[One of my gurus, Jack Ross, 23, had some comments re Pete Seeger, whom I hagiographied yesterday. I don't agree with Jack here, I luv Seeger, but some of his asides are sharp, so I'm passing them along...]
I do begrudge Seeger for his history, though I guess I really should be thankful he did so much to clean up the Hudson. I hate "This Land Is Your Land", and the whole of Woody Warmonger's repertoire. Woody Guthrie really was nothing but the Toby Keith of the New Deal era.
I remember my horror to learn that he composed a Hanukkah song and that the cantor of my shul was singing it at some family Hanukkah service I happened to find myself at.
Still, if you get the chance, tell Seeger that you have a crazy young friend who has recordings of such long forgotten chestnuts of his as "Conscription Bill" and "UAW-CIO Makes the Army Roll and Go". The former was the best of the Almanac antiwar songs (Chorus: Oh Franklin Roosevelt/Told the people how he felt/We damn near believed what he said/He said I Hate War/And so does Eleanor/But we won't be safe till everybody's dead), the latter had a revival as a favorite bit with which SDS would make fun of the CP.
Tell him also that I think of the following verse from "Listen Mr. Bilbo" every time I walk over the Brooklyn Bridge:
In 1609 on a bright summer's day,
The Half Moon set anchor in old New York Bay,
Henry Hudson, a Dutchman took a good look around,
He said 'Boys this is gonna be a hell of a town!'
And finally also tell him that I also have the recording of his song about the Yiddish-speaking collective farm.
[Weiss. I asked Ross who Toby Keith is.]
Toby Keith is not the best example, only the most famous – my point was that Woody Guthrie was just the New Deal version of the crass pro-Bush country singer who isn't even all that country.
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I do begrudge Seeger for his history, though I guess I really should be thankful he did so much to clean up the Hudson.� I hate "This Land Is Your Land", and the whole of Woody Warmonger's repertoire. Woody Guthrie really was nothing but the Toby Keith of the New Deal era.
Love it. My sentiments exactly. Thanks, Jack.
Phil,
Your friend Ross, doesn't have a clue about Woody Guthrie.
Anyone that still concludes that the United States should have stayed out of WW2, is a shithead in my view.
(Sorry for the profanity.)
My family would not exist if that had occurred.
Howard Zinn said similarly, that the US should not have joined the war effort, that he felt guilty about serving in WW2. My wife told him that as he was bombing Germans in Hungary, that it was likely that she would not be alive if the US had not done so.
Guthrie's motive for supporting the war effort was the slogan on his guitar "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS".
Sometimes you have to go to war, even if its not literally self-defense, but just defending your allies, and every aspect of your life that you depend on.
Is that Iraq, NO?
Was that Germany, ABSOLUTELY?
Did your friend Ross understand "This Land is Your Land"? No way.
Its a pretty egregious negligence on his part, perception of spine or not.
Come on Rich, you know that this is a popular topic with Keating, Ed, Todd, Martillo, and his cunt of a wife. not to mention all the rest. Their only regret about WW2 is that Hitler lost and didn't finish the "final solution"
Pretty smug. Luckily for all of us 23-year-old Minnesotan Jew Rob Zimmerman had a slightly higher opinion of the folk legend.
dont know toby keith.
tb, traci adkins, and the other broke back mtn boys are brave warriors in the vein of wolfie and wormy. urging america's troops to fight israel's created enemies. as the wolf and the worm sit in a tax supported kosher office drinking tax supplied kosher coffee, the gay blades fight from behind microphones chest puffed out like a puffy blouse and wearing sprayed-on jeans like a night walker.
usa produces only the finest: diaper wearing, tv jew-warriors and spandex, singing-cowboys using each other as horses.
What's to understand? This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land–is an inspiring song to whichever group gains, maintains, the most political clout in our plutocracy. It also allows those doomed in the zero-sum games at play every day within the USA's physical borders–to hope, they may be top dog some day.
Folk songs are whores.
I felt the same way about Woody Guthrie. It doesn't have anything to do with whether we should have entered WWII. Rather it relates to a bullying, self-righteous tone in his work that takes things so far that it undercuts the response that he probably intended.
Guthrie relishes the emotional release of his anger more than other, more restrained artists. You may agree with the point he's making or the side he's on, but still feel uncomfortable with his emotionality and moral smugness.
It also should be noted that Woody's position on the war changed when Hitler turned on Stalin. Prior to that he'd followed the CP's isolationist line.
Was Woody the Toby Keith of his day? That statement comes across more as emotional and designed to get a rise out of people than a judicious assessment of either artist's work, but I can see why your correspondent might make that comparison.
I notice that Toby is in real hot water for his new "pro-lynching" song. It's not racist so far as I can see, but to judge from the lyrics, it's impossible to deny that Keith supports the idea of taking the law into one's own hands.
.
Joe Klein wrote a great biography about the remarkable Woody Guthrie, titled "Woody Guthrie: A Life." It attracted a unanimous 5-star rating from 14 readers at Amazon — an assessment in which I concur.
http://tinyurl.com/5srvcv
For contemporary performances of some Woody Guthrie lyrics which he never got round to setting to music, check out Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. The music and performances are by Wilco and Billy Bragg:
http://tinyurl.com/65rqeo
http://tinyurl.com/5jyvxe
The difference between Toby Keith and Woody Guthrie is that Toby Keith hasn't written anything but doggerel, and will be forgotten a few years hence. Woody Guthrie's songs live on, because he was a talented and prolific writer.
Rescued from an archive, the 60-year-old songs on the Mermaid Avenue albums sound utterly fresh and contemporary. How many songwriters manage that?
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