I helped a relative of a friend do some remodeling over Easter weekend. He's in his 60s and at the first dinner, we talked about music.
"Boots" mentioned Laurie Anderson and Johnny Cash within 10 minutes. He said that the "most transcenedent concert" he ever attended was when Ike and Tina brought their revue to town and their opening artist was some new commer named Don McLean. Bridging the gap, I talked about swing era singers and Dave Brubeck. The next day, when I walked into the kitchen as he was telling Anna about seeing an earlier version of "Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh when traveling in Chicago. He spoke passionately about the influence of madness on van Gogh's work. I thought, "First, he's citing all these eclectic musical influences, and now he's talking about van Gogh? This guy talks like a JMDLer." Eventually, I steered him back toward music. He gave me a cassette of Ian and Sylvia, a Canadian duo. He turned back to his work, facing away. That did it. I said, "Ya know, yesterday we talked about how sometimes a musician transcends their own genre, like Chuck Berry? There's one person who's done that over and over again. Do you know who Joni Mitchell is?" He turned back, and slowly spoke: "What did you say?" Loudly and slowly, I repeated, "Do you know who Joni Mitchell is?" He looked at Anna like I was "having him on". "Know her? She the best songwriter of the centrury!" I looked at Anna and blinked. Then I looked back at Boots and said, "Yes! Thank you!" He goes, "Yeah! She's a perfect example! She starts out in folk, then does some commercial things, then jazz, then synthesizers! No one has done that like Joni!" and the beat goes on yeah the beat goes on Lama Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover http://greetings.yahoo.com/
