I am very impressed with this website! I manage a well known musician (well, his estate now) and understand fully the time and resources required to build and keep a site such as this. But I am so shocked at the absence of financial assistance from Ms. Mitchell or her management team. (webmaster: do you need the contact info for them? I can get if for you). Joni Mitchell is an amazing creator of music and art that is life altering. As much as she dislike the business aspects of creating art, she is a millionaire many times over -- and even if she has no current release, she continues to earn from publishing, performance rights, let alone record
sales -- all of which come from us, her fans. That's why I am a little taken aback by her or her mgr's lack of financial support for this beautiful and lovingly crafted site. Good luck
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I agree that this is a wonderful website, but it is a "fan site" and, as such, independent from Joni. If Joni financed it in any way then lots of questions would arise about control, editing etc. By her own admission she doesn't care for internet use, emails etc. and so probably does not see much on here. She acknowledged the wonderful work the originator, Wally Breese, did and invited him to her home. I kept meaning to contribute, but didn't; now the call has come and I will, because I value it very much as a source of news and analysis. I also pay for all Joni's albums, CDs and DVDs: the fact that she is a millionaire as result of sales is irrelevant, she deserves every cent she gets in my opinion as my life would not have been the same without her music.
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Hello
I have only just registered for this site and find it a great resource. I understand if Joni is reluctant to contribute personally to the funding or running of this site however if it is a case of having to close this site down because of lack of funds then surely the record company could contribute to keep it going if it is an official site. I hope you make enough money somehow to keep it going.
Love and Peace
(edited: 2009-Aug-25 at 15:32:56)
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Joni Mitchell might not have all that much money. Her biggest selling records were 40 years ago. Also, she has a song called the "Windfall" about someone trying to sue her. It doesn't say who it is. I have wondered if it is about her daughter. There was a story in the news that she slapped her daughter. Her daughter must have been rude and dishonored her mother for that to happen. The news story said the police were called, but no charges were made. Maybe her daughter wanted all the fun of having Joni as her mother, but none of the requirements that go with being a loving, honoring daughter. Maybe Joni should have cracked her on the behind or used a rod on her. If she did try to sue her, it's awful. I hope the lawsuit was dropped. Anyway, Joni Mitchell is not necessarily made of money.
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Actually, "The Windfall" was written about her housekeeper, and a good 6 years before Joni was reunited with her daughter.
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Oh, I didn't know that about the housekeeper. Still, my main point is that Joni Mitchell might not be as rich now as she used to be. About the "Windfall," why would a housekeeper expect her employer to buy her a Jag? And what about the verses in which the singer speaks of sleepless nights and "down that searchless alley runs some lost belief"? And lies. It's an intense song. Maybe it's not entirely autobiographical. Who knows.
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About the housekeeper and the lawsuit, I hope it was dropped, and I hope the housekeeper is keeping somebody else's house and driving a fun, cheap, cute little car that she bought for herself. Everybody is too lawsuit happy these days. I checked and the "Windfall" is on the "Beginning of Survival" CD--is that the first release of it? It was in 2005. Some litigation can go on that long, so I hope it was dropped. Anyway, it's fun that this web site is fan supported. I'm gonna donate when I get paid. I like this web site.
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Well, maybe the housekeeper is tending a hut on a tropic shore, and Joni Mitchell and her finances are fine. Let's hope for the best. It's still kind of a cool idea for fans to support a web site that's for us, after all. She doesn't need to read about herself or research her recordings or look at images of her paintings.
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I did not really mean what I said about Joni Mitchell punishing her daughter. I was just ticked off that her daughter called the cops. When I was growing up, I had several friends who got slapped by their mothers after we had stayed out all night and stuff like that. It was considered mother-daughter discipline and everyone got over it without the police. I myself got slapped on the arm by a teacher-supervisor when I was in graduate school. I was furious for a little while, but the next day she was crying and we had a cup of tea together. It was a complicated situation. This non-standard mother-daughter relationship dynamics is really one of my big interests because of my life and it's complex.
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Well, probably nobody is reading this string anymore, but I will post some follow ups to what I said above. I hope it is not voyeuristic, but it interests me about this foster/adoption/birth mother-daughter thing. I have a foster-daughterish-niece and two foster-nephew-sons. I read just a little bit of "Girls Like Us," and it says her daughter had some kind of a breakdown about the kids and sexual abuse, and then she isn't doing anything with her life, and Joni is concerned about the lack of work ethic. My "girl" (23) isn't doing anything but watching TV and waiting for love and happiness and children, so that interested me. My latest on it is that mine is a fallow field and something will grow there someday. I do not get what interests her about TV, as I forget that I even own one. I get my news from the Internet. But it is very different from me that my girl doesn't get going with something, but I was a hard worker and then a partier when I was her age. Joni Mitchell is so prolific that she must be a very hard worker, but there are the fun and kind of rowdy songs, too. My girl doesn't party either, which is kind of hard for me in that I feel I can't really talk about aspects of my life story. Right now, we're on hiatus for other reasons, but it's interesting this stuff with kids.
About mother-daughter relationships, it's not just the non-standard ones. Like in Facelift, there's a breakdown over who they are and their values and differences. But elsewhere in some For the Roses Song, she says her mother taught her the deeper meaning. The love/sex relationship and marriage license issue are interesting. What is marriage? Can we find new definitions for some sorts of people who can't really do 24/7 everyday forever? Is the sex "taudry and cheap" if it's in a hotel and you're not conventionally, letter-of-the-law married? Well, it does not sound taudry and cheap to me. It is not port sex. But if you cannot talk about it or find a language and new concepts for it, how can you work through these mother-daughter differences of personality, different eras, values?
In the Bible, there is no marriage ceremony. I get hung up on some of this myself. Jesus went to a wedding and changed the water into wine when they ran out. He talked about adultery and divorce. There was a writ of divorce. i don't think I've ever read there was a writ of marriage. And maybe not everyone had weddings, as they are expensive. In the Old Testament, there were harens of married people. With someone, maybe Rachael, the servant goes to deliver some jewelry, and she goes off with him and they are married. So our American or Canadian concepts of marriage are not necessarily biblical.
Just some forum musings of the day....
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Well, on this silent string, I'm just gonna say that I am sort of a a fallow field myself, even though I work really hard at my job. I have potential in many other areas, with natural talents and a range of what the Bible calls spiritual gifts, and people get frustrated with me because I'm not bearing down and settling down and producing something. They think I should get going on it and discipline myself, and I have always felt like the problem is that I cannot do it, even though it seems like I can. Well, I just want to make some hats for the homeless, but I'm slow. I'm a handspinner and knitter. Maybe with some lessons I could do some weaving; I have before. Well, making a few hats is not what people want from me. But to me, it feels like it's the me that I was made to be. There is a spiritual gift of arts & craftsmanship in the Old Testament. I've been into working with my hands since i was little. I made my own toys (fabric puppets and bean bag animals), and a teacher taught me to knit after school in elementary school, but I'm self taught after that. I oculd use some lessons to do some things. Well, about hats for the homeless, is it enough to make a small difference in the world? I can bear down on that and discipline myself to do it. Actually, it's a joy to me.
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