From: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2008 #50 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org 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, May 18 2008 Volume 2008 : Number 050 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: Carly Simon/"Girls Like Us"/guys like them [Mark-Leon Thorne ] Re: Carly Simon/"Girls Like Us"/guys like them ["Mark Angelo" Subject: Re: Carly Simon/"Girls Like Us"/guys like them Mark, I just loved your analysis of C&S. I never thought of that album in that way before. I knew there was a lot of madness towards the end but the excerpts of lyrics that you chose leads me to believe sanity was on Joni's mind when she wrote that album. I know she was feeling a lot of frustration over John Guerin at the time so, I'm sure that had a lot to do with it. Mark in Sydney ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 04:40:38 -0400 From: robmsteen@aol.com Subject: Re:Those guys & Todd Just to assuage any fears - I have interviewed Todd on several occasions (once for two hours on the making of Something/Anything? which you can find at the site rocksbackpages.com) and he is a good guy, for all his former reputation as a bit of "ladies man". Frighteningly bright and disarmingly honest. Never courted the critics, always does things his way. Oh, and his last CD, Liars, is the best recording I've heard this decade. Love RobB ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 05:29:45 -0400 From: paulcastle@talktalk.net Subject: New to the group Evelyn from northwest Canda @ almassy@qcislands.net asked me to post this on the list for her - ______ I was never lucky enough to hear Joni play when I lived in Matalla. I did get to say "Bon Voyage" to her as she left the caves...she was, climbing down right in front of me from a boulder to the sand in front of the main caves in the village. (There were some more caves over the hill to the east that I lived in after the Greek Police came and kicked everyone out of the caves...this was in late summer/fall of 1970.) My partner and I lived in a little cave overlooking the bay of Red Beach. We shared the cave with a Burmese Scotsman called Neil. Wow, even typing this brings back memories. I am very connected to that place called Matalla on Crete. It used to have no electricity and now it has three ATM machines... But you can still hike the hills with no one about but the sheep and their bells tinkling in the wind. I did see Carey, and heard one story about him: He was playing cards, and someone was leaning over his shoulder. Carey took his cigarette and put it into this person's face! (I did not see this, and the story may have grown, but wild, eh?) _____ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 08:23:15 -0700 (PDT) From: KEVIN DOHENY Subject: Joni & Johnny To my knowledge there is no video of Joni singing with Chuck Mitchell but watching her sing Girl from the north country with johnny cash on you tube, gave me a glimpse of what that may have looked like..Although something tells me the way she looks at Johnny is a liitle different than the way she looked at chuck..lol. We are so lucky to have such easy access to these jewels..Joni on video is rare as it is but to have her with johnny is just priceless to me. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 13:10:45 -0400 From: "Mark Angelo" Subject: Re: Carly Simon/"Girls Like Us"/guys like them Interesting, Mark, that you should bring up C&S. I'm always interested in what people's perceptions of songs, or in Joni's case, the positioning of songs on her albums are because they are placed in the sequence they are in for a reason. I can't find my C&S currently but oddly enough I was thinking the last night or so before I fell asleep of the two songs "Trouble Child" and the juxtaposition of that song being followed by "Twisted". One being an in-depth yearning to help an institutionalized soul who can't function under current societal norms and "can't live life and...can't leave it" but hints with subtlety of her weariness of ever-changing accepted behavioral health standards - "they're friends but they're foes too" followed by "Twisted" a song that mocks and taunts the behavioral health care field in a light-hearted manner. I think it perhaps was Joni's way - without yet being directly critical as she will later in her career - of once again questioning cultural norms "They all laugh at angry young men, They all laugh at Edison and also at Einstein" - though not penned by her - referencing those whose thoughts or actions places them outside cultural norms (scientists and artists in particular) who can be dismissed as mad by many in the milieu of their times but are later viewed to be brilliant. Her self-portrait in the manner of Van Gogh on TI and using his favorite color "indigo" in the title to convey a more palpable sense of the sterile "depression" label and would be a much more overt statement of this juxtaposition of "madness" and what is now viewed as brilliance. Both songs speak to "madness" - though Trouble Child still can't help but reflect on love - "you know you really can't give love in this condition, though you know how you neeeeeeeeed it" - as you say madness or the nervous preoccupation that you might be tending towards some form of madness or regressing psychologically ie. in "Help me", it really is the predominant theme and now I think about it throughout the album, and of course the ever-present exploration of "the anatomy of love - the scene of the crime" which she would only later exorcise. I personally think (FWIW) that this obsessive need to introspectively examine love's "many faces" reached it's zenith primarily in her reflections while journeying as "a defector of the petty wars that shell shock love away" that comprise most of the album "Hejira" and would be a sort of epiphany for her as later works focused more and more on other, more external subjects. (I know I'm opening myself here for criticism btw). All of the songs speak to madness or "irrationality" and love (except Twisted which doesn't address love - and interestingly the only song on the album that is not her composition) - with "Down to You" and "Trouble Child" written from a more enlightened, philosophical and cautiously worded perspective. "Free Man In Paris" seems a curious contender at first with "Help Me" segueing into it. I've long understood the song to be written about David Geffen - when they were a bit more amiable - and see it as written from his perspective. He is finally free in one of Joni's most cited cities, Paris, where he can get away from all the superficiality and people "trying to get ahead, trying to be a good friend" to being able to go "cafi to caberet, thinking how I'll feel when I find that *very good friend of mine *- in other worlds a romantic interest that wants something other than a favor to get ahead. So the love theme is consistent, and I suppose the "irrationality" as well as he has to travel half-way across the globe just in the hope of finding "true love". Anyways - as yet another Mark notes - I really liked your interesting take on an album. It got me to thinking of C&S once again which I had heretofore seen as a project that largely explored Joni's vulnerabilities and like so many of her earlier works, a sort of continuing analysis of love. It seems to be one of her lighter albums as well in relative terms, with Twisted, Raised On Robbery (a great song but I still have a hard time imagining Joni wrote it as it is so different from all her other songs) being upbeat and almost comical and Just Like This Train having a slower pace but showing a Joni who can look at love and her relationship(s) with some train metaphors and "tit for tat" kind of glee. Maybe that had something to do with the album's broad popular appeal as well. Stay in Touch...yes I still believe that was written regarding her daughter Kilauren even though you are right some of the other songs on TTT do reference her relationship with Donald. Even though it is written about that initial giddy meeting/trying to impress/getting to know phase of a familial relationship it could just as easily apply to the "court and spark" phase of a romantic relationship, that's why I think it is so brilliant. :-) I'm not a Joni expert by any means but I found this from a 1998 review in the JMDL Library: "Mitchell said in a recent interview the tentatively tender "Stay in Touch" is about getting to know her now grown daughter, Kilauren". Let light hearts remake us Let the worries hush - -Mark in Florida ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2008 #50 ******************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe