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Thanks, Pete. May we have 90 more, please? (And a new national anthem would be nice...)
As we reflect upon our good fortune, viz, for 90 years sharing the planet with Pete Seeger, let us use this moment as an opportunity to begin the tortuous process of replacing the bellicose (and unsingable) S.S.B., with the far more truly American ballad This Land is Your Land.
Consider: Not only would a successful campaign end with a far improved musical product—the struggle alone, eliciting apoplectic right wing fulminations, will be a trip all by itself.
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I hereby give you the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here TPMC site, given to all of you from all of me for this line:
Consider: Not only would a successful campaign end with a far improved musical product—the struggle alone, eliciting apoplectic right wing fulminations, will be a trip all by itself.
hahaha
May 3, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
right wing fulminations
Like they say, I hear America singing...I truly believe that at least one of the Three Mousketeers (Beck, Hannity & O'Reilly) would pop an aneurism right on camera--shades of Howard Beale!.
May 3, 2009 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two points, Jolly.
1st, Agreed. One nice thing about This Land Is Your Land is people just change the place names and sing it in THEIR country. We grew up singing "from Bonavista, to Vancouver Island!" I think all national anthems should be like that. Hell, I dig the Russian one just because it's a kickass tune.
2nd. I have to commend you on even showing your face after that major league smackdown you took over on the Gossling thread. I don't normally like to treat debate like it's a fight, but dude... the floor's still shaking from where you hit. For those who want to see true brutality, Mike Tyson taking both ears, it's here.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
(I'm still laughing.)
May 3, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROTFLMAO! I guess JR will think twice before calling out anyone, esp. tpmr. Still laughing.
May 3, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
OMFG!
I have been asleep since I posted this (apologies for the consequently tardy replies...). I had forgotten all about that thread--I just picked my own bad self up off the floor.
I can only ask, (with Butch and Sundance...)
Who is that guy?
May 3, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, 90! I hope he shall overcome the stairs up to the stage to play :) Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger!
All of our music classes in elementary had to sing TLIYL. I thought it was an official anthem of some kind (historic anyway). Do the kids still sing it in school? RIP W.G.
Without Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, the world would be very different- union movement, migrant labor, civil rights, Ban the Bomb, college and public demonstrations, antiwar, Bob Dylan, counterculture...
May 3, 2009 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
he shall overcome
count on it.
Retirement kills, working keeps you *spry.
*Expect George W. Bush to receive credit from historians in 2060 for the Great Ponzi Longevity Bulge, as they will come to call the sudden increase in health and vigor caused by all the senior citizens having to go back to work.
May 3, 2009 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hilarious. Most Presidents have some kind of fitness program. Just goes to show- Bush really cared. I know I'll be excersizing more thanks to him. He really was a compassionate conservative.
May 3, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been trying for years to get the national motto "In God We Trust" changed to "Christ, What Next?" so good luck in the national anthem thing.
May 3, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is funny.
=D
May 3, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
the national anthem thing
Apparently, the adherents of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ward & Bates are already out of the gate ahead of us.
There is not a moment to lose.
May 3, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would totally dig an anthem from Skynyrd, but I'd prefer Gimme Three Steps.
I mean, an anthem with "Let's run away" as the takeaway message might help minimize foreign interventions too, right? Tough to get all cocky when you're singing "Gimme 3 steps, Gimme 3 steps Mister, Gimme 3 steps toward the door."
May 3, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gimme 3 steps
Well, you will need to fight it out with the Freebird partisans--the petition real estate is open to all comers.
On reflection, actually, I'm worried that if we change the national anthem, then Jimi's epiphany will fade from public memory.
May 3, 2009 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bev,
I like your motto, but where is your patriotism? Let the Eagle Soar!
May 3, 2009 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
[I cut two versus for length]
But ain't that always how it goes? First they take your money, then they take your clothes.
May 3, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Don, Thanks for this. No kidding.
May 3, 2009 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi, Dick.
I just happened to be listening to a CD of Guthrie songs by Wilco with Billy Bragg in my car for the last two weeks. It's called Mermaid Ave from '98 (Against th' Law, All You Fascists, Blood of the Lamb, etc.). Some of the music was rewritten or rearranged but the spirit is there.
Such great songs and he just rattled 'em off. I don't know if you like Wilco, but I bet you'd like this LP. California Stars...
beautiful.
May 3, 2009 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seeger used to just say f...it to copyright. He just felt there were songs out there and you could change the lyrics anytime you damn please.
Never sung the same song the same way.
Seeger and Guthrie could have made millions, ha.
They spent their lives pissing off the powerful.
AND SEEGER MADE IT TO 90. Is that not great!!!
May 3, 2009 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
And they live on in song. Re: Seeger's attitude, did you notice the way he changed TLIYL cenored lyrics from WG's in the link from jollyroger? (The verse applies as well)
Seeger:
Guthrie:
May 3, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
SHIT. Don, write a book on this. I would read it over and over. I love this stuff.
May 3, 2009 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn, I can’t keep my internet connection from cutting off. Let me try again…
Musically, lyrically and politically, I think those two have had as profound effect on others, ballooning to the wider culture, as most of the famous "movers and shakers" depicted in histoy textbooks.
We bitch about the MSM much these days, but the press has always protected the status quo, and guys like this have kept the public eye wide open to the hypocrisy, inequality and injustice for a very long time. On top of that, they really celebrate life and common (or uncommon) people.
I've searched the web to find any writing PS might have done online, without success. He may not be writing much these days anyway. But the internet seems like such a natural for him (like a catfish in a shaded pond).
The socialistic nature of the web seems like the unfettered freedom and personal expression he has always appealed to. No central control (though the government-corporations keep trying).
The “Copywrong” movement is what he was about before it was born. Then, too, he and WG propagated the populist protest movement (and folk music) that we keep returning to, as the youth of today seem to be.
May 3, 2009 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd be for TLIYL for the national anthem as long as the verse about private property is required in each singing. Most people have never heard that verse. They don't print that in the school songbooks. But they damn well should!
May 3, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
verse about private property
Oh, I think that we can guarantee that any successful campaign will represent so thorough a rout of the thieves, that we will memorialize it every time they cry out "Play Ball"
May 3, 2009 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe we could sing it during the seventh inning stretch instead of this!
May 3, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a jolly banker
I understand that Ken Lewis performed this very song at the last Bohemian Grove get together...
May 3, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha! But he simgs like a country Blowfish. Still the "minstrel" shows were good!
From wiki link: Not long after the Club's establishment by newspaper journalists, it was commandeered by prominent San Francisco-based businessmen, who provided the financial resources necessary to acquire further land and facilities at the Grove. They still retained the "bohemians" however — the artists and musicians — who continued to entertain international members and guests.
May 3, 2009 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink