is JONI PLEASE DON'T DO THIS AGAIN! Continue to create or call it a day and stop. Christ. Listen to Catherine, she's smarter than me...put out a nice glossy art book for the coffee table. Like they say down in SC, this dawg don't hunt. Meanwhile, what's this "Snapshots In A Diary" that's coming out 9/14? More Geffen? After all, she hasn't re-released "Dancin' Clown" yet. **I've never seen this pic before. If Muller thought the green hand was scary, he ought to have a look at this. Lauging and smoking, you know it's the same release.** Yikes! Paging Mrs. Beetlejuice...pretty macabre indeed, but at least she's just pale and not deathbed green. Bob NP: Spirit, "New Dope In Town" PS: At least the latest covers are HOT. Richie Havens' Woodstock is astounding, done in a Wooden Ships style, very loose and folk-rockish old school - sweet. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:06:42 EDT From: SCJoniGuy@aol.com Subject: Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) Thanks for the love, Stevo...the line about the stuff languishing in the basement was Joni's, not mine. My whole point is not that these are all bad tunes, but rather that this compilation is totally superfluous. Although the All-Music Guide thinks differently, their review (by Thom Jurek) says: "The Beginning of Survival is a whopping, 16-track collection from Joni Mitchell's Geffen period, recorded between 1985-1998, and carefully chosen by the artist as "commentaries on the world in which we live." One has to wonder about the title; if by saying this is "the beginning of survival," Ms. Mitchell is referring to her own retirement strategybshe is no longer making new records. Or perhaps that we are now, at the end of actual living and are on the other side of the garden of Eden she referred to in her song &Woodstock" from so long ago? Are we at the beginning a new era, one in which the strategies we once used to exist in a society together have been erased and new ones come into play, where we make our way merely as individuals in isolation from and in competition with one another? Or perhaps, the question is one of beginning to survive as a culture despite the onslaught of mediated images that now cancel out "the real thing," with rampant greed and the lust for objects of desire and power rather than desire itself. The sequencing here, is so meticulous and effective that the Beginning of Survival feels like a topical song cycle rather than a compilation. Tracks trace meaning and impression onto other tracks, they inform and elucidate themes of resistance in the face of the dark deluge that began the culture war in earnest during in the 1980s, and which as come to signify the nature American society in the 21st century with no signs of anything but further fragmentation. The opening words of "The Recoccuring Dream that begin this cycle states: "This is a reoccurring dream/Born in the dreary gap between/What we have now/And what we wish we could haveb&." A line that signifies a double meaning, one that is caught between the simulacrum of what we are offered as life, and the drive for life itself. And so it goes from this screed against consumerism that follows in tracks like "the Windfall (Everything For Nothing)," and moves on to the weariness with Culture in "Dog Eat Doc," "The Beat Of Black Wings," and "Fiction," and "Sex Kills," and the meditation on other cultural and social and ecological injustices in "The Three Great Stimulants," "Lakota," the "Ethiopia," "No Apologies," "The Magdalene Laundries," to the place of the spirit and the allegories of the great spiritual lessons in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," and "Passion Play," to the faint glimmer of hope in "Cool Water," and "Impossible Dreamer." Back and forth, around, down and in, these songs swirl with her trademark weave of jazz, rock, and pop into a long meditation on what has happened, and where we find ourselves, in this new world, truly "at the beginning of survival," deprived of the strategy of history because it has been cancelled out. This is a provocative, wonderfully articulated and gorgeously illustrated compilations (there is a series of nine of Mitchell's thematic paintings and one self portrait Mitchell adorning the booklet), that sheds not only new light on the tunes, but on Ms. Mitchell's enduring contribution. " Bob ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:35:04 -0700 From: Randy Remote Subject: Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) SCJoniGuy@aol.com wrote: > All-Music Guide thinks differently, their review (by Thom Jurek) says: > One has to wonder > about > the title; if by saying this is "the beginning of survival," Ms. Mitchell is > referring to her own retirement strategyb I've wondered at the title, too. Seems like the beginning of survival was millions of years ago, and every day. Enigmatic, to say the least. Or vague, or hyperbolic, or ? > and moves on > to the > weariness with Culture in "Dog Eat Doc," I don't remember this one...was it the theme from a bad horror film? A giant hot dog terrorizes the ER? > This is a provocative, wonderfully articulated and gorgeously illustrated > compilations Score one for the Joanster. RR ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 21:23:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Catherine McKay Subject: Re: BS, 100% JC (aka tBoS) - --- Randy Remote wrote: > > > > and moves on > > to the > > weariness with Culture in "Dog Eat Doc," > > I don't remember this one...was it the theme from a > bad > horror film? A giant hot dog terrorizes the ER? > ... or a new computer virus? ===== Catherine Toronto - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We all live so close to that line, and so far from satisfaction ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:46:32 -0700 From: "Mark or Travis" Subject: a big blue moon On July 31st there will be a blue moon. Applications are now being taken for surrealists to present their prototypes for the creation of a 31st of July night ride home. Requirements are: hula girls caterpillar tractors in the sand ukulele man fireworks silver power lines headlight beams a big dark horse red tail lights a loved one to ride beside you the open road no phones (til Friday) distance from overkill distance from overload distance from undertow The successful applicant will be assigned the task of inventing a night ride home such as is only seen on rare occasions, once in awhile, perhaps. In a blue moon. A big blue moon. ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2004 #212 ********************************* ------- 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)