Rudyard Kipling also wrote well of Afghanistan, and of how things can go wrong there.

Another home run for C&L. I hope everyone orders Joni's new album

Ahhhhhhhh another master of musical art.

Beautiful

Congrats on the premiere. Awesome artist, (sad to she 'er smokin')

"Starbuck's is great" did anyone else notice this nonsequiter toward the bginning of the dance sequence. Sounds like a blatant ad cut to me.

Indigowatcher @ 10:

What is Starbuck's idelogical stance anyway? Are they, for instance, a very gay-friendly company? Did they support BushCo in any way in the Iraq & Aghanistan wars? If Starbucks is cool politically then I can forgive them for making nasty coffee.

Howard Schultz, Chairman
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=WA&last=schultz&first=...

on you crazy diamond!!!! Hello Joni!

This report on Starbuck's CEO campaign contributions is a bit more complete.

King Crimson: 21st Century Schizoid Man -

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gpX71RZeev4

Joni - wow.

I never could figure out her guitar stringing, but more than any other artist...she gives herself away. Everything. Thanks C&L. And thanks Joni.

Joni - Live 1970 : Both Sides Now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg

Yikes! Gorgeous song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7iLPnDCQ1g Cat Stevens.....Peace Train.

Aerosmith

Nobody's Fault

no, no, no: Saturday night is right for fightin'

I loved her with Jaco and Brecker too....

John -
> I loved her with Jaco and Brecker too….

Wasn't Metheny with her also then?

The last two Joni CD's I bought have religious poems put to her music.Yeat's Second Coming is on Nightride Home titled; Slouching Towards Bethlehem and on another great CD Turbulent Indigo titled; The Sire Of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song).I love that.

Court and Spark I think is my favorite album but I can't find anything from it so-
Joni Mitchell-California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR356wrvQq4&mode=related&search=

This song is so devastating and so beautiful that, if there's any chance, maybe she just gave it to us.

UFO

Out In the Street

could we borrow Michael ... for six albums or so

Joni Anderson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBdC8lORHh8&mode=related&search=

Gotta love the Joni. All this years later and she's still got that thick Canadian accent (and the cigarette habit).

Joni Anderson Mitchell in Canada 1966
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaWlSfqT0O4

nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez @ 44:

an old, dear love of mine, Joni.

i'll have to listen to this a few times through...it's really not grabbing me right away. maybe i'm just too used to Court and Spark...Blue...and so on. This...I mean, I hate to sound contrary in the face of so much admiration in this thread. So I'll be quiet. Maybe it will grow on me. But I can't really find the melody I'm used to. Tho I do appreciate the gift very much.

No its all good. I've found that Joni's last couple of albums (Turbalent Indigo, Taming the Tiger) demanded repeated listens. So while her later music doesn't have the immediacy of Court and Spark or Blue, I think it's still holds up.

So the new record will most likely grow on you, just as her other later albums have grown on me.

What a beautiful surprise that was! Thank-you so much. :)

Andy K @ 48:

Leonard Cohen

Suzanne

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Leonard+Cohen/video/x2faz1_leonard-cohen-suzanne-live_music

Hey Andy k WHERE YOU BEEN? We missed ya!

lafin gas @ 49:

Andy K @ 48:

Leonard Cohen

Suzanne

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Leonard+Cohen/video/x2faz1_leonard-cohen-suzanne-live_music

Hey Andy k WHERE YOU BEEN? We missed ya!

Workin' early at my regular job, late on the weekends fer the second job.

I said hi to ya a few weeks back on a LNMC thread, lg, but you were looooong gone!

Andy, do make it back here whenever you can. Your contributions are alWAYs welcome.

Air

Playground Love

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/tag/electro/search/Air/video/xjeqp_...

lafin, please ship me a Morris chair! I love those things.

Neil Young

Heart Of Gold

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Heart+of+Gold/video/xu4vz_he...

"And here’s an EPK of Joni talking about the making of this record and why this project is so unique and so important to her." I am very fond of Joni Mitchell, having been a fan (and Lp collector since the first album), but you've hit a raw nerve: this English major's pet peeve, which is to say, misuse of the word, "unique." If you look in the dictionary, it defines "unique" as "one of a kind." A thing that is unique cannot be qualified. A thing can only be unique, not "very unique," "sort of unique," "somewhat unique" or even "so unique." End of rant. And, again, it's just a personal thing with me. I see it all the time, so I guess it's accepted now. Just not with me.

Okay, lafin, I'll try to get a paying job!

I'm still listening to this beautiful song....

Hey, you messin! with me? lol

John Amato @ 65:

Hey, you messin! with me? lol

As a matter of fact....

Go ahead, bust my balls over the Tigers. Yer Yanks really turned it around.

BTW- didjya get a chance to read my less-than-complete letter?

Don McLean

Vincent

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Don+McLean/video/xwtbx_stary...

Can anyone help me with this piece of music? I'm thinkin' it's Marin Marais, but what do I know?

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Gustav+Klimt/video/x24lfp_po...

Supertramp: Crazy -

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OOqo8W7swng

Oops, bad link. Here's Crazy On You -

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AcAn3z7D1Pc

(site monitor, please delete my comment @ September 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 AM - PDT. General Petraus, or in General Delete Us?)

Heart: Magic Man -

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0uvr3dmptvg&mode=related&search=

Joni Mitchell's first new release of original recordings since her magnificent "Taming The Tiger" with her beautiful artwork gracing the front and interior of the CD. I am tired of wasting my money on CD's that have one or two worthwhile songs on them but I know that Joni's CD is a keeper. This CD has her uncharacteristically playing the piano or a synthesizer on most of the songs as opposed to the guitar, the first heavily piano oriented work since "For The Roses".

The Grammy award nominated album "Court and Spark" marked the height of her career in terms of record sales and "popularity". Instead of churning out repackaged versions of what was obviously a successful formula, however, she instead continued to grow as an artist, musically and lyrically, with jazz becoming increasingly predominant in her work. The focus changed from introspection from a feminine perspective to one of extrospection with criticism of the "star maker machinery" that was the recording industry, consumerism and it's inevitable ties to destruction of the environment, and of course the wars that mankind cannot refrain from, as if it was an integral part of the human genome.

Songs from her subsequent work were extraordinarily prescient and many spoke about the "Dog Eat Dog" consumerist society we live in, where "lawyers and loan sharks are laying America to waste". Hmm... reminds me of a certain mortgage crisis in our economy right now. Also, lamenting about the wholesale destruction of nature with lyrics such as "last night I dreamed I saw the planet flicker, great forests fell like buffalo, everything got sicker, and 'til the bitter end, big business bickered". The destruction of forests worldwide, whether it be for monocultures of corn to produce the apparently not so bio-friendly fuels, to the coming destruction of the vast expanses of arboreal Canadian forests to extract the oil in the tar sands after events in the Middle East make it economically feasable to do so, were all presaged in those few lines. As well as the corporate control of our political system. She finally was recognized with the Grammy award for her brilliant work "Turbulent Indigo" which featured a portrait of herself (Joni has always considered herself to be first and foremost a painter) fashioned in the manner of VanGogh.

Many have commented they had some difficulty in hearing or understanding the lyrics to "If I Had A Heart" which she has been kind enough to pre-release here on C & L. Here are some lyrics from the song:

There's just too many people now
And too little land
Too much rage and desire
It makes you feel so feeble now
It's so out of hand-
Big bombs and barbed wire...
Can't you see
Our destiny?
We are making this Earth
Our funeral pyre!

Holy Earth
How can we heal you?
We cover you like a blight...
Strange birds of appetite...
If I had a heart I'd cry

Joni Mitchell Copyright © 2007; Crazy Crow Music

Lyrics for all of the songs on "Shine" can be obtained here:

jonimitchell.com/musician/album.cfm?id=28

I believe she is essentially addressing the awful mess we've created in which we are on a course not only of self destruction, but of wholesale destruction of nature, whose vanishing animal and plant species we have a fundamental connection with. Western religions discount our vital link to our the natural world of which we were once a part, by proclaiming man is nobler that any beast (do his recent actions indicate this?) and Western paradigms are not able to assign an economic "value" to the natural environment so species have gone silently extinct exponentially. Again, propaganda that tells us that consumerism will make us happy, which it can never really do by appealing to "our discontent (which) is their delight, they offer relief for the purchase price". She knows that in the 10 odd years since she has released any new music, that we are truly at a tilting point, and I might argue actually past it, and it is a sort of final wake up call.

BTW, everyone (myself included) has automatically attributed her deeper voice to cigarette smoking, however, Joni has been smoking since she was 9 years old, and it didn't affect her early soprano-like vocals (she has always had an alto voice actually). Digestive problems were given as the reason by her doctor as I recollect reading. And if you've ever been to LA or Phoenix, just breathing the air is equivalent to smoking a pack or two each day. Indeed I had to leave Phoenix as I could no longer breathe the air there without constantly coughing. These are the symptoms of our man made world becoming toxic to even ourselves, not simply bad air quality days with bad AQI index numbers.

Anyways, I could write forever about Joni, she has always been my favorite singer since I first heard her in high school many moons ago. So I am just so happy that after 10 years she could grace us once again with the inspiration and beauty that is her music.

Sorry, bad link. Here's Sometimes Wanna Die -

http://youtube.com/watch?v=X0k0L7r9Uig

What an incredible song! Joni Mitchell has been one of my lifetime favorites -- I can mark places in my life with her albums. Thank you for posting this!

Joni Mitchell has been my favorite singer/songwriter since I first heard her some three decades ago. I just spent about an hour and a half trying to put this latest work "Shine" into some kind of meaningful perspective. As I was trying to say, her words have been very prescient for decades to anyone who really listened to them. I guess in this "land of snap decisions, land of short attention spans" the moderator must remain true to form and delete anything longer than a sound bite. Hmm.. I believe Joni herself had something to say about this sound bite mentality earlier this year: "Some of the stuff I am thinking about, especially now, is awfully deep, you can't speak of it flippantly in a good sound bite". My attempt to clarify that this CD contains many songs that are a type of final wake up call regarding our Western paradigm's relentless need for ever increasing amounts of consumerism and the price it is exacting on the natural environment and ultimately on ourselves. As she sings in the song pre-released to C & L:

"Can't you see our destiny? We are making this Earth our funeral pyre!
Holy Earth how can we heal you? We cover you like a blight...Strange birds of appetite...If I had a heart I'd cry."

After a 10 year hiatus since releasing "Taming The Tiger", this new musical work "Shine" is truly a gift to those of us who have heard her message of the lack of balance which has been engineered by man and his machines with no regard for the laws of nature which unlike the laws of man, are immutable.

Greg Pagel @ 14:

The greatest American songwriters: George Gershwin, Charles Ives, Richard Rogers, Billy Strayhorn, Joni Mitchell.

(a woefully incomplete list, but you get my point)

Can I have your address please. I want to send you my old Rand McNally to show you where Joni's birthplace of Fort McLeod (not Apache) Alberta is. Or have you just decided to take ownership of her as well?

Greg Pagel @ 14:

The greatest American songwriters: George Gershwin, Charles Ives, Richard Rogers, Billy Strayhorn, Joni Mitchell.

(a woefully incomplete list, but you get my point)

I don't think that you can claim Joni as American...She may live there, but the girl/spirit inside are Canadian to the max. Just like Neil Young.

Thanks for sharing the genius of Joni.

When I was a young boy my father died and a older neighbor about the same age as what my father would have been read me the poem "IF", that poem and that person came alive again today in my heart just thinking what Joni's song "IF" must sound like.. can't wait to have that CD to play on my stereo.

Met her once at Tower Records on the strip in the mid 70's, wish I had been more mature, instead I asked her to sign one of her LP's and she looked at me as though I was just another fan.

Her music has always cut right to my bones and has stood for truth and understanding taking my soul to places I would have never traveled.

Love Ya Joni
JCB

P.S. Thanks C&L

Joni has always been the bomb - The changes her music has gone through are breath taking.

I have always asumed she is one of the worlds greatest lovers...
Been a fan for 30 years.

"Sex Kills" "Cotton Ave"

I have seen her a dozen times and she was awsume every time.

Thanks C&L

Thanks for this. Been too long.
Joni reminds us why pop music can matter.

A Case of You - Joni Mitchell

I could drink a case of you darlin'
and still be on my feet
oh I'm a lonely painter
I live in a box of paint
I'm frightened by the devil
and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't ...afraid
I remember that time you told me
you said that love is touching souls
surely you touched mine
cuz, part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6voJjexENok&mode=related&search=

Tom @ 91:

I don't think that you can claim Joni as American...She may live there, but the girl/spirit inside are Canadian to the max. Just like Neil Young.

H'yeah, well you won't find Topanga Canyon on the map of Toronto, sir.

Nor will you find Neil Young's train sounds on a Canadian Lionel.

Beautiful song. Thanks for posting this. I haven't listened to Joni Mitchell in years but Hejira was always one of my favorite albums.

bilhelm-X @ 100:

Joni Mitchell is the greatest American songwriter in the last 60 years. She is as true and American an icon as Irving Berlin, a brilliant songwriter if ever there were. Thanks Joni for adding you and your experiences to my own! Thanks C&L, anything about JM is better than anything about JC.

; - D

"I drew a map of Canada,
Oh Canada!
with your face sketched on it twice"

Okay, she's Canadian but since NAFTA she's actually our's and she is the greatest songwriter in the last 60 years. Nobody holds a candle to her.

joni writes, paints, dances, sings, and sculps the truth every day of her life.

hers is a poetic confrontation, which finds its way into even the tightest minds and moneywads.

the best way to pay tribute to joni mitchell is to be ourselves and allow ourselves to cry and then to cry out.

thank you for this preview, mr. amato.