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Category:    Home > Reviews > Biography > Folk Music > Politics > Counterculture > Pete Seeger – The Power Of Song (Miriam DVD) + Live In Australia 1963 (Acorn Media DVD)

Pete Seeger – The Power Of Song (Miriam DVD) + Live In Australia 1963 (Acorn Media DVD)

 

Picture: C+/C     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Main Programs: B

 

 

Pete Seeger’s contributions to Folk Music, World Music and its simple force is an amazing story that has a man simply singing and speaking his mind, but finds himself in the middle of the U.S. Government’s campaign to hold back a burgeoning counterculture and anything they deemed subversive on a whim.  Two more DVDs have arrived about and with Seeger that show more explicitly than ever just how inane the feds were in targeting him and how this eventually backfired.  Pete Seeger – The Power Of Song is a biography about the man, his music and how he was blacklisted by singing music that was not that political, while Live In Australia 1963 shows his huge success in exile from the U.S. and how that began his slow comeback.

 

He wrote songs that became hits like “If I Had A Hammer” and “Turn Turn Turn”.  The Religious Right hates the song, always did and always will, going on a goofy campaign to say the song is just a weak distillation of a Biblical quote instead of a clever interpretation by Seeger.  Note how when the good book is noted, he is not, but that is the kind of typical thing by the Ultra Right where they love disturbing anyone who is at peace because hey can only thrive on hate.  We see that hate in the documentary and much more, it took 17 years before he was on TV again and by then, he was also a founder of music for children’s television!

 

There is no shortage of key vintage footage, new interviews with the Seegers and major names in music including Bob Dylan, Natalie Maines, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt and many others.  However, it is Seeger himself who steals the show with his common sense, deep love of music, boundless talent and when all is said and done, you have seen the quietest of all the music giant endure and innovate.

 

Live In Australia 1963 is a fine concert with Seeger in top form and one of the best concerts in what was a 10-month world tour.  The audiences go wild and he is in his element, way ahead of his time (like when he sings a song by his “young friend Bob Dylan”) and you see a master at work who made so much possible all the way to what we know as the 1960s.  Ironically, if the U.S. authorities had just left him alone, they would have had less troubles, but the concert is as much a testament to his greatness as the portrait, which is why we strongly recommend both DVDs.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Power is varied from the documentary nature of the production with footage well edited form many sources and eras.  The 1.33 X 1 black and white image on the Live set is more degraded per its age, but looks as well as can be expected.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Power just spreads the sound around, which is often monophonic.  The Dolby 2.0 Stereo option is a little weaker.  The Live disc and its extras are actually in a very welcome PCM 16/48 2.0 Mono that shows how clean these recordings were for their time.

 

Extras in Power include three additional scenes and five short films on the Seeger Family, while the Live set offers interviews, performances and rare footage from his Australian tour in addition to the main program, plus a well-illustrated booklet inside the DVD case with extensive essay text on Seeger and the DVD.  For more Seeger, see the following DVD releases from his Rainbow Quest TV show:

 

With Johnny Cash

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2411/Pete+Seeger's+Rainbow+Quest:+John

 

New Lost City Ramblers + Greenbriar Boys DVDs

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2874/Pete+Seeger's+Rainbow+Quest:+New

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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