"You outlived the bastards"---Bruce Springstein

Take the time and watch this. Will bring a lump! Save it and send it around, these videos, so others can see it as well...This stuff needs to be handed down....we are lost and drowned in a barrage of "mytake,your take--and assorted net feeds"--this is plain history.....


May 3 was Pete Seeger's 90th birthday, and the occasion
of a tribute and benefit for the Clearwater at Madison
Square Garden that featured dozens of performers (Bruce
Springsteen, Joan Baez, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco,
Bernice Johnson Reagon, Billy Bragg, Ruby Dee, Steve
Earle, Arlo Guthrie, Guy Davis, Dar Williams, Michael
Franti, Bela Fleck, Tim Robbins, Dave Matthews, Rufus
Wainwright, John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, Ritchie Havens
and many more). The place was packed, and god knows how
many more will see much of the event on TV, DVD and the
Internet.

So here is the incomparable Pete, who famously wanted
to take an ax to the power cord when Bob Dylan first
performed with an electric guitar, being broadcast to
the world using all the technologies that humans have
yet devised. And yes, here were performers using lots
of electric guitars and speakers, as well as pipes,
drums, violins, banjos, and a capella voices. There
could be no more fitting tribute to a man whose music
and life have been so devoted to reflecting the
aspirations and struggles and power and contradictions
of the people, of our country and around the world. As
Walt Whitman wrote:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

And at the center of the musical storm was the folk
singer and activist who contains and inspires
multitudes, with his simple banjo and the motto, "This
machine surrounds hatred and forces it to surrender."

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! devoted the May 4 show
to the MSG event, adding many reflections of the
artists about Pete and his influence. Here it is on
YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dpb_vFknhA

Part 1. Bruce Springsteen's wry, moving, bitter-sweet
prose-poem tribute, and footage of This Land Is Your
Land from the Obama inauguration concert.

9:40

Part 2. Backstage: Pete, Joan Baez, Bernice Johnson
Reagon (Sweet Honey and the Rock).

10:04

Part 3. Backstage: Tom Morello (Rage Against the
Machine), Steve Earle, and more Pete, remembering
singing Waist Deep in the Big Muddy on the Smothers
Brothers, plus his Smothers Brothers historic
performance.

9:58

Part 4. Steve Earle, Ani Defranco, Dar Williams, Billy
Bragg (how Pete urged him to update the
Internationale).

10:10

Part 5. More Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Tim Robbins
(mc of 90th birthday). Finally, Pete reiterates his
leitmotif: 'Little things lead to bigger things.'

5:57

To purchase the DN! episode, go to