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Title: Driving Through Mythical America Post by Kevin Cryan on Today at 10:14 Shameful details of the tragic events referred to in Pete and Clive's Driving Through Mythical America (http://www.peteatkin.com/b8a.htm) continue to emerge. See today's edition (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2070139,00.html) of The Guardian: The command, as Alan Canfora heard it on a 37-year-old audio recording recently discovered in a government archive, appeared to leave no room for doubt. "Right here. Get set. Point. Fire." Then came 13 seconds of gunfire. When it ended, four students were dead and nine injured, and the shootings at Kent State University became engraved in America's collective memory as one of the most painful days of the Vietnam era..... Kevin Cryan |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by neilyoungatheart on 05.05.07 at 16:52 As you may guess from my user id, I'm a big Neil Young fan. I've also been a fan of Pete since the early 70s: I bought 4 of his original 6 releases on vinyl (2 somehow passed me by). Of course, after discovering Midnight Voices 4 or 5 years ago, I repurchased everything on CD, and filled the gaps as well. But, being a big Neil Young fan, I'm struck by the several overlaps between Neil's writing and Clive & Pete's. As far as I know, Driving Through Mythical America and NY's Ohio are the only two songs about the Kent State shootings. They both have an "Elvis" song: Apparition From Las Vegas and NY's He Was The King. Both have personnified their guitar: Thief In The Night and National Steel from Clive/Pete and This Old Guitar by NY. And finally - though obviously not uniquely - both have "anti-war" songs: All The Dead Were Strangers and more recently A Hill Of Little Shoes by Clive/Pete. And NY's entire 2006 Living With War album. A case of great minds thinking alike? |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by Keith Busby on 05.05.07 at 17:07 Ah, no. There's Harvey Andrews' "Hey Sandy" about one of the victims of the Kent State shootings. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Scheuer This was sung quite a lot in the folk clubs in days of yore, or so my ageing brain tells me. Keith |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by BogusTrumper on 05.05.07 at 20:27 on 05/05/07 at 17:07:42, Keith Busby wrote :
According to WikiWhatsit: The best known response to the Kent State University events was the protest song "Ohio", written by Neil Young within weeks of the incident for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Crosby, Stills, and Nash visited the Kent State campus for the first time on May 4, 1997, where they performed the song for the May 4 Task Force's 27th annual commemoration. Lesser known musical tributes include: Harvey Andrews song “Hey Sandy,”[29] addressed to Sandra Scheuer. Steve Miller's “Jackson-Kent Blues,”[30] from The Steve Miller Band album Number 5 (released in November 1970). The Beach Boys released "Student Demonstration Time"[31] in 1971 on Surf's Up. Mike Love wrote new lyrics for Leiber & Stoller’s “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine.” Jon Anderson has said that the lyrics of "Long Distance Runaround" (on the album Fragile by Yes, also released in 1971) are also in part about the shootings, particularly the line "hot colour melting the anger to stone."[32] In 1970-71 Halim El-Dabh, a Kent State University music professor who was on campus when the shootings occurred, composed Opera Flies, a full length opera, in response to his experience. The work was first performed on the Kent State campus on May 8, 1971 and was revived for the 25th commemoration of the events in 1995. In 1971, the composer and pianist Bill Dobbins (who was a Kent State University graduate student at the time of the shootings), composed The Balcony, an avant-garde work for jazz band inspired by the same event. First performed in May 1971 for the university's first commemoration, it was released on LP in 1973 and was performed again by the Kent State University Jazz Ensemble in 2000 for the 30th commemoration. Dave Brubeck's 1971 oratorio Truth Is Fallen also has the Kent State events as its subject; the work was premiered in Midland, Michigan on May 1, 1971 and released on LP in 1972.[33] The All Saved Freak Band dedicated their 1973 album My Poor Generation to “Tom Miller of the Kent State 25.” Tom Miller was a member of the band who had been featured in Life magazine as part of the Kent State protests and lost his life the next year in an automobile accident. Holly Near's “It Could Have Been Me,” her personal response to the shootings, was released on A Live Album (1974). The industrial band Skinny Puppy's 1989 song "Tin Omen", which appears on the albums Rabies refers to the event (The song is also on the live Doomsday: Back and Forth Series 5: Live in Dresden.) Lamb of God's 2000 song "O.D.H.G.A.B.F.E." references Kent State, together with the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Waco siege. Joe Walsh, who briefly attended Kent State, has said that he wrote "Turn to Stone" in response to the shootings.[citation needed] Sage Francis references the Kent State shootings in his song “Slow Down Gandhi.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by Keith Busby on 06.05.07 at 15:33 Somebody say something about completists? Keith |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by BogusTrumper on 06.05.07 at 20:50 I was considering posting them one at a time to get my post count up :D |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by S J Birkill on 06.05.07 at 21:29 Anyone here contribute to Wikipedia? We should be well up that list -- some of the later ones are more obscure (or jolly well should be) and tenuously connected at best. I've upped the search engine profile of our lyric page (http://www.peteatkin.com/b8.htm). SJB |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by David Morgan on 06.05.07 at 22:34 On the completist theme, Wikipedia is missing not only DTMA but also the B-side of CSNY's Ohio, which was a more typical (and rather lovely) CSNY close-harmony piece written by Stephen Stills: Find the Cost of Freedom. I still treasure the 45! I'm an occasional Wikipedia contributor & will update the page. |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by neilyoungatheart on 07.05.07 at 15:26 Find the Cost of Freedom predates Kent State - I think Stills wrote it about the Vietnam war in general. Certainly CSNY were performing it back in 1969: it was part of their set at Woodstock and at several other gigs. After Neil wrote Ohio in 1970, recorded it with CSNY, and they decided Ohio should be released as a single: Stills' existing anti-war song seemed the obvious B-side. A prophetic title. So FtCoF isn't, strictly speaking, about Kent State, but as the B-side of Ohio and the closing number throughout CSNY's 1970 tour it became closely associated with it. |
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Title: Re: Driving Through Mythical America Post by David Morgan on 08.05.07 at 14:10 Thanks - we live and learn! Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings) now updated appropriately. David M |
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