Joni Mitchell - Tumblr Posts

The worst part of every December is when Emma Thompson unpacks the Joni-Mitchell-CD.

Your Devils and Your Deeds Poster on Flickr.

Poster design to promote a recent gallery exhibition of my comic work.

Postcard design, front on Flickr.

Postcard design for a recent gallery show where my comics work was featured.

Postcard design, back on Flickr.

Aaand the back of that previous postcard. What can I say. I like my little stool and microphone image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4NdsnFZm0X4

Both Sides Now 1969 2000

Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa and Sting hang out at a post-concert party, 1991

guys, you gotta stop reblogging the joni mitchell blackflace album and being like "omg so good!" "amazing!!!"

guys, please, I'm begging you..

Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, Bread and Roses Festival, October 5, 1980.

Joni Mitchell, Rolling Stone, May 17, 1969. Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone, March 4, 1971.

i was never a huge fan of joni mitchell, simply listened to a couple of her songs when spotify suggested it and thought they were nice. but ever since i learned about her doing blackface and being weird (not only about black people, but also natives), i just feel so grossed out and uncomfortable whenever i see her mentioned anywhere😔 i thought that she for sure must've apologised for it already, it happened years ago, but it looks like she still defends herself - it hurts so bad and is such a disappointment. it sucks knowing that such a beloved artist (even if she wasn't by me) has done something like that but THANK YOU for posting about it. you're the only person on social media i've seen mention it

very sorry for the looong message but i just had to say it:(

yea i don't mean to be a hater or anything, i really enjoy the song "big yellow taxi" by her as well. but the fact that she did blackface multiple times, made an album based on her blackface character and then profited off of it, is so gross to me. and the fact that it was based on a real black man who she met. this real guy was literally objectified for her to profit off of. she even claimed in an interview that her dentist told her she had 'the teeth of a black man'.

and she still has not apologized! in fact, in an interview in like 2015 (?) she was almost bragging about it, saying she did it to get revenge on the photographer. ??

and i know a lot of people defend it as like, ignorant but well-intentioned and I wanna push back on that. in a 1988 interview, not only did she use the n slur (when describing another time she referred to Muhammad Ali as such), she describes the black man who complimented her as sleazy. She dressed herself up like a pimp. this isn't good intentions, it's closer to minstrelsy, that like I said before, she profited off of.

genuinely, it's awful that this isn't talked about very much. And it makes me really mad and upset too. Especially how it's swept under the rug. A lot of racism of the folk revival scene is swept under the rug.

I'm planning on talking about it more in depth at a later time. This is just how i feel about it. she's a talented artist, but I can't listen to her music anymore.

anyway, thanks for the ask anon /gen

but heres a cool cover of big yellow taxi if anyone cares

Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Joni Mitchell (1977)

Just to be contrary, I’d love to argue against consensus here; to pitch that Joni Mitchell’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter simply didn’t deserve such a mixed critical response – and that it should stand as one of her peak period classics. But I can’t. Not seriously, anyway. Not only was Don Juan bad; it was the record Mitchell lost her touch – and from which, in hindsight, she never came back from. 

So what went so wrong with Don Juan? A few things, I suppose. Instrumentally, Mitchell urged towards whatever she believed was jazz, growing increasingly indulgent but near-totally lacking in reward. Even without the lyrics and vocals, Don Juan was lengthy and dull in particularly uninspiring ways.

But it was in the lyrical realm that Don Juan suffered most. Having apparently lost her poetic touch – but, judging from references to her own esteemed poeticism, unaware of it – Mitchell gave off shoddy parody. The stories weren’t there, but neither were the one-liners, the deft poignance, the vivid metaphors. In short, pretty much everything I loved about her previous records was amiss, replaced by tired scenes and silly references.

Add all that together (plus the blackface cover, a dash of Islamophobia and several instances of cultural appropriation and awkward white ignorance) and one is left with a severely unflattering portrait of an artist. Unflattering enough to retroactively dismantle the air of genius of earlier Mitchell works? Perhaps not. But the very idea that this record could dare to call into question Mitchell’s prior untouchability gives you an idea of just how poor it is and remains.

Pick: ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’

joni mitchell & graham nash

leonard cohen and joni mitchell at the newport folk festival, 1967 / joni mitchell, "wizard of is" (joni's take on leonard cohen’s “suzanne,” was rarely performed in concert; this recording is from a september 16, 1967 performance at the white swan in leicester, england) / leonard cohen, "travel" (published in the spice-box of earth) / leonard cohen, "winter lady" / joni mitchell, lyrics from "winter lady" / leonard cohen, lyrics from "winter lady" / joni mitchell interviewed by malka marom in joni mitchell: in her own words / joni mitchell, "the gallery" (live BBC performance, 1970) / joni mitchell, lyrics from "the gallery" / leonard cohen, "joan of arc" / leonard cohen, lyrics from "joan of arc" / leonard cohen interviewed by david yaffe in reckless daughter: a portrait of joni mitchell / leonard cohen and joni mitchell, 1974 / katherine monk, joni: the creative odyssey of joni mitchell / joni mitchell, "a case of you" (live performance at the hollywood bowl, 1974) / david yaffe, reckless daughter: a portrait of joni mitchell / joni mitchell, portrait of leonard cohen (watercolor on paper; according to joni, “i gave it to a friend and his house burned down”) / joni mitchell interviewed by malka marom in joni mitchell: in her own words / herbie hancock and leonard cohen, "the jungle line" (joni mitchell cover) / leonard cohen, in a tribute written for joni mitchell's seventieth birthday celebration at the 2013 luminato festival / leonard cohen and joni mitchell at the newport folk festival, 1967

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell during the Rolling Thunder Revue

Wow this is life changing.

Joni Mitchell for the Weekend Magazine, Jan 11, 1969.

Inktober, day two

Joni Mitchell, by Hedi Slimane

Ink / pen / graphite / 2015

go here and let me know what your short term top artists from spotify (within the last 4 weeks) are in the tags!

blue, i love you

Book Review | Songs in Ursa Major

Author: Emma Brodie

Cover Art: Andrew Davis

Publication date: June 22, 2021

Genre: Historical Fiction, Biographical Fiction, Romance Novel

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

The year is 1969, and the Bayleen Island Folk Fest is abuzz with one name: Jesse Reid. Tall and soft-spoken, with eyes blue as stone-washed denim, Jesse Reid's intricate guitar riffs and supple baritone are poised to tip from fame to legend with this one headlining performance. That is, until his motorcycle crashes on the way to the show. Jane Quinn is a Bayleen Island local whose music flows as naturally as her long blond hair. When she and her bandmates are asked to play in Jesse Reid's place at the festival, it almost doesn't seem real. But Jane plants her bare feet on the Main Stage and delivers the performance of a lifetime, stopping Jesse's disappointed fans in their tracks: A star is born. Jesse stays on the island to recover from his near-fatal accident and he strikes up a friendship with Jane, coaching her through the production of her first record. As Jane contends with the music industry's sexism, Jesse becomes her advocate, and what starts as a shared calling soon becomes a passionate love affair. On tour with Jesse, Jane is so captivated by the giant stadiums, the late nights, the wild parties, and the media attention, that she is blind-sided when she stumbles on the dark secret beneath Jesse's music. With nowhere to turn, Jane must reckon with the shadows of her own past; what follows is the birth of one of most iconic albums of all time. Shot through with the lyrics, the icons, the lore, the adrenaline of the early '70s music scene, Songs in Ursa Major pulses with romantic longing and asks the question so many female artists must face: What are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams?

OH MY GOD! I've been meaning to read this book for a long, long time... and finally I did! One of the comments you can find somewhere on the Internet referring to the book is the one that Red magazine wrote: "Full of sex and rock 'n' roll...if you enjoyed Daisy Jones and The Six, this will be a big hit with you too." When they said big hit I didn't think I would have been thrown out of a moving car.

I read Daisy Jones and The Six (By Taylor Jekins Reid) before I read Ursa Major and yes, I was absolutely destroyed by the fact that all of the characters never existed - I cried for a whole hour over that book. So, when I read this one I was already mentally prepared and not get too attached to the characters and the story; I made a mental note that none of this was real and still I forgot about it.

This book was utterly transporting and addictive to read, I found myself reading in bed and every time I read a chapter I looked at the clock; I was so invested on the story that i stood awake until three in the morning. It was like i were in the story, like i was a spectator watching everything. It takes a lot of pratice and power to make a reader feel that way. Emma Brodie has that power. She writes so passionately and beautifully, poetically even. She's a fantastic writer.

In my opinion, I think that Brodie wrote this book thinking about how, at the time (early 70s), and now still, mental illness is something that we hide and pretend that it doesn't exist. Like as if it were all in a distant universe, when, in reality, the person next to you might suffer from it.

She also wrote about how unfair it is that we get to live when a loved one has died, and how that guilt grows inside a person's heart, a person's mind and the many ways it can affect your coping mechanisms, being one of them drugs - which isn't that big of a suprise taking into account that we are talking about the 60s and 70s.

So yeah it was one hell of a hit. Almost a literal one, as it can hit you in every way possible.

Also this book was inspired by Joni Mitchel and James Taylor's romance. So I recommend you to listen to their songs while reading this book - just the ideia.