This is not to say that I don't have Pete Seeger songs permanently burned into my brain cells.
Sometimes my employees and I join in a cheerful of "If I had a hammer," usually when someone makes the excuse of asking for a hammer. We also talk to each other in old country song lyrics. Perhaps we are weird.
Once time the regional sales representative for Great Plains was out with the local salesman looking at my grain drill. My two little helpers were working on the baler. One of them asked for a hammer and then they burst into song. The salesmen gave me strange looks. I just said that my employees really love their job. What else is there to say?
But, I digress...
Pete is pushing up the daisies.
Here is a link to a Bob Seger song. I like Bob better than Pete.
Bob sold Chevy trucks and Beer and Pete enabled millions of hippies have nice campfire sing-a-longs. How nice!
Here is a link to a Bob Seger song not done by either Bob or Pete. Actually, I like neither one. This whole post is just basically free word association which started when I was looking up grain augers on craigslist and found an advert of a "hotrod." This made me think of Eddy and the Hot Rods and wonder if they were dead and then I thought of Pete Seeger and that made me laugh about telling people his brother's name was Bob. And that lead to Bob Seger and how much I hated the "Like a Rock," song and that the only good song he ever wrote was way more listenable when done by an British pub rock band which lead me to "Get out of Denver Baby,"which led me back to Eddy and the Hot Rods and now I'm just plain confused and my lunch is over and I have to go to work.
ANYWAY, I'd much rather listen to this song than hear "like a rock," or drive a chevy truck or sit around a campfire at the Unitarian Church and singing "where have all the flowers gone."
I really hate, "Where have all the flowers gone." But now, I strangely have the urge to hug someone...
Posts
well. that logic string made complete sense altho now i'm a little dizzy. plus. i never liked that commie hippie either. i'm just glad that i wasnt the one who said it. the fact is that my parents werent hippies - they were the generation before then. my husbands parents, tho they were in the thick of it. it causes some tense moments. anyway my point is, we sing the if i had a hammer thing too when we are working.
ReplyDeletestill frozen here but the weather should break soon. what did you have for lunch?
Pete was a pacifist whose songs became popular during the Viet Nam war. He was much more than that. They helped gather support against it. Somehow I would thought that you would applaud that.
ReplyDeleteArlo Guthrie: "I realized that Pete and my father and that crowd of people that included Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee — all of these guys had grown up before recorded music. The songs that they knew circulated by word of mouth, not by radio or by records or any electronic media. They were handed down from one person to another, from generation to generation. It was not the kind of music you could take a course on; you couldn’t get a degree in it. Nobody went to school for it. It was the kind of music you heard around the campfire or hanging out with friends. It was very different from the music we were hearing on the radio."
|f that dislike extends to Woodie Guthrie, we are going to have to have a talk.
Amen. Watch footage of Pete standing up to the congressional un-american activities committee. This guy was spring steel and whale bone.
DeleteI grew up hearing (and singing) those Pete Seger songs. Had no idea as to his political affiliations, just that they were catchy tunes, but then I am about the most non political person you will ever encounter. Where have all the flowers gone? Thats easy. They are dead and buried under the snow we get every winter. But we live in hope that they will, as they always have, return in spring. Its what gets us through our six months of winter.
ReplyDeleteI always figured that Pete's biggest accomplishment was plagiarizing the Bible so that the Byrds could have a hit with Turn, Turn, Turn..........
ReplyDeleteI like preachy liberals only slightly less than I like preachy conservatives. I just don't like that bland white person sanitized folk music genre of Pete and Woodie. I don't give a rip about Joe Hill and whoever else it was that wandered off when my back was turned.
ReplyDeleteI would much rather listen to the Carter Family or Fiddlin' John Carson. I find their music to be "real" and from the heart. Music played for the sake of the music rather than to convince white middle class kids that if Uncle Joe killed a few million it was just a bump in the road to a better society, but if Henry Ford got upset that his workers were revolting and broke a few heads it was genocide.
Neither one of them gave a rip about me. At least Henry made the flat head v-8.
This Land is Your land this land is my land has always pissed me off. I don't want to be on your land and I sure as heck don't want you on mine. So just leave the ..... alone!
If you want to sing a song tell me about how you miss the country and the big city freaks you out, or sing a hymn, or be in love, or have a broken heart, or just shut up and play your banjo just for the love of playing your banjo, I don't want to join your stupid movement, (unless there are hot chicks).