Joni Mitchell is no longer a black man

I’m black where it counts.

I do like “Dreamland” and “The Silky Veils of Ardor,” but the album is mostly a mess.

Please, remove the vapors from my nostrils. Mama is finally able to rise from her chaise lounge.

I actually like the title track quite a bit.

There was/is a short film entitled “Love” which features Mitchell at a party in character as Nouveau and nobody recognizes her.

as long as Brandi Carlisle doesn't trot her out looking like Frederick Douglass, we're probably all ok

But men "serving cunt" as absurd caricatures of women is cooler than ever!

Clown world.

That was likely a record company decision - the company that's rereleasing all her records plus demos/extra tracks.

I knew she meant it as an homage, but I sorta get that people might not appreciate it. So, whatever. The new image is.....not my favorite. But the album itself is great (if a little overlong).

R6 I wouldn't put it past that fame grabbing bitch

It was never my favorite Joni album cover as I liked her own artwork from the psychedelic first album to “Mingus.” But it’s hard to imagine any other artwork in its place.

In my dweems we fwy

It’s one of my fave albums of hers. Hejira and Hissing Lawns are my other top Joni albums

I’m sure she’s scratched all the black off her skin by now.

how strange that album cover art from 1977 has to be altered to placate music buyers in 2024

wouldn't Tipper Gore be satisfied with a parental advisory label?

I didn’t even realize that was her on the cover until a few years ago.

I hate her overrated ass almost as much as I hate woke cunts.

I feel like Joni had enough black dicks inside her to maybe make this OK.

I had this album since it's release in 1977. I knew it was Joni dressed up and in make-up, but I never considered this to be an issue. People are looking for reasons to be outraged.

It was starting to gain traction after nobody saying anything about it for 47 years. I saw threads on Reddit and was thinking it would. Into this.

Rick Moranis used to do a character called Eskimo Art.

But the kid staring at the naked lady on her dress stays?

No one mentioned it for years until she did that one interview (Vanity Fair? I can't remember) a year or so before her aneurysm and the gen Z'ers got all pissy about it

She's no longer a man at all; the Morgellons turned her into a blanket.

No, R22. The entire cover has been changed.

Thanks R25!

Both the original and the new one are here

The new one looks like it’s an unused, unretouched photo from the “Dog Eat Dog” album. You can see Joni’s perm. Kind of a boring image.

They should have gone with an image of an eagle and a serpent or even had her use one of her own paintings for it.

Or they could have just left well enough alone.

Indigenous Joni says “How” on the original back cover.

I don't know why they couldn't just sort of zoom in and remove the blackface image.

R28 the painting would make sense too.

“Paprika Plains” sounds like Joni was on shrooms.

[quote] There was/is a short film entitled “Love” which features Mitchell at a party in character as Nouveau and nobody recognizes her.

How strange. My first thought upon meeting a Black man named Art is “Is that Joni Mitchell” in blackface and drag?”

Intent used to matter in these situations. It no longer does.

Some background.

1976 was a different time, indeed. Around Halliween, you could still find grotesque cannibal masks with red lips and a bone through the nose at your local toy shop or Thrifty drug store. I’m still surprised that a liberal folk singer pulled that stunt, though.

*

[quote]I’m still surprised that a liberal folk singer pulled that stunt, though.

There's a difference between homage and ridicule, r35.

Dressing as a pimp is an homage to Black people?

It was a cultural trend back then that was actually looked up to by younger people. I recall at least two black high school classmates thinking black pimps and how they dressed was cool. I doubt anybody would have frowned back then if a white person dress up like a pimp and wore black face at a costume party back then.

Maybe she’ll do an homage to white Jews by dressing like Jeffrey Epstein this Halloween.

Is she dressed like a pimp? People dressed very differently in the 70s. The vest with the suit was common.

I shall respect her pronouns and new racial identity and support her throughout her recent transition into a white woman.

Joni’s inspiration:

[quote]I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard (when) a black guy walked by me with a diddy-bop kind of step, and said in the most wonderful way, 'Lookin' good, sister, lookin' gooood'," she told Q Magazine in 1988. His spirit was infectious and I thought, I'll go as him. I bought the make-up, the wig… sleazy hat and a sleazy suit and that night I went to a Halloween party and nobody knew it was me.

Pimp daddy was her muse!

[quote]His spirit was infectious and I thought, I'll go as him.

an homage

[quote]I bought the make-up, the wig… sleazy hat and a sleazy suit and that night I went to a Halloween party and nobody knew it was me

How flattering.

I remember people talking about getting perms in the 70s because they wanted to look like the brothers.

It was a different time, more ignorance than hate.

You think that was Barbra’s inspiration for her 1976 perm, R46?

I wonder how many black people Joni met growing up on the prairie in Saskatoon?

*

Boz Skaggs had a big hit around this same time with "Jojo." A white man singing an homage to a black pimp would surely be unfashionable these days.

R50 Actually, anyone singing “Jojo” or a similar aspirational about pimping is unfashionable these days.

His baby stays high

Got to keep her sweet

And he keeps her just right

Keeps her on the street

- Boz Skaggs

I loved Donna Summer’s hair as a kid and my mother would put my stick straight hair into multiple little braids, and then I’d put my head under the faucet, sleep on it and for a few brief hours the next day I’d have hair that looked like a black woman who had used a relaxer. It was a different time.

I remember wet braiding, r52/ElderLez. I guess it did less damage than crimping.

Bo Derek would be SO cancelled today for those cornrows.

Crimpers were a tool of the patriarchy, not to mention part of the capitalist pig destruction of the environment through excessive electricity use R53/Doris so not allowed in our house in the 1970s. It was such a different time.

OTOH cultural appropriation wasn’t a thing that people were concerned about.

r54 my mom used to braid my hair like that when I was still in elementary school. She thought I wanted to look like Bo Derek but it was actually Zac Hanson. Thinking back, there was a black girl in my class that didn't like me. Maybe it was the braids?

I wish there was footage of the Halloween party, so that we could hear Joni speaking “jive.” I wonder if she spoke it as well as Barbara Billingsley.

Probably not, R57. Being Canadian, she probably said “Aboot” and “eh?”

This is what Chat GPT thinks a jive-talking Canadian sounds like:

"Yo, buddy, that scene last night was a real beaut, eh? We were just givin' 'er, and it was all chill, man. No hoser nonsense, just pure gold, ya know? And then Jake, that cool cat, he shows up with some Timmy's, and we were like, 'You’re aces, man!' So we just kicked back, had a few, and it was all copacetic, eh?"

(I’m obviously not Canadian)