From: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #44 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 Friday, February 13 2009 Volume 2009 : Number 044 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- Re: onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #43 [stdoherty@aol.com] Paradise in a Parking Lot [Joseph Vallee ] Re: Grammy Memorials [Jenny Goodspeed ] More Slogan Than Substance [Gerald Notaro ] Re: Grammy Memorials [Anne Sandstrom ] TV Alert: Graham Nash tonight [Patti Parlette ] Re: TV Alert: Graham Nash tonight [T Peckham ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:59:59 -0500 From: stdoherty@aol.com Subject: Re: onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #43 I haven't had that experience of people not being open.? As a matter of fact quite the contrary.? I HAVE heard people rate new music -and well, sometimes?a new artist just doesn't?make the cut.? - -----Original Message----- From: onlyJMDL Digest To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Sent: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 3:00 am Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #43 onlyJMDL Digest Thursday, February 12 2009 Volume 2009 : Number 043 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: - -------- Re: Grammy Memorials [Vince ] Urge for Bandwidth ["Les Irvin" ] - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:22:35 -0500 From: Vince Subject: Re: Grammy Memorials On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Cassy wrote: > > > Overall, the parts of the awards show I saw were good. I also loved the > mixing it up of new and old artists, music builds bridges. > > Warmly, > Cassy > > Thanks Cassy, yes it does - or at least, if people are open to new possibilities, music can build bridges. Before I went online today I was thinking that I should have included you and Jerry Notaro in my little list of people I know who are open to new music, music from this decade, music from this century, music from this millennium. And I was also thinking of taking a break from the JMDL because I get fed up with closed mindedness to anything new. Especially here where music is supposed to be our shared interest and music lives, it is not the mummified remains of our childhoods that we cling to *because nothing good has been done since our puberty. * Other than the Beyonce article I just linked to in a prior post, I so much enjoy the New Yorker because it remains new and open to the world in which we live. A few issues back there was a review of the new movie Notorious about the life of the Notorious B.I.G. It concluded by saying that to really capture the life force that was Biggie Smalls, one would need an extended tv mini-series- or listening to his music again. I did not feel free to share that here. To be ignored or open a new discussion ripping rap as "not music" - I mean, to be very blunt and this unfair but not so much so - that as the JMDL has aged, it has become too much a home for aging geriatrics who can 't wait to attack the music of the next generation bubbling up. I love folks here but it is tough to see whole genres dismissed (for racial or for aging reasons? ironic considering Joni's transcendent genre-breaking journeys - we too easily betray the spirit of her career)... I was very sad that Rihanna did not appear at the grammys because of the Chris Brown thing and I was sorry to miss him as well - Rihanna is such an explosive talent, I love her work so much... but who here knows who she is? or would do other than put her down because she is not Aretha Franklin?* I am sick unto death of Justin Timberlake being dissed by old people who are clueless as to his music, and I am tired of rap being dismissed, and I am tired of all new artists being dismissed unless they are reflections (or children) of aging hippies, the past is just a goodbye, so sha la la la la let's live for today. Take care Cassie and please, you and Joseph and Bob and Jerry can email me off list with new music to be turned on to... please... Vince *this is not a dis at Aretha - I am maybe the only (ex) JMDLer who has done Aretha covers for her sister Erma while on a dorm bed at WMU in Kalamazoo - but as Rihanna sings, "come on, take a bow, it's over now" - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:35:10 -0700 From: "Les Irvin" Subject: Urge for Bandwidth Joniphiles - I'm looking for bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. Are there any computer geeks out there who have web hosting space with lots of bandwidth to spare for a good cause? The new JoniMitchell.com is in need. You can host MP3 files for the new site and make all the world's Joni fans happy! Anyone who may be able to help please email me off list. Thanks, Les - ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #43 ******************************** - ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:39:10 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Vallee Subject: Paradise in a Parking Lot For us Joni fans, Paradise in a Parking Lot is an exciting display based loosely on Joni's Big Yellow Taxi. It is a garden exhibit in the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, March 7-15, that depicts the regrowth of a garden from a world of modern abuses and deterioration. I think she'd appreciate the twist of nature reclaiming it's realm in a world that seemed destined to destroy itself. The exhibit incorporates living walls, concepts of water conservation, recycling, alternative energy sources, the need to educate children to care for the world in better ways than we have, and the development of urban gardens as way to save us from ourselves. For more information and details on the concept and design of the exhibit, go to wpgarden.org. Enjoy! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:10:35 -0500 From: Jenny Goodspeed Subject: Re: Grammy Memorials I feel compelled to say that I think of the JMDL as exactly the opposite. The way I see it, JMDLers are music lovers first and foremost. If ya don't mind me making a huge generalization to answer a generalization - we are thrilled to discover new music that inspires and excites us and *live *for those rare moments when we hear something transcendent. It's only on the JMDL that I know I can discuss the latest music I love and people actually * know* who I'm talking about. And perhaps I wasn't following the thread closely enough, but I think I read one note that disparaged rap and the joining of generations on the Grammys. Were there more? I feel like I read mostly positive responses. Am I imagining things or putting a positive spin on the situation? That would be very unlike me, especially in February. :P Jenny (Who misses Smurph) On 2/11/09, Vince wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Cassy wrote: > And I was also thinking of taking a break from the JMDL because I get fed > up > with closed mindedness to anything new. Especially here where music is > supposed to be our shared interest and music lives, it is not the mummified > remains of our childhoods that we cling to *because nothing good has been > done since our puberty. > * > Other than the Beyonce article I just linked to in a prior post, I so much > enjoy the New Yorker because it remains new and open to the world in which > we live. A few issues back there was a review of the new movie Notorious > about the life of the Notorious B.I.G. It concluded by saying that to > really capture the life force that was Biggie Smalls, one would need an > extended tv mini-series- or listening to his music again. I did not feel > free to share that here. To be ignored or open a new discussion ripping > rap as "not music" - I mean, to be very blunt and this unfair but not so > much so - that as the JMDL has aged, it has become too much a home for > aging > geriatrics who can't wait to attack the music of the next generation > bubbling up. I love folks here but it is tough to see whole genres > dismissed (for racial or for aging reasons? ironic considering Joni's > transcendent genre-breaking journeys - we too easily betray the spirit of > her career)... > > I was very sad that Rihanna did not appear at the grammys because of the > Chris Brown thing and I was sorry to miss him as well - Rihanna is such an > explosive talent, I love her work so much... > > but who here knows who she is? or would do other than put her down because > she is not Aretha Franklin?* I am sick unto death of Justin Timberlake > being dissed by old people who are clueless as to his music, and I am tired > of rap being dismissed, and I am tired of all new artists being dismissed > unless they are reflections (or children) of aging hippies, the past is > just > a goodbye, so sha la la la la let's live for today. > > Take care Cassie and please, you and Joseph and Bob and Jerry can email me > off list with new music to be turned on to... please... > > Vince > > *this is not a dis at Aretha - I am maybe the only (ex) JMDLer who has done > Aretha covers for her sister Erma while on a dorm bed at WMU in Kalamazoo - > but as Rihanna sings, "come on, take a bow, it's over now" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:32:58 -0500 From: Gerald Notaro Subject: More Slogan Than Substance More slogans than substance By Bronwyn Eyre, The StarPhoenixFebruary 11, 2009 During a heated political discussion, a friend once declared there is "a right and wrong side" to every issue. So much for debate, I thought. Similarly, singer Joni Mitchell -- whose photographic exhibition, Green Flag Song, is currently showing at the Mendel Art Gallery -- is clearly one who believes she's on the "right" side. According to the gallery notes, as Mitchell "watched the daily menu of distress and fear on her deteriorating television set, the colour distortions seemed to accentuate the bias of mass media." So she photographed televised scenes of "militancy" that depict her "personal response to the consequences of war and humanity's struggle with itself." These scenes eventually served as stage visuals to Jean Grand-Maitre's ballet, The Fiddle and the Drum -- a tribute to Mitchell which the Alberta Ballet recently performed here. They include images of Hitler and Stalin, along with a parade of current social and political bugbears, including George W. Bush, the state of the environment, conflicts in Africa and consumerism. "With the situation for all earthlings" (earthlings?) "so dire," Mitchell writes, "it was frivolous to present a lighter fare, like 'fiddling while Rome burned'." Of course, no "anti-war, pro-environment" manifesto would be complete without a wistful (if not very original) tribute to Woodstock. Mitchell sings: "We are stardust / We are golden / And we've got to get ourselves / Back to the garden." The reality, of course, is by the end of that famous weekend, revellers were practically drowning in their own, er, refuse. And in an ironic twist, the U.S. army and National Guard flew in food and medical supplies. In The Real Thing, playwright Tom Stoppard writes: "Is that what it's all come down to? No philosophy that can't be printed on a T-shirt?" The great thing about The Fiddle and the Drum ballet is that the beauty of the dancing transcends Mitchell's lyrics -- many of which are sophomoric slogans. Take Shine: "Let your little light . . . / Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas / Shine on our Frankenstein technologies" -- at which point, an image flashes above the dancers: "We need experts, not bigots." So no "Frankenstein technologies" -- but I'd venture to guess Mitchell favours stem cell research ("experts") over the position on stem cell research held by George Bush and many Christians ("bigots"). As she sings herself: "Shine on the Catholic Church / And the prisons that it owns." For the ballet, Mitchell wrote a new song, If, based on Rudyard Kipling's poem about -- as she puts it -- "stoicism and war." Problem is, it's not about war. It extols manly, if not aristocratic, character. And I doubt Kipling would be on what Mitchell considers the "right side." In The White Man's Burden, for example, he describes the colonizing white man's "new-caught, sullen peoples" as "half-devil and half-child." Oops. In the ballet program, Mitchell describes how she adapted another song, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, from "Yates' [sic] poem, The Second Coming." That would be W.B. Yeats -- another controversial choice. Scornful of democracy and admiring of Mussolini's dictatorship, Yeats once wrote marching songs for the Irish Blueshirts, who adopted the Nazi straight-arm salute. Oops again. 'Dang it, why must this right and wrong business be so complex? Sure, sure, we all know Bush was evil. But how do we, for example, intervene in African regions such as Darfur when no one except the bad guys has an army? As for Mitchell's snide projections of the White House and the Statue of Liberty, what do we make of the awful irony that in the last 20 years, two Balkan interventions, as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims, were humanitarian exercises by the U.S.? In 2002, Barbra Streisand -- like Mitchell, a proponent of fashionable causes -- quoted what she thought was Shakespeare: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervour." The lines were actually penned by an Internet prankster. Both Streisand, who later insisted the words "are still powerful and true and beautifully written," and Mitchell, with her shaky reading of literary greats, would do well to heed Alexander Pope's famous caution: "A little learning is a dangerous thing." Polemics, unfortunately, don't make for high art. (c) Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:11:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Anne Sandstrom Subject: Re: Grammy Memorials Not marking this as NJC because there is some Joni content. Vince, I think thee doth protesteth too much :-). This is the JMDL, not the Biggie Smalls list, after all...LOL As for me, I do like some hip-hop, but am not as fond of rap. I'm just too much a melody person. Rythmn has always been my weak point. I love Rihanna's music, "Disturbia" stil being a favorite. And Chris Brown is a very talented writer - too bad he seems to be an abusive jerk. As for the Joni Content: I think that Joni's strength has always been more melodically based than rythmically based. (Putting on kevlar suit here.) So, I think that it stands to reason that many members of this list would be drawn to music that is more melodic than rythmic. OTOH, rappers could certainly draw upon and learn from her skill as a lyricist. Her rhymes, in particular, are gems. One other thing that I suspect many of us on the list are wary of (as would be Joni, I believe) is the whole star maker machinery. Even if someone is genuinely talented, there's a manufactured quality to much commercial music these days. The look. The production. The publicity. It's not that I want music to be stripped down to be devoid of its entertainment value. I'm just sad that everyone has to be the whole package. If someone had the voice of an angel, but the face of , well whatever, they probably wouldn't make it. Someone asked Simon Cowell if he thought Aretha would be chosen on Americal Idol and he said no. That says a lot to me. Individuality is eschewed in favor of forumlas that sell. And that's unfortunate. It's great to hear opinions on all kinds of music here. But, can we please share without slamming others for their opinions. (Oldies stations actually make me nauseous, but that not true of everyone...) lots of love, Anne ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:34:24 +0000 From: Patti Parlette Subject: TV Alert: Graham Nash tonight Willy is scheduled to appear on Tavis Smiley's show tonight: http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200902/20090212.html My heart be still! Maybe there will be a Joni mention? (Hence no NJC tag here.) I think Tavis's conversation w/ Joni was the best of all the interviews conducted during the SHINE debut period. He's a good listener who has heart and humor and humility. He really tries to connect with his guests. Shine on Willy, Tavis! xo, pp, NPOMC: Riding around on a carousel... "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." -- John Lennon http://www.imaginepeace.com/ _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_howitworks_02200 9 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:02:52 -0600 From: T Peckham Subject: Re: TV Alert: Graham Nash tonight Thanks for the heads-up! Sometimes I forget to check Tavis---and I agree, he "got" Joni better than most lazy, dimbulb TV interviewers---I'm still mad about Charlie Rose!---and he usually actually listens, as you say, without interrupting a lot. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single person who currently has a TV talk show (of any sort) who has the smarts and sophistication to keep up with her in a conversation. Except maybe Elvis Costello or---call me crazy---Bill Maher. But I have to say I've been somewhat disappointed with "Spectacle" overall. Maybe we should start a poll: Who would you most like to see having a wide-ranging conversation with Joni? Not having spent much time thinking about this, I'll just say *Dick Cavett*off the top of my head. Anyone? T On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Patti Parlette wrote: > Willy is scheduled to appear on Tavis Smiley's show tonight: > > http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200902/20090212.html > > My heart be still! > > > > Maybe there will be a Joni mention? (Hence no NJC tag here.) > > > > I think Tavis's conversation w/ Joni was the best of all the interviews > conducted during the SHINE debut period. He's a good listener who has > heart > and humor and humility. He really tries to connect with his guests. > > Shine on Willy, Tavis! > > xo, > > pp, > > NPOMC: Riding around on a carousel... > > > "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd > be > peace." > -- John Lennon > > http://www.imaginepeace.com/ > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Windows Live : Keep your life in sync. > > http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_howitworks_02200 > 9 > - -- Note to any and all govt. agencies who might be looking in: You can kiss my sweet ass. ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2009 #44 ******************************** ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe