Comments on: The Communist Consumers Loved

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 04:21:41 +0000

I like electric guitars, but they aren’t for singers with poor elocution. Dylan acoustic was already nearly unintelligible. Seeger, who wrote the book on banjo playing, was right on Dylan electric, amplified, loudly unintelligible.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 04:20:15 +0000

I like electric guitars, but Dylan acoustic was already nearly unintelligible. Seeger, who wrote the book on banjo playing, was right on Dylan electric, amplified, loudly unintelligible.

By: Faze

Faze — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 01:23:52 +0000

Yes, he fits the model that makes the politically correct liberal Massachusetts elite the spiritual descendants of the Puritans. Pete, you may recall, was the one who angrily tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylan when he went electric at Newport. And while the hippies loved Seeger, he himself was no libertine and kept that whole lifestyle at arm’s length.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:00:54 +0000

The more I learn about Pete Seeger, the more he seems like’s Moldbug’s archetypal progressive: Yankee pedigree, Harvard education, Communist Party membership, “Progressive” politics, etc.

By: Faze

Faze — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 03:37:21 +0000

Great summary of the weird leftism of the 60s folk revival. One recent history of Moses Ash and Folkways records marvels that the American left hoped to build a working class movement based on this deeply unpopular music. (Unpopular, that is, among the non-elites who were going to be the beneficiaries of the revolution.) The most successful leftist anthem of the pre-sixties era was “Look for the Union Label” — the theme song of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. It was based on a melody by Jerome Kern (“Look for the Silver Lining”), the man who gave us “A Fine Romance”, “Smoke gets in Your Eyes” and “The Way You Look Tonight”.

Pete Seeger, however, will live forever for giving us “Turn, Turn, Turn”, “If I had a Hammer”, “Guantanamera”, “Where have all the Flowers Gone” and all the great songs he stole or adapted — like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (“Wimoweh”) He was something else, creepy politics and all.

By: Toddy Cat

Toddy Cat — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 21:34:55 +0000

Will Geer was a commie? It’s remarkable how many of these guys came slithering out of the woodwork in the early ’70′s, isn’t it? And about half of them appeared as guest stars on the TV show “MASH”, which, whlie it was funny enough in it’s earlier years, started to resemble at victory celebration for the CPUSA once Alan Alda took it over. God, but Communists were creepy.