This is a great day for the peace movement that flowered (pun intended) in the 1960s. One person who must be thrilled at the prospect of an Obama presidency is the great Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, one of our personal heroes, whose birthday is on Friday but is for some reason is celebrated in a story in today's Wall Street Journal.
Joni Mitchell fun facts, because they're easier to write than a full-on biography:
1) The CSNY cover of "Woodstock" was one of the biggest songs of the 1970s, with massive airplay throughout the early part of the decade, despite only reaching #11 on the charts. Camille Paglia wrote that the Mitchell-penned tune is "possibly the most popular and influential poem composed in English since Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy'."
2) The Clintons named Chelsea after the Joni Mitchell song "Chelsea Morning," which isn't all that memorable otherwise.
3) That Counting Crows song that tortured you for years about "paradise" and "parking lots?" That's "Big Yellow Taxi," see below.
4) "The Circle Game," which helped put her on the map, was inspired by Neil Young's "Sugar Mountain."
5) "Sex sells everything and sex kills," she sang in 1994. We have to disagree with at least part of that.
Here's a special playlist which we selected just for those of you who don't know what the hell we're talking about:
You Turn Me On I'm A Radio
Cactus TreeThe Circle Game
All I Want (Live LP Version)
Woodstock (Live LP Version)
Big Yellow Taxi
The album to get is Blue, which is one of the ten best English-language records ever, no question. All you'll need is a bottle of wine and a record player and you won't ever require anything else again...
Here's a story about Joni featuring an interview with David Crosby in today's WSJ.
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