LOS ANGELES (Geffen/UMe) - One of the most uncompromising, provocative and outspoken artists in music since the '60s, as well as one of its most admired, singer-songwriter
Joni Mitchell throws down a timely political/environmental/cultural gauntlet in this election year with a unique compilation. THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL (Geffen/UMe), released July 27, 2004, brings together 16 of her most highly-charged "commentaries on the world in which we live," as she puts it, of the past nearly 20 years.
THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL features tracks from DOG EAT DOG (1985), CHALK MARK IN A RAINSTORM (1988), NIGHT RIDE HOME (1991), TURBULENT INDIGO (1994) and TAMING THE TIGER (1998). Among the guest artists heard are Willie Nelson, Don Henley, James Taylor, Michael McDonald, Thomas Dolby, Wayne Shorter, Manu Katche, and actors Rod Steiger and Iron Eyes Cody.
Each selection has been 96k/24-bit mastered from the original master tapes.
Mitchell, who co-produced the collection, also contributes her original artwork and a revealing and instructive essay. In addition, the package includes complete lyrics and a copy of the famous 1852 Letter to the President from Chief Seattle, a philosophical cornerstone of the environmental movement.
On THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL, Mitchell, who has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and was listed among VH1's millennium-ending "100 Greatest Women Of Rock 'N' Roll," rails against the evils in modern society and offers hope for the future. She tackles consumerism in "The Reoccurring Dream" and exploitation in "The Windfall (Everything For Nothing)" and "Sex Kills." Scorched are the corrupting power of money in "Dog Eat Dog," "No Apologies" and "Passion Play (The Story Of Jesus And Zachius ... The Little Tax Collector)," of advertising and image-making in "Fiction," of televangelists in "Tax Free" (with Steiger delivering the money-grubbing sermon) and of the values of Western culture in "The Three Great Stimulants."
A news-specific track is "The Magdalene Laundries," the true story of the horrid conditions suffered by young unwed pregnant Irishwomen who were sent there in decades past.
Mitchell's passion leaps from "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," her adaptation of a poem by W.B. Yeats; the eerie "The Beat Of Black Wings," and the tale of hunger in "Ethiopia." Her championing of Native American culture rises from "Lakota," in which Iron Eyes Cody is heard, and its corollary environmental beliefs in her adaptation of the Sons Of The Pioneers' classic "Cool Water" (with Willie Nelson).
THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL, an optimistic title in itself, concludes on a hopeful note with a song whose title might very well be applied a la Don Quixote attacking the windmills to the influential and inspiring Mitchell - "Impossible Dreamer."
