Joni Mitchell, feminine/insightful social voice and poet extrodinaire.

This book is yet another example of her gift for words, through simple yet deeply profound lyric she says more, expresses more, shows more than others who toil for months even years to write a Children's book and still don't measure up to her talent. (When you got it you got it)

The illustrations depicting a caterpillar's metamorphosis is appropriate with it's metaphysical imagery. Illustrator Allan Baker captures the magic of these classic lyrics beautifully.

Why not for children? Life & Love & all of the above, as a critic I argue that children are multi-dimentional and capable of appreciating the spontaneity & playful rhymes that make this book a welcome addition to any child's (or adult for that matter) home library.

"Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feathered canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way."

This book is a visual treat and a treasure for any fan of Ms. Mitchell. If you haven't come to appreciate her songs/writing, get this book and see why her style has been refered to as "A Lyrical Miracle!" Finally a kid's title with substance.

Todd-Michael Phillips

Creative directoer CyPress Green Publishing

"A kaleidoscope of the mind"

I can't believe no one has ever reviewed this little book -- it literally has been on my bookshelf for years! I bought my well-thumbed copy in a book store in Rockefeller Center about 1976. It's a "fan club" type book, which was written and published at the point in her career when Joni was at the top of her game. It provides a 'snap shot' of Joni and her work (and her loves!) at a particular moment, and it's a fascinating read almost thirty years after its publication. Any die-hard Joni fan will get a big kick out of this one.

I just wanted to add a note here for those looking for this book. I owned it once, and wish I still had it. It contained all of the sheet music from the albums, "Song to a Seagull" through "Court and Spark". The only currently available folio containing any of this material is "Anthology", which is mighty thin for a true musician/music lover. Her newer albums are also available in complete album folios. "Complete" has some artwork from the albums, photographs, and nicely typeset charts. I believe it contained guitar tablature, along with vocal and piano accompaniment. It is a shame to have it out of print, as her music is a historical record, in many ways.

This was a really nice effort on Stacey Luftig's part. Joni has been the object of fascination and scorn for several decades, it's nice to have a compendium of sorts where the full picture emerges of a Canadian farm girl transformed into a folk singer, rock star, jazz dilletante, all the while maintaining her artistic integrity. She has left such an indeligible mark on the history of popular music. One major slam, though: it's incredible to think in a book with this much obvious research that Rickie Lee Jones would be confused (in the photograph with Bonnie Raitt) for Joni Mitchell. For shame...

What a read! Luftig has culled together the absolute best of Joni-journalism. Even diehard fans will learn something new from the riveting biographical pieces. Music lovers will appreciate the astute discussions of her guitar technique, composition and lyrics.

Any Joni Mitchell fan will want this book (far, far superior to Brian Hinton's travesty of a few years back). Even those unfamiliar with Mitchell's work will appreciate this profile of a modern creative genius.

Reviewing this book is going to be as difficult as writing about Joni's music, because there are not enough superlatives in the language to say what needs to be said without redundency. This is an essential book, necessary reading for any fan or student of Joni Mitchell. Stacey Luftig has put together an extraordinary collection of reviews, articles, columns, interviews, pictures, and emotions that refect the vast ouevre of Joni Mitchell's work, from the first artist days in 1966 to the 3 July 1999 tribute in Joni at Central Park. The range of this book is incredibly vast. The casual music observer will be introduced to this most gifted artist. The dedicated fan will discover information and concepts that astound, even after thirty-plus years of loving and following Joni. Each album and the various phases of Joni's life and musical development are covered, with true insights continually offered in an accessable manner. Musicians seeking technical information on how to play like Joni will find their rewards, too. This companion book consists of well-selected pieces from the fullness of Joni's career to date, in an attractive, readable, and helpful format, with a thorougness and professionalism that makes this a serious study of things Joni. This is not a wild-eyed fan's tribute; it is a contribution to the literature on music and the study of this most complex and influential artist... and it is loving and fun... it has a great beat, and you dance to it! The contents of this book may have been available, scattered and uncollected, prior to this book's publication; to have this array of material in one place, accessable, is truly a companionable idea. This reader is in awe of what Luftig has accomplished in this major addition to our knowledge and appreciation of the gift and music of Joni Mitchell.

ROCK TROUBADOURS: Conversations On The Art And Craft Of Songwriting by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers I love what I do. I get to review fantastic books like this one. :-) Here they are - some of the songwriters I have most admired throughout my lifetime, all talking about what makes them want to write, how they write, where their writing comes from... It's amazing stuff. Paul Simon, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, the Indigo Girls, Chris Whitley, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Ben Harper, the Barenaked Ladies and Ani DiFranco. Hell - the first three alone would be worth the price of the book.

Jeffrey's opening words to each interview are insightful commentaries on where the songwriter has been and where they may be heading. Though the interviews themselves may have happened several years earlier, those commentaries bring the reader to the present so that everything can be put into perspective. And his questions get right to the meat of the matter. These are personal interviews that dig into the why's and the wherefore's. What are the differences between then and now? How has their songwriting changed from the early years? How do they perceive the "industry" as a whole? How do they arrive at their inspiration? How do their

instruments of choice influence their songwriting? That's only a sample. These are the questions I would love to ask if I were in a room with any of these wonderful artists - only I would be too tongue tied. Thankfully, Jeffrey does the work for all of us.

In each interview, there is a section called "What They Play" where the instruments the songwriters use are explained in detail - their preferences, what they used in the past and what they use in the studio compared to what they use in live performance. There is also a selected discography for each songwriter.

I enjoyed every moment of reading this book. Not only did it answer a lot of my own questions concerning these songwriters, but it also inspired me. Deep down, these songwriters, legends though they may be to me (yes, even the Barenaked Ladies - whom I adore and who have a true knack for not taking themselves too seriously), are still human beings with the same problems of time, insecurities, and daily difficulties that I face myself. They have managed to overcome them and create some of the very best music of the 20th century and beyond. Reading about them gives me hope that I can do the same. I highly recommend you pick this one up...

There is another publication entitled JONI MITCHELL ANTHOLOGY which contains many more of Mitchell's songs. Here's the best part: "Anthology" is cheaper!

The only conceivable benefit of this book might be that it may contain better arrangements. It should also weigh a lot less than "Anthology."

This book gets 3 stars because the songs are good (contains "California," "Big Yellow Taxi," "Chelsea Morning," "Both Sides Now" and others) and I will also leave room for the possibility that these arrangements are not the same as those in the "Anthology" book.

I love Joni's music but the alternate tunings seemed to keep me away from playing it. So I finally decided to buy one of her songbooks. This book has most of her best songs and the guitar tab notations are quite good (with the exception of "Urge for Going"). It includes chord diagram boxes for guitar for most of the songs and tab notation for all of them. At the begining of each song it gives the guitar and dulcimer (for Carey and California) tunings. There are a few sparse notes throughout and all lyrics are listed under the song names at the begining of the book as well as under the music notation for each song.

I was drawn to this book because of the gorgeous cover photo of Joni Mitchell by Herb Ritts. I pleasantly discovered how wonderful it is to hold her beautiful poems and lyrics between the pages of a book, and to have them all in one place. True, an intro or bio or artwork or other photos would have been a bonus, but I like this book for what is. A little pricey but a great gift. I hope a companion volume of Joni's visual art is in the works.

I have liked Joni Mitchell for quite a number of years.Her "Blue" Album really moves me still to this day.this book works for me because I don't have all Her Albums nor all the lyrics so this is a cool book.I hope that a full overview of Her Career&things will be included in the future in a expanded edition of this book but for now this is really cool.

No new insight on Joni is contained here, but that is not really the point, is it? What we have here is a way to curl up with the words of a fantastic poet on cold night, to take her lyrics with us wherever we may roam. To those who would rather carry around their bulky CD cases to these scenes, be my guest. To those who would like to have the wisdom of Joni with you anywhere, this book is for you.

I bought this anthology based on the two positive reviews from other purchasers. Four stars seemed like a pretty good recommendation. However, I received the book yesterday and was fairly disappointed. Many of the songs are quite poorly done, and all of them are much too simple. Big Yellow Taxi, for instance, has several chords that are clearly not correct and sound nothing like the "real" version. I thought Circle Game was the best rendition overall, but other than that, I wouldn't bother purchasing this. I have not bought any other Joni Mitchell book, but if this is the best out there, then I think I've just discovered a niche in the market....I'll be off writing my own, and accurate, version of these songs!

This is great. I've always wanted to know how to play Carey, (I'm) Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Big Yellow Taxi, River, and other great Joni Mitchell songs.

But guess what? My two absolute favorites, "Blue" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" are both absent. Oh well. Get it anyway.

I have been looking for a comprehensive Joni Mitchell piano songbook forever! This is it. It's got all of my favorites, and probably yours, too. It's intermediate level difficulty. I was able to sight-read a lot of it, but it's definitely fun. The arrangements of some songs, like "Real Good For Free" are very accurate while others are not. Overall, this is the best Joni Mitchell piano book that I've found. Not perfect, but very very good.

Because Hinton's is the first Joni Mitchell biography I've digested, I was hoping for something that didn't leave a cheap, plastic taste in my mouth. The known parts of her life that are inspiring to me were reduced to banal fodder mentioned in passing, while darker aspects became reasons for the author to step up to her vehement defense--these outbursts were nauseating and usually at the expense of someone else, leaving many questions largely unresolved. Hinton tends to shuffle back and forth between regurgitation of objective fact and jarring personal opinion. Incidentally, I like what one reviewer said about this book reading "like a last-minute book report". The fact that he completely destroys my favorite JM album in his woefully amaturish musical critiques doesn't help either. This book does not do justice to an artist such as Mitchell.

The bulk of this book is made up of quotes taken (and endlessly repeated - verbatim) from a great Cameron Crowe interview with Joni from 1979. Save yourself the trouble & just read that.

In starting this book I had such high hopes and expectations - especially given its billing as the "first" full length book to examine Joni's art and life. But almost immediately I was disappointed, confused, and even offended by what a disgraceful work this is.
There are many reasons to fault this book but chief among them are its virtually endless stream of gratuitous (and obnoxious) opinions, its numerous irrelevant passages, and its many erroneous or questionable "facts". What was often most difficult to read were the "critiques" of the selections on each of her albums. More often than not it seemed hard to believe that this man had any appreciation of, knowledge of, or feeling for her music; at times one wondered whether he was just making up these "analyses".
His sense of the historical background and cultural milieu was comparably incredulous. Either he hates most of what the epochs (from the sixties onward) represented and/or he managed to live through them basically clueless all the while.
He seems to have a rather jaded attitude toward Joni herself. A biography need not be favorable to be accurate or fair. Yet he seems to have managed to craft a rather jarring triumverate of failings: he's inaccurate, unfair, and unsympathetic!
The photos comprise one of the few positive aspects of the book. Despite all the negative aspects I've enunmerated, I've kept my personal copy. Maybe I'll eventually reread it.....at which time I will hope to find it less obnoxious, offensive, and uninformative.