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
