Shanghai Scrap

The staff of Shanghai Scrap has been traveling for the last week or so – three continents, 15,000 miles, in a week or so, actually – and thus posting has been light to non-existent. But, thankfully, we have found a port to call our own: Guarujá, Brazil. We’ll be spending a week on assignment here, meeting members of the local recycling industry – including this gentleman, whom we found on the beach this afternoon. According to him, aluminum cans are going for $.75/lb., roughly, and he’s not happy about that market at all.

While traveling I’ve had the time to read Michelle Mercer’s terrific Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell’s Blue Period, a careful examination of Mitchell’s work from Blue, to Hejira (Shanghai Scrap’s all-time favorite recording). It’s not a music biography, though, so much as a careful consideration of how memory intersects with imagination to create art. Highly, highly recommended – whether you’re a Joni fan or not.

Posting to be intermittent for the next few days.