Pete Seeger makes a surprise appearance at Farm Aid 2013.
September 29, 2013 7:01 PM   Subscribe

 
Here are additional verses Pete Seeger has written: http://www.peteseeger.net/thisland.htm
posted by stan.kjar at 7:19 PM on September 29, 2013 [3 favorites]


Pete Seeger is awesome, I'm not going to lie I got choked up watching this.
posted by MrBobaFett at 7:34 PM on September 29, 2013 [11 favorites]


Right on Pete Seeger!! Meaningful at 93. Wow. So utterly inspiring. A person of integrity, a gently fierce activist, true and trustworthy all the way through to the bone his entire life.

Proud, age 13, to have sat next to Pete Seeger in a flatbed truck 'float' on a peace march down Fifth to see Martin Luther King Jr. speak, way back when in April 1967. Went to Central Park's Sheep Meadow after and witnessed draft card burning for the first time. After that I learned to play Pete Seeger's beautiful and potent songs on guitar.

This video brings joyful tears to my eyes. Thanks for the post Capt. Renault.
posted by nickyskye at 8:10 PM on September 29, 2013 [23 favorites]


my hate for dave matthews just increased a hundredfold.

Pete Seeger, though, he's looking pretty punk rock.
posted by the bricabrac man at 8:15 PM on September 29, 2013 [3 favorites]


Neil Young is pretty into it, but Willie Nelson? A man of not-inconsiderable accomplishment, clearly humbled simply to be standing alongside Pete Seeger? Wow.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:19 PM on September 29, 2013 [8 favorites]


Here are additional verses Pete Seeger has written:

And a Native American verse:

This land is your land, but it once was my land,
Until we sold you Manhattan Island.
You pushed our Nations to the reservations;
This land was stole by you from me.

posted by Anitanola at 8:23 PM on September 29, 2013


Willie Nelson in general is one of the most humble people working--i mean he is a fucking genius, and has made an enormous impact on American popular song, but he considers his work essentially collective--that is one of the things farm aid is about, and one of the things that Seeger taught as well. There mutual iconoclasm is vital. I wish Seeger was a bit less red, but those new verses made me weep.
posted by PinkMoose at 8:52 PM on September 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Youtube is telling me that's John Cougar on the left but I don't believe it.
posted by dobbs at 8:55 PM on September 29, 2013


Billboard confirms that.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:12 PM on September 29, 2013


Yes, awesome post. It's uniquely American that we can somehow make something like uniquely beloved and whitewash all the amazingness out of it...take something honest and true and make it propaganda.
posted by nevercalm at 9:40 PM on September 29, 2013


my hate for dave matthews just increased a hundredfold.

Yeah cos he's like, uh, standing there, smiling sometimes! Fucking prick. Fucking hatebomb.
posted by xmutex at 9:41 PM on September 29, 2013


I think the "additional verses" mentioned in the OP refers to the "New York was meant to be frack free"...
posted by symbioid at 10:18 PM on September 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ugh. Dave Matthews clearly doesn't know the words to this. How do you not know the words to this? Get off the stage and go learn your craft.
posted by TheDonF at 10:30 PM on September 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thanks for the post. There are actually few days that I don't, at some point, wonder how Pete is doing and worry a little... This affirmation that he's still out there fighting the fight is a good thing.

I wander down to Ann Arbor once in a while for lectures, concerts, events, many of them are, eventually forgetable, but two of them will always remain with me... listening to a two day lecture by the Dalai Lama, and seeing Pete sing as part of the folk festival.

In case you missed it, Pete also sang If I Had A Hammer, at this Farm Aid event.
posted by HuronBob at 2:31 AM on September 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


His appearance is even more heartening, given that it was only a couple of months ago that Pete's wife Toshi died.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:17 AM on September 30, 2013 [4 favorites]


I would gladly contribute some of my hard earned scraps from a rich man's table to a 'progressive' Mount Rushmore. Especially if it included Pete Seeger on it.
posted by DigDoug at 8:01 AM on September 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but Pete Seeger has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Thank you for posting this.
posted by maurice at 9:32 AM on September 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thanks for being awesome, Pete Seeger.
posted by mnfn at 11:13 AM on September 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Damn. Wind blew something in my eye.
posted by Twang at 12:17 PM on September 30, 2013


This affirmation that he's still out there fighting the fight is a good thing.

And a challenge that I will never not have to struggle to live up to, even if it's only in whatever puny way I can.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:24 PM on September 30, 2013 [4 favorites]


Not only does Dave Matthews obviously not know the words, but he looks increasingly bored out of his gourd with every verse. Boooo.

John Cougar singing the verses out of order very loudly is hilarious.
posted by naoko at 4:22 PM on October 1, 2013


Although it's hard to wrap my head around not knowing the words to "This Land is Your Land," since I don't think you're allowed to graduate from an American primary school without being able to sing it backwards in your sleep with your mouth full of peanut butter, I can cut Matthews some slack for his globetrotting childhood.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:26 PM on October 1, 2013


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