Joni Mitchell Shin

Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind is an outstanding DVD of the Canadian folk singer who discovered life in art, and kept on dreaming of better times. Producers Susan Levy and Stephanie Bennett leave room for us to make our own sense of Mitchell’s narrative. Through a highly creative blend of concert footage, paintings and retrospect, viewers cannot help but be arrested into self-assessment. “It’s hard peeling the layers off your own onion,” says Mitchell. That is exactly what this documentary does: undress popular perceptions with multiple grains of truth.

Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years 1963-1967 fills in an important chapter that heretofore has gone undocumented through in her official discography: her formative years as a folkie, playing intimate venues and radio stations while recording the occasional demo or gift tape at home…

Joni Mitchell has had one of the most peculiar career arcs in the history of popular music. Since her first stint as a superstar in the making – from about 1967 to 1975 – her overall creative catalog of complex, challenging, ever-changing music has gone more or less unnoticed by the masses. Of course, this has been done by mutual agreement between artist and audience. Mitchell has no desire to pander (when she's slipped and tried, the results have been very mixed – 1985's poorly received Dog Eat Dog, for example) and the vast majority of the pop music buying public don't want to think when they listen to favored acts.

Turns out it is a 1970 concert Joni taped in England for the BBC. It captures Joni during that golden time right between LADIES OF THE CANYON and BLUE…