art Archives - Heartland liberal

I don’t listen to folk music, but even I know what the iconic Joni Mitchell represents to music and music artistry.

So it’s been nice to read about her return to the stage after being sick for so long:

This summer, quite unexpectedly, two of music’s brightest stars haven’t been fresh young upstarts, but a pair of semi-reclusive female elders whose brilliance is being reaffirmed by a new generation of fans.
The 63-year-old pop legend Kate Bush’s 1985 anthem “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” is a legitimate contender for Song of the Summer — it currently sits at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, nestled between recent smashes from Harry Styles and Jack Harlow — thanks to its prominent use in the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things.” And on Sunday night, Joni Mitchell, 78, stunned attendees of the Newport Folk Festival (and the countless people who have since watched viral cellphone videos of the event) when she performed in public for the first time since her 2015 brain aneurysm, playing her first full-length live set since 2000.
Acting as an ecstatic master of ceremonies, the 41-year-old musician Brandi Carlile asked the crowd to welcome her friend Mitchell “back to the Newport stage for the first time since 1969” — which was 12 years before Carlile was born.
“Joni hasn’t always felt the appreciation that exists amongst humanity for her,” Carlile said in a CBS News interview, explaining her idea for a performance that would mimic the laid-back “Joni Jams” that Mitchell has for the past few years been hosting with peers and younger musicians in her Los Angeles living room. “But I wanted her to feel that.”

You can read the rest here.

See part of her iconic surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival below.

American authorities made an interesting discovery while sailing a Russian oligarch’s seized yacht to the U.S.

What could be a priceless Fabergé egg has been found on board a Russian oligarch’s superyacht seized by US authorities, one of the more curious items unearthed in sanctions-led investigations so far.
US deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco told the Aspen security forum on Wednesday it was one of the more “interesting” finds her team has made.
“Let’s get to the juicy stuff: the yachts,” she told the forum dedicated to discussing law enforcement’s role in freezing and seizing Russian assets. “We’ve been finding some really interesting things … we recovered a Fabergé – or alleged Fabergé egg – on one of these [yachts] so it just gets more and more interesting.”
Monaco did not specify exactly which yacht she was referring to but did say it was currently docked in San Diego Bay after it had been sailed from Fiji last month.
A $300m yacht called the Amadea was sailed by US law enforcement officials from Fiji to San Diego late last month after an extensive legal battle over which Russian oligarch owned it.

I’m as happy as the next person to see American law enforcement putting the screws to shady Russkie billionaires. But let’s never forget that your average CEO of American multinational corporations is no better as they make thousands of times more money than their lowest paid workers.

And the fact that those stupid eggs are considered to be priceless makes just as much sense.

Heartland liberal

art

Feel-good news courtesy of folk legend Joni Mitchell

Art egg described as “priceless” found aboard seized oligarch yacht