@janis b

so we're going to have a white Xmas after all. I was sitting at my computer this morning and saw the guys across the street use the 4 wheeler to push the snow down the driveway and hollered over and asked if they'd do mine. Long and steep and my blower is broken. Gotta sure thing ma'am and 4 sweeps and done. Hey. When they moved in one of them said that if I ever needed something ...

#6.1

I'm glad I don't have to go out today. I imagine for some who aren't already where they wanted to be for Christmas today, they may be stuck because of flooding.

All my best to you and yours QMS.

@bobswern
sorry.
and so's joni.
she's a talented poet and musician, but she's also an egomaniac, filled with a weird and unjustified bitterness. interviews with her invariably leave me disgusted. the essence of every one of them is that Joni Mitchell is Better Than Everyone Else -- more moral, more talented, more creative, more original, more more more.
whether you like Dylan or not is not what is at issue -- de gustibus non disputatum -- what is at issue is whether he was "creative" or "original", and there's simply no reasonably denying that he made music and wrote lyrics that were like nothing that had come before. Go ahead and show me the direct antecedents of Subterranean Homesick Blues, Tambourine Man, All Along the Watchtower, and so on. Sure, he drew on hundreds of years of western literature and folk music -- but that is inevitable. No man is an island, nobody arrives fully formed, unshaped by cultural influences. JM only fantasizes that she was some sort of complete original. It's just her own hippie-dippie new age version of that most odious of libertarian myths, the Self-made Tycoon. BLECH.

#8.1 I don't know about your conclusions, but I feel like I totally get her, after fully reading the content behind the great link you put up in your comment. And, as far as Dylan's concerned, it was basically Joni's contention (again, within the context of the info in the link you provided) that Dylan was really not all that original nor talented (and, I've got to say, I actually concur with her on that one...never been a Dylan fan here).

@bobswern
Like A Rolling Stone, Tambourine Man, Rolling Thunder Review, but the stardom and hero-worship got him. Holy FSM, he put out a Christmas album! His train moved on a long time ago, but it's all he knows, so he keeps doing it.

The Band was smart for leaving the party in style.

I liked JM's characterization of Dylan as putting on a mask, like when he was very young and wanted to be Woody Guthrie -- I remember reading some stuff about that way back. This midwestern jewish kid developing an Okie twang? All part of the performance.

JM had/has a fantastic swooping expressive voice which is/was all her own. She developed unique guitar style using what, hundreds, of tunings, to the point where she used custom electronics to simulate alternate tunings. So I give her points for art. And for surviving, and developing her art.

#8.1 I don't know about your conclusions, but I feel like I totally get her, after fully reading the content behind the great link you put up in your comment. And, as far as Dylan's concerned, it was basically Joni's contention (again, within the context of the info in the link you provided) that Dylan was really not all that original nor talented (and, I've got to say, I actually concur with her on that one...never been a Dylan fan here).

@pindar's revenge

the bias is obvious in the selectively chosen parts of the interview quoted. It is very subjectively interpreted and should be addressed, but I wouldn’t know how.

Funny you should mention the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. My very favourite NZ Reggae group took their name from the cat in the comic strip - Fat Freddy’s Drop.

[video:https://youtu.be/wirn-iQel3w]

#8.1
I really can't see where that interview (good one) supports at all that wiki paragraph. I see where the wiki-ist drew some of their lines, but they weren't all direct quotes, more like interpretation.

Ever since the "Death of Hippie, Son Of Media" funeral in SF '67, the hippest thing to do was to rag on hippies. Look at Zappa. By '69 the word was "freak" or "freek", ala Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Or else "head". In the sound-bite shorthand which constitutes what we call history, "hippie" is the only surviving word of that period. I see elements of that interview you linked (thanks!) as being mature, well-developed hip hippie-ragging, with good analysis of Western post-war social transition.

That said, the period gave us a lot: environmentalism, antiwar, etc., etc. But the bullshit, contradictions, and exploitations were thick and deep. A lot of the best didn't survive. The exploiters sharpened their skills then, so we have both Earth Day and expert greenwashing today, for example.

So yeah, Joni ragged on hippies -- easy to do, and it was a popular pastime in the "hippie" era, but not only were those "quotes" taken out of context and outright misquoted, they missed the whole point. Look at the page organization. The editor of that one paragraph gave it a heading level equal to the whole other massive article; (s)he's using Joni as a bludgeon in this generational warfare thing, which strikes me as foul treatment of her. So my question: what do you think of that wiki section? Doesn't it need work and bias removal?