Tribute to Woody Guthrie

[JerseyMike]

I won tix from Rolling Stone, got the VIP treatment. Unfortunately the VIP treatment included hanging around a bunch of souless corporate execs who wouldn't shut the fuck up, so we moved downstairs, but not before rubbing elbows with Stone Gossard, Tom Morello and Susan Sarandon...

 

The music:

Tim Robbins Kids' band- missed them but someone told me "they werent bad for 16 year olds"

 

Tim Robbins and Band- misssed them too. Was at MSG trying to score Bruce tix. Bob Roberts anyone?

 

Brad (featuring Stone Gossard of Peral Jam)- only got to see three songs, but they were ok. It was mellow, soulful and "grungey"

 

Steve Earle- not his best performance, but he got everyone all riled up, and he's still telling the same stories word for word for the past 6 years

Set:

(Fuck the) FCC

Tennesee Blues

Steve's Hammer

Christmas Time in Washington

 

Billy Bragg- very good set, did all Mermaid Ave. stuff and talked about wanting to do a Mermaid Ave. III (please discuss)

SET:

Against Th' Law

Another Man's Done Gone (very poigant, as it was a benefit for Huntingtons diesease)

Ingrid Bergman

Song (unreleased and maybe unrecorded from Mermaid Ave. sessions)

Black Wind Blowing

Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key

**a capella song about Republicans' "bungholes" and "twatholes"**

 

The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and AudioSlave)

Played 2 songs I didn't know, but they were good. He was full of ebergy and bought the whole place up, kind of a hip-hop attitude. Bith songs were good, mean and very, very political

This Land is Your Land (with all of the performers (Brad, Earle, Bragg, Robbins, and Robbins' kids band and some guy I don't know on lead gtr.)-

This was great. The song featured all of the original verses, which many people have never heard because they were sensored over time because they are quite critical. Bragg took the first, Robbins the 2nd, Brad guy the 3rd, Earle the 4th and then Morello, who said this before the verse: "I'm going to sing the verse that you've never heard. your going to listen and become enraged. Then I will ask a question and you all will answer in full throat, then we will sing the chorus while jumping up and down and going totally batshit!" Everyone followed suit. Twice. Good way to end the night.

 

A good time was had, and it was quite inspiring. i was glad I decided to go!

[dannygutters]

The song featured all of the original verses, which many people have never heard because they were sensored over time because they are quite critical.

 

I've never bought this story. Woody was never one for not embellishing or recording / writing a song the same way twice. Moe Asche was pretty much the only person recording Woody, And it's unlikely to me that Moe would have censored him, on the Asche recordings you can hear several versions of the song and some have the verses some do not. Maybe they told him not to play it on some of the radio shows he was on but he never stayed those jobs long enough to face any cordinated censorship. Tho it is true that the version we are most farmilliar with does not contain the verses, this is probably due to the fact that the sheet music distributed to public schools by Howie Richmond doesn't include them. Maybe he felt the verses weren't appropriate for school kids but I've never seen any evidence to backup a conspiracy of censorship.

 

I guess i just don't like tom's sthick he tries to make woody's song more combatative than they were.

[JerseyMike]

Tho it is true that the version we are most farmilliar with does not contain the verses, this is probably due to the fact that the sheet music distributed to public schools by Howie Richmond doesn't include them.

 

That is censorship, correct?

[dannygutters]

I haven't heard anything about Howie's choice to choose one arrangement over another. I'd like to see it if anyone knows, but everything I've heard is speculation. I mean I can see why it's propagated, censorship is a more attractive myth than woody's randomness.

 

Besides, woody wrote songs to make you take pride in yourself not make you "batshit enraged".

[JerseyMike]

Besides, woody wrote songs to make you take pride in yourself not make you "batshit enraged".

 

Whover said that was Woody's intent? And if you have actually ever listened to his lyrics, you would find that many of them are not, in fact, intended to make you feel proud of yourself. "This Land is Your Land" was written as an angry response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", not to have 3rd grade classes sing in assemblys across the country. And as far as 'batshit enraged", Tom Morello was trying to get a crowd fired up and he did a great job of doing it. The verses to that song do exist. And they do question the direction of America during the great depression, and I'm sure that they were written out of anger and questioning: "And I wondered, if this land was really made for you and me."

[dannygutters]

Whover said that was Woody's intent?

 

well, woody for one.

 

"I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."

 

the intent of the song wasn't my question tho. If you look at the manuscript for the song (i think there is a link to it on the wikipedia page) you can see the verses are present in a song called "God Blessed America". Woody didn't record this song until 5 years later, at that time it was given the "This Land" title and the verses aren't present (on the Asche recordings) tho they are in subsequent recordings and sheet music. MY question is, Was there actually an effort to censor this song or was it just woody being a songwriter and changing a song throughout it's life to his whim.

 

Tho as far as that quote, it's a good one from one of his more elequent diatribes:

 

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. ... I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.

And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow. " -Woodrow