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Monday, March 11, 2019

JONI MITCHELL

 "I'm not a feminist. I don't want to get a posse against men."

I stuck with Joni from the first album and certainly Ladies of The Canyon was avidly perused but somewhere I lost her  along the way and despite seeing her live at Wembley with CSNY in 1974 and her having the Tom Scott band backing her it was The Band who blew everyone away that day and around the time of 'Miles of Aisles' later that same year, I lost my interest in her, that being the last album I bought. Lately she has appeared to get that elder statesperson's madness of too much coke and too much money, claiming herself affected by the psychosomatic self diagnosed illness Morgellon's Syndrome largely accepted by medical authority world wide as a delusional parasitosisshe has also turned her back on the so called 'counter culture' she was perceived as being part of, finding a critical voice focused on the Woodstock generation, (she never went for fear it would jeopardise a TV appearance) Bob Dylan specifically, and the peace movement citing her Uncles being in the forces who "died in the war" and that she was more like "Bob Hope' supporting the US troops (sic!) playing Fort Bragg* This interview she seems knowingly perverse and curmudgeonly countering everyone's perception of the original hippie chick! 

"Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception."                                                          Remembering of course that Mitchell changed her name also (sic)

Mitchell turned her back on her musical creativity in 2010 and devoted most of her time to actively support the victims of Morgellon's. In the past she also devoted much time to painting, at once amateurish and at best a kind of 'hippy' illustration with nothing of the great women painters and true artists whatsoever that I can discern. The delusions continue. She fell ill again and reports feared her dead and was reportedly found collapsed in 2015 after suspected brain aneurism which completely paralysed her and she has slowly regained her health through physical therapy and daily rehabilitation. Old friend and mentor Dave Crosby reported that she was learning to walk again in 2018. She last made a public appearance at Scientolgist Chick Corea's concert in Los Angeles in 2016 and has been seen little since then. 

Wrestling with my ego . . . a prisoner of the fine white lines" seemed about right.

On this day in music history: March 10, 1970 - “Ladies Of The Canyon”, the third album by Joni Mitchell is released. Produced by Joni Mitchell, it is recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood, CA from December 1969 - February 1970. After the success of her sophomore release “Clouds”, Joni Mitchell returns to the studio near the end of 1969 to begin work on her third album. With technical assistance from engineer Henry Lewy, who becomes a trusted and long time studio collaborator, Joni produces herself entirely on her own for the first time. The title refers to Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills area where Mitchell is living at the time, and one of the creative centers of L.A.’s thriving rock music scene. “Ladies” features mostly Joni accompanying herself on guitar or piano, singing nearly all of the vocals, with minor instrumental accompaniment from other musicians. The twelve tracks on the album are a combination of newly written material, and drawn from Mitchell’s already vast back log of songs that had not yet been recorded. The opening and closing songs “Morning Morgantown” and The Circle Game" date back to Mitchell’s days on the coffeehouse circuit in Toronto, Canada, Detroit and New York City. Others like “Woodstock” and “Willy” are more recent. The former being inspired by the legendary rock festival which Joni is originally scheduled to perform, but backs out at the last minute when her manager David Geffen is worried that she might miss making her national television debut on “The Dick Cavett Show” the day after. Instead, Mitchell stays in her hotel room, watching coverage of the festival on television, then sitting down at the piano and writing “Woodstock”. She debuts the song the next night on the Cavett show on August 19, 1969. “Willy” is written for singer and songwriter Graham Nash who is Mitchell’s boyfriend at the time, and becomes the inspiration for several songs she composes during this period. The album is an immediate critical and fan favorite, becoming Mitchell’s biggest seller to date. It spins off the classic single “Big Yellow Taxi” (#67 Pop), a commentary on the destruction of the environment, and the need to preserve nature. It is written while on a trip to Hawaii, when the musician looks out her hotel window and sees vast stretches of parking lots in the foreground,with lush green mountains behind them. In time, it becomes one her most popular and widely covered songs. The albums outer and inside gatefold cover art is also painted and illustrated by Mitchell. Originally issued on CD in 1990, it is remastered and reissued in 1998 as an HDCD encoded disc, restoring the original cover artwork, illustrations and handwritten lyrics included on the original LP release. The album is also reissued as a 180 gram vinyl LP by Rhino Records in 2009. “Ladies Of The Canyon” peaks at number twenty seven on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

"Fibres in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer – a terrorist disease"
*
Ghomeshi, Jian (June 10, 2013). "The Joni Mitchell Interview"CBC. Retrieved June 1, 2017 – via YouTube.

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