A little excavating. Please indulge. If you've been following the rapturous reviews of Lisa Cholodenko's latest, The Kids Are All Right, one thing you may have noticed is that the lesbian couple played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore named their daughter, conceived with sperm from an anonymous donor, Joni. After Mitchell, natch. Hell, Bening's character apparently even lets loose with an a capella rendition of "All I Want," at some point.
But it gets a little more complicated than a mere "Oh, the lesbians, with their folk music! Of course!" once you delve into the accompanying pieces, which note that director Cholodenko and her partner have themselves had a child with the aid of an anonymous sperm donor. Her partner Wendy Melvoin. You know, old people:
That Wendy. Who, according to an amazing recent piece* on Prince's "Purple Rain" by Matthew de Abaitua at Hilobrow, not only made her debut with Prince the night that "Purple Rain" was first recorded but also, with then-girlfriend Lisa Coleman:
introduce[d] Prince to music he has never heard before — Gustav Mahler, the English pastoral of Vaughan Williams, the experiments of Joni Mitchell and Peter Gabriel. It’s an education for him.
Joni. For whom Chaka Khan sang backing vocals long before charting a hit with the Prince-penned "I Feel 4 U." Joni, whose 1988 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm featured a collaboration with... Wendy & Lisa. Joni, whose 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon's name refers to Laurel Canyon. Yeah, that Laurel Canyon.
RELATED: An interview with The Kids Are All Right's music supervisor, Liza Richardson.
*Seriously, go read it RIGHT NOW. Here's the lede:First Avenue, August 3rd, 1983
Wendy Melvoin is fresh from high school. She is a wearing a V-necked sleeveless top, and patterned shorts. She is playing the first chords of a new song on her purple guitar, opening chords that she wrote, a circular motif with a chorus effect. Wendy is eighteen-nineteen and she has the high cheekbones and diffident confidence of a Hollywood upbringing. She half-smiles at the faces that crowd close to the low club stage. This is Wendy’s first gig with the new band, and the song she is playing is “Purple Rain,” and nobody in the audience has ever heard “Purple Rain” before because this is the night that Prince and the Revolution record the song.
