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Joni Mitchell

Forty Years Ago Today: 1977 Hanafi Siege – March 9, 1977 – Otis & Marlena – Joni Mitchell


Otis & Marlena – Joni Mitchell – Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Asylum 1977

Marlena under Foster Grants
She’s undercover from the dawns advance
That girl is travel drained
And the neon mercury vapor stained
Miami sky
It’s red as meat
It’s a cheap pink rose
Otis in the driver’s seat
Watches the street lights fade away
On louvered blocks in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cards

They’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick up Washington *

Otis empties out the trunk
On the steps of that celebrated dump
Sleazing by the sea
Bow down to her royal travesty
In her ballrooms heads of state
In her bedrooms rented girls
Always the grand parades of cellulite
Jiggling to her golden pools
Through flock and cupid colonnades
They jiggle into surgery
Hopefully beneath the blade
They dream of golden beauty

They’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims stick up Washington

Marlena white as stretcher sheet
Watches it all from her tenth floor balcony
Like it’s her opera box
All those Pagliacci summer frocks
Otis is fiddling with the TV dial
All he gets are cartoons and reruns
She taps her glass with an emery file
Watching three rings in the sun
The golden dive the fatted flake
And sizzle in the mink oil
It’s all a dream
She has awake
Checked into Miami Royal
Where they’ve come for sun and fun
While Muslims hold up Washington
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream on

© 1977; Crazy Crow Music

Joni Mitchell appears on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977 – disguised as a black man © Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell appears on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977 disguised as a black man © Joni Mitchell

*

On March 9, 1977, seven members of Khaalis’ group burst into the headquarters of B’nai B’rith, a few miles south of Khaalis’ headquarters, and took over 100 hostages. Less than an hour later, three men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, and took eleven hostages. At 2:20 pm, two Hanafis entered the District Building, three blocks from the White House. They went to the fifth floor looking for important people to take hostage. When an elevator opened the hostage-takers thought they were under assault and fired, killing Maurice Williams, a reporter for WHUR-FM radio, and injuring security guard Mack Cantrell. Then-councilman Marion Barry was struck by a ricochet in the chest, and two others were wounded. “Throughout the siege Khaalis denounced the Jewish judge who had presided at the trial of his family’s killers. ‘The Jews control the courts and the press,'” he repeatedly charged. – Wikipedia

Homestretch Bar & Grill – Gravesend, Brooklyn

© Vincenzo Aiosa

Three waitresses all wearing
Black diamond earrings
Talking about zombies
and Singapore slings
No trouble in their faces
Not one anxious voice
None of the crazy you get
From too much choice
The thumb and the satchel
Or the rented Rolls-Royce
And you think she knows something
By the second refill
You think she’s enlightened
As she totals your bill
You say “show me the way
To Barangrill”


Joni Mitchell – Barangrill, For The Roses (1972)

All I Want – Lonely Roads & Blue Motel Rooms – Las Cruces NM & El Paso TX – Gaia Son & Joni Mitchell

© Gaia Son

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me

– All I Want, Blue (1970) Joni Mitchell

© Gaia Son

I’ve got a blue motel room
With a blue bedspread
I’ve got the blues inside and outside my head
Will you still love me
When I call you up when I’m down….

….I’ve got road maps
From two dozen states
I’ve got coast to coast just to contemplate
Will you still love me
When I get back to town

– Blue Motel Room, Hejira (1976) Joni Mitchell

© Gaia Son

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
It’s the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be

– All I Want, Blue (1970) Joni Mitchell

Midnight Snowflake – The Stab & Glare & Buckshot – Nostrand & Fulton – Brooklyn

© Frank H. Jump

The blizzards come and go
The stab and glare and buckshot
Of the heavy heavy snow
It comes and goes
It comes and goes –

The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey
Joni Mitchell, Mingus 1978

John Kelly & Frank Jump Sing People’s Parties @ Barnes & Noble – World AIDS Day 2011

Joni Mitchell Live on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic – October 25, 1994

Memphis – Home of the Blues – Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Vincenzo Aiosa

© Frank H. Jump

WC Handy Park © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

Elvis © Frank H. Jump

Old Beale Street is coming down
Sweeties’ Snack Bar, boarded up now
And Egles The Tailor and the Shine Boy’s gone
Faded out with ragtime blues
Handy’s cast in bronze
And he’s standing in a little park
With a trumpet in his hand
Like he’s listening back to the good old bands
And the click of high heeled shoes
Old Furry sings the blues

-Furry Sings the Blues, Hejira
(1976) Joni Mitchell

John Kelly Transmogrified – Paved Paradise REDUX @ Abrons Art Center

© Frank H. Jump

John Kelly as Joni Mitchell @ Paved Paradise REDUX © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

John Kelly Defrocked © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

Zecca Esquibel as Georgia O'Keeffe © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

Paul Ossola as Vincent van Gogh © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

John Kelly @ the afterparty © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

Murray Hill in the lobby during intermission. © Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

© Frank H. Jump

With only six more performances, this is a show you must not miss. John Kelly is an art/performance genius.

“Transformation through spiritual osmosis … magnificent.” — The New York Times

In Paved Paradise Redux: The Art of Joni Mitchell, John Kelly’s vocal and dramatic skills make for an interpretation that is at once haunting and hilarious, and will gratify even the most hardened “Joni-phile.” The arrangements (performed in the original key) combined with Kelly’s spot-on vocal acrobatics provide an experience that is both original and uncanny. – ABRON ARTS CENTER

JOHN KELLY – Paved Paradise – REDUX


Urge For Going – Joni Mitchell

Thank you henhenstoll for posting this on YouTube! It is a remarkable glimpse into the early years of Joni on TV when even TV was young.

Urge For Going by Joni Mitchell

I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling’s heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow

He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go
He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Now the warriors of winter
They gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying
And all that lives is gettin’ out
See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow

They got the urge for going
And they got the wings so they can go
They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I’ll ply the fire with kindling now
I’ll pull the blankets up to my chin
I’ll lock the vagrant winter out and
I’ll fold my wandering in
I’d like to call back summertime
Have her stay for just another month or so

But she’s got the urge for going
So I guess she’ll have to go
She gets the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
All her empire’s falling down
And winter’s closing in.
And I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down.

Copyright © 1966; Siquomb Publishing Company
Printed from the official Joni Mitchell website: JoniMitchell.com
Please respect the copyright owner by not profiting from this document.