He was quite happy at home, listening to Joni Mitchell and reading books, but it didn't do him any good at school. It was funny, because people would probably think the opposite -- that reading books at home was bound to help, but it didn't: it made him different, and because he was different he felt uncomfortable, and because he felt uncomfortable he could feel himself floating away from everyone and everything, kids and teachers and lessons.

(Joni is also mentioned on pages 43, 55, 57, 101, 102, 166, 235, and 306 to 307. There are no references to her in the film which was made from this book.)

After stopping for gas on his way to his mother-in-law's house, the narrator, Jack, emerges from a convenience store to find that his car and his wife, Anne, are nowhere to be found. Jack later meets Linda and on page 84 tells her that she looks like Joni Mitchell. Linda says "it must be the beret."

Undoubtedly someone has told you, but the hilarious and vastly entertaining novel Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z, by Debra Weinstein (Random House, 2004) has a riff on Joni that goes on for more pages than I care to type--unless someone else hasn't noticed:

Then Claire says, "Braun is teaching Joni Mitchell, the Troubador Poet that Saturday afternoon. It is so anti-Mother, don't you think?"

"Anti-Mother?"

"It's so not her generation. . . "

Later:

Claire goes to the stereo, finds an album, removes it from its cardboard jacket, and holds it along its edges. "This is poetry."

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning,
and the first thing that I heard . . .

Joni's voice is young and high. She reminds me of Snow White singing to the birds in the Disney movie. Claire changes the record. Now Joni's singing Rainy Night House. Her voice is dark, almost melancholy.

She's a complicated woman.

We listen for awhile, then Claire says, "What's wrong with this picture, Annabelle?"

I don't know.

"No weed."

There's more later including a quotation from People's Parties. All in the chapter called Weed, pp.180-191.

Now I have to go finish the last few pages of this very funny book.

Just finished reading a so-so book The Arrival of Fergal Flynn recommended to me by my niece ...

A story about a young Belfast lad growing up in the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland and victim of extreme abuse by his family and at school who is discovered to be a wonderful singer and is whisked away to Rome to be taught by one of the finest singing coaches. Yeah, that's about it, you've read it, believe me.

It's written by Brian Kennedy who's better known for his singing and 'platinum-selling' albums like The Great War of Words and Get on With Your Short Life. I've never heard of him so can't comment on his singing or style. The blurb on the book states that he's had a show on BBC called Brian Kennedy on Song. Again, never heard of it.

But Joni gets a hefty mention in a romantic scene where the hero of the piece is falling in reciprocated love with the new young priest:

"Father Mac searched his record collection nervously, buying time. 'Do you mind if I put some music on? I always fall asleep with music on, turned down low so I can still hear the phone or the doorbell - '

'Sure. What've you got?' Fergal moved over to him..etc

'I don't know - let me see - Ella, Billy, Frank...Oh, I know, let's have some Joni Mitchell. Do you like Joni?'

'I don't really know. I've never heard of her.'

'What? Well you're in for the biggest treat of your life, and hopefully the start of a love affair that will only get better as you get older.' Father Mac blushed as he realised what he'd said. 'Ah, no - no, I meant with Joni's music, a love affair with her music.'"

A little later on it refers to Joni singing like a 'beautiful lonely blackbird'. Not the comparison I'd have made but there you have it.

This was music that spoke to him.

Of course, Joni Mitchell herself was no longer the Joni Mitchell of those early albums. The last time he'd seen her, on VH-1 at one of those charity concerts, she'd been droning on in a cigarette-ravaged voice, stopping in midsong to lecture the crowd for not paying close enough attention to her lyrics. She'd seemed angry and bitter, a far cry from the open, giggly young woman captured on the live Miles of Aisles, and it had been depressing and dispiriting to realize how much times and people changed.

From today's Guardian; Brian May has collaborated in the writing of a book that is intended as a popular introduction to the Universe - one that people might actually be able to understand. Some of you may know that May was in the final stages of his work on a Phd when he jacked it all in to play with some rock band, forget the name...

<< The book came about as a result of May's friendship with Moore, whom he first met when he gave a talk at Imperial College. It was the impenetrability of Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" that partly inspired the three to write "Bang!"; Moore essentially poured it all out in a week, after which May and Lintott "dived in and tore it apart". Their aim was to assemble an easy-to-read chronology of the formation of the universe and the result is a readable and beautifully illustrated book that plays to a popular audience - lots of space given to coolstuff such as worm holes and Martian ice holes.

"I figured that if I understood it, there was a good chance that peoplewould in general, and that if I didn't understand it, then there waswork to be done," says May. He understands that lay readers needanalogies and so, for example, spiral galaxies are likened to traffic jams on the M25 and there is the odd rockular touch - "we are stardust, we are golden," runs the epilogue, a quote from Joni Mitchell - to remind us whose hands we're in. >>

Joni was mentioned this morning on CBS Sunday Morning. They were doing a segment on the book Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and they were mentioning various people included in the book. They showed a clip of her singing Big Yellow Taxi and the two quotes of hers included in the book: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" and "We are stardust, we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

Joni is also mentioned on page 38.

While reading a short story by Hanif Kureishi, titled Goodbye, Mother, copyrighted in 2000, I came to read that Alexandra, the wife of Harry, the main character, went to Thailand for two weeks to attend some dream, healing and imagination seminars. The following is a dialogue between Harry and his mother:

His mother said: "What is she doing there?"

"She said to me at the phone she's there with other middle-aged women, all wearing sandals and bright coloured dresses and they are all mad about Joni Mitchell. The last thing I came to know is that she hugs these women and does rituals on the beach."

"Rituals?"

Vincenzo adds:

Please note that the above excerpt is freely translated from Italian.

Later, Vincenzo wrote the following:

Your question brought me to a page on Hanif Kureishi's website where I did find what it would seem the whole original text. Here s the relevant excerpt [in a quite better English, uh? ;-)]:

He explained that Alexandra had gone to a centre in Thailand for a fortnight to take various courses. There were dream, healing, and 'imaging' workshops.

Mother said, What is she doing there?

She said on the phone that she is with other middle-aged women in sandals and bright dresses with a penchant for Joni Mitchell. The last I heard she was hugging these women and taking part in rituals on the beach.

Rituals?

Paglia concludes with the words to Joni Mitchell's Woodstock, a wonderful song about which she says baffling things: "This is an important modern poem -- possibly the most popular and influential poem composed in English since Sylvia Plath's Daddy. " The clichéd overstatement seems harmless, but the casual dismissal of all contemporary page-based poetry is not. Nor is the cavalier attitude toward music history: Is Woodstock more influential than Like a Rolling Stone or Anarchy in the U.K. or Rapper's Delight? After 200 pages of handy exegeses, it's a shame that Paglia ends her book with what looks less like literary (or cultural) criticism than a bid for attention or an expression of Baby Boomer myopia.

From Austrailia, Tegan Low writes, "Maureen McCarthy is an Australian author whose best selling novel Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life, was made into a four-part television mini-series."

When I was growing up, many of my schoolteachers were Children of '68, and they tried their hardest to spread their message. But, of course, I and my cohorts ended up as a generation (Doug, don't say it) of computer-embracing, punk-rock pragmatists in response to the dippiness of the sixties. But the hippies might take heart that the best of what they believed valuable was, in the end, passed on to the khaki-loving kids who followed them. Many sitcoms and Sunday paper think pieces on the subject have appeared, so the subject need not be discussed further.But as comedienne Sandra Bernhard has said, on a clear night, you can hear Joni up in the canyons knitting a shawl.

"I've been weeding our Media Center's Juvenile collection all summer. Today I came across the title Come In from the Cold by Marsha Qualey (1994). I opened to the title page to see if it had any Joni connection. It has two quotes to begin the book:

We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

- Joni Mitchell, 1969

All we ever wanted was to come in from the cold.

- JoniMitchell, 1991

The story is a about the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War."

Michele Marie Azzi, the 24-year-old narrator of this tale of frustrated love, is a Los Angeles soap-opera star who can't get over her affair four years earlier (when she was a student in New York) with one of her film professors, David Hellerman, whom she calls Coyote, from a Joni Mitchell song. These days she lives with a man she doesn't care for, and her life is a dreary, self-destructive routine ("What I regretted most was the loss of love"). In a series of flashbacks, she remembers the good and bad times with Coyote (he called her "Shrimpton" after the actress), who was married and had two children from whom he couldn't yet part.

"'Wilkie Fahnstock, the Boxed Sex' is a parody of a cassette-boxed-set-booklet, he lists on ten tapes all the songs of a particular loser's life, along with a running commmentary on Mr. Fahnstock's life. On Cassette 3, side B, he lists cut #14 as Joni Mitchell's For Free (1972)."

About another story in this collection, Walt writes:

"The Joni mention on page 249 is in the story 'Ineluctable Modality of the Vaginal,' a rambling, one-run-on-sentence stream-of-consciousness thingy written in the style of someone who has read too many academic articles, presumably without understanding them."

"...up until then we might have found the spot where we agreed that we didn't disagree, and we might have listed the things we agreed on, a history that swept backward behind us, we agreed on being in that certain bar on the upper West Side and, prior to that, we agreed on certain jukebox selections, Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell if available, and prior to that, we agreed on a sequence of semesters and vacations..."

"I've been reading a wonderful book entitled Dig Infinity! the Life and Art of Lord Buckley, by Oliver Trager, published a couple of months ago. Lord Buckley (1906-1960) was a humorist, standup comic, and philosopher who used the jazz or jive venacular in his pieces, many of them hip re-readings of classic literature. His most famous piece is The Naz, and he coined the phrase 'Willie The Shake.'"

Here's the Joni reference:

"As evidence of the Ivar albums' resonance in the liturgy of the following generation of American minstelsy, Joni Mitchell references Buckley's tag of the Bard in her song Talk To Me from her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter when she sings, 'I stole that from Willie the Shake, you know/Neither a borrower or a lender be/Romeo, Romeo talk to me.'"

Randy goes on to say,

"The "Willie the Shake" phrase was also used by Ken Kesey in his novel Sometimes A Great Notion, but Joni's exposure to Lord Buckley may very well have come from her relationship with James Taylor, who has stuck a few LB lines in his own songs, and says in the book:

'I was fifteen or sixteen when I first heard Lord Buckley's records. I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and someone down at the university suggested I listen to him. I had a friend down there and we got into Lord Buckley and began quoting him . . . His pieces [take on] very important, meaningful stuff like Shakespeare and Christ, claiming it for a generation and expressing it in those terms....'"

Randy also adds:

"Lord Buckley has influenced The Beatles -- "make it Jude!" is from a LB routine -- Dylan, who performed Black Cross early in his carreer (Jimmy Buffet has also recorded it), Robin Williams, The Firesign Theatre, Roseanne, and virtually every comedian. His buddies included Lenny Bruce, Jonathon Winters, and most of the 40's and 50's jazz musicians including Miles Davis. You can usually find his records on ebay. His only CD currently in print is His Royal Hipness (which does not contain Willie The Shake), available from Amazon, also they have short realaudio samples from this CD.

"The book also comes with a CD featuring interviews and routines, including an unreleased rendition of Willie The Shake from an interview.

"'You know why they called him Willie The Shake? Because he . . . SHOOK ever'body...they gave that cat five cents worth of paper and a nickel's worth of ink, he sat down and wrote up such a breeze, when he got through PPFFTT! ever'body got off! He was too tight a cat . . .'

"Sounds like someone else I can think of . . ."

In "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," the new book by David Sedaris, David mentions a time when he was living as a bum in his parents' house, smoking pot and listening to the same Joni Mitchell album over and over. Finally his father kicks him out - he assumes it's because he's an unemployed, pot-smoking bum, but later finds out it was because he was gay - and his sister agrees to let him move in with her, as long as he doesn't bring his Joni Mitchell album.

(1) Boy, if they only knew I tie interest rates to my cholesterol level . . .

(2) Does "fundamentally antidisinflationary" mean anything? Think not. Might use in next speech . . .

(3) What I could make on Wall Street: $250 million. What I make at Fed: $141,300. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

(4) First wife: Joan Mitchell
Now wife: Andrea Mitchell
Next wife: Joni Mitchell?

"Tonight you're mine, completely. You give your love so sweetly . . ."

Here's a review:

Publisher's Weekly

This collaboration with NASA (where two of the editors work; the other two are associated with the Smithsonian) celebrates the centenary of flight, marked by Wilbur and Orville Wright's invention of the airplane in 1903 (an excerpt from Orville's diary is included). Filled with full-color and black-and-white photos, this beautiful coffee-table book captures flight as the plane has matured into an instrument to wage war and a vehicle to reach the stars. But what really stand out are the works of art that the concept of flying has inspired-poems such as "On the Beaches of the Moon," by Archibald MacLeish or "Kitty Hawk," by Robert Frost; and such paintings as Airplane Flying, by Kazimir Malevich, Notre Avenir est dans l'Air, by Pablo Picasso, or Moonwalk 1, by Andy Warhol. This is an homage in the artistic sense, so historians flipping the pages won't find snapshots of fighter planes in combat, stills of Kitty Hawk's brief flight, or explosive rocket ship liftoffs. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Joni is also mentioned on page 104.

"Like David Sedaris (a friend of his) Rakoff is a contributor to This American Life on NPR, and a frequently published freelance writer. I think Fraud is his first book. In any case, he references/mentions Joni several times throughout the book. He obviously admires her, quoting lyrics here and there and talking about her openly . . . It's funny as hell."

"Because we're human. For a while, I think it was between Woodstock and Kent State, we thought we were something else, but we weren't."

"We thought we were stardust," Skip said. Almost with a straight face.

"We thought we were golden," I agreed, laughing. "And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

(Joni is also mentioned on page 29 of this edition.)

Like every other title in Paul Charles's series of detective novels about Inspector Christy Kennedy, THE HISSING OF THE SILENT LONELY ROOM (Do-Not Press/Dufour, cloth $29.95; paper $15.95) sounds as if it wants to be a song title. Only this time the musical tonalities of the writing harmonize with the moody themes of the story, which begins with the death of Esther Bluewood, a beloved American singer-songwriter ("the missing female link between Joni Mitchell and the New Wave") who apparently gassed herself in the kitchen of her London home. If Esther gets no sympathy from those who were closest to her, including her faithless husband and her sullen lover, she is treated gently by Inspector Kennedy, whose analysis of her music and her personal journals convinces him that her death was a cunningly contrived murder. For someone who is dead when the narrative opens, Esther emerges as an extraordinarily vital character, warmed to life by an uncommonly sensitive cop."

"Stop that," she says, batting the song away as if it was a taunting crow. Her silver bracelets click. "If there's one thing I never expected to end up as," she says, "it's an old hippie."

"There are, you know, worse things to end up as," I say.

"It's too late," she says. "The butterflies are turning back into bombers. Haven't you noticed? They're going to build condos on that mountain, take my word for it."

(Joni is also mentioned on pages 99, 166 and 334.)

(Joni is also mentioned on page 122.)

"You don't wear an earring do you? Nothing more beautiful on a man. Remember that Joni Mitchell song, And you stood out like a ruby in a black man's ear? Joni Mitchell is so underrated. She and Leonard Cohen. Mick Fucking Jagger is still on MTV, but Joni -- no!"

"While flipping through James Gavin's book called "Intimate Nights" this afternoon at the University Bookstore I chanced upon a passage about Joni.

"Actually it was not really about her as much as what she had to say about the late cabaret matriarch Mabel Mercer's version of "Both Sides Now". The book mentioned that in 1991, Joni considered Mercer's BSN version as the best version of all she has heard ever since. Anyone knows where to find this article when Joni said this? Not that I distrust James Gavin (who is one jazz critic I respect along with Gene Lees, Leonard Feather and Bob Blumenthal), but I'd like to read the context behind this official announcement."

(Joni is mentioned on page 109, too.)

The main character says, "I put on Joni Mitchell's Miles of Aisles, one of my favorite pondering CDs."

This is an interesting reference as the rest of the book is a jumble of "name" fashion, shoes, etc, alcoholic drinks, and society name dropping.

(There are also Joni references on pages 80 and 284.)

I was among the first people to meet President Bill Clinton when he came to San Francisco earlier this week. The event was quite a spectacle. They estimate that 4000 people waited in line all along the waterfront to meet the ex-prez.

I had a nice chat with him and got to witness his famous charisma firsthand. He greeted people and signed copies of his 957 page book for 5 hours straight with just one 15 minute break. He's left handed, so he shook hands with his right hand while signing with his left...all the while listening to whatever comments the star-struck book-buyers would make. Then he'd reply something like: "Thank you for saying that" or "thank you for telling me that" or "if we pull together we can win in November." I got a "Wow" and a laugh out of him, too, which thrills me to no end. I got three of my books signed.

Anyway, on the ferry back to Marin from San Francisco, I took a peek at the index. Sure enough it read: "Mitchell, Joni, 73, 646"

I'm about to quote what he said, so if you're going to get the book, and you don't want it spoiled for you right now, cover your ears and go "ah yaah yah nanah annanan nah nah!!!!!!" Okay, here it comes:

Page 73

"Though occasionally I felt cooped up in Georgetown, most days I was happy as a clam, absorbed in my classes and my friends. However, I was also grateful for my few trips out of the cocoon. Several weeks into my first semester, I went to the Lisner Auditorium to hear Judy Collins sing. I can still see, her standing alone on the stage with her long blond hair, floor-length cotton dress, and guitar. From that day on, I was a huge Judy Collins fan. In December 1978, Hillary and I were on a brief vacation to London after the first time I was elected governor. One day as we window-shopped down King's Road in Chelsea, the loudspeaker of a store blasted out Judy's version of Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning." We agreed on the spot that if we ever had a daughter we'd call her Chelsea."

Page 646 (regarding a visit to Canada while president)

"I also spoke to the Canadian parliament, thanking them for our economic and security partnerships and the rich cultural contributions of Canadians to American life, including Oscar Peterson, my favorite jazz pianist; singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who wrote "Chelsea Morning"; Yousuf Karsh, the great photographer who had become famous for his portrait of Churchill scowling after Karsh jerked the omnipresent cigar out of his hand, and who had photographed Hillary and me in less forbidding poses."

"As Lorna searches for acceptance in her teen years - buoyed by Shindig! and Joni Mitchell - she must also disentangle herself from her beloved sister's wild and morbid underworld."

If you've got any more information about how Joni is used in this story, please let us know.

I recently stumbled across a Joni mention in a book called, No Touch Monkey! (And other travel lessons learned too late), by Ayun Halliday. While traveling in Cambodia, the author is invited to stay at a very sparse Buddhist monestary.

She says, "I concentrated on the whoosh of the pines rocking in the mild breeze. If I were a monk, this would be the soundtrack to my life. No phone, no radio, no burping, farting boyfriends making fun of yoga and Joni Mitchell."

"In the 1980 satirical title, The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach, (for all those who don't remember, this was a send-up of all things East Coast Establishment/Top Drawer), the author lists the five best musical selections for a Sunday brunch. These musical selections were considered the best choices as Music to Drink Bloodies By. "Bloodies" are, of course, Sunday morning Bloody Marys, as one nurses a hangover from the previous nights' debauchery:

1. J.S. Bach, Brandenberg Concerti
2. The Beatles, Rubber Soul
3. Handel: Water Music
4. Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
5. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons

Considering the competition, I don't suppose we should feel too bad that C&S only made it to Fourth Place!"

Check it out, as I said it's a great taste of life on the road in the seventies.

Gino writes: The book is a memoir recalling experiences of the author who’s decided to become a cleaning lady even if she had earned an M.A. in Comparative literature. Wonderful and funny book! Anyway, here it is: “Another client was an agent summering in a million-dollar beach house with his standard poodle, who often joined him in his lukewarm hot tub. I took names from his Rolodex. I called Joni Mitchell at her Malibu home and Nastassja Kinski in Rome. I left messages. I asked Joni to call my best friend and sing her happy birthday. She never called.”

". . . Post described as "extremely sensitive," including songs from Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. Ever since Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox first . . ."

"Upon being asked if she knew how to be fifty, Joni Mitchell answered, 'It will make itself known.'"

As if to regain some sense of power, Eustace regales Billie with a long, rambling, suspiciously tall story about how he once had his hair cut by a then-unknown Joni Mitchell. As the story comes out bit by improbable bit -- the work gang up north, the car wash where Joni had a summer job -- Billie's curiosity begins to show through her scorn: "The girl at the gas station," Billie said. "You're not about to tell me you stumbled on Joni Mitchell killing time as a pump jockey. Not the Joni Mitchell who sang at Woodstock. You can't expect me to buy a lie as dumb as that."

Yet the spell of the story works, as this bit of dialogue reveals:

"What did she look like?" Billie asked.

"Blonde, thin."

"So was I, once."

"I remember."

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone"

JONI MITCHELL, Big Yellow Taxi

While contemplating aging, the main character, Anne Wells, plays some Joni tapes and says something like, "Joni didn't change, when her voice went from smoking too much, she just turned to painting and did what she wanted to do."

If you'll admit to reading this book, will you let us know what the exact reference is?

"Oh," I said. "Right."

She must have seen my disappointment. "I was two people back from Joni Mitchell in the portable toilet line, though," she said.

"Joni Mitchell used the public toilets?"

"Well, yeah. See, the whole point was that we're all one, you know? You and me and Joni and your tall, skinny friend: a bunch of equals sharing the same small planet. It was a rush - very political!"

"Yeah," I said. "You bet your bippy."