Joni, Mary, Mama

June 16, 2017 10:16 AM

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now (Mama Cass Show 1969) Mama Cass, Mary Travers, & Joni Mitchell - I Shall Be Released (ibid.)
posted by OmieWise (16 comments total)

I watched that Clouds clip a lot when I was [re-]learning it a year or two ago.
I can't remember if I watched it on TV or not. I was big into that song at the time.
Anyway, didn't notice until today where she almost flubs a line (1:16) and the smile that follows.
posted by MtDewd at 10:32 AM on June 16, 2017

NOT an obit... cripes! She's 73 bless, can't take chances and glad I did the double-take.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:39 AM on June 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Joni is Goddess.

Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:53 AM on June 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

NOT an obit

She's been very ill, but was well enough to attend Elton John's birthday party a couple of months ago, which is encouraging.
posted by thelonius at 10:55 AM on June 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

How ill, do you know? She's someone who has made no mystery or apology for her love for cigarettes.
posted by OmieWise at 11:07 AM on June 16, 2017

How ill, do you know?

I heard she had an aneurysm
posted by thelonius at 11:11 AM on June 16, 2017

Joni Mitchell's Aneurysm, Explained (6/2015)
Joni Mitchell attends gig as she continues recovery from aneurysm (8/2016)
Joni Mitchell Steps Out for Her Birthday (11/2016)
posted by mykescipark at 11:32 AM on June 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

I remember listening to an interview on CBC Q, back when abuser Jian Ghomeshi was the host (well before the allegations and subsequent trial). He tried to use his smooth-talking silkiness to butter her up, but she was having none of it. Now I'm not sure if this was just her personality, her reaction to smooth-talking silky media personalities, or if she just had a bad feeling about the guy, but now I get chills when I think about it.

She also made a simple comment during that interview, where she was talking about the 60's (or maybe it was the Love revolution), and how "... it was for the men, only".

I likely don't do her words justice, but that comment floored me, because I always imagined that time to be more 'equal' for everyone. But I realized that with that comment, those times weren't as awesome as they're made out to be.
posted by bitteroldman at 12:09 PM on June 16, 2017 [10 favorites]

she was having none of it ... "... it was for the men, only".

I've always gotten the impression from her that she just doesn't take or speak any bullshit. It's quite refreshing.

My mother was involved in the New Left in the 1960s, and the hippie scene to a certain extent. The stories she tells ...
posted by lunasol at 12:25 PM on June 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

"it was for men only"--Joni Mitchell on the sexual revolution of the 60s. Yup. Like me, Joni was an unwed mother pressured into giving up her baby for adoption. Free love was a joke and went right out the window in the 60s if a girl "got herself pregnant". Nobody even wanted to know the father's name if he declined to marry you, and as a fallen woman you could not even put it on the birth certificate, even if he was the first and only man in your bed. Joni is reunited with her daughter, I with my son, but it was a long hard road. Her song "Little Green" is about her daughter, written long before she really came out as a birth mother. Many women's stories from the 60s are tragic, about loss and exploitation. It was not all love and flowers.
posted by mermayd at 1:52 PM on June 16, 2017 [17 favorites]

I never hear that song often enough and I never hear that song enough.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:20 PM on June 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thank you y/t algorithms, I appreciate the recommendation.

Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Michael Brecker - "Shadows And Light".
posted by mikelieman at 1:45 AM on June 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Current status: still not emotionally stable enough to listen to Joni Mitchell. Also, crying. She just destroys me, every time.
posted by mishafletch at 5:48 AM on June 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Joni song that has been slaying me recently is actually Prince's piano cover of "Case of You." The Emmylou Harris cover of "Magdalene Laundries" is also really good, especially if you like the Daniel Lanois production, like on her album Wrecking Ball.
posted by OmieWise at 11:51 AM on June 17, 2017

I was in Greece a couple of weeks ago and pretty much had "Blue" on repeat when I was listening to music. The day after we pulled out of the Paris Accords, "California" killed me, it's a song about traveling in Europe when everything at home in North America is fucked up:

Oh it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
Just gives you the blues
Just gives you the blues
posted by lunasol at 3:39 PM on June 17, 2017

Joni is Goddess.

Evidence.
posted by kneecapped at 11:29 PM on June 17, 2017 [1 favorite]