Category: Music

Pete, Bruce, Beyonce and Obama: the Changing of the Guard

Brucespringsteen_l

There they are: two of the cultural icons of my political life.  Pete Seeger, close to 90, peer and colleague of Woody Guthrie, creator of We Shall Overcome and Turn Turn Turn, of Abiyoyo and Sam the Whaler, leader of The Almanac Singers and the Weavers.  If there was a civil rights rally or a labor rally or an anti-war rally, he was there. 

Beside him, Bruce Springsteen, a modern troubadour whose songs speak for many Americans whose opinions are never sought, whose voices are seldom heard.

As they stood together at the Lincoln Memorial in celebration of the Inauguration of Barack Obama, they represented, to me, all that I had believed and tried to help bring into being.  To many, though, they were “the ultimate in subtly old-left populism.”  Speaking about the concert early Sunday before it began, I kept talking about Bruce.  A younger friend gently suggested that he was probably not the day’s headliner.  That would be Beyonce Knowles, she said.  I’m sure she’s right. 

As one who was present the last time “the torch was passed to a new generation;” as a strongly defined Baby Boomer, it’s painful to hear anchormen celebrate the fact that “there will never be another Baby Boom President.”  It’ s not that I mind the fact of that; it’s just painful that it seems to be something to celebrate.  So many of us have tried so to be productive agents of change, have spent our lives working either full or part of the time to see that our country offers more to the least powerful, demands quality education, justice and maybe, even peace.  So to hear Joe Scarborough revel in the fact that “16 horrible years of baby boomer presidents is over” really hurts.  All my adult life we’ve been tarred by the brush of the least attractive of us while the work of the rest of us went unnoticed.  For most campaigns, as I’ve written before, we were the secret weapon of the right.

So as exciting as all this is, especially for one who has supported Obama for so long, it’s also bittersweet because I feel the shadow of the disdain in which so many of us are held.  I really don’t know how to respond.  If I were to try, it might be by offering some of the words to Si Kahn‘s They All Sang Bread and Roses.  It’s better with the music, but it does the job.

They All Sang “Bread and Roses (Si Kahn, 1989,
1991)

The more I
study history,

The more I
seem to find

That in
every generation

There are
times just like that time

When folks
like you and me who thought

That they
were all alone

Within this
honored movement

Found a
home.

 

And ‘though
each generation fears

That it
will be the last,

Our
presence here is witness

To the
power of the past.

And just as
we have drawn our strength

From those
who now are gone,

Younger
hands will take our work

And carry
on.

Edgy, Funny Prop. 8 “Musical” — Hilarious or Horrible? Doogie, Jack Black, CJ (aka Juno’s stepmom), Maya and more

I missed this one* so figure maybe you did too.  I promise to be back with a "real" post soon but it's pretty provocative so wanted to share it. (Read more about the battle over Proposition 8 here.)  There are a lot of comments on the original page that call it blasphemous and it's certainly edgy – but well – what do you think?

*For background on the video, try this.

MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

Kristopherson_2For weeks I’ve been writing about politics here, but today – some personal politics. They say the personal is political, and for me, the personal is music (and political) — and music makes all the difference — through time, sadness, joy, loneliness, political anguish, even spiritual connection. 

I’ve started walking every morning – around two miles.  Part of the reason is that I never get to listen to music anymore, so on my walks, I pretty much let my iPod take me wherever "shuffle" wants to go.  For while we moved from Bruce to Great Big Sea to Juno.   Then things got serious – an anthem really, of a time in my life when I valued awareness, aliveness, presence above all else: along came Me and Bobby McGee.  Kris Kristofferson wrote it but this is one of the few videos I could find of him performing it – Janis Joplin’s version was the famous one.  Still — it was this version, Kristofferson’s, that spoke to me.

A cut-loose road song and a love song too.  "Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose."  I remember my mother railing against this chorus — claiming that freedom was real and important and much more than "nothin’ left to lose" and she was probably right, but then…  Then that road life was one I craved but never had the nerve to undertake and this song was my chance to travel along.  Later, on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner did a monologue as "Bobby McGee" who had moved home, and whose "mom even kept my room for me."  She’d given up.  There I sat on our water bed in our Upper West Side apartment in our married, new baby life, and cried. It was way too familiar.  Made me face the gap between what I had wished and what I was, that gap we all face as we enter "grown up" lives, with kids and responsibilities.

Then, around the time my walk reached Georgia Avenue, I traveled to London’s Grosvenor Square, and Scarlet Begonias.  The Robert Hunter/Grateful Dead song included this description:  "Wind in the willows playin’ tea for two;   The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, Strangers stoppin’ strangers just to shake their hand, Everybody”s playing in the heart of gold band."  It sounds comical now, I suppose, and it was really about Dead concerts, but I remember so many marches where people passed food around, each taking what they needed, and driving on the turnpikes on the way as we gave M&Ms to each tollbooth operator along with our quarters and even, at the first Clinton inauguration, being hugged by some guy I’d never met as I stood alone, close to tears (again) when Bob Dylan came out and surprised everyone.   

Continue reading MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

Shut_up_and_sing_2Have you seen  this movie?  I sat in bed watching it early Sunday morning on cable and was just blown away.  It’s one of the saddest, scariest, most moving American documentaries I’ve seen in a long time.  That’s no surprise, since it was directed by  Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County USA – the landmark documentary about coal mine union battles in Kentucky.

What happened to the Dixie Chicks is infuriating: performing in London just before the start of the Iraq war, lead singer Natalie Maines (married, by the way, to HEROES star Adrian Pasdar,) told the crowd "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."  The scene is included in this preview.


As I watched the film, seeing the rage and cruelty that emerged in the response to this one sentence,  my first thought was, "Oh my God, what does this mean for Barack Obama?"  The people who went after the Dixie chicks were nowhere near a sense of respect for the First Amendment – and sounded like they would be particularly vulnerable to "elitist" or racist accusations against a candidate.  If you remember the exit polls in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania you’ll recall that many respondents just about acknowledged that they would not vote for Senator Obama simply because of his race.  Am I unfair to wonder if many of those people are the same ones booing and even threatening Maines’ life?  Still "out there" in larger numbers than we wish?  Look at these figures:

In Pennsylvania
exit polls on primary day, 14% of voters
said that race one one of several important factors. Fifty-five percent of those were Clinton
voters and 45% Obama voters. When asked
race was “important” 19% said yes – 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if
race was a factor in their decision, 12% said yes. In this group, 76% were white Clinton voters.

In West
Virginia, when asked race was “important” to their decision, 22% said yes –82%
of them Clinton voters; when asked if race was a factor in their decision, 21%
said yes. In this group, 84% were white
Clinton voters.

Finally, Ohio. There, when asked race was “important” to
their decision, 20% said yes–  59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if race
was a factor in their decision, 14% said yes. In this group, 59% were Clinton voters. (the racial breakdown was not available here.)   

Please understand – I don’t know if I’m right.  I’m not alleging racial bias in all those who rose up to burn Dixie Chicks CDs and threaten country stations with boycotts if they "ever played one of their songs again"  – but I do suspect they could be more vulnerable to campaigns run in an uglier vein – just as they responded to this one.  It’s worrying me.

Continue reading SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

HIGH FIDELITY – A LITTLE BIT OF EACH OF US – IF WE’RE LUCKY

High_fidelity_record_store_2
Do you remember High Fidelity?  We woke up early this morning and it was on Showtime.  I’d forgotten how wonderful it is, especially if you remember being 28ish, love John Cusack and wonderful witty writing or just plain love music.  Like Cusack’s character, I annoy those who love me with at least one song – and often a Top Five — to go with whatever is going on at the time.  A friend and I throw songs back and forth all the time; his wife and my husband are, usually, tolerant.  So the initial connection is there.  But what is it about this film that is so irresistible?  Here’s a scene from YouTube:

There’s been a lot of sadness in my life lately, and a lot of anxiety.  All the grown-up stuff that High Fidelity’s hero is fighting desperately to avoid.  So it was sweet and moving, my husband and I slightly drowsy,  just waking up and holding hands, to watch as he struggled to get where he needed to go.  The things he says here are all true as me makes his way from the thrill of the new to the warmth and deep meaning of lasting a relationship. 

Married since 1971, we’ve been through plenty – personal, medical, parental, political, spiritual and even musical.  There were many times when one or the other of us despaired of getting through it.  A huge issue haunts us even now.  But was what so nice, at this point in our lives was watching this very funny, sweet (and I know, made-up – but still..) young man understand, finally, how much more joyous it is to build a life with someone than "to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left."  It was a reminder, in the midst of yet another crisis, of the wonder and power of a life built together, no matter what obstacles may rise up along the way,

PETE SEEGER, JOE HILL, MUSIC, VALUES , PAST AND FUTURE

Pete_seeger_banjo_2
I once had the opportunity to interview BB King.  In preparation, I brought his latest album home and played it for my sons.  The older, then around 5, asked me "Why is this man named King mommy.  Pete Seeger is the king of music, right?*"  Well, how do you answer that?  Our boys grew up on the Weavers, the Almanac Singers, Pete and Arlo at Carnegie Hall… all rich with wonderful songs (with pretty wonderful values) for children.  I asked my husband, no folkie, why he didn’t complain about the "noise" – and in fact joined us every Thanksgiving at Carnegie Hall to hear Pete and later Pete and Arlo. He said (I’m paraphrasing here)  "It’s offering them something whole to believe in.  Even if they don’t always believe it – they’ll understand the feeling of believing – and always seek it."  As far as I can tell, that worked. 

Rerack a few years though — to the Vietnam war, when songs like this informed some of my earliest political ideas.   

In fact, Pete has been a hero of mine for more than 40 years (How is that possible?)  As I sit watching the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary on his life, I can’t stop thinking about all the hope, idealism and dreams tied up in his music – at least in my life — and, for a time, the lives of my sons.  Seeger always has believed that music has infinite power; his own music made us believe that we could bring about the world we dreamed of.  I’m embarassed by how much I long for those feelings; it’s probably one reason Barack Obama and his young supporters interest me so much –  they remind me of…. ME.  Pretty feeble, isn’t it?  To still be whining about long-lost days and dreams.  Most of all, to feel such rage and sadness at what we weren’t able to do for our children; we leave them a world, in many ways, so much tougher than the one we inherited. 

Pete, though, would hate such talk.  I once met him, around the time that there were civil rights battles raging in the old Chicago Back of the Yards neighborhoods that Saul Alinsky helped to organize.  I asked him if it didn’t bother him that the residents there revealed attitudes so contrary to what had been fought for — for them — just a generation ago.  His response "No.  When people are empowered they have the right to want what they want.  If we believe in empowerment we have to accept that too."  NOT a usual man, Mr. Seeger.

The music was more than a transmission of values though — from "A Hole in My Bucket" to Union Maid.  It was our family soundtrack.  One of my kids was watching WOODSTOCK while he was in college, and was astonished to hear Joan Baez singing Joe Hill – and to recognize it from when he was little (this is a bad YOUTUBE version; the proportions are off, but just listen..

In our house, that old labor song had been a lullaby.  I’d learned it from Pete’s concerts. Recently, so many years from those lullabies, another family favorite presented us with a great, rolicking tribute to this remarkable man.  I wanted to end with a more of this (way too) sentimental tribute to Pete, but the joy of watching another generation up out of their seats in song is probably a better way to end.  Right?

*He went on to become an enormous BB King (and Albert, for that matter) fan, for the record.

SAD MUSIC, GREAT BIG SEA, STONE PONIES, BEATLES – RIDING THE WAYBACK MACHINE

Great_big_sea_2
Have you ever heard a song that caught you up short and brought you almost to tears?  Boston to St. John — sung by Great Big Sea, does that to me, no matter how many times I hear it.  In fact, when we pass over St. John on the way to Europe and it shows up on the map on the little TV, I get weepy just hearing it in my head.  What is it about this romantic, acoustic song accompanied by a pipe and a guitar?  Just listen (this one has lyrics posted) – it’s a nice thing to end the week with.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the wonder of what music has come to mean to me, again.  Of course I was a typical teen fan, and then in my college years obsessed with Bob Dylan, the Beatles, The Doors, Cream, anything by Ellie Greenwich, anything from Motown, Linda Ronstadt (especially the Stone Ponies phase) – listen to this primo girl song:

I also loved the great folkies like Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Joan Baez ( oh – and Peter, Paul and Mary (need I go on?) and Simon and Garfunkel — among others.  Then I went into semi-retirement.  I made mix tapes for my kids – Good Day Sunshine, Hippy Hippy Shake, Here Comes the Sun, the Garden Song, Carolina… you name it.  And we sang a lot.  But the deep, gut-wrenching feeling you get when the music drills right to the center of your soul — that all came back more recently.  And differently.  Once, my Deadhead son asked me why I had never gone to one of their concerts.  The answer was peculiar, I guess.  I heard all my music for free at marches.  And peace rallies.  Who needed to buy tickets? 

The music was, literally, the soundtrack to my life.  Every song I hear pulls a movie into my head — me on a bus to Manhattan for a march, in a boat on Paradise Pond with my boyfriend, dancing like crazy someplace or other.  Now, though, the music seems to bring the mood to me, rather than meeting it half way.  I can be moved from zero to 60 – solid to weepy – in about one chorus.  Maybe it’s the passage of time.  Maybe it’s that I hear far more of it alone.  Maybe it’s just that much of what I listen to evokes other times in my life.  Today, driving home, I had my iPod plugged into the car radio, on random shuffle, and Pete Seeger singing All My Life’s a Circle did it. Again. 

Of course, anything from the Juno soundtrack just makes me laugh.  And lots of Bruce just makes me want to dance.  It’s not all sad stuff.  I guess I should try to figure it out, but I’d rather just think I’m newly available, or RE-newly available, to those feelings.  And be grateful for the music that brings them.

JULIE’S SHOWER: WHO EVER THOUGHT RAISING SONS WOULD BE SO GREAT!

Running_kidsOK so I grew up with sisters.  And I went to a women’s college.  And most of my life I’ve worked in offices with more women than men (amazing, no?)  So, when I was pregnant I was terrified at the idea of having boys.  They were so strange — so noisy — I had no idea what was coming.  Except that what was coming was Josh. And then Dan.  And it turned out that — hang on sisters — boys are a blast, great company, luuuhhhv their moms and — boys are easier!  I know this because I’ve watched my friends raising daughters and the tensions are fierce.  Girls and their mothers — boys and their dads.  Not easy.

But let’s get back to basics.  Little boys run around a lot and make noise.  They jump off things.  They ride the dog around and fall off and hit their heads and need stitches.  They, later, seem to be trying to kill each other much of the time.  And before I go any further – let me tell you that there’s an old shrink saying that therapists never believe that babies are born with personalities until they have their second child.  This is also true with many women regarding gender differences – it hits you once they show up.  My kids are feminists and very good to the women in their lives as far as I can tell – but they are men and they were boys and that is not like being a girl.  Nope.

I have great memories from when they were little – stomping around singing Free to Be and Da Doo Ron Ron Ron and The Garden Song and Abiyoyo, skiing down black diamond slopes and going to Yankee Stadium to see Billy Joel and Carnegie Hall to see Pete Seeger and Madison Square Garden to see Sesame Street on Ice and being dragged to an infinite number of Police Academy and other disgusting movies.

And I lived in alien space much of the time.  Some of our hit toys (ie things I would NEVER have had in my house if there were not these strange male creatures inhabiting the premises — and pre-video game age of course):
One of those Radio Shack electronics build-your-own thingy kits that make bells ring and bulbs light up if you hook them up correctly.
Legos
Anything aviationary
Anything Star Wars
Anything GI Joe
Voltron
Weird wrestling stuff (boy did I fight that one!)
Folk music (that’s my fault though)
Baseball cards  (and proudly, I did NOT throw them out)
Stuffed animals
Ernie

No  Mary Poppins books (I tried) but I did get to read all The Great Brain and Ralph S Mouse and Timothy Goes to School and a gazillion baseball player bios.

There’s serious stuff to having sons, of course.  We have to be sure, no matter how much we love hanging around with them, that they get enough alone time with their dads or some other male figure.  And wave bravely as they off together on a Sunday (also your day off after all) without you.  We have to accept and celebrate the guy stuff.

Just like girls, but differently, we have to let them know we think they can take care of themselves – enable independence at each landmark, if we think they can handle it, even when we really want to help.  It’s so easy, with a boy, to want to remain more connected than is useful for them as they grow.  At certain points they may pull back for a while, when they need to untangle.  We have to let them and respect the struggle

With regard to respect for women – I am deeply impressed with my sons’ perspectives.  I hope that being honest and respecting their developing attitudes, helped.  I never threw a Playboy out of our house but I made it very clear how I felt about them in the (brief) period they were around.  Anything like that, of which I (or my husband) disapproved, had to come out of their allowance.  They had to put their money on the line – and I think that helped more than locking it all out of the house and pretending they weren’t interested.  It also helped us understand where their heads were.  Although that is easier for boys because they are, honestly, more straightforward.

Of course none of what I write here applies to all boys.  Much of it may apply to plenty of girls.  But it was my experience and in a kind of stream of consciousness baby shower kind of way it’s what rose to the top.   The bottom line though, is that even though it’s scary if you’ve lived in a world of women, as I had, they are just wonderful.  Most of all, because I know Julie, from reading your blog for so long, you  would be a great mother to any child with whom you were blessed, this kid is in for a great life.   And where advice is concerned, I say take it only as far as your gifted mother gut takes you.  Where the two collide, trust yourself.  Girl, boy or android, that way your little one will always be in the right hands.