Joni Mitchell ballet
p2pnet.net News:- “I’ve been screwed from the beginning,” Canada’s Joni Mitchell once said, going on, “the deal that I got was just atrocious. I mean, it was like slave labor … And I’ve never really had a good deal in the business.”
With that in mind, “I hope it all goes down the crapper. It’s top-heavy, it’s wasteful. It’s an insane business. Now, this is all calculated music. It’s calculated for sales, it’s sonically calculated, it’s rudely calculated. I’m ashamed to be a part of the music business.
“You know, I just think it’s a cesspool.”
She’s not alone. As music lovers around the world know to their cost, Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) didn’t go down the toilet. They’re still around, these days trying to screw their own customers into buying ‘product,’ as the Big 4 correctly call their offerings.
Thankfully Mitchell, too, is still here and still performing and recently, she was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Writing and singing songs isn’t all she’s about, however. She’s a renaissance woman – a painter, a poet, an environmentalist, a philosopher – and she’s added dance to her repertoire.
Last Thursday saw the opening of The Fiddle and The Drum in Calgary, a collaboration with the Alberta Ballet’s artistic director Jean Grand-Maître.
“The ballet is 48 minutes long and will feature nine songs from Mitchell’s musical repertoire,” said CTV. “The production is centred on environmental issues and world violence, stretching from the Vietnam War to the present day.”
The Fiddle and The Drum includes three new compositions and features a video installation, “projected above the dancers, with whom she has been rehearsing,” Grand-Maître said, according to the CBC.
Dancing Joni runs in Calgary through Saturday, before moving to Edmonton for a two-night run at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on February 16 and 17, adds the story.
The Fiddler and the Drum
And so once again
My dear Johnny my dear friend
And so once again you are fightin’ us all
And when I ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum
You say I have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But I can remember
All the good things you are
And so I ask you please
Can I help you find the peace and the star
Oh, my friend
What time is this
To trade the handshake for the fist
And so once again
Oh, America my friend
And so once again
You are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall
Oh, my friend
How did you come
To trade the fiddle for the drum
You say we have turned
Like the enemies you’ve earned
But we can remember
All the good things you are
And so we ask you please
Can we help you find the peace and the star
Oh my friend
We have all come
To fear the beating of your drum
— Joni Mitchell
Also See:
inducted – Joni Mitchell: honoured once again, January 28, 2006
CTV – Joni Mitchell’s ballet sparks worldwide attention, January 22, 2007
CBC – Much-anticipated Joni Mitchell ballet to debut, February 8, 2006
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February 10th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Jon, are you capable of writing anything without trying to tie it into your attacks on the major music labels? Your continual diatribes have become extremely tiresome, and so have you.
Please give it a rest.
February 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
-5
February 11th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Well, you can’t really blame him for negatively commenting on the material he posts when stories like those that appear here show up in the blogosphere.
However, I would like to see Mr. Newton stop toting himself as being “unbiased.” In many instances, this blog is like Fox News: it claims to be “fair and balanced” and “without bias,” but a more accurate claim would be “biased in the opposite direction.” This isn’t entirely his fault. After all, there is absolutely no news source which is unbiased, as we all subconsciously insert bias into things by our mere choosing of what to report, among other methods. But calling yourself “unbiased” when in reality your are just biased in a direction opposite that of the mainstream is just being dishonest in my opinion.
February 11th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Hi Matt:
___However, I would like to see Mr. Newton stop toting himself as being “unbiased___
When and where have I ever said I was unbiased? I’m as biased as they come, I’ve explicitly said so on a number of occasions, and I’ve never pretended to be otherwise.
I’m biased against any and all efforts to kill free speech, online or off. I’m biased against the entertainment cartels as they pretend to be honest businesses trying to earn an honest living. I’m biased against their efforts to penetrate school classrooms to spread their poisonous ‘educational’ programs, claiming they represent decent standards for children to follow. I’m biased against the one-sided reporting by many, if not most, elements of the mainstream media who DO pretend to be fair, balanced and unbiased. I’m biased against attempts to flood us with tricky Net advertisements designed to force themselves past our natural barriers of free choice. And I could go on : )
I’m biased, Matt. Most definitely. And since you mention Fox, where does it afford viewers a chance to air their opinions, named or otherwise, without without edits? On p2pnet, though, anyone can comment freely, whatever their views. Ask Gachnar and others like him/her. And that’s the way it’s always been.
A revised p2pnet is on the way and it’ll have both forums and comment posts for articles. You’ll have to register for the first, but the second will allow anonymous posting, as ever.
So far, no one has ever offered to submit anything offering the corporate perspective. If and when one such comes along, I’ll run it untouched just as I do other papers and articles.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to call it like I see it and although I enjoy your frequent posts, Matt, I must say this time around, I don’t like your accusation that I’m being dishonest. Whatever else I may be, that I am not.
Cheers!