Or maybe that should be Peeeete and Bruuuuce. Either way, ben just put this video up over at unfogged. And I’m stealing it, because It’s nice to feel good again about loving America. And sure, party-pooper, it might not last all that long. But I’ll just enjoy the moment, if it’s all the same to you. (Nice backdrop, by the way.)
Update: Well, so much for that. HBO insisted that YouTube pull down the video.
Update II: Video of the whole concert is available for free on HBO’s site. And before someone decides to call me a corporate whore for linking, let’s remember that HBO brought us The Wire. We still owe the network a little loyalty, don’t we?
Update III: Thanks to Drip in the comments, we’ve got new video posted above.
36 comments
January 19, 2009 at 10:40 am
drip
I’m not so old that I remember when he wrote it, but it was part of the music class in my grammar school in rural Connecticut in the ’50s. My favorite verse:
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
January 19, 2009 at 10:41 am
ari
It should be the national anthem. More so than it already is, I mean.
January 19, 2009 at 10:57 am
jazzbumpa
In the humble opinion of this mediocre trombone player, Peeete should get top billing.
Drip – you must be about my age.
January 19, 2009 at 11:23 am
Goldrush
How nice to see an official event that’s not staged in front of a wall of American flags. Oh yeah, those guys are pretty good too.
We didn’t sing that song in 50s grammar school in Georgia. Our ‘you and me’ was too exclusive for that sort of thing.
The powers that chose our tunes knew exactly how many Communist front groups Peeeete had sung for and supported. That made us deprived youth revere him all the more.
January 19, 2009 at 11:28 am
Galvinji
I’m not so old that I remember when he wrote it
I assume by “he” you mean Woody Guthrie. Not that he didn’t sing for Communist front groups either. “Bound for Glory” was on TCM the other week, and I’m astounded that a biopic like that would be made by a major studio.
On topic, Pete Seeger sounds great for an 89-year-old guy. I heard this on NPR yesterday while driving my younger kid home from her skating lesson and she started to sing along (it’s one of her favorite songs) — so I guess I’m enjoying the moment, too.
January 19, 2009 at 11:38 am
kid bitzer
seeger wrote ‘if i had a hammer’; easy to confuse the two.
i actually think ‘if i had a hammer’ is the better tune, though you can’t fault woody for making it simple to sing along with.
in any case, i think all of this makes it pretty clear that obama is a communist pinko marxist.
January 19, 2009 at 11:40 am
Ahistoricality
Dammit, Ari, I was doing pretty well this weekend, keeping an even keel. You made me cry.
I’ve seen Seeger in concert every couple of years for about three decades, and my family record collection included some of his very early recordings with and without the Weavers. (The Babysitters remains one of the best children’s records ever made.) The man looks and sounds very old to me, but it’s still absolutely a joy to see him up there on the Lincoln Memorial, with the President-Elect nodding in time.
And they did the radical verses, not the grade school ones, which rocks.
January 19, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Linkmeister
“What a long strange trip it’s been” is the Dead’s catchphrase, but it could work for Pete too; from being blacklisted for standing for the 1st Amendment in front of HUAC in the 50s to singing for an inauguration in 2009.
January 19, 2009 at 12:54 pm
andrew
We still owe the network a little loyalty, don’t we?
They could have at least made it easier to navigate the concert video. I’m not watching the whole thing (or any of it, actually, now that I’ve tried and found it’s at too high a quality for my computer to display the motion correctly).
January 19, 2009 at 1:11 pm
ari
It is really annoying that you have to watch from start to finish, yes.
January 19, 2009 at 1:47 pm
John Emerson
This land is their land. You really couldn’t get a more vivid indicator than the HBO licensing of that particular performance of that particular song.
As always, cursing the darkness.
January 19, 2009 at 1:52 pm
drip
Linkmeister hit on something unusual about Seeger. He refused to testify by taking the first not the fifth amendment like the mobsters. I did not cry when I watched the clip. That’s because I cried when I listened to it yesterday. But that’s because I’m old, though not as old as jazzbumpa.
January 19, 2009 at 2:25 pm
jazzbumpa
Hey. I’m only 62. A mere adolescent.
January 19, 2009 at 2:32 pm
John Emerson
Yeah, I know. Pete and Bruce were just trying to make people happy with a beautiful song, but someone had to politicize it. It’s been happening to Pete all his life. To say nothing of poor Woody.
Sorry, but I’m still boggled by the audacity. “Sorry, but this video has been removed by the user”.
January 19, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Gassalasca
I’m a 22-year-old Pete Seeger fan from Serbia… and I’m as mad as hell for not being able to watch that clip.
Drat.
January 19, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Bitchphd
I think you guys should watch the whole thing. It really is quite awesome. And if you don’t, you might miss Stevie Wonder or my boyfriend Forrest Whittaker.
January 19, 2009 at 2:58 pm
CharleyCarp
The HBO people didn’t do that well at capturing 400,000 people singing along.
January 19, 2009 at 3:07 pm
drip
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “Private Property.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
Tell them Al sent you, but hurry.
January 19, 2009 at 3:15 pm
John Emerson
Drip, that’s a felony you know.
January 19, 2009 at 3:16 pm
CharleyCarp
And I don’t know what you people are whining about: the HBO thing allows you to move up and back at will.
January 19, 2009 at 3:19 pm
John Emerson
B, Charley, that particular song at this particular time.
January 19, 2009 at 3:21 pm
drip
I’ll take the First.
January 19, 2009 at 3:32 pm
A White Bear
That’s much better footage of the crowd, drip. Thanks!
January 19, 2009 at 3:34 pm
drip
It’s a free concert! The New York State Thruway is closed, man!
January 19, 2009 at 3:35 pm
andrew
Thanks, drip! If HBO gave some indication of who performs when and had the option of watching on a lower quality video for those of us with less powerful computers, I’d be mostly fine with it.
January 19, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Gassalasca
Thanks so much drip!
January 19, 2009 at 4:02 pm
kid bitzer
ah, fuck it. i’m over obama–done, fed-up, disillusioned.
i just heard a clip of a speech in which he referred to the “enormity” of the problems facing us.
if there’s one thing i can’t stand, it’s somebody using “enormity” when they mean vast size, not gross immorality or shocking criminality.
(if there’s two things, it’s using enormity to mean “vast size, cunning, and fanatical loyalty to the pope”–oh damn–).
unbelievable–i have heard tens of thousands of words from the guy, thousands of sentences. it’s the first thing i have been able even to launch a pedantic quibble at. this one word aside, he just has perfect pitch, in every register.
the life of a linguistic snob was so easy under bush–it’s going to be sparse pickings under his replacement. but i’ll persevere.
January 19, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Charlieford
Good reminder of why Dylan went electric.
January 20, 2009 at 1:42 am
“This Land Is Your Land” « From Laurel Street
[...] to commenter Drip over at The Edge of the American West for the video footage. No Comments so far Leave a [...]
January 20, 2009 at 2:06 am
fromlaurelstreet
i went over to youtube to see if they had a video of “i had a hammer” — yeah, i was a small child in the ’60s and loved both songs.
in this video, seeger is saying that peter, paul & mary rewrote the song “and then it took off.”
thanks, drip!
January 20, 2009 at 3:11 am
ajay
“if there’s one thing i can’t stand, it’s somebody using “enormity” when they mean vast size, not gross immorality or shocking criminality.”
“Enormity” means “vast size”.
January 20, 2009 at 5:12 am
kid bitzer
well of course “enormity” means vast size, ajay.
that’s part of why the guild of linguistic snobs (h.w. fowler, presiding), has declared it an unpardonable sin to use it with that meaning.
you clearly don’t understand the point of linguistic snobbery.
January 20, 2009 at 6:00 am
Michael Turner
This land is your land — except for the state where Obama was born, and the state Sarah Palin governs. Woody wrote the song back when neither Hawaii nor Alaska were states. Feel free to add your own verses for those. Well, maybe not one for Alaska.
The tune seems to have been about 80% lifted from the hymn “When the World’s on Fire”, <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=qxo-zayI6tErecorded by the Carter Family. Maybe that’s the version they’ll sing in Alaska when it secedes, saving us having to write a verse mentioning some Aleutian island from which Russia is supposedly visible.
In the meantime, the world is on fire. It’s melting permafrost in Alaska, which then vents methane, a bad GHG, hence an accelerant of the process. Steven Chu, Obama’s pick for DOE, thinks global warming will bring us displacement of “hundreds of millions”, and “resource wars”. Ah, the enormity of it. This land is your land, but it will be smaller land as the oceans rise, so be careful which part you stake out as your own.
I’m too old to see how bad it will really get — I probably first sang along to “This Land is Your Land” watching Sing Along with Mitch. What a simple world that was. Nobody kicked the tires of the GM Opal Kadett cars advertised on that show while wondering what it would do to their carbon footprint.
January 20, 2009 at 6:06 am
Dan
Kid Bitzer wrote: “seeger wrote ‘if i had a hammer’; easy to confuse the two.”
Song credit for that one goes to Seeger and Lee Hays. Hays co-wrote other songs with Seeger and the Weavers, including “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” See the bio of Hays by Doris Willens, “Lonesome Traveler.”
January 20, 2009 at 7:36 am
Larry
Not just Bruce and Pete on stage, but also Pete’s grandson, Tao Rodriquez-Seeger, who goes unmentioned here and deserves a little recognition for carrying on Pete’s tradition and career. He’s been performing with his grandfather for years. Pete’s singing voice is mostly gone. He can still lead a sing-a-long like nobody else, but Tao, a good singer and musician in his own right, provides the melody.
January 20, 2009 at 7:41 am
Ahistoricality
Woody wrote the song back when neither Hawaii nor Alaska were states.
There are a lot of states which don’t get mentioned in the song. Hawaii doesn’t scan all that well, but Phil Ochs got Alaska into The Power and the Glory.
Guthrie was a completist, though: I wouldn’t put it past him to write a version with verses for every state. His first version of the Reuben James was going to have a verse for every one of the 115 casualties….