Posted on 04/03/2021 9:24:36 PM PDT by Shark24
...one of the best-loved songs ever recorded about the Civil War: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band. The song was first recorded in 1969, and was later covered and/or performed by Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, the Black Crowes, Bruce Hornsby, and the Allman Brothers Band, among others...
#10. Re Winn Dixie was “out of sauerkraut”.
That was because, according to Blutarsky, the Germans never got that far inland when they attacked/bombed Pearl Harbor.
Talking about Pearl Harbor. Here’s an old bad joke from my “landsman”.
Did you hear about the cross-eyed anti-Semitic Japanese Kamikazi pilot in WW2? Instead of attacking Pearl Harbor, he attacked Pearl Schwartz.
Just made up a really bad joke based on history. Do you know what the last American message to Adm. Yamamoto (the Pearl Harbor planner) was before two American P-38’s shot him down in the Pacific? It was: “Hey Yo mama. Look behind you, sucker!”
I liked that one too but didn’t want to bury you in versions.
:D
That was good.
I would never have known this song, but for Baez singing it.
OTOH, not too many popular songs were composed in foxholes...
To get back to Shark’s question in the OP, I’ll start by saying if you’re not familiar with Marcus King, you should be. He’s a young kid from Greenville SC doing some of the best new blues rock out there. And he just turned 25! He’s a baby!
https://marcuskingband.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6dwaC5J_YiXXsRCZhqK3yw
So here’s a story and some commentary on woke culture and this song.
Fairly early during Covid, he did a series of four streaming concerts, one of which was a cover of The Last Waltz from start to finish (!!). The guy gets that The Band in general, and that album/event in particular, were An Important Thing. And in general his tribute to The Band was very nicely done.
Here, I see it’s now up on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3aTpvmXhzw
But here comes the wokeness screws up everything part. When it came time for The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, there was an intro by his friend “Early” James Mullis with some woke statements of “we need to change some of the lyrics because we’re young and thus woke” (heavily paraphrased). The lyrics change didn’t do much for me.
Here is the above concert advanced to this song.
https://youtu.be/Z3aTpvmXhzw?t=4091
The key issue seems to be that someone might see this as a glorification of the Southern cause, and thus because woke we must adjust the song, which I see as completely absurd. This song is a lament of a thoroughly beaten person/cause, and it certainly doesn’t glorify slavery. Virgil Cain is a poor Southern white who never owned a slave, barely made it through the war with his life, his brother dead, and came through it with nothing. And Virgil is lamenting what life has thrown at him and telling the story. It’s not like he was ever in control of events. There is no need to change the lyrics.
I don’t hold this against Marcus and James Mullis. I do hold it against the idiot teachers who didn’t give them enough background in history such that they didn’t understand my summary of the song above. And to the whole woke cancel culture phenomenon, which they’re clearly working to avoid falling afoul of. And I sort of can’t blame them for that.
Again, wokeness screws up everything.
[I have The Band’s version on my iPod.]
The world ain’t what it seems, is it?
(now, if you saw what I did there...give yourself 25 points)
Ping to my previous post.
Regarding Blackberry Smoke, I saw them warm up for Tedeschi-Trucks Band, they’re on my go see if they come around list for sure.
I “collect” versions of The House Of The Rising Sun.
One Friday night at the yearly crab & chicken feed, my biker friends’ bluegrass band suddenly struck up HOTR.
I had my back to the pavilion in that dark, backwoods campground and I was sitting on the ground with my dog.
I was watching the waxing harvest moon shadow playing with the black mountains behind my old log house, just across the road.
As the song played, I had a weird transcendent moment where the scattered camp fires of the bikers looked like what my hillbilly kin would have had, at a gathering.
The paved road appeared as a dirt wagon trail in the moonlight.
The band tore my heart out with that eerie yet very real reconnection to my past.
I could feel the souls of my kith and kin around me.
[I went all “Lo, there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning....”]
When the song ended, I felt unbidden tears running down my face.
I knew that *that moment* was A Thing and that nothing would ever be the same or as good, again.
Five days later, the towers fell.
I can still close my eyes and see, hear and feel it, as if it was happening right now.
It was a great gift given to me.
They are quite good.
This ain’t the garden of Eden
There ain’t no angels above
And things ain’t like what they used to be
And this ain’t the summer of love
My friends’ band...my dear friend Jeff is the guy on the right in the black hat.
Gramma’s Ass.
:D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7UFqAZ-U0
If I remember correctly, she tried to get other leftists to condemn the Vietnam communists for their atrocities after taking over South Vietnam, but the most of the leftists did not go along with her.
<< lefties did make good music
I mean ....for what it’s worth >>
That too: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY
Man that’s some shoddy performance syncing.
I’m surprised YouTube hasn’t yanked it off their platform.
The song was written by a Canadian, stealing our culture.
Before my time, but I was spoonfed a great deal of boomer music.
There are two songs with catchy tunes and decent lyrics, that no one could ruin, and she offered both: Don’t Think Twice, and The Night They Drove Dixie Down.
And she really tried to botch both of them!
The "Lemon Pipers" (a relatively local band) did "Green Tambourine".
I was/am a huge fan of the Byrds and McGuinn's 12-string jangly Rickenbacker sound.
"Just get an electric guitar, and take some time, and learn how to play"
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