Michael Paz wrote: > Rev. Have I ever told you, you are a trouble maker??? You bring new meaning > to "pushing the envelope".
Coming from you, that is a supreme compliment! But consider that one of the joys of the TNT Tribute to Joni was hearing Joni's music in some different genres. Sweet Honey in the Rock - Diana Krall - although the rest of the performers were pretty, how can one say, doing Joni in expected styles. And even SHINR and Krall were hardly huge leaps of styles, if at all. But isn't the mark of a great artist the ability to take something and do it in a real way. I have always been intrigued by different interpretations of the same song. The Bee Gee's "To Love Somebody" as opposed to Janis Joplin's cover or Eagle Eye Cherry's cover -- the Beatles "With a little help from my friends" vs Joe Crocker's version -- we hear different things in these very different arrangements and styles, the songs take on new life because of the underlying strength of the song. Who writes stronger songs than Joni? Most covers fail because they sound too much like homage, they don't reinterpret, they don't discover something new, or don't discover something present but not elevated, the cover artistry is saying, "I like this song" rather than "This song is saying something that I hear." Rap is an ultimate use of older songs, or other songs, turned inside out to uncover new things. Look what Eminem did to Dido's little song on his "Stan." And then what he does to Arrowsmith's Dream On in Em's Sing for the Moment. He is a master of reaching into the heart of a song and laying his own rap across the soul of that song. Actually, the entire Blue-FTR- Heijera series would be great material for Em to work from. The themes of loss, of unfaithfulness, of anger, of disillusionment with love, would be so natural for him to play off of. The only song he could not do is Little Green, I think, because his own deep love for his daughter Hailey Jade would make it too wretched. Or I could be wrong - for Em has experienced (in a different way) loss of child and reuniting with child. Joni has written strong material and Eminem, a fellow Detroiter, could take from that strength and work some new magic, some new insight, some interpretation, some new realization, as he applies his own genius to her genius. And then we'd have something so new! I'd love it! Are you familiar with Linkin Park taking their album Hybrid Theory and re-releasing it in an entire remix, Reanimation. Bob Muller has spoken eloquently of the re-imaging of the familiar songs in the LP remix. That is what I was thinking, that Em would be the one to not do another pretty cover or a rocking cover ot an old favorite doing the song of another old favorite - Erica's question was, what would you really like to hear, and I'd like to hear the musical genius of Eminem applied to the strong work of the musical genius Joni Mitchell since the results would be exciting - good, bad, invigorating, re-imaging, pulling out new insights or laying counter insights across the song we know - it would be worth listening to, at the very least. The only person to attempt something like this - not in rap but in a different genre of course - was David Lahm with the Jazz takes on Joni. Did not David's work give us something new, these interpretations that were just not Joni covers but a reappraisal of Joni? That is what I am suggesting actually (if only I could get the attention od Dr. Dre!!!!!) and for the sheer audacity of it - it is what music sorely needs today. Back in the day - Miles Davis taking on the saccharine "My Favorite Things" from Sound of Music - now there was a genius who took one song and made it something so totally different while it was yet the same - music isn't fun enough like that right now. If a Marseilles (spelling) brother took on Britney Spear's "Oops I Did it Again" everyone would gag - unfairly, because maybe like Miles Davis with Favorite Things, either brother would find something to show us the song in new light. And that's what I want, Paz brother, I want courage, I want risk, I want the really unexpected, I want adventure, I want the death of safe music and the advent of the risk taking, and the discovery that the rappers and the rockers and the jazzers and the popsters and the folkies and the operatics all are dealing with the same medium - now what we can do to cross fertilize and see what glories might result! You said, Paz, "you are a trouble maker??? You bring new meaning to "pushing the envelope." I embrace that! Best insight on me in a long time! Vince
