It is rare that my idiosyncratic and widely ignored Friday music blogging overlaps with the subject matter that occupies the rest of my time. But today we have a happy confluence.
Kathy Mattea is a Grammy-winning country artist, born in West Virginia. She had a string of hits in the '80s and '90s, but her turn to the social activism that fueled the original Appalachian folk music tradition has put her out of sync with current commercial radio appetites.
After the Sago mine disaster, Mattea felt moved to respond somehow. She began researching the music that's grown up around coal and coal mining, which led her deeper into her own history (both her grandfathers were coal miners). The result is Coal, a concept album about the black rock and its effects on the people of West Virginia. It is composed of covers, some of extremely old songs, some of more recent tunes.
Though the album doesn't make any mention of climate change, Mattea was changed by her exposure to An Inconvenient Truth and spends much of her time these days presenting Gore's slideshow around the Southeast.
You can see some coverage of Mattea in the Bend Bulletin, in a story written (small world!) by a good friend of mine. See also USA Today and this great story on Living on Earth.
This song is called "Dark as a Dungeon."
(P.S.: If you can't make the music play, please let me know in comments or by email.)
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
View as Flat
Biodiversivist Posted 11:35 am
25 Apr 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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KarenLOrr Posted 12:40 pm
25 Apr 2008
Daddy, Won't ya take me back to Muehlenberg County
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDda6bNRWNA&NR=1
Lyrics
By John Prine
When I was a child, my family would travel
To western Kentucky, where my parents were born
And there's a backward old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
CHORUS:
And daddy won't you take me back to Mulenberg county
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay
Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well sometimes we'd float right down the Green River
To an abandoned old prison down by Atry Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
CHORUS
Then the coal company came, with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
CHORUS
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
CHORUS
http://www.risa.co.uk/sla/song.php?songid=17772
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amazingdrx Posted 1:41 pm
25 Apr 2008
Merle Travis doing it. Great song. Kathy is great too!! Wish it would play.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:46 pm
25 Apr 2008
This pretty much makes Prine the hero of the fight against strip mining. Since he's been playing it for decades, since he wrote it.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GreenMom Posted 3:11 pm
25 Apr 2008
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caniscandida Posted 4:27 pm
25 Apr 2008
I never heard the John Prine song, so unlearned am I. The lyrics strike me as overwhelmingly mournful and nostalgic, uttered by one who is bitter, and clinging to his pistols and his hope of Paradise, such that I would weep to hear him sing them, and might choke on my waffle. But I trust the recommendations of my pals Amazing and GreenMom, and so I shall be brave, and resolve to hear it, once the sun comes up, and it is music-listening time again, here on the island, across the lagoon from America.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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kmp Posted 12:50 am
26 Apr 2008
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caniscandida Posted 1:25 am
26 Apr 2008
Cf. by contrast Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter," which describes the poverty of the family; and the first track on Cowboy Junkies' astounding "Trinity Session" album, "Mining for Gold," which is not about coal-mining, but anyway emphasizes the silicosis that results from long engagement in hard-rock mining.
What does "the air smelled like snakes" mean?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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wesrolley Posted 1:38 am
26 Apr 2008
There is an alternative that I also tried and worked. The actual MP3 file that is loaded to plan this music is given as a URL. It is more work, but if you do a view page source, you can copy the URL and paste it into the browser and play the music with whatever player you have for MP3 files.
Having said that, I would respectfully request David to continue on this vein... though it seems that he is a bit more attuned to rock than county. I was reminded of my college days, when Dylan was just a young guy that we heard about making the coffee house circuit and The Times They are a Changin' had not yet been recorded. If we get a few more like Kathy to carry this activism into the current pop culture like we once did, then maybe there is some hope.
Unless we do, there is none.
Wes Rolley
CoChair - EcoAction Committee
Green Party US
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spaceshaper Posted 2:27 am
26 Apr 2008
Off-thread - talking of web browser issues - I've seen complaints in Gristmill of pdf download links filling up hard drives. If you have this problem try Apple's Safari browser - free download for Mac or PC - which has a setting to open PDF's in a browser window without downloading.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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KarenLOrr Posted 5:49 am
26 Apr 2008
Grant Peeples has recently come back on the music scene in Florida. Grant submitted his rollicking song, "Come on Down to the Sunshine State" to the New State Song of Florida Contest. Some thought Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" wasn't quite the ticket anymore.
Way down upon the Swanee River.....
http://www.flheritage.com/KIDS/symbol.cfm?page=2&id=1 ...
Well, Grant didn't win the state song competition and we might be keeping 'Swanee River" after all. Read about it here:
http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20080418/GUARDIAN/8 ...
You can see Grant perform his Sunshine State Song and read about Grant on his website:
http://www.grantpeeples.com/
Here are the lyrics to Grant's New State of Florida Song ~
Sunshine State
In the middle of the winter when you need a vacation, come where the sun and sand are waiting, right down here at the bottom of the nation, I'm talking about Florida.
Yea, come on down to the Sunshine State. Bring your money, check out the place.
Chances are you'll decide to stay Hell, everybody else does
Yea there's a thousand new residents coming down everyday, they're all moving in and buying up the place, filling in the swamps and making more space, cause man we're starting to need it
We got snake farms and alligator wrestlers, more state executions than anywhere but Texas, plus shuffleboard and wet T-shirt concessions, man, ya gotta see it to believe it
Come on down to the Sunshine State. Bring your money, check out the place.
Chances are you'll decide to stay Hell, everybody else does
We're number one is lightning strikes, snake bites, alligator and shark attacks. With a million illegal alliens to sack the trash, clean toilets, wash dishes and cut the grass, I'm telling you: its heaven
We feature one golf course for every man, woman and child. When we cut down the trees you can see for miles. Don't it seem like a place you could kick back a while? Dude! It just don't get no better!
Come on down to the sunshine State. Bring your money, check out the place.
Chances are you'll decide to stay Hell, everybody else does
There's federally subsidized sugar plantations, bigger and richer than most European nations. They own the politicians and hire all the Haitians........Its what you call a sweat deal
Everybody thought it was some kinda joke. When we said it ain't over till your brother counts the votes, but eight years later they're still blowing smoke, its what you call a State Steal
Come on down to the sunshine State. Bring your money check out the place.
Chances are you'll decide to stay Hell, everybody else does
Our school system rates higher than Mississippi and Louisiana, and though we're not quite up there with Arkansas and Alabama, 10 percent of our `chiren' spend time in the slammer, and that's gotta count for SOMEthing
You see we ain't go not state income tax, but we just screw the tourists to make up for that, oh its a service-based economy that keeps us fat, well yea that and a lotta fried mullet!
Come on down to the sunshine State. Bring your money check out the place.
Chances are you'll just stay Hell, everybody else does
------------------------------------------------------
To the question of the scent of snakes ~
John Grassy investigated the smell of snakes after being asked, "Do copperhead snakes smell like cucumbers?" Some say they do. Some say they don't. Some say they have a musky smell. Others say they have no smell but the great northern watersnake does. You can read about John Grassy's olefactory odyssey here:
http://gorp.away.com/gorp/activity/wildlife/expert/exp082 ...
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amazingdrx Posted 10:49 am
26 Apr 2008
"I'll be halfway to heaven with paradise waiting."
You gotta hear "Angel From Montgomery", Prine's version and Prine and Bonnie Rait singing the duet. It brings the sadness to an exquisite place where the human condition transcends the end.
They must be somewhere on the net, I'll look for 'em.
On the air? The dry, dusty southern heat of the air, where it feels like a rattle snake rattling?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 10:56 am
26 Apr 2008
Magnificent!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 11:02 am
26 Apr 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:43 pm
26 Apr 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 9:36 pm
26 Apr 2008
Thanks very much for sending this. I shall be passing it along, to my embittered elitist friends.
On the other hand, "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" is a gorgeous, classic song, despite its politics. The sustained third in the first bar, then the thrilling upward octave plus key change (C to F) in the third, the galumphing second in between setting the movement, are terrificly satisfying.
Are the lyrics inevitably racist? I.e., approving of the ante-bellum slave-holding South, dominated by plantation-owners? Well, that could be, I sadly admit. "Sadly," because I like the nostalgia about the natural pleasures of the home in the country, such as the Virgilian bees, as recalled by a boy in Greenwich Village, NYC, a struggling writer, not knowing where his prospects lie -- as I imagine Stephen Foster to have been.
I can see why many of you guys in Florida do not want it to represent you, but it is still a great song.
Not to be too cynical, but why not admit that Disney World is your biggest tourist draw, and go with "It's a Small World After All"?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 9:38 pm
26 Apr 2008
what in the world is a "foxfire"?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 11:45 pm
26 Apr 2008
"How can a person go to work in the morning, and come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?" -- maybe that is getting at the central American tragedy. Thoreau was already telling us to stop, stop, stop being like that; "be what you are, really, already."
I shall go back now and look at the other performances.
Thanks again, Amazing.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:16 am
27 Apr 2008
Prine also has one of the best anti-war songs ever
"Flag Decal" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qE2vJdDw4
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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KarenLOrr Posted 2:20 am
27 Apr 2008
I'll pass your comments along to Grant Peeples. He'll be tickled.
You can read a little bit about Grant and the state song competition in this brief article at The Tallahassee Democrat:
"Crawfordville songwriter's state song spoof is a hit on You Tube"
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200 ...
You can listen to more rollicking Grant songs that are funny and sad on My Space.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.view ...
"The New State of Florida Song," This is Real Country," "Down Here in the County," and "Summer Camp" are at that My Space link.
Summer Camp is "a paid political development" by St. Joe Development, formerly the St. Joe Paper Company. Joe decided to turn their Panhandle timber lands into developments some years ago and put in an airport at taxpayer expense to accommodate them.
You can hear another side of Grant at his website.
http://www.grantpeeples.com/music-13.html
The angel singing with Grant on "I Am Empty Now" is Lis Williamson of Keystone Heights, Florida.
My husband and I went to Tallhassee to see Grant perform at the American Legion Hall where he'd organized a benefit for The Wakulla Independent Reporter, perhaps America's only newspaper that had to go to court to prove that it is, in fact, a newspaper.
You can read about it here ~
Funny Songs About Ignorance War and Greed
http://www.wakulla.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Other_Area_ ...
It was a wonderful evening. The audience knew the words to "Sunshine State" and sang along.
AND we were introduced to the headliner, the excellent Roy Zimmerman, who we'd never heard and whose cerebral, sidesplitting lyrics just knocked us out.
If you don't know Roy Zimmerman, I recommend starting with "My TV:"
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individ ...
Then head on to Roy's tender love song to Dick Cheney, "the sexiest man alive."
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individ ...
There's more on Roy's website:
http://www.royzimmerman.com/
Regarding the controversy over the State of Florida Song, "Old Folks at Home," the letter below appeared in the Gainesville Sun this morning.
http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20080427/OPINION02/ ...
Give Foster his due
Excuse me for putting in my oar regarding the current controversy over the Florida state song "Old Folks at Home" but the letter by Tayler Hensen (April 16) is just too negative to go unanswered.
Stephen Foster is an American icon, known throughout the world for his indelible compositions and artistic genius. He did write many of his songs using negro dialect of his day. He wrote specifically for the minstrel show medium, because it was a popular music outlet, albeit very demeaning to the African American community.
But Foster wrote with compassion for the inherent dignity of a people he had learned to love, and he instructed the recipients of his musical scores to perform them with "pathos" rather than with the usual derision.
"Old Folks at Home" became Foster's best-known piece worldwide, quite apparently because of the deep longing for the roots of childhood that it represents; a universal and poignant expression of home-sickness.
The song need only be rendered in standard English to be acceptable to all with only one expression in need of replacement. Change "Oh darkies" to "Oh lordy." How my heart grows weary," and all of humanity would now be represented.
Foster is the only composer with two state songs to his credit. "My Old Kentucky Home," which is heavy laden with references to African American suffering, is much beloved by Kentuckians and to my knowledge Is free from any attempt to find a replacement.
A. W. Myers,
Hawthorne
---------------------
Finally, you can see a great North Florida singer perform right there in New York City. Gainesville boy, Fran Leadon, is with the Brooklyn band, "The Y'all Stars," and they play around the Island.
For a real Sunday mornin' regrettin' song, listen to "Bury the Bottle." You might have to pick yourself off the ground after that "peetiful" number but you can perk yourself up with one of their zippier tunes.
The Y'all Stars
http://www.myspace.com/yallstars
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:40 am
27 Apr 2008
You can download it from here
Use it to open Dave's link and it will ask if you want to download missing components, say yes and you may be good to go ... or maybe not ; )
You don't have to use it as your default browser.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 1:58 am
28 Apr 2008
"How much tequilla did I drink last night?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du7abplOtaA&NR=1
Writer of "City of New Orleans", who slipped this mortal coil. But he lives on with this song and his whole body of work!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Pompey Road Posted 2:01 am
28 Apr 2008
Nobody paid much attention because we die one or two at a time and strip mining has reduced the number of men who actually work underground now.
I guess because we are actually killing the planet along with ourselves by digging coal we are receiving a little more attention now.
I am conflicted by fighting mountain top removal because I know it will only drive the coal corporations to more underground mining and put more men in harms way.
Then again, it's what we do, its in our blood and
everyman makes up his own mind concerning where he makes his living. I have seen many men die in the mines along with my father but will say that if you have to mine it, this is the proper way.
I would rather see a mountain subside or fall the thickness of the coal seam than to be destroyed altogether along with a valley and a fresh water stream.
You can clean off the shops buildings and scrap up the tailing from the stockpile and cover it with fresh dirt. In a few years you never know it was there.
The sludge or coal slurry is another matter, the coal cleaning process does not get enough attention by environmentalist. A spill larger than the Exxon Valdez got little more that local headlines even though it affected large portions of the Big Sandy River and its tributaries.
We had a large mine blow out over the weekend, the stored up mine water from an abandoned mine ran for hours, thousands of gallons. It was clear and for the most part harmless. I would say it got oxygenated by running over the rocks and such for the long distance it had to run before it got into the river.
Console Coal Corporation has just started dumping coal chemical waste water in the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy Fiver. The chemical waste water dumping is allowed by the Army Corps of Engineers who are supposed to be testing it. It was allowed over the protest of all of us on the Kentucky side who have to drink that water.
Last week we had a large fish kill, with a substantial amount of the fish killed being catfish. Bottom feeders with a tough constitution. It is just more than a coinsidence that we had the fish kill a few weeks after the coal corporation was allowed to dump chemical waste water into the river that runs into Fistrap Lake. This is the source for our drinking water. It is bad enough the corps allows strip mining on the Fishtrap Lake property inclucing MTR, now they allow the coal corporations to dump chemical waste water straight into the river that feeds Fishtrap Lake. Was set up as a flood control project, now mostly a mining operation and a chemical waste water and coal slurry dump.
We need help down here, this has got to stop. I hope the next administration will do some things to tighten the clean water act back up. I hope they will stop the MTR and valley filling. It has really got out of control down here. It will take generations to fix all this environmental damage. Of course the MTR's and valley fills can never be fixed. Once you destroy a mountain and a pristine valley it is gone forever.
It will take more than one album and one country music artist to put the spotlight on coal. I fear it will not be stopped in my lifetime. I would however like to think my kids will not have to be witness to all the destruction both human and environmental I have lived with.
In times past and even now when it is dangerous to retrive the bodies of fallen miners they seal them up where they die. Mother earth has buried them, they have laid their burden down, you can find the cost of coal laying buried in the ground.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:28 am
28 Apr 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy6EuZp9IY&NR=1
My favorite line from "Dark as A Dungeon":
"I'll pity the miner who's diggin' my bones."
I bet Prine would do an anti-MTR benefit concert. He could get all his music friends like Kathy to join up. I'll email his people. He's got people. Hehey.
Imagine the great Doc Watson on stage at the end singing "Paradise" along with Prine and friends.
That would truly be a piece of paradise right here on earth.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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undyau Posted 9:53 pm
28 Apr 2008
To work two miles down from the air and the light
And imagine, having to plead
That a job that can kill, is a job that you need
Words from Latin Quarter's "The Men Below" that have been stuck in my mind for ummm... 21 years. Gosh. Its pretty interesting to revisit their music now and look at how many of the issues they were singing about are unresolved.
From memory this dates from the Thatcher government's battles against the mining union (NUM). I've never been a fan of Thatcher, but she did have her finger on the pulse when it came to global warming.
Thanks for the article - along with the discussion, its opened up a few new artists for me to get my ears around.
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baysidebill Posted 2:42 am
29 Apr 2008
This one's all over the place.
Steve Earle's "Harlan Man" and "The Mountain" are really good. Google songs about coal/coal mining- you'll get many good songs.
I know it's convenient to abbreviate but MTR means Mountain Top Removal. Like IED means Improvised Explosive Device- a bomb. Abbreviations take the emotional weight off the term.
America's cities and its rural areas have been hammered by policies in the past 50+ years. Rural areas have been crapped on longer than that.
As for Thatcher, she was anti-union. Period. Don't buy into historical revisionism. England has long had health problems due to coal burning.
Strange isn't it that native peoples here and elsewhere have held sources of energy (coal/uranium) sacred, not to be exploited. And they're seen as backwards.
This country needs a real energy program, a real health care system and a good food production system.
The destruction of this country and its environment from the mountain top removal in West Virginia to the planned oil drilling near Artic Village, Alaska is a monument to the greed of the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Peabody's and the JH Blairs.
Remember the Cheney Energy Task Force of 2001? For a country that has seen more of its share of police/detective shows, we sure don't seem to get prima facie. Let's see- Enron and energy provider rip-offs, invade Afghanistan, Iraq, support coup attempt in Venezuela, involvement in Columbia.
It says "We the People" not we the sheeple. Or lemmings.
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caniscandida Posted 1:56 am
30 Apr 2008
John Prine's "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" is surely one of the greatest Youtube performances ever. Thanks for sending it!
Steve Goodman's Tequila song was fun; but it is a pity how he declined toward the end. His performance of "City of New Orleans," one of my very favorite songs ever (in Arlo Guthrie's version, of course), is sad.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 2:35 am
30 Apr 2008
I have finally had time to work my way through your detailed message. Grant Peeples and Roy Zimmerman are angels from heaven, plainly. Joni Mitchell is right about Roy; the Dick Cheney song is perfect. Thanks so much!
Thanks also for the letter on Stephen Foster. By the way, the link to the Gainesville Sun website takes you to a charming video on "Women's Handgun Safety Day."
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 2:41 am
30 Apr 2008
That detail about the fish kill, many of them catfish, is important. And I did not know that last bit, about the bodies of miners being left unrecovered, it is too dangerous to go after them.
Amazing has a helpful idea, to get John Prine and pals to do a concert.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 2:49 am
02 May 2008
This stuff is classic, far better than DR's usual highly dated questionable stuff. : )
We shall be listening to it again, on our way down to my parents in PA, on the NJ Turnpike, with connexion below Trenton to the PA Turnpike.
The record sorely needs a listening-to by Pompey Road and Amazing DrX, with review.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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