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   clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:43 JST clacke
   I saw the Colbert interview with Edward Norton about "A Complete Unknown". It was a wonderful interview ... or monologue if you will, and I have a renewed interest in Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Will be watching the film for sure.
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     Elias (eliasr@social.librem.one)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:37 JST Elias

     in reply to

     @clacke my mother is also born in the 40s and she has The Times They Are A-Changin' on LP, it's absolutely awesome.

     These are the tracks I remember most from that LP:

     The Times They Are A-Changin'
     Ballad Of Hollis Brown
     With God On Our Side
     Only A Pawn In Their Game

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:38 JST clacke

     in reply to

     I just asked my Swedish parents, who were born in the 40s and have the time context, but still not the space or culture.

     - How much do you know about Bob Dylan?
     - Not much.
     - Any songs? The answer is blowing in the wind ... how many times must a ... ?
     - *patient gaze*
     - Well that is fitting, because the new movie is "A Complete Unknown". 😅

     They've heard of him, but that's it.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:40 JST clacke

     in reply to
     I guess that's why it's called folk music. Pop and rock is mostly global culture, even a lot of country music is, and it's easy to believe that that's the same thing as US culture, but it's not, even though a lot of it is produced there. There's still something that is truly local.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:41 JST clacke

     in reply to

     To US ears that might sound unbelievable, how can you not have heard these songs, but that's like me saying how can you not know the songs of Evert Taube, Cornelis Wreeswijk or Lasse Berghagen, when Swedish music is so internationally famous.

     You have heard ABBA, Ace of Base and Roxette, because those are the things that went on export, but there's a load of things that never did, that are deeply Swedish and didn't make the slightest effort to appeal to an international audience.

     Dylan, Seeger and Guthrie are not the Madonnas and Michael Jacksons that the record companies fed to Europeans, and which were understandable and consumable without that deep US context. Dylan is the best known of them outside the US, but still niche.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:22:42 JST clacke

     in reply to

     As a non-US millennial I've never had the context of time, space or culture to get Dylan or ever get interested in getting him, he is firmly placed very, very deep in 1960s Americana.

     Of Pete Seeger I've only (knowingly) heard the song "If It Can't Be Reduced", and that's only very recently.

     I don't know much about Woody Guthrie either. All of these people are historical cultural landmarks that everyone else is referring to, so I've heard their names over and over, but if you didn't grow up in the US, you haven't been served their music through the radio everywhere you went as you grew up.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 12:50:50 JST clacke

     in reply to

     Anyway, here's the moment where Bob Dylan "went electric".

     Bob Dylan feat. Mike Bloomfield on electric guitar: "Maggie's Farm" (1965, Newport Folk Festival)

     farside.link/invidious/watch?v…

     youtube.com/watch?v=QPfsUlFxhr…

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 12:50:51 JST clacke

     in reply to

     Somewhere behind that stage is Pete Seeger, frantically trying to convince a sound technician that something is wrong with the mix, because the guitars are distorted and loud and he can't hear Dylan sing, just like the baffled Swedish sound technicians the first time the Beatles played in Stockholm.

     "no, no, that's actually intentional ... believe it or not, they want to sound that way!"

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 12:50:52 JST clacke

     in reply to

     50 years later, Seeger still didn't get it. He couldn't in his heart believe that actual musicians would want that song to sound like that.

     "... and I ran over to the sound man and said 'fix the sound so you can understand him', and they hollered back 'no, this is the way they want it' ... I don't know who 'they' was ..."

     Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviews Pete Seeger about Newport 1965 (2013)

     farside.link/invidious/watch?v…

     youtube.com/watch?v=UXbf7o8HGv…

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 12:50:53 JST clacke

     in reply to

     Today is the first time I've heard a "Maggie's Farm" that wasn't the Rage Against the Machine recording. I had no idea that was a Deep Cut and a nod of continuity with 1960s counterculture. Now I know.

     #RageAgainstTheMachine #BobDylan #PeteSeeger
     #FolkMusic #FolkRock #ElectricBlues
     #ACompleteUnknown

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 12:50:53 JST clacke

     in reply to

     Here's the version that people at the Folk Festival would have been expecting.

     "Maggie's Farm" (1965, "Bringing it All Back Home")

     farside.link/invidious/watch?v…

     youtube.com/watch?v=fgphPFNiVZ…

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     Thomas (tfb@functional.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 18:36:19 JST Thomas

     in reply to

     @clacke Pete, and even more his sister Peggy, Seeger were huge figures in folk and traditional song across the English speaking world. She was a first-rate song collector, and spent much of her life in England.

     Your broader point of course stands, but there's an interesting conversation amongst all the English folk traditions, plenty of songs move back and forth across oceans and seas, giving Anglophone folk an oddly cosmopolitan bent

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     Thomas (tfb@functional.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 18:36:26 JST Thomas

     in reply to

     @clacke One of the funnier songs I stumbled upon recently, is one I know from the Irish tradition, and where there's a dragon that's slayed. Same theme in English and Scottish versions of the song.

     The Appalachian versions feature a wild pig instead of a dragon, which is just wonderful

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     hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Saturday, 28-Dec-2024 21:37:34 JST hypolite

     in reply to
     @clacke For a little bit of French context, Bob Dylan is very popular in France among my parents’ generation (born 1940-1960), I’ve learned about Arlo Guthrie (Woody’s son) through my US partner and his hilarious song Alice’s Restaurant Massacree (1967), and I didn’t know about Pete Seeger until you mentioned him in this thread.
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