Today's song, in honor of the great Arlo Guthrie:
Showing posts with label Arlo Guthrie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arlo Guthrie. Show all posts
Friday, April 06, 2012
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Happy Arlo Guthrie Day!
It's the Tenth of January, and I still ain't had no sleep...
Once again, it's Arlo Guthrie Day, celebrating what is perhaps my all-time favorite song, "Darkest Hour," a mysterious, dream-like song, with some of the best poetry this side of "Mr. Tambourine Man."
The song captured me fully about 11 years ago, and made its way onto my Eighth Street Symphony mix, settling in right between Neil Young's Unplugged version of "Long May You Run" and the Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson Storytellers version of "Ghost Riders In The Sky."
"Darkest Hour" is a truly magical song, with an understated foreignness that builds and builds throughout. It's a classic tale of love amidst war, but it leaves the impression more of still photographs - black & white and beautifully lit - than of a movie. Arlo captures the moments in such detail, but leaves the story blank along the way, as the greatest songwriters do, for the listener to work his way into the cracks.
I've seen Arlo twice in the past year, in November at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger, and in April at the Fox Theatre on his Solo Reunion Tour (Together At Last With the Original Band). In concert, Arlo tells how the song came to him in a dream, but when he woke he wasn't sure whether he was singing it or it was someone else. "I wasn't sure whether it was my song, but then I thought, what the hell, it was my dream," he says.
Well, here's to you Arlo, and I hope everybody takes a moment to themselves today, to listen to "Darkest Hour."
DOWNLOAD:
Arlo Guthrie - Live 2007-08-04, Freeport, Maine (entire show, zip file, 95 minutes, 177 mb)
Arlo Guthrie - story about Darkest Hour (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - Coming Into Los Angeles (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - My Peace (Live 2007-08-04)
Once again, it's Arlo Guthrie Day, celebrating what is perhaps my all-time favorite song, "Darkest Hour," a mysterious, dream-like song, with some of the best poetry this side of "Mr. Tambourine Man."The song captured me fully about 11 years ago, and made its way onto my Eighth Street Symphony mix, settling in right between Neil Young's Unplugged version of "Long May You Run" and the Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson Storytellers version of "Ghost Riders In The Sky."
"Darkest Hour" is a truly magical song, with an understated foreignness that builds and builds throughout. It's a classic tale of love amidst war, but it leaves the impression more of still photographs - black & white and beautifully lit - than of a movie. Arlo captures the moments in such detail, but leaves the story blank along the way, as the greatest songwriters do, for the listener to work his way into the cracks.
I've seen Arlo twice in the past year, in November at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger, and in April at the Fox Theatre on his Solo Reunion Tour (Together At Last With the Original Band). In concert, Arlo tells how the song came to him in a dream, but when he woke he wasn't sure whether he was singing it or it was someone else. "I wasn't sure whether it was my song, but then I thought, what the hell, it was my dream," he says.
Well, here's to you Arlo, and I hope everybody takes a moment to themselves today, to listen to "Darkest Hour."
DOWNLOAD:
Arlo Guthrie - Live 2007-08-04, Freeport, Maine (entire show, zip file, 95 minutes, 177 mb)
Arlo Guthrie - story about Darkest Hour (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - Coming Into Los Angeles (Live 2007-08-04)
Arlo Guthrie - My Peace (Live 2007-08-04)
Friday, November 28, 2008
Catfish takes Manhattan
I'm about three hours from flying to New York, on a strange but super-cheap, double-layover red-eye combo flight. I'm not worried about the long trip - I have the time and good books to read, Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn and Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito. Plus I'll be able to zero in mentally on this trip's centerpiece: Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall.
I've seen Arlo twice, in the last couple of years, but never Pete, who I consider to be pretty much the greatest living American. I guess you'd have to start off by calling Pete Seeger a musician, which fits, because I'm traveling to see him pluck a banjo and sing. But while musician might be good on a business card, it doesn't even approach a full or reasonable description of Pete's life and career.
I've come to treasure and seek inspiration in Pete Seeger for his creativity and his unwavering faith in the power of music and the power of people to make themselves one through music, theirs and others. An all-too-easy term for Pete is activist, and while his politics were from time to time clearly defined, and something for which he was victimized by the powers that be, I don't see him as a political figure. Politics and politicians live and die every day, bursting onto the scene or dying into the background. The most sustained thing you'll ever see in politics is a movement, the sort of ill-defined and loosely organized catch-all phrase loved by the TV news.
Pete Seeger was so much more - he's been a crucial and wildly influential part of the culture, the very life and soul, of this country, for three of my lifetimes. And I think he was driven for all that time by the simplest of motivations, to make people happy. He brought songs and passion and joy to the causes of justice, fairness and equality.
That no person or group should ever be oppressed by another, and that everyone should share in freedom and opportunity just as they share in the sunshine and oxygen that make life possible, and that a beautiful melody carries the power of humanity are hardly radical notions. But in Pete's days, sometimes they were called radical, and sometimes he was called a radical. What's so remarkable is the fact that he never stopped singing, never put down the guitar or banjo, never wanted to capitulate to anyone, and that even facing the vile and incomprehensibly insulting blacklist, he didn't shut up.
(Outstanding portrait by Annie Leibovitz)
I expect a rollicking good time tomorrow. I expect to be awed by the 89-year-old singer. I expect to laugh a lot. I expect Arlo & Pete to broadcast friendship as much as music. I expect to see generations on stage, and to celebrate the continuity of Pete's ideals. I expect to sing along an awful lot, possibly crying, with a joy that comes from music and humanity and the presence of as great an icon as there has ever been in American life.
Pete was the subject of an extraordinary American Masters episode I saw earlier this year. Watch the trailer below:
DOWNLOAD:
Pete Seeger - Smithsonian Folkways Sound Session (48 mb, 53 minutes)
I've seen Arlo twice, in the last couple of years, but never Pete, who I consider to be pretty much the greatest living American. I guess you'd have to start off by calling Pete Seeger a musician, which fits, because I'm traveling to see him pluck a banjo and sing. But while musician might be good on a business card, it doesn't even approach a full or reasonable description of Pete's life and career.
I've come to treasure and seek inspiration in Pete Seeger for his creativity and his unwavering faith in the power of music and the power of people to make themselves one through music, theirs and others. An all-too-easy term for Pete is activist, and while his politics were from time to time clearly defined, and something for which he was victimized by the powers that be, I don't see him as a political figure. Politics and politicians live and die every day, bursting onto the scene or dying into the background. The most sustained thing you'll ever see in politics is a movement, the sort of ill-defined and loosely organized catch-all phrase loved by the TV news.
Pete Seeger was so much more - he's been a crucial and wildly influential part of the culture, the very life and soul, of this country, for three of my lifetimes. And I think he was driven for all that time by the simplest of motivations, to make people happy. He brought songs and passion and joy to the causes of justice, fairness and equality.
That no person or group should ever be oppressed by another, and that everyone should share in freedom and opportunity just as they share in the sunshine and oxygen that make life possible, and that a beautiful melody carries the power of humanity are hardly radical notions. But in Pete's days, sometimes they were called radical, and sometimes he was called a radical. What's so remarkable is the fact that he never stopped singing, never put down the guitar or banjo, never wanted to capitulate to anyone, and that even facing the vile and incomprehensibly insulting blacklist, he didn't shut up.
(Outstanding portrait by Annie Leibovitz)I expect a rollicking good time tomorrow. I expect to be awed by the 89-year-old singer. I expect to laugh a lot. I expect Arlo & Pete to broadcast friendship as much as music. I expect to see generations on stage, and to celebrate the continuity of Pete's ideals. I expect to sing along an awful lot, possibly crying, with a joy that comes from music and humanity and the presence of as great an icon as there has ever been in American life.
Pete was the subject of an extraordinary American Masters episode I saw earlier this year. Watch the trailer below:
DOWNLOAD:
Pete Seeger - Smithsonian Folkways Sound Session (48 mb, 53 minutes)
Thursday, November 27, 2008
It just ain't Thanksgiving without a little Arlo
And have a listen to a fascinating early draft of the song, performed live in Gerdes Folk City in 1966. There's the chorus, but none of the Thanksgiving or anti-war story - it's just Arlo talking about how the song was going to spread all over the world. He sounds much more like Woody as a 19-year-old.
DOWNLOAD: Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (live 1966)
The ultimate goal of the song at that point was to teach everybody in the world Alice's Restaurant, issue everyone alarm clocks and then have everyone in the world singing Alice's Restaurant (in the same key). And if you don't know the words, everybody in the world will be against you, and come over and step on you.
And Arlo kinda got his wish, in a roundabout way that I'm sure gives him a chuckle everytime he launches into this 18-minute ridiculous epic, and once again as an auditorium of spellbound people sing the damn thing back to him, still, 41 years later.
Bless him, and I have the treat of a lifetime to see Arlo with Pete Seeger in two days, live at Carnegie Hall.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Happy Arlo Guthrie Day!
It's the 10th of January, and I still ain't had no sleep...
Today we celebrate one of my all-time favorite songs - "Darkest Hour" - and its author - the great Arlo Guthrie. It's a song full of mystery, driven by fleeting images. And if I knew precisely what it meant I'd get further into that, but as Arlo himself has said, the song came to him in a dream. And it truly exists best in a sort of dreamscape. The two lovers in the castle seem completely separate from the pre-battle atmosphere all around them.
Here's a live version from 2006: Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (live in Dublin)
Next we have a treat, an incredibly early version of Arlo's signature opus, Alice's Restaurant. It's essentially more of a prototype than even a first draft. The 19-year-old Arlo is singing in 1966 at Gerdes Folk City and all that exists of the song at that point was the looping guitar pattern and the chorus. But there's no mention of Thanksgiving or the draft or anything that emerged when he recorded the song a later. What's there is the wit that's continued to drive his performances since. What I find most fascinating is how much more he sounds like Woody in those days. His banter is twangier, more Oklahoma than the Brooklyn-born Arlo really had much right to claim.
The main bulk of the song (at just 13 minutes, it's actually substantially shorter than it would eventually become) is Arlo talking about how the words to Alice's Restaurant are going to spread like wildfire - first out of the club and into the Villlage, then the rest of New York and then steadily across the East Coast and the rest of the country ("New Mexico, OLD Mexico") and the rest of the continent ("there's a slight chance it may get into Cuba"). And eventually the song will go over the whole world, and one day everybody in the world, at the same time and in the same key, will sing "Alice's Restaurant."
Download: Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (live 1966)
Everybody have a great Arlo Day!
Today we celebrate one of my all-time favorite songs - "Darkest Hour" - and its author - the great Arlo Guthrie. It's a song full of mystery, driven by fleeting images. And if I knew precisely what it meant I'd get further into that, but as Arlo himself has said, the song came to him in a dream. And it truly exists best in a sort of dreamscape. The two lovers in the castle seem completely separate from the pre-battle atmosphere all around them.
Here's a live version from 2006: Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (live in Dublin)
Next we have a treat, an incredibly early version of Arlo's signature opus, Alice's Restaurant. It's essentially more of a prototype than even a first draft. The 19-year-old Arlo is singing in 1966 at Gerdes Folk City and all that exists of the song at that point was the looping guitar pattern and the chorus. But there's no mention of Thanksgiving or the draft or anything that emerged when he recorded the song a later. What's there is the wit that's continued to drive his performances since. What I find most fascinating is how much more he sounds like Woody in those days. His banter is twangier, more Oklahoma than the Brooklyn-born Arlo really had much right to claim.
The main bulk of the song (at just 13 minutes, it's actually substantially shorter than it would eventually become) is Arlo talking about how the words to Alice's Restaurant are going to spread like wildfire - first out of the club and into the Villlage, then the rest of New York and then steadily across the East Coast and the rest of the country ("New Mexico, OLD Mexico") and the rest of the continent ("there's a slight chance it may get into Cuba"). And eventually the song will go over the whole world, and one day everybody in the world, at the same time and in the same key, will sing "Alice's Restaurant."Download: Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (live 1966)
Everybody have a great Arlo Day!
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Arlo! Concluded...
For a Brooklyn-born hippie best known for a cleverly nonsensical anti-war ballad disguised by 'Aw, shucks' simple-mindedness and a harmless, looping guitar line, Arlo Guthrie is an amazingly complex performer.
The spare stage Sunday night held Arlo, his son Abe on keyboards, a friend switching between pedal steel and mandolin and Arlo's daughter Sarah Lee and son-in-law Johnny, a pair of guitarists and wonderful harmonizing singers.
The wild, white hair of a 59-year-old - Arlo's most dominating physical attribute - is strange considering I've only seen the performer in the oddly dark Alice's Restaurant movie and record covers, where there's a definite boyishness mixed in with the hippie.
I do have a bootleg recording of Arlo doing a short set at a folk festival last summer, so I knew pretty well what to expect from the sound.
The show opened with plenty of Woody songs, including “Oklahoma Hills” and “Talking Dust Bowl Blues.” Arlo's young granddaughter ran out to join her mother in singing the chorus to "Union Maid." And the performance of "1913 Massacre" was beautiful and sad in ways I don't think Woody ever quite wrapped his head around.
Sarah Lee and Johnny sang a couple of their own tunes, which fit right into the Guthrie canon, especially sung in such a delicate harmony. The couple even brought out their own version of "Another Man's Done Gone," after giving some great props to Wilco and Billy Bragg for their Mermaid Avenue records.
An old New Orleans tune, "St. James Infirmary," and a new Arlo composition probably called "In Times Like These" touched on Arlo's experience playing a series of charity shows after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
After intermission (intermission?! oh yeah, it's a sit-down folk show with an audience median age of at least 60), Arlo came out with a romping Irish tune to warm up.
Then he hit into "Alice's Restaurant Massacre," the nearly 20-minute career defining tune I thought he'd retired. Still funny and still poignant, the song had me shouting along with the final chorus ("If you want to end war, you have to sing loud") and couldn't have been more uplifting.
Arlo the storyteller took up a lot of the second set, primarily with this long rambling set of loosely connected stories about Australia and flying that Josh and I were pretty sure was a set-up for "Coming into Los Angeles." And eventually it was, after an ever-more-excited Arlo told of flying back into the country once and seeing a man 1,000 miles away smelling his plane, zeroing in on new present - exactly the type of illicit material you'd expect he'd try to smuggle into the States. So Arlo ate it, and when the plane landed he was still flyin' so high that he saw the passengers one by one get sucked down the time tunnel, until he himself was escorted down the time tunnel, where at long last he came face to face with the man who'd been sniffing him for the past 1,000 miles. "Heh, Heh, Heh, You ate it," said the inspector's grin, to which Arlo smiled back "Yep." A circuitous route, to be sure, but hilarious all along the way and "Coming into Los Angeles" indeed followed, a smashing quick and loud version considering there were no drums or amps.
After playing a bit of newly unearthed Woody audio, Arlo sang a Woody tune he'd put music too. Then came the sing-along "This Land is Your Land" to close the show and an encore that started with "City of New Orleans."
All in all it was an amazing show, despite not even hearing my two favorite Arlo tunes - "Motorcycle Song" (which I'm not sure he plays any more) and "Darkest Hour" (which is just about my favorite song of all time, for anybody, and one I know he still plays 'cause it's on that bootleg I have from last summer).
Afterwards, Josh and I discussed the show over a couple of beers, talking about how Arlo bridged his father and the hippies, how the peace and love movement is not only fueled by its songs, but takes comfort in them and drives more new tunes. I'd say that by virtue of the fact that he had Woody as a father and teacher, plus strong friendships from his youth with Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston, Arlo is probably the only great post-Dylan songwriter never influenced by Dylan.
We talked about how the War experiences of both Woody (Merchant Marines) and Johnny Cash (Air Force) only strengthened their individualism. I wouldn't call the experience foundational for either man's character - there were just too many experiences earlier for that - but in a way both men became more isolated by their service, pushed more into the art of song, drawing on that inner artistic strength to push them through the experience (though to my recollection neither faced anything in the way of direct combat, that doesn't mean the service was a comfortable time) and returning more a musician and song-writer than before. Cash was obviously a lot younger during his time in the service than Woody was, but Woody was even more prolific writing songs later in life, though most are just words on paper these days, with thousands of melodies dying inside his head as he succumbed to Huntington's disease.
The spare stage Sunday night held Arlo, his son Abe on keyboards, a friend switching between pedal steel and mandolin and Arlo's daughter Sarah Lee and son-in-law Johnny, a pair of guitarists and wonderful harmonizing singers.
The wild, white hair of a 59-year-old - Arlo's most dominating physical attribute - is strange considering I've only seen the performer in the oddly dark Alice's Restaurant movie and record covers, where there's a definite boyishness mixed in with the hippie.
I do have a bootleg recording of Arlo doing a short set at a folk festival last summer, so I knew pretty well what to expect from the sound.
The show opened with plenty of Woody songs, including “Oklahoma Hills” and “Talking Dust Bowl Blues.” Arlo's young granddaughter ran out to join her mother in singing the chorus to "Union Maid." And the performance of "1913 Massacre" was beautiful and sad in ways I don't think Woody ever quite wrapped his head around.
Sarah Lee and Johnny sang a couple of their own tunes, which fit right into the Guthrie canon, especially sung in such a delicate harmony. The couple even brought out their own version of "Another Man's Done Gone," after giving some great props to Wilco and Billy Bragg for their Mermaid Avenue records.
An old New Orleans tune, "St. James Infirmary," and a new Arlo composition probably called "In Times Like These" touched on Arlo's experience playing a series of charity shows after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.
After intermission (intermission?! oh yeah, it's a sit-down folk show with an audience median age of at least 60), Arlo came out with a romping Irish tune to warm up.
Then he hit into "Alice's Restaurant Massacre," the nearly 20-minute career defining tune I thought he'd retired. Still funny and still poignant, the song had me shouting along with the final chorus ("If you want to end war, you have to sing loud") and couldn't have been more uplifting.
Arlo the storyteller took up a lot of the second set, primarily with this long rambling set of loosely connected stories about Australia and flying that Josh and I were pretty sure was a set-up for "Coming into Los Angeles." And eventually it was, after an ever-more-excited Arlo told of flying back into the country once and seeing a man 1,000 miles away smelling his plane, zeroing in on new present - exactly the type of illicit material you'd expect he'd try to smuggle into the States. So Arlo ate it, and when the plane landed he was still flyin' so high that he saw the passengers one by one get sucked down the time tunnel, until he himself was escorted down the time tunnel, where at long last he came face to face with the man who'd been sniffing him for the past 1,000 miles. "Heh, Heh, Heh, You ate it," said the inspector's grin, to which Arlo smiled back "Yep." A circuitous route, to be sure, but hilarious all along the way and "Coming into Los Angeles" indeed followed, a smashing quick and loud version considering there were no drums or amps.
After playing a bit of newly unearthed Woody audio, Arlo sang a Woody tune he'd put music too. Then came the sing-along "This Land is Your Land" to close the show and an encore that started with "City of New Orleans."
All in all it was an amazing show, despite not even hearing my two favorite Arlo tunes - "Motorcycle Song" (which I'm not sure he plays any more) and "Darkest Hour" (which is just about my favorite song of all time, for anybody, and one I know he still plays 'cause it's on that bootleg I have from last summer).
Afterwards, Josh and I discussed the show over a couple of beers, talking about how Arlo bridged his father and the hippies, how the peace and love movement is not only fueled by its songs, but takes comfort in them and drives more new tunes. I'd say that by virtue of the fact that he had Woody as a father and teacher, plus strong friendships from his youth with Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston, Arlo is probably the only great post-Dylan songwriter never influenced by Dylan.
We talked about how the War experiences of both Woody (Merchant Marines) and Johnny Cash (Air Force) only strengthened their individualism. I wouldn't call the experience foundational for either man's character - there were just too many experiences earlier for that - but in a way both men became more isolated by their service, pushed more into the art of song, drawing on that inner artistic strength to push them through the experience (though to my recollection neither faced anything in the way of direct combat, that doesn't mean the service was a comfortable time) and returning more a musician and song-writer than before. Cash was obviously a lot younger during his time in the service than Woody was, but Woody was even more prolific writing songs later in life, though most are just words on paper these days, with thousands of melodies dying inside his head as he succumbed to Huntington's disease.
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