Mostly Monday Reads: Sisters are Doing it for Themselves!

Posted: February 5, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Tracy Chapman at the 2024 Grammys.

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I can tell you from experience that being a woman musician is challenging. You rarely get to display your complete set of talents. This has been especially true of the Grammy Awards recognition. Last night, Joni Mitchell, a constant inspiration of my musical journey other than my concert pianist mother, finally got to perform on that Grammy stage.

My dad traded my flute for a guitar in the 8th grade, and I taught myself to play and pick “Both Sides Now.” That was 1968. She sang it last night at the age of 80.  Judy Collins first made it famous, but it was all Joni.   I saw Joni perform at my first Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 1995 before I started playing around town and doing sound for the Fest. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to see her live. I watched how she did all those alternative tunings. I played her album ‘Free Man in Paris’ in my first year at university. There I was, watching those fingers work their magic as close as I could get. I’d already worn the tracks off of ‘Blue’.

In 2024, the Grammys lived up to their often-dubious claim to being “music’s biggest night,” with highs like Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” duet, lows like the shocking arrest of Killer Mike, and whoas like Album of the Year winner Taylor Swift announcing a new album titled The Tortured Poets Department. But for me, the highlight of the evening was a quieter, if no less historic moment: Joni Mitchell taking the Grammy stage for the first time, at 80, to perform her classic ballad “Both Sides, Now.” I’d like to think Swift—the woman of the hour, night, and year, as well as a Joni superfan who calls Mitchell’s Blue her favorite album—would agree.

The song began as a piano playing through darkness, out of which Mitchell emerged, spotlit and facing backstage in a regal Victorian chair. Decked out in her signature beret and braids, and surrounded by crystal chandeliers, she used a bejeweled cane to keep time. And as she sang the opening lines, voice deeper now than that of the soprano who trilled its high notes on her 1969 album Clouds, her throne revolved until she was staring straight at the audience. Seated around Mitchell, like acolytes at her feet, were younger musicians—Brandi Carlile, Jacob Collier, Allison Russell, SistaStrings, Blake Mills, and Lucius—accompanying her with guitar, strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals. She didn’t strain her voice, but she sounded strong and clear.

Joni Mitchell at the 2024 Grammys

If Joni ruled my guitar picking in the sixties and seventies, Tracy Chapman grabbed me in the 1980s. I jumped on singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman’s ‘Give Me One Reason’, a track from Chapman’s 1988 album, with a 5-year-old daughter sitting beside me. When I moved to New Orleans and started performing again, that older and mouthier daughter corrected my timing several times. Given my lack of interest in country music, some singer I’d never heard that recorded her song shared the stage with Mitchell at the Grammies last night. Her album that enriched my life has never been re-released. I bet it will now. It topped the iTunes Chart after her Grammy performance. She looks and sounds better than ever!

“Fast Car,” the folk anthem by Tracy Chapman, is continuing to have its renaissance moment.

Chapman joined country singer Luke Combs for a rare performance of the song at Sunday’s Grammys ceremony. Moments after, “Fast Car” shot to No. 1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart. Her 1988 debut album, Tracy Chapman, also sat at No. 1.

Chapman’s original song peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following its release. She has performed the song on the Grammy stage before, when she won best female pop vocal performance for it at the 1989 Grammys.

Combs’ version peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart after it was released last year and was nominated for a Grammy this year, though it did not win.

Chapman was not listed as an official performer this year, and the crowd cheered loudly when she appeared onstage, providing one of the most powerful moments at a Grammys show that was packed with memorable moments. Artists Taylor Swift and Jelly Roll were seen standing and singing along, and Chapman herself beamed with a smile.

Chapman’s album won plenty of Grammy honors at the time.

Chapman has won four Grammys in the past, three of which were tied to her self-titled album, which included “Fast Car.” For that, she won Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist in 1989.

And yes, Taylor was there. A shot of her standing, dancing, clapping, and singing ‘Fast Car’ is viral today. ‘I became a Swifty’ with her 2014 hit ‘Shake it off’. It got a lot of play during Hillary’s campaign. She was a Hillary supporter but never quite got around to “endorsing’ her. Here’s a typical headline for that time of my life. “Can Hillary Clinton Shake It Off?” was all over the media. It was a meme-worthy song once Clinton stood on a town hall stage with Stalking Donnie Dotard and actually shook off his hateful rhetoric.

Swift won her 4th Album of the Year last night with intense competition. This is from People Magazine. “Taylor Swift Makes History as She Wins 4th Album of the Year at 2024 Grammys: ‘Unbelievably Blown Away’.”

Taylor Swift was awarded album of the year at Sunday’s awards show in Los Angeles for her album Midnights, making her the only artist to ever win album of the year four times. Midnights, Fearless, 1989 and Folklore have all won the achievement.

Next up for Swift is watching  The Super Bowl and more grief on all those nutty conspiracy theories from the left-hand tail of the MAGA IQ charts. Don’t even ask where the mean sits for these freaks of nature. She’s reportedly turned down performances for its Half Time Program several times, according to Fortune.

I would like to honor these two women in the category of causing all other female artists to have hope and awe. They are Annie Lennox and the late Sinead O’Connor. I love to tell this story of what the neighborhood kids said about me when I was in the skinny as hell and even balder stage of having chemotherapy in 1980. They went around telling everyone that I was a big music star! They thought I was Sinead! That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten!

This is from Rolling Stone. “Annie Lennox Calls for Gaza Ceasefire During Sinéad O’Connor’ Grammys Tribute.”

ANNIE LENNOX CALLED for a ceasefire in Gaza during her tribute to Sinéad O’Connor at the Grammys.

After performing “Nothing Compares to U” on Sunday, the singer became the first artist to call for a ceasefire in Gaza at a major awards show this year.

“Artists for a ceasefire. Peace in the world,” Lennox said with her fist in the air, as an image of O’Connor displayed in the background.

Fans celebrated the Eurythmics icon for making the bold statement and honoring O’Connor in the “most meaningful and honest way.” O’Connor, who was also known for speaking up, famously ripped an image of the Pope to call out the Catholic church’s approach to clergy child sex abuse while performing on Saturday Night Live in 1992.

Oh, Annie of THAT voice! She killed it. The song written by Prince has one of the more gut-wrenching melodies and lyrics you’d ever want to croon.

So, anyway, that’s all I want to do today. I am glad that these female singer-songwriters are finally getting their due at the Grammys.   Okay, I’ve shared my inner fan girl and inspirations with you. You probably need more coffee now.

Have a great week! And go on!   Listen to their music!

Here’s a bonus: Annie with the Queen of Soul singing that funky music in 1985. It’s Aretha!!!

It’s time for some wearin’ o’ the Green!

Posted: March 17, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: open thread | Tags: | 8 Comments

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

This is going to be a short open thread.   For some reason, all the crazy sexism and misogyny floating around the Dem primary candidates got me thinking on this Joni lyric:

This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear
I know you don’t like weak women
You get bored so quick
And you don’t like strong women
‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks

This is a few years old but I enjoyed it all the same:  From The New Yorker: “Joni Mitchell’s Openhearted Heroism. She made the best music of her generation by falling in love, over and over, while defending her sense of self.”

Mitchell writes about emotional information: who controls it, and how it is squandered or hoarded, withheld or weaponized. This requires some reconnaissance, which for Mitchell involves falling in and out of love, over and over—not so much a research method as a form of self-surgery. Her songs report on those lessons, which are, in an instant, in performance, happily forgotten. She is always thinking about the ways in which calculation fails, as guile yields again and again to innocence. As she put it in “Song for Sharon”: “I can keep my cool at poker / But I’m a fool when love’s at stake.”

She was never a fool for longer than her art required, though, and she could be withering, in interviews, about the lovers who misread her patient scrutiny of them for acquiescence. David Crosby, who produced Mitchell’s first record, would “trot me out” in front of his friends, she said, “and watch me blow their minds.” Crosby is the smooth operator in the first verses of “Cactus Tree”:

There’s a man who’s been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen
Bearing beads from California
With their amber stones and green

It sounds like a cross between a hippie valentine and an abduction scenario. As the tune progresses, one suitor after another makes his approach, but Mitchell’s refrain wards them off: “She’s so busy being free.”

That freedom was hard-won. Men often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her. When David Geffen, her manager, implored her to write a hit, she came up with “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” which mocks the request while heedlessly fulfilling it:

I come when you whistle
When you’re loving and kind
If you’ve got too many doubts
If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static
It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal
From “Breakfast Barney”
To the sign-off prayer

The song checks all the boxes: it’s hummable, it’s accessible, it’s a love song—but it’s also a sabred refusal of all of the above. Mitchell was frank but weirdly Parnassian about male sexual appetite, which she saw as not so different, finally, from her own. When she resisted the advances of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, it was partly because she recognized her own techniques in their vulpine attentions. (She always said that she preferred “the company of men.”) In “Coyote,” a song about her fling with Sam Shepard, Mitchell describes his roving eye: “He’s staring a hole in his scrambled eggs / He picks up my scent on his fingers / While he’s watching the waitresses’ legs.” The detail is crude and adolescent, but it’s also very sexy, and Mitchell sings those lines to sound like a boast. Prowess is prowess.

What really got me thinking about the entire treatment of the incredibly talented Democratic women running for the Presidency in 2020 was this discussion we had earlier this week on Boomer’s thread about Beto and this Politico headline ‘Not one woman got that kind of coverage’: Beto backlash begins by Natasha Koreki.

Since announcing her 2020 run, Elizabeth Warren has dispensed three major policy proposals, held 30 campaign events and visited nearly a dozen states.

Since announcing his 2020 run, Beto O’Rourke has made one visit to Iowa, where he vaguely outlined his positions, including from atop a cafe counter.

Guess who’s getting the star treatment.

stbrigid2And it’s kinda like today.  February 1st was St. Brigid of Kildare’s Day. She is also a patron Saint of the Irish yet she get’s no play at all here.

Little is known of her life but from legend, myth, and folklore. According to these, she was born of a noble father and a slave mother and was sold along with her mother to a Druid, whom she later converted to Christianity. On being set free, she returned to her father, who tried to marry her to the king of Ulster. Impressed by her piety, the king removed her from parental control. According to the Liber hymnorum (11th century), the Curragh, a plain in Kildare, was granted by the king of Leinster to St. Brigid. At Kildare she founded the first nunnery in Ireland. The community became a double abbey for monks and nuns, with the abbess ranking above the abbot. Her friend St. Conleth became, at Brigid’s beckoning, bishop of her people. She is said to have been active in founding other communities of nuns.

St. Brigid appears in a wealth of literature, notably the Book of Lismore, the Breviarium Aberdonense, and Bethada Náem n-Érenn. One of the loveliest and most gently profound legends of Brigid is the story of Dara, the blind nun, for the restoration of whose sight Brigid prayed. When the miracle was granted, Dara realized that the clarity of sight blurred God in the eye of the soul, whereupon she asked Brigid to return her to the beauty of darkness. Brigid is also said to have miraculously changed water into beer for a leper colony and provided enough beer for 18 churches from a single barrel; she is sometimes considered to be one of the patron saints of beer.

So, she’s really the patron saints of beer and known for turning water into beer.  But who get’s all the beer in celebration?  Hmmm?  So, here’s to Saint Brigid who was known for giving everything away and for having a brilliant little woven cross.

And here’s to the women who are trying to find all the oxygen taken by the Bad News B boys (Bernie, Beto, Biden) to give voices to the rest of us.

Anyway, have a happy day!!!

What’s on your mind today?

Lazy Saturday Afternoon Reads

Posted: April 4, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments
Boston in Spring 2012

Boston Common in Spring 2012

Good Afternoon!!

It’s not quite as nice here yet as it was when that photo of Boston Common in the Spring of 2012 was taken, but we’re making progress. Yesterday it got up to 70 degrees! All that snow we got in January and February is almost gone, although there are still piles of it here and there. Spring rains will soon wash the rest of it away, and it will be only a memory. I can’t wait for trees to start budding and tulips and daffodils to start popping their heads up. But if the trees grow too much, there’s nothing to worry since there are tree service largo fl who can do trimming and removal.

So what’s happening in the news? Today I found myself focusing on more lightweight stories. I hope you don’t mind. I just loved this article at Slate that pokes fun at the “gluten free” fad that has gotten manufacturers putting labels on things that never contained gluten to begin with. No offense intended to anyone here who actually has celiac disease.

Finally, We Can Enjoy Our Greatest Works of Art Without Gluten.

Gluten is by now firmly cemented as our most infamous nutritional bête noir, even ifmost people can’t actually explain it. But even the staunchest gluten-free evangelists have, up til this point, missed another carb-contaminated industry: art. Luckily, a Gluten Free Museum has been created on Tumblr for those who just can’t stomach the idea of gluten in their favorite works of art.

In photos that span the worlds of high art, television, film and even advertising, Gluten Free Museum rids cultural artifacts of their carbs.

Here are a couple of examples: That nasty gluten on the left and gluten-free on the right. Check out the links to see more gluten vs. gluten-free images.

tumblr_nm4is58i8h1unnd3po1_500

 

tumblr_nl9xshOvul1unnd3po1_1280

Years ago, millions of people thought they had hypoglycermia. Now it’s gluten intolerance.

Speaking of questionable health issues, singer Joni Mitchell has been in the hospital for three days with a disease that doctors say isn’t real.

Hollywood LAist: The Story Behind Joni Mitchell’s Mysterious (And Possibly Fictional) Condition.

It’s still not clear what caused Joni Mitchell to faint in her Bel Air home earlier this week, sending her to the hospital. But the legendary 71-year-old singer has said in the past that she suffers from a rare and mysterious condition called Morgellons, something that has been a subject of debate on whether it’s a real illness or not.

Scientists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are skeptical that Morgellons is an actual medical condition and believe it’s more of a psychological problem. The people who believe it’s a real illness say that it has some scary symptoms, including fibers (or even “specks, dots, granules, or worms“) coming out of the skin causing tingling sensations that sometimes leads to lesions and scars, fatigue and problems with short-term memory, according to the New York Times.

In a 2010 interview with the L.A. Times,Mitchell said she has this “weird, incurable disease that seems like it’s from outer space.” She added, “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer — a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year.”

I think I heard something about this on that weird radio show Coast to Coast AM. They also discuss things like alien implants, bigfoot, and ghosts. It’s kind of fun to listen to in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep.

Joni Mitchell

From Vox: Joni Mitchell suffers from a disease most doctors think isn’t real.

The 71-year-old singer-songwriter has often complained of her battle with Morgellons, a medical mystery that has stumped the scientific community for years.

“I couldn’t wear clothing. I couldn’t leave my house for several years,” she described in her 2014 book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words. “Sometimes it got so I’d have to crawl across the floor. My legs would cramp up, just like a polio spasm. It hit all of the places where I had polio.” (It’s unclear if Morgellons was related to her recent hospitalization, but she has certainly brought attention to the issue over the years.)

Sufferers of Morgellons report itching, biting, and crawling sensations. “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin,” Mitchell has said. “They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral.”

They say their skin feels like it’s erupting from underneath, infested by insects, worms, or mysterious fibers. Like Mitchell, they say their symptoms are debilitating: they point to lesions that won’t heal, and say the biting and stinging that afflicts them every day leaves them fatigued and depressed, even affecting their memory.

It sounds awful, whatever it is.

Joni

For the past decade, researchers have searched for a biological cause or single underlying factor that might explain the suffering. But they have mostly concluded that Morgellons is “a psychosis or mass-shared delusion.”

In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, published in the journal PLOS, researchers from the CDC collected detailed epidemiological information, medical histories, and skin samples from 115 Morgellons sufferers in Northern California.

“No parasites or mycobacteria were detected,” they reported. The researchers also couldn’t find any environmental explanation for patients’ suffering.

The fiber-like strands on sufferers were mostly just cotton debris, probably lint from clothing. Their skin damage seemed to be caused by nothing more than sun exposure. While some patients had sores, these appeared to have arisen from chronic picking and scratching.

Interestingly, a large number of people in the study had a psychiatric or addictive condition, including depression and drug use. Among half of the participants in the study used drugs, but it wasn’t clear whether the drugs caused the symptoms or whether they were being used to deal with the disease.

I don’t know what to think. They used to say chronic fatigue syndrome was imaginary, and now it seems to be an accepted diagnosis. I just hope Joni feels better soon.

Via Raw Story

Via Raw Story

Comedian Jon Fugelsang came up with the perfect response to anti-gay “christian” fanatics.

From Raw Story: John Fugelsang zings conservative radio host: ‘If you don’t like gay people, take it up with the manufacturer.’

John Fugelsang clashed with conservative radio host Heidi Harris on Friday when Harris questioned the need for sexual orientation to be covered under anti-discrimination statutes.

“Being gay is what sets a person apart from straight people,” Fugelsang told Harris on MSNBC’s Ed Show. “If you don’t like gay people, take it up with the manufacturer, because God keeps creating them around the world.” . . . .

Harris argued that in the workplace, only a person’s behavior could set them apart, proving that non-discrimination statutes like one that was voted down by North Dakota legislators on Thursday were unnecessary.

“Why are we protecting a certain group of people because of their behavior?” Harris asked at one point, causing Fugelsang to facepalm. “Not only that, but how do you prove someone didn’t get hired because they were gay? You can’t prove that any more than you can prove somebody didn’t get hired because of their age or their sex.” . . . .

“You might not realize this, but sometimes straight people are mean to gay people,” Fugelsang said to her. “That’s why gay people have needed more protection.”

I posted something about that North Dakota law yesterday in a comment, but I’m going to post it again here. I really like the way newspapers are started to highlight the horrible lawmakers who support discrimination. In this case it was The Fargo Forum.

Talking Points Memo: Newspaper Front Page Shames North Dakota Lawmakers Over Anti-Gay Vote.

A North Dakota newspaper on Friday plastered across its front page the photos of every state lawmaker that voted down a measure that would have protected LGBT individuals from discrimination.

Fargo-based The Forum’s provocative front page was published amid national outrage over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which critics argued would allow business owners with religious objections to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Legislators in the Hoosier State later agreed to alter the law to specify that it cannot be used to defend discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

A bill that would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation failed to passThursday in the North Dakota House by a vote of two to one, according to local TV station WDAY.

View the front page below.

Fargo Forum2

Good for The Forum! That makes me proud to call Fargo my birthplace. I want to see North Dakota and Indiana go back to being states with sane governments where Democratic Senators can be sent to Washington. Just a short time ago, North Dakota had two Democratic Senators.

Can you believe that a so-called “news” site (The Blaze”) raised $800,000 for that pizza place in Indiana that say they’d never cater a same-sex wedding?

From GayStarNews: Now nearly $800,000 richer, Indiana pizzeria co-owner is ‘sad, very sad’ for gays.

Flush with nearly $800,000 in donations from supporters, the owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, aren’t through talking about gay people.

‘God has blessed us for standing up for what we believe, and not denying Him,’ Crystal O’Connor tells Fox News.

She also said her family ‘doesn’t hate gays’ but simply would not deliver pizzas to a gay wedding because of their religious beliefs….

Memories Pizza was so besieged by phone calls and online comments that they temporarily shut their doors. This resulted in a Go Fund Me campaign that as of Friday afternoon was closing in on $800,000.

Of the LGBTI community her family has offended O’Connor says: ‘All we can do is pray for them, and truly, we’re not really angry at them. We’re sad for them. Very sad.

‘We have to accept them, and we just ask they accept us.’

What a pathetic excuse for a human being she is. I don’t know who she’s praying to all the time, but she’s certainly not following Jesus’ teachings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB978ptaj3E

Now for some positive political news.

From The New York Daily News: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign signs lease for Brooklyn Heights headquarters.

The former Secretary of State’s team signed a lease Wednesday to house its headquarters in a Brooklyn Heights office building, a move indicating Clinton will launch her second presidential campaign within two weeks.

The Federal Election Commission gives candidates 15 days to create a campaign committee after “campaign activity” — which includes leasing office space.

Sources said Friday that Clinton’s camp has leased two floors, totaling about 80,000 square feet, at One Pierrepont Plaza.

The offices are near a dozen subway lines. The building touts itself as “Modern Offices. Brooklyn Cool.”

But the location, just across the East River from downtown Manhattan, is about as corporate as Brooklyn gets.

It is located in a building where Morgan Stanley and employees of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney, currently Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, have offices.

That sounds promising.

deniro4n-2-web

And from The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern, Robert De Niro is backing Hillary.

On Wednesday afternoon, I had the pleasure of sitting down with De Niro and his Tribeca partner Jane Rosenthal to discuss the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, which this year boasts a very formidable lineup including live events, star-studded film premieres, and talks featuring the likes of George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, the Monty Python crew, and a 25th anniversary Goodfellasdiscussion with the cast moderated by The Daily Show’’s Jon Stewart. Our talk eventually veered to his prophetic 2006 Hardball appearance, and whether or not he’ll be endorsing Hillary Clintonfor president in 2016.

“Hopefully it will be her, yes,” said De Niro. “I think that she’s paid her dues. There are going to be no surprises, and she has earned the right to be president and the head of the country at this point. It’s that simple. And she’s a woman, which is very important because her take on things may be what we need right now.”

“She’s smart, has run things before, and knows how government works and how to get things done,” added Rosenthal. “She’s watched it from the sidelines, and the frontlines.”

Now it’s your turn. What stories have caught your interest today?