#FortnightFridayMusic
April 17 2026
The word is #green

The song is Little Green, by Joni Mitchell, from her 1971 album Blue. She wrote it for her daughter, whom she named Kelly, the reference is Kelly Green.

https://youtu.be/epmz46Fgu4w?si=dc1Zt9IOsolPBlg_

#AlternateFridayMusic
April 10 2026
The word is #Air

The song is From the Air, by Laurie Anderson, from her 1982 album Big Science.

https://youtu.be/9Zqqfi_qtH8?si=N4xgT8ODBaGvxJy6

#FortnightFridayMusic
March 20 2026
The mood is #Indigo

The song is Turbulent Indigo, by Joni Mitchell, from her 1994 album of the same name. Joni was invited to a young artists’ program in Canada, where teachers were trying to cultivate “young Van Goghs”. Joni wrote this song as a response to the program. She painted herself as Van Gogh for the album cover.

You wanna make Van Goghs
Raise 'em up like sheep
Make 'em out of Eskimos
And women if you please
Make 'em nice and normal
Make 'em nice and neat
You see him with his shotgun there?
Bloodied in the wheat?
Oh what do you know about
Living in Turbulent Indigo?

Brash fields crude crows
In a scary sky
In a golden frame
Roped off
Tourists guided by
Tourists talking about the madhouse
Talking about the ear
The madman hangs in fancy homes
They wouldn't let him near!
He'd piss in their fireplace!
He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo

"I'm a burning hearth" he said
"People see the smoke
But no one wants to warm themselves
Sloughing off a coat
And all my little landscapes
All my yellow afternoons
Stack up around this vacancy
Like dirty cups and spoons
No mercy Sweet Jesus!
No mercy from Turbulent Indigo"

https://youtu.be/2wE58Yobx74?si=aau9xu00P3jWiY9z

#FortnightFridayMusic
Dec 26 2025
The word is #Apathy

The song is Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free), by Joni Mitchell, from the album Night Ride Home.

Enter the multitudes
In Exxon blue
In radiation rose
Apathy
Now you tell me
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free?
(Who're you gonna get)

https://youtu.be/uLMze6y9YaA?si=0KHtx_fCiyoxIjYB

#FortnightFridayMusic
Dec 12 2025

This time, it’s a #Breakup

Old school, the song is Break Up to Make Up by the Stylistics, from their 1972 album The Stylistics: Round 2.

https://youtu.be/PHvpbKpy7d4?si=g4kjHKyhdhCLdmDv

#FortnightFridayMusic
Nov 28, 2025
The word is #Captive

This as a very well known song by Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game, from her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

https://youtu.be/DGHjHU_Z8d8?si=SCMfsvmqjo5d4ePl

#FortnightFridayMusic
Nov 14 2025

The word is #Defend

The song is Borderline, by Joni Mitchell, from her album Turbulent Indigo.

…You snipe so steady
You snub so snide
So ripe and ready
To diminish and deride!
You're so quick to condescend
My opinionated friend
All you deface all you defend
Is just a borderline
Just a borderline
Another borderline
Just a borderline…

https://youtu.be/rqOzVh4eLqc?si=z-mqotrn_ijz8ed_

#AlternateFridayMusic
October 10, 2025
#universe

The song is Cosmogony, by Bjork, from her album Biophilia. References different versions of the creation of the universe.

https://youtu.be/yHCQ6Pgfk28?si=KwWAcM8kHnb_yfCC

#FortnightFridayMusic
Oct 03 2025
The prompt is #Ground

This song was written by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman in 1948. It’s about a true story of a plane full of deportees going back to Mexico; the plane caught fire and crashed to the ground. No one bothered to even have names of the passengers, so the song makes up their names.

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotten
The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps
They're flying us back to the Mexico border
To pay all our money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mi amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be Deportee

Now my father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
Six-hundred miles to the Mexico border
They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

The sky-plane caught fire, over Los Gatos Canyon
A big ball of fire, it shook all the ground
Who are these friends, who are falling like dry leaves
The radio said they were just deportees

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

But we died in your hills, we died in your valleys
We died in your orchards, we died on your plains
We died on your deserts, we died in your treetops
Both sides of the river we died just the same

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

© 1948

#FortnightFridayMusic
Sept 19 2025
The prompt is #Home

The song is California, by Joni Mitchell, from her album Blue. Such a pretty song. There is dulcimer, pedal steel, and Joni’s voice. She’s traveling the world and longs to get back home to California.

“Sitting in a park in Paris France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't want to stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here
Oh but California

California I'm coming home
I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I'm coming home”

https://youtu.be/Lm39YkGrHp8?si=z0BjjJqmm4a-3kzF

#AlternateFridayMusic
Aug 15 2025
The prompt is #Quiet

The song is Lesson in Survival, by Joni Mitchell, from her album For the Roses.

Lesson in Survival
Spinning out on turns
That gets you tough
Guru books-the Bible
Only a reminder
That you're just not good enough
You need to believe in something
Once I could in our love
Black road
Double yellow line
Friends and kin
Campers in the kitchen
That's fine sometimes
But I know my needs
My sweet tumbleweed
I need more quiet times
By a river flowing
You and me
Deep kisses
And the sun going down

https://youtu.be/g6cxxPKIXSY?si=GVyXpPKgyI-pgwno

#FortnightFridayMusic
Jul 11 2025
The prompt is #Movement

The song is Wanderlust, by Bjork, from her album Volta.

wanderlust!
from island to island
wanderlust!
united in Movement
wonderful!
I enjoy it with you

https://youtu.be/NKIiPvowk-c?si=b15ZtD1bgXfJ3Agb

#AlternateFridayMusic
July 04 2025 is "Never"

The song is Cool Water, written by Bob Nolan, revised lyrics by Joni Mitchell, from her album Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm. Added vocals by Willie Nelson. An excerpt:

Keep on movin' Dan
We're still in no-man's land
Dry bones and sand
People never planned here for water
Cool clear water
In my mind I see
A big green tree
And a river flowin' free
Waiting up ahead for you and me
Cool clear water

https://youtu.be/-dBymrfhYI8?si=Pvrt_1xR9TVswdJy

#FortnightFridayMusic

May 30 2025
The prompt is Prove

Bjork, Cover Me, from her album Post:

While I crawl into the unknown
cover me

I'm going hunting for mysteries
cover me

I'm going to Prove the impossible really exists

This is really dangerous
cover me

But worth all the effort
cover me

I'm going to Prove the impossible really exists

https://youtu.be/QW0fwUTedNE?si=jjemp1TRIXG2LVAd

#AlternateFridayMusic
Friday May 9, 2025
The prompt is Jerk

This brings us back to an old school dance track, 1966, The Capitols singing Cool Jerk. Here’s an article about the background of the song, when it was originally titled Pimp Jerk.

https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-real-meaning-of-r-song-cool-jerk.html

https://youtu.be/ypIzdi9PoJA?si=Dc_mY75SRm1Kc5v4

#AlternateFridayMusic
April 25, 2025
The prompt is Insects

Insect Song, a kids’ song by Have Fun Teaching

“Insects have an exoskeleton…”

https://youtu.be/lxH7NBbL9JY?feature=shared

#AlternateFridayMusic
March28 2025
The prompt is Gather

Joni Mitchell covered the song Pastures of Plenty, written by Woody Guthrie, a song about migrant farm workers.

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and westward we rolled
Your deserts were hot and your mountain was cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of your moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we’re gone with the wind

California Arizona, I made all your crops
Now it’s up north up to Oregon to GATHER your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table that light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters roll down
Every state in this Union us migrants have been
We'll stay in this fight and we'll fight until we win

https://youtu.be/a4wEiG8-Sh4?si=NnhhQdQy9hfXDKOM

#FortnightFridayMusic
March 7, 2025
The prompt is Void.

The artist is Bjork, the song is Victimhood, from the album Fossora.

Oh, who am I
That this has happened to ?
Victimhood
Rejection, it left a Void
That is never satisfied
Sunk into victimhood
Felt the world owed me love

Only bird’s-eye view
Can help me transgress
Out of this hole

#FortnightFridayMusic
Feb 07 2025
The prompt is Xeno-

The song is Xenophobia, by Paul Sutton, from his album Past Due.

https://www.karaoke-lyrics.net/lyrics/sutton-bill/xenophobia-885237

The first verse:

Let's be xenophobic! It's really in this year
Let's find a nasty, slimy, ugly alien to fear
There's no more cutesy stories 'bout E.T. phoning home
Let's learn to love our neighbors, like the Christians learned in Rome!

#AlternateFridayMusic
Jan 31 2025

The prompt is Colour

Incredible String Band, song "Creation" from their album Miscellaneous.

If you are not familiar with ISB, take some time and dive into their very original music.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/incredible-string-band-creation-lyrics.html

A snippet of lyrics:

The first day was golden
And she coloured the sun
And she named it Hyperion
And she made it a day of light and healing