The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- In Honor Of Newport 1965-A Pete Seeger Encore- The Early Work

Click On Title To Link To A Pete Seeger Appreciation Web Site.

CD REVIEWS

Darling Corey and Goofing-Off Suite, Pete Seeger, Smithstonian Folkways, 1993

This review is being used to describe several of Pete Seeger’s recordings. Although I have listened to most of his songs and recordings these are the CDs that best represent his life’s work.

My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by ‘Rock and Roll’ music exemplified by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music need not be reviewed here. Those then who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.

That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their influence on the times.

As I have noted in my reviews of Dave Van Ronk’s work, when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about the Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing "Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies" and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message, including, obviously, Pete Seeger.

Although I had probably heard Seeger’s "Had I a Golden Thread" at some earlier point I actually learned about his music second-hand from a recording of “Songs of the Spanish Civil War” which included “Viva la Quince Brigada” a tribute to the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades. Since I was intensely interested in that fight in Spain and in that “premature anti-fascist” organization I was hooked. While, like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger’s influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the previous political struggles and the ordinary people who made this country, for good or evil, what it is today.

This compilation is made of two early Seeger albums that reflect his early and on-going attempts to recapture the American folk heritage. He uses his signature banjo to great effect here. You will also find that since the release of these albums in the 1950’s many of these songs are now familiar and have frequently been covered by a whole range of later artists. Thank Pete for that. Think- “John Riley”, “Darling Corey”, “East Virginia Blues”, “Empty Pocket Blues’ and “Sally Ann” on that point.





Here are lyrics to "We Shall Overcome" made famous by Pete Seeger and others in the early 1960's part of the black civil rights struggle.

We Shall Overcome

Lyrics derived from Charles Tindley's gospel song "I'll Overcome Some Day" (1900), and opening and closing melody from the 19th-century spiritual "No More Auction Block for Me" (a song that dates to before the Civil War). According to Professor Donnell King of Pellissippi State Technical Community College (in Knoxville, Tenn.), "We Shall Overcome" was adapted from these gospel songs by "Guy Carawan, Candy Carawan, and a couple of other people associated with the Highlander Research and Education Center, currently located near Knoxville, Tennessee. I have in my possession copies of the lyrics that include a brief history of the song, and a notation that royalties from the song go to support the Highlander Center."

1.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS:
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

2.
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day

CHORUS

3.
We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day

CHORUS

4.
We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some day

CHORUS

5.
We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some day

CHORUS

6.
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day

CHORUS

7.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCES:
Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History, Second Edition (Norton, 1971): 546-47, 159-60.
The International Lyrics Server. . March 1998.
Donnell King, email message, 29 Nov. 1999.

JOHN RILEY

As I went out one morning early,
To breathe the sweet and pleasant air,
Who should I spy but a fair young maiden;
She seemed to me like a lily fair.

I stepped to her add kindly asked her,
"Would you like to be a bold sailor's wife?"
"Oh no kind sir," she quickly answered,
"I choose to lead a sweet single life."

"What makes you different from other women?
What makes you different from other kind?
For you are young, sweet, beautiful and handsome,
And for to marry you, I might incline."

"It's now kind sir that I must tell you.
I might have been married three years ago
To one John Riley who left this country.
He's been the cause of my overthrow."

"He courted me both late and early.
He courted me both night and day.
And when he had once my affections gained,
He left me here and he went away."

"Oh never mind for this Johnny Riley,
Oh come with me to the distant shore.
Why, we'll sail o'er to Pennsylvany,
And bid adieu to Riley forever more."

"I shan't go with you to Pennsylvany,
Or go with you to the distant shore.
My heart is with Riley, my long lost lover
Although I'll never see him no more."

Oh, when he saw that her love was loyal,
He gave her kisses one, two, and three,
Saying, "I'm the man you once called Johnny Riley,
Saying "I'm the cause of your misery."

"I've sailed the ocean, gained great promotion,
I've laid my money on the English shore,
And now we'll marry, no longer tarry,
And I shall never deceive you any more."

sung by Pete Seeger

DARLING COREY

Wake up, wake up, Darlin` Corey.
What makes you sleep so sound?
Them revenue officers a`commin`
For to tear your still-house down.

Well the first time I seen Darlin` Corey
She was settin` by the side of the sea,
With a forty-four strapped across her bosom
And a banjo on her knee.

Dig a hole, dig a hole, in the medder
Dig a hole, in the col` col` groun`
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the medder
Goin` ter lay Darlin` Corey down.

(above verse frequently used as chorus)
The next time I seen Darlin` Corey
She was standin` in the still-house door
With her shoes and stockin`s in her han`
An` her feet all over the floor.

Wake up,wake up Darlin Corey.
Quit hangin` roun` my bed.
Hard likker has ruined my body.
Pretty wimmen has killed me mos` dead

Wake up, wake up my darlin`;
Go do the best you can.
I`ve got me another woman;
You can get you another man.
Oh yes, oh yes my darlin`
I`ll do the best I can,
But I`ll never take my pleasure
With another gamblin` man.

Don` you hear them blue-birds singin`?
Don` you hear that mournful sound?
They`re preachin` Corey`s funeral
In some lonesome buryin` groun`

On the 16th Anniversary Of The Iraq War-From The Archives- For Bob Dylan- The Voice of The Generation Of '68?- Bob Dylan Unplugged

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Bob Dylan performing "Masters Of War".

CD REVIEW

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1962

In reviewing Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic album “Bringing All Back Home” (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. Here we are going back to the early days when there was no dispute that he had earned a place in the folk pantheon. The only real difference between the early stuff and the later electric stuff though is- the electricity. Dylan’s extraordinary sense of words, language and word play has been a constant throughout his career. If much later ( in the 1990’s) he gets a bit repetitious and a little gimmicky in order to stay “relevant” that is only much later after he had done more than his share to add to the language of music.

In this selection we have some outright folk classics that will endure for the ages like those of his early hero Woody Guthrie have endured. Blowing in the Wind still sounds good and makes sense as an anthem of change - especially today when some serious social tasks remain to be accomplished. Yes, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind (and in other locales, as well). Also here showing Dylan’s, sometimes disavowed, country roots is a very nice although Johnny Cash-less "Girl From the North Country". No anti-war song is more powerful than "Masters of War"- none. Anyone can write the easy peace songs about "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" and "Give Peace a Chance" but to really understand and really get mad about what we are up against you need to listen to this song. Pearl Jam covered it later for a reason- we still need to drive the warmongers from their marketplaces.

"Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" hits right where you live, the lyrics could have come out of out of the front pages of today’s newspaper (or Internet updates). The cover of the old blues classic "Corrina, Corrina' is fine. Another Dylan classic "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right", about the never-ending subject of lost love and longing is as well. There are a few topical songs from that time that might not make sense today- but topicals by footloose troubadours have always been a part of the folk tradition-as it is safe to say is Mr. Dylan.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen ***Yes, Put Out That Fire In Your Head- The Music Of Patty Griffin

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Patty Griffin performing "You Are Not Alone."

CD Review

Living With Ghosts, Patty Griffin, AM Records, 1996

Frankly, I do not spend much time reviewing some of the most contemporary folk artists on that scene today, although I am vitally interested in where that music is going, and who will keep the folk flame burning. Part of the reason for my neglect is, to paraphrase a somewhat famous folkie from the 1960s folk revival; it is “hard to get worked up about lyrics complaining that the family Volvo is not available or the foibles of a school vacation trip to the Swiss Alps.” (Real lyrics, believe me.) No question that much of the current scene when not just plain 'jailing' lyrics into some “politically correct” form in order to offend no one or no thing tends to those trivialities.

But not all current folk (or folk rock, which is closer to what the current genre should be called) performers are out there mainly to merely to not offend as the artist under review, Patty Griffin, amply proves. And it does not hurt that she spent some time as a waitress (ah, waitperson) in hallowed Harvard Square in Cambridge and some time singing on those hard street corners of that town in order to hone her skills. This woman “speaks” to me. Any one who puts out a lyric “put out the fire in your head” (from the final song on this CD, “Not Alone”) tells me I had best listen up because some kind of hard- learned truth is aborning. And it was, and is.

This is another one of those albums not for the faint-hearted as the above-mentioned “Not Alone” demonstrates. But Patty also speaks of dysfunctional family, sibling rivalry, loneliness, loneliness in the struggle trying to get a break, fear of failure, and fear of the pratfalls of success. In short, just those kinds of things that made me pay attention in the old days when that cranky 1960s folk revival was aborning. Listen up as the torch gets passed.

"Not Alone"

She sees him laying in the bed alone tonight
The only thing a touching him is a crack of light
Pieces of her hair are wrapped around and 'round his fingers
And he reaches for her side, for any sign of her that lingers

And she says you are not alone
Laying in the light
Put out the fire in your head
And lay with me tonight

One of them bullets went straight for the jugular vein
There were people running , a flash of light
Then everything changed
Nothing really matters in the end you know
All the worrys sever
Don't be afraid for me my friend, one day we all fall down forever

She says you are not alone
Laying in the light
Put out the fire in your head
And lay with me tonight

The wedding date was June just like any other bride
She loved him like no one before and it was good to be alive
But sometimes that can slip away as fast
As any fingers through your hands
So you let time forgive the past and go and make some other plans

You are not alone
Laying in the light
Put out the fire in your head
And lay with me tonight
You are not alone
Laying in the light
Put out the fire in your head
And lay with me tonight

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen-*From The Edges Of The Folk Revival- The Work Of Eric Andersen

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen-*From The Edges Of The Folk Revival- The Work Of Eric Andersen

CD Reviews

So Much On My Mind-The Eric Andersen Anthology, Eric Andersen, Raven Records, 2007

In the great swirl that was the folk music revival movement of the early 1960's a number of new voices were heard that created their own folk expression and were not as dependent on the traditional works of collective political struggle or social commentary associated with the likes of the Weavers, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Although Eric Andersen was a product of the intense Cambridge folk scene and knew and played with many of the stars of that scene he had a distinctive niche in that he performed mainly his own his music and his subject matter tended toward the very personal. It was only political in the most general sense that he, like the others, was breaking away from Tin Pan Alley to express his sentiments.

That said, this anthology is heavily weighted toward songs that he wrote in the 1960's and early 1970’s - the most productive period of his career. I have seen some of his more recent performances (post 1980’s) and listened to his later work and nothing compares with the work of this period. Such tunes of personal sorrow and anger as “Florentine” and “Sheila” (not included here) and well as the classic “Violets of Dawn” and “Leaving You” (not here) come from this period. Here “Time Runs Like A Freight Train” sticks out as does “Sign of a Desperate Man”.

I would note than for veteran folkies this album may suffer, as seems to be fairly common these days when artist cover their originals versions, of being over-produced. If that makes the sound more appealing to younger audiences drawn to this type of music that is to the good. If done for artistic reasons I beg to differ on the value of that effort. Especially with a fine-voiced artist like Andersen, who lived and died by the simple presentation of his songs.

In short, you have listened to (and read) the lyrics of this singer/ song writer from this time to get a real feel for his work. But if you want to take a trip back to a time when a serious argument could, and was made, that the personal was political and that folk music was, above all, about expressing the seemingly eternal notions of the complexities of love and loss then this is a part of the archives.

Thirsty Boots written by Eric Andersen

I note here that this is one of Eric Andersen's more political songs, made famous by Judy Collins, and relates to some of his friends who were working in the civil rights movement down in the South in the early 1960's.-Markin


C C/B C/A C/G
You've long been on the open road
F C C/G
You've been sleepin in the rain
C C/B C/A C/G
From the dirty words and muddy cells
F G
Your clothes are soiled and stained.
C C/B C/A C/G
But the dirty words and muddy cells
F G
Will soon be hid in shame
C F C
So only stop to rest yourself
F G
Till you'll go off again.
C F
So take off your thirsty boots
C F
And stay for awhile
C C/B C/A
Your feet are hot and weary
Dm G
From a dusty mile
C F
And maybe I can make you laugh
C F
Maybe I can try
C C/B C/A
I'm just lookin' for the evening
Dm G C
And the morning in your eyes.
C C/B C/A C/G
But tell me of the ones you saw
F C C/G
As far as you could see
C C/B C/A C/G
Across the plain from field to town
F G
A-marching to be free
C C/B C/A C/G
And of the rusted prison gates
F G
That tumbled by degree
C F C
Like laughing children one by one
F G
They looked like you and me
C F
So take off your thirsty boots
C F
And stay for awhile
C C/B C/A
Your feet are hot and weary
Dm G
From a dusty mile
C F
And maybe I can make you laugh
C F
Maybe I can try
C C/B C/A
I'm just lookin' for the evening
Dm G C
And the morning in your eyes.
C C/B C/A C/G
I know you are no stranger down
F C C/G
The crooked rainbow trails
C C/B C/A C/G
From dancing cliff-edged shattered sills
F G
Of slender shackled jails
C C/B C/A C/G
But the voices drift up from below
F G
As the walls they're being scaled
C G C
All of this and more
F G
Your song shall not be failed.
C F
So take off your thirsty boots
C F
And stay for awhile
C C/B C/A
Your feet are hot and weary
Dm G
From a dusty mile
C F
And maybe I can make you laugh
C F
Maybe I can try
C C/B C/A
I'm just lookin' for the evening
Dm G C
And the morning in your eyes.

VIOLETS OF DAWN
(Eric Anderson)

Take me to the night I'm tipping
Topsy turvy turning upside down.
Hold me close and whisper what you will
For there is no-one else around.
Oh, you can sing-song me sweet smiles
Regardless of the city's careless frown.
Come watch the no colors fade, blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

In blindful wonderments enchantments
You can lift my wings softly to flight.
Your eyes are like swift fingers
Reaching out into the pockets of my night
Oh whirling twirling puppy-warm
Before the flashing cloaks of darkness gone.
Come see the no colors fade, blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

Some Prince Charming I'd be on two white steeds
To bring you dappled, diamond crowns
And climb your tower, Sleeping Beauty,
'Fore you even know I've left the ground.
Oh you can wear a Cinderella, Snow White,
Alice Wonderlanded gown.
Come see the no colors fade, blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

But if I seem to wander off in dream-like looks
Please let me settle slowly.
It's only me just starin' out at you,
A seeming stranger speaking holy.
No, I don't mean to wake you up,
It's only loneliness just coming on.
So let the no colors fade, blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

Like shadows bursting into mist
Behind the echoes of this nonsense song
It's just the chasing, whispering trails
Of secret steps, oh see them laughing on.
There's magic in the sleepiness
Of waking to a childing sounding yawn.
Come see the no colors fade, blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

Written by Eric Anderson
Copyright United Artists Music Co., Inc.


Close The Door Lightly When You Go (Eric Andersen)

Turn around, don't whisper out my name
For like a breeze it'd stir a dying flame
I'll miss someone, if it eases you to know
But close the door lightly when you go

Chorus:
Who was the one that stole my mind
Who was the one that robbed my time
Who was the one who made me feel unkind
So fare thee well, sweet love of mine

Take your tears to someone else's eyes
They're made of glass, and they cut like wounding lies
Memories, are drifting like the snow
So close the door lightly when you go

Chorus

Don't look back to where you once had been
Look straight ahead, when you're walking through the rain
And find a light, if the path gets dark and cold
But close the door lightly when you go

Chorus

Turn around, don't whisper out my name
For like a breeze it'd stir a dying flame
I'll miss someone, if it eases you to know
But close the door lightly when you go



My Land Is A Good Land (Eric Andersen)

My land is a good land
Its grass is made of rainbow blades
Its fields and its rivers were blessed by God
It's a good land so they say
It's a good land so they say

My land is a rich land
Its hills and its valleys abound
Its highways go to many good places
Where many good people are found
Where many good people are found

My land is a sweet land
It's a sweet land so I've heard
Its song is made up of many men's hands
And a throat of a hummingbird
And a throat of a hummingbird

(instrumental on 'Bout Changes 2, 1st verse on 'Bout Changes 1)

My land is a free land
It's a free land so I'm told
Freedom is a thing money can't buy
And it's worth even more than gold
And it's worth even more than gold

My land is my homeland
My homeland is a strong land too
It starts where the sun is born each morn
And it ends where the skies are blue
And it ends where the skies are blue

My land is a good land
Its grass is made of rainbow blades
Its fields and its rivers were blessed by God
It's a good land so they say
It's a good land so they say


Waves: Great American Song Series, Volume 2, Eric Andersen and various artists, Appleseed Records, 2005

This first paragraph is taken from a previously reviewed Eric Andersen CD.

“In the great swirl that was the folk music revival movement of the early 1960's a number of new voices were heard that created their own folk expression and were not as dependent on the traditional works of collective political struggle or social commentary associated with the likes of the Weavers, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Although Eric Andersen was a product of the intense Cambridge folk scene and knew and played with many of the stars of that scene he had a distinctive niche in that he performed mainly his own his music and his subject matter tended toward the very personal. It was only political in the most general sense that he, like the others, was breaking away from Tin Pan Alley to express his sentiments.”

Here, Eric, older and wiser (right?) pays musical tribute to his fellow singer/songwriters of the 1960’s who influenced his own work and were in turn influenced by his. An added attraction is accompaniment by Arlo Guthrie, Tom Rush, Judy Collins and other artists that also were instrumental in that period or who were later influenced by the songwriters covered here. So what is good here? Tom Paxton’s “Ramblin’ Boy”; Tim Buckley’s “Once I Was”; Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes”, and Richard Farina’s “Bold Marauders”. Like I say this is a labor of love and it shows.


Pale Blue Eyes- Lou Reed

Sometimes I feel so happy,
Sometimes I feel so sad.
Sometimes I feel so happy,
But mostly you just make me mad.
Baby, you just make me mad.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I've had but couldn't keep.
I've had but couldn't keep.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see,
I'd put you in the mirror,
I put in front of me.
I put in front of me.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

Skip a life completely.
Stuff it in a cup.
She said, Money is like us in time,
It lies, but can't stand up.
Down for you is up."
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

It was good what we did yesterday.
And I'd do it once again.
The fact that you are married,
Only proves, you're my best friend.
But it's truly, truly a sin.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

For Bob Dylan-*Bringing It All Back Home, Indeed- Bob Dylan’s Later Work -"Good As I Been To You"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan Doing Stephen Foster's 19th Century classic "Hard Times" (a very appropriate song for these times). Talk About Dylan's Knowledge Of The 'American Songbook'. This Is A Case In Point.

CD Review

Good As I Been To You, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1992

The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.

Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan's music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of '68. But, please, don't blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ....like a rolling stone?

All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan's vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life times' summing up driving the music. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the so-called American Songbook that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental (for him) songster it is good to see him return once more to his beginnings. "Bringing It All Back Home", "Blonde On Blonde" and "Blood On The Tracks" will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well.

Stick outs here include; a now timely cover of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times"; the classic, much covered (in various versions) "Frankie And Albert"; a tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks with "Sitting On Top Of The World"; the Irish freedom struggle -related "Arthur McBride (founder of Sinn Fein); and, a very crooner-like "Tomorrow Night". On this last one are we sure Dylan didn't want, among all his other personas, to be Frank Sinatra, or at least a wanna-be?

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

For Bob Dylan *“Tangled Up In Blue”- Up Close And Personal With Bob Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks” Album-The Trans-Atlantic View

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan performing "Tangled Up In Blue' From The 'Blood On The Tracks" Album.

DVD Review

Bob Dylan: Changing Tracks, Edgehill, 2006

Most of the review below was used in a review of the film documentary “Bob Dylan:1966-1978: After The Crash”, which covers much of the same material, as background, to an up close and personal discussion among Trans-Atlantic professionals music critics about what is, perhaps, Bob Dylan’s master work “Blood On The Tracks”. There should be no question that the lushness and profuseness of the lyrics of more than a dozen songs presented under one album cover may be unequaled in music history. Maybe something of the Beatles, maybe of the Stones or that one of Elvis’ in 1956 but not much else is even in the competition:

“Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan’s music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of ’68. But, please, don’t blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, …. like a rolling stone?”

Frankly, I have covered so much Bob Dylan material, early, middle and late, over the past year I am beginning to feel like the guy interviewed in the “After The Crash” DVD who made something of a ‘journalistic’ career (if also a nuisance) of going through Dylan’s garbage to see if he could find the “Rosetta Stone” to decode the meaning of his lyrics. Whew! At least I am not that bad off. I “merely” write reviews of what, as is the case here, Trans-Atlantic (meaning from the British Isles and their environs) professional music reviewers think Dylan was up to and his place in the folk/rock/pop pantheons.

I will just quickly run through the main points that are presented here as the “talking heads’ who dominate this documentary are fully capable of taking you through the technical/musical/cultural/personal highlights of this lyrically beautiful and poetically dense album from a very productive period in Dylan’ career. The center of the documentary revolves around a serious discussion of the first song “Tangled Up In Blue”, its meaning in Dylan ‘s personal life (he was having marital difficulties), his movement away from the starkness of some of his earlier American roots roots-oriented music ("John Wesley Harding") and his desire to develop a “concept” album heading back to a more folk/rock look than some of his just previous work. Additional highlights center on the bittersweet” Idiot Wind” and the ambivalent “Shelter From The Storm”. Less time is spent on my favorite, “If You See Her, Say Hello’ and my now up and coming favorite (after I heard Dave Van Ronk do a version) “Buckets Of Rain”. If you have to chose though between this one hour presentation and the other two hour, “After The Crash”, DVD mentioned above go for the latter, it is more complete story of this period in Dylan’s musical evolution.


"Tangled up in Blue"

Early one mornin the sun was shinin,
I was layin in bed
Wondrin if shed changed at all
If her hair was still red.
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like mamas homemade dress
Papas bankbook wasnt big enough.
And I was standin on the side of the road
Rain fallin on my shoes

Heading out for the east coast
Lord knows Ive paid some dues gettin through,
Tangled up in blue.

She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess,
But I used a little too much force.
We drove that car as far as we could
Abandoned it out west
Split up on a dark sad night
Both agreeing it was best.
She turned around to look at me
As I was walkin away
I heard her say over my shoulder,
Well meet again someday on the avenue,
Tangled up in blue.

I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to new orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin for a while on a fishin boat
Right outside of delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

She was workin in a topless place
And I stopped in for a beer,
I just kept lookin at the side of her face
In the spotlight so clear.
And later on as the crowd thinned out
Is just about to do the same,
She was standing there in back of my chair
Said to me, dont I know your name?
I muttered somethin underneath my breath,
She studied the lines on my face.
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe,
Tangled up in blue.

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
I thought youd never say hello, she said
You look like the silent type.
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin coal
Pourin off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue.

I lived with them on montague street
In a basement down the stairs,
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air.
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died.
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside.
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue.

So now Im goin back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
Theyre an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters wives.
Dont know how it all got started,
I dont know what theyre doin with their lives.
But me, Im still on the road
Headin for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

For Bob Dylan *Bringing It All Back Home, Indeed- Bob Dylan’s Later Work -"Love And Theft"

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan Doing His Arrangement Of "High Water" In Honor Of The legendary Bluesman Charley Patton.

CD Review

Love And Theft, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 2001

The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.

Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan’s music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of ’68. But, please, don’t blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ….like a rolling stone?

All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan’s vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life times’ summing up driving the music. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the so-called American Songbook that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental (for him) songster it is good to see him return ever more to his beginnings. “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Blonde On Blonde” and “Blood On The Tracks” will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well.

Stick outs here include "High Water" (his tribute to the legendary Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton; a very lyrically mysterious "Mississippi"; a plaintive "Po' Boy": and, a seeming return to 1920's pop culture Rudy Vallee crooner-type "Bye And Bye".



"Charley Patton- High Water Everywhere (part 1) lyrics"

Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I'll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town
Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed
You know I can't stay here,
I'll go where it's high, boy
I would goto the hilly country,
but, they got me barred
Now, look-a here now at Leland
river was risin' high
Look-a here boys around Leland tell me,
river was raisin' high
Boy, it's risin' over there, yeah
I'm gonna move to Greenville
fore I leave, goodbye
Look-a here the water now, Lordy,
Levee broke, rose most everywhere
The water at Greenville and Leland,
Lord, it done rose everywhere
Boy, you can't never stay here
I would go down to Rosedale
but, they tell me there's water there
Now, the water now, mama,
done took Charley's town
Well, they tell me the water,
done took Charley's town
Boy, I'm goin' to Vicksburg
Well, I'm goin' to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine
I am goin' up that water,
where lands don't never flow
Well, I'm goin' over the hill where,
water, oh don't ever flow
Boy, hit Sharkey County and everything was down in Stovall
But, that whole county was leavin',
over that Tallahatchie shore Boy,
went to Tallahatchie and got it over there
Lord, the water done rushed all over,
down old Jackson road
Lord, the water done raised,
over the Jackson road
Boy, it starched my clothes
I'm goin' back to the hilly country,
won't be worried no more

"High Water Everywhere (part 2)"

Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The man said to his women folk, "Lord, we'd better go"
The water was risin', got up in my bed
Lord, the water was rollin', got up to my bed
I thought I would take a trip, Lord,
out on the big ice sled
Oh, I can hear, Lord, Lord, water upon my door,
you know what I mean, look-a here
I hear the ice, Lord, Lord, was sinkin' down,
I couldn't get no boats there, Marion City gone down
So high the water was risin' our men sinkin' down
Man, the water was risin' at places all around,
boy, they's all around
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down Lord, have mercy
I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.