I'm not quite sure how it got there. For that matter, I don't know where any of our records came from. We weren't going to the store and selecting them ourselves when we were 3 or 4, so our parents must have bought it for us. Or a Christmas gift from a relative. Or a hand-me down from someone. Who knows.
First I loved the songs. Then I got bored with it. Then I hit an age where I was just at the perfect stage to enjoy the humor in this album, and my sister and I thought "The Foolish Frog" song on this album was the funniest thing ever, and we listened to that song over and over again, laughing our heads off each time.
And then eventually I outgrew that humor, and got bored with the album again, and it became disregarded.
I rediscovered Pete Seeger when I was 18, and beginning to become interested in the history of popular music, and protest music. I began to hear Pete Seegar's name a lot in connection with other artists like The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary, et cetera.
I bought Pete Seeger's greatest hits on CD. I hadn't realized at first that this was the same singer whose animal albums I had grown up with, but once I listened to the voice on the CD, I immediately made the connection. I was pleasantly surprised to combine childhood nostalgia with my more adult tastes.
I used to play the CD around the Calvin College dormitories.
My roommate Brett initially mocked me at first for the CD--the song Little Boxes in particular he thought sounded like a parody of a children's song instead of what an 18 year old should be listening to. But then after a few spins of the CD, he became a Pete Seeger fan himself. (This was back before the song got renewed popularity from the television show Weeds).
I saw Pete Seeger live in November 1999 at the School of America Protest down in Georgia. I had gone down with a Calvin group, and we were sitting on the lawn listening to the speeches and the music, when suddenly I thought the voice of one of the musicians sounded familiar. I left the group to get closer to the stage, and there was Pete Seeger singing.
Although this was 15 years ago now, he was already not young at this stage, being 80 years old. His singing voice seemed pretty shot, and he was singing with his grandson who helped him carry the song. But in between the songs he would tell stories, and his talking voice hadn't changed at all from the familiar voice I grew up on.
This was in a big field, and I saw him only from a distance, but I was happy just to say I saw him.
However I got a much closer look at him later that night. We went to a non-violence training workshop in the evening, which was a small group of people in a small little room. And before the training began, Pete Seeger came out and sang several songs to the room, and I was really elated to have seen him up so close.
During my time in Japan, I was delighted to discover Pete Seeger was also quite popular in Japan. During my brief experiment with joining the town choir in Ajimu, I discovered the choir sang some Pete Seeger songs translated into Japanese. The choir director asked me if I had ever heard of Pete Seeger. "Have I ever heard of him?" I replied, "Let me tell you the story about how I saw him play in just a small room once..."
I also enjoyed the Japanese version of Big Muddy.
By the way, sorry I'm a few days late on this post. The news that Pete Seeger had died completely passed me by the past couple days. Despite the fact that I try to keep an eye on the news, the past few days I've heard plenty about Justin Bieber's exploits, but nothing on Pete Seeger's death. I suppose I always knew the media would largely ignore him, although I somewhat expected facebook and other word of mouth would alert me. But my facebook feed has been surprisingly quite about Pete Seeger's death.
Related Posts: A post from about 10 years ago, when I recounted the same story as above.
A post on Non-violence, in which I recall a Pete Seeger anecdote that I heard him tell once in an NPR interview.
A list of the top 10 Biopics I would like to see Hollywood produce, in which I include Pete Seeger.
Link of the Day
reddit.com Interviews Noam Chomsky
2 comments:
"Weeds," eh? Funny how things cycle around.
"Small group of people in a small little room" -- wow, does Seeger ever have a host of stories like that following him. Bloody remarkable, if you consider how many performers, who claim him as a personal icon, won't show up anywhere until a minimum fee has been paid.
Yeah, you said it. And think how many people got famous playing his songs, that wouldn't dream of doing small performances like that.
It was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was 80 years old at the time, but was still travelling all over the country playing at protests.
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