Joni Interview, KB short take

[hound!hejira]

For any of you Joni Mitchell enthusiasists, there's a terrific interview
of her in the December, 1985 issue of "Musician" (the only 'zine around
that's giving her the treatment she deserves).  In it, she talks about her
latest release, scolds the new right, retraces her long, creative past
and talks about her songwriting.

A few excerpts:

[Joni]:  I have felt more angry in the last year.  Some of it's personal and
	some of it's what my antenna is picking up.  There's an increase in
	my outrage at the general direction of things, at the way the govern-
	ment dispenses authority and money, and the Star Wars insanity and 
	all that business.  It's [Dog Eat Dog] an angry album.

[Musician]:  Was "Ethiopia" written for the We Are the World album?

[Joni]:   No, it was written after the fact.  ..."We Are the World" is 
	a beautiful idea.  I just felt that in singing the words that the
	general overtone of these anthems was self-congratulatory and that 
	there's another way to look at [it] ... All this heroism, in all the
	big charity events of the past--Bangladesh, No Nukes--a lot of self-
	congratulation went on, and everybody that appeared in these things
	was "the new consciousness," and inevitably it did all their careers 
	some good and everything--AND THE MONEY NEVER GOT TO THE PEOPLE.  
	...that's the truth and the irony of it.

On PMRC...
	
	I think it [the rating system] is a really stupid solution; it's 
	typical of this conservative approach to everything.  Good and evil
	in this country suddenly are polarized again to a Gothic degree.  Jimmy
	Swaggart, to me, is just as god-awful and evil-looking as the guys 
	prancing around in spiderwebs and studs ... except for the costumes, 
	I don't see them looking that different ... all show biz--they play
	the same halls.
	

  			**************

In the same issue, in the Short Takes section, there's a blurb about HoL:

	"Bush surely knows her way around the studio, and has a real genius
	for molding sounds -- whether from her voice or her band -- into 
	detailed soundscapes.  What makes it something to be endured rather
	than enjoyed is her insistence on playing Ophelia to hew own Hamlet."

Any comments?

	- Rob