Billboard; The history of music and the environment (Quotes from Stone)
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Billboard; The history of music and the environment
JESSICA LETKEMANN
Online
24 March 2008
VNU Entertainment Newswire
Pete Seeger clearly hoped to open a few eyes about how polluted the Hudson River had become when he released "My Dirty Stream" in 1966, but little did he know he'd be helping spawn a movement in environmentally conscious songwriting that's now in its third wave.
Recent years have seen the beginning of a watershed moment, as such acts as Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson are not only championing the environment but also writing songs about it. And artists across the timeline agree that there is no issue more universally important.
"It comes down to the simple fact that we all live on the same planet," Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard says. "There's always a liberal or conservative view of any particular issue. It's really about how you frame it and navigate it."
Seeger, now 88 and still an activist, figures into any discussion of the grass roots of environmental concern in music. "I was an early nature nut," he says. "When I got to prep school in my teens, started reading Thoreau and took him as my guidance." As part of his efforts to preserve New York's Hudson River, he released "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" as the focal point of an entire album of green songs in 1966. By 1969, he had formed anti-pollution organization Clearwater and was sailing the river in a sloop of the same name, pulling over for concerts to raise awareness of the issue.
"Part of a folk singer's role is to go out and write songs about topical issues," says the Byrds' Roger McGuinn, who cites Seeger as a friend and continual influence. The Byrds' 1970 song "Hungry Planet" talks about "people . . . poisoning my oxygen, digging into my skin; taking more out of my good earth than they'll ever put back in." Like Seeger, "the environment has long been one of my concerns," McGuinn says. He released a song called "The Trees Are Gone" in 1991 when the second generation of earth-conscious artists were at the fore, and is currently an advocate of solar power. He was glad to see the issue come up in R.E.M.'s music at the time, and "Generation Y is there now."
The turbulent, fertile late-'60s/early-'70s moment is best represented by such classics as Marvin Gaye's 1971 "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," which had a major impact on the songwriters of tomorrow.
"Certainly Neil Young is enormous," Pearl Jam's Gossard says of artists who have influenced singer Eddie Vedder and the group in general to incorporate green issues into their music. "All of our favorite artists sing about how the personal and the political blend in the world to some degree. It's such an important way for people to create art but also have an impact on the planet at large; by telling stories about the realities some people don't necessarily hear about or see."
Between R.E.M.'s litany of global ills on 1987's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" ("slash and burn return"), Talking Heads' wry 1988 song "Nothing but Flowers" and the B-52s' 1990 track "Channel Z" ("market crash! polar shift!"), several bands during the second Reagan term and the Bush Sr. years blended the political and the personal into their environmental storytelling.
"In the '80s, I was starting to write about political topics and the environment was one of the things that really needed to be addressed and discussed," R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe says. "I think a lot of that had to do with basically recognizing that the Reagan administration may well turn into the Bush administration."
Stipe cites a science class in the early '70s for helping spark his lifelong attention to the issue, but says 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant was "a huge influence on [me] on how socially relevant topics, in the hands of a good writer, can go hand in hand with music and writing lyrics."
But listeners still weren't quite sure what to make of the message, as evidenced by a 1991 Earth Day show in Boston featuring Jackson Browne, Queen Latifah and Bruce Hornsby, among others. The crowd of 37,000-plus cheered the musicians, but loudly jeered the political speakers, among them Jesse Jackson and Sen. John Kerry.
"They're booing the speakers and applauding the musicians," Indigo Girls' Amy Ray told Billboard in 1991. "But many of us have the same views and the same message."
As this first decade of the millennium draws to a close, the political nature of the crisis has become far more accepted. Indeed, Al Gore's environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" enjoyed wide support, and spawned a best song Academy Award for its closing track, Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up."
Now, Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson are among the current crop of acts writing to fit the times. "No Cars Go," from the former's 2007 album "Neon Bible," says, "We know a place where no planes go. We know a place where no ships go. No cars go" and then "Let's go!"
Just as Seeger wrote a ditty called "Garbage" and sang it on a "Sesame Street" album with Oscar the Grouch in 1974, Johnson put his voice and acoustic guitar to use in a children's song. "The Three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)" appeared on the 2005 soundtrack to "Curious George."
Guster guitarist Adam Gardner, whose company Reverb oversees the greening of major tours, says Johnson "is truly combining [it all into] an environmental campaign . . . It's an environmental campaign simultaneous with a Jack Johnson rock tour. That's just who he is."
But is it an issue for blue state bands? Red state bands? "It has to be nonpartisan. I think we need to be green states; I'm pushing for that," McGuinn says. He believes music "is becoming like a little plant coming through the crack in the sidewalk now; the green things are breaking through the cracks. I would love to see it get greener and less paved over, like the Joni Mitchell song."
"It may be the rising of the oceans [that is] the wake-up call the whole human race needs," Seeger says. "The harder you bounce a ball down on the sidewalk, the higher it bounces. Whether a Republican or a Democrat gets in, I think some of the best things are going to happen in the next few years."
Billboard; The history of music and the environment
JESSICA LETKEMANN
Online
24 March 2008
VNU Entertainment Newswire
Pete Seeger clearly hoped to open a few eyes about how polluted the Hudson River had become when he released "My Dirty Stream" in 1966, but little did he know he'd be helping spawn a movement in environmentally conscious songwriting that's now in its third wave.
Recent years have seen the beginning of a watershed moment, as such acts as Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson are not only championing the environment but also writing songs about it. And artists across the timeline agree that there is no issue more universally important.
"It comes down to the simple fact that we all live on the same planet," Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard says. "There's always a liberal or conservative view of any particular issue. It's really about how you frame it and navigate it."
Seeger, now 88 and still an activist, figures into any discussion of the grass roots of environmental concern in music. "I was an early nature nut," he says. "When I got to prep school in my teens, started reading Thoreau and took him as my guidance." As part of his efforts to preserve New York's Hudson River, he released "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" as the focal point of an entire album of green songs in 1966. By 1969, he had formed anti-pollution organization Clearwater and was sailing the river in a sloop of the same name, pulling over for concerts to raise awareness of the issue.
"Part of a folk singer's role is to go out and write songs about topical issues," says the Byrds' Roger McGuinn, who cites Seeger as a friend and continual influence. The Byrds' 1970 song "Hungry Planet" talks about "people . . . poisoning my oxygen, digging into my skin; taking more out of my good earth than they'll ever put back in." Like Seeger, "the environment has long been one of my concerns," McGuinn says. He released a song called "The Trees Are Gone" in 1991 when the second generation of earth-conscious artists were at the fore, and is currently an advocate of solar power. He was glad to see the issue come up in R.E.M.'s music at the time, and "Generation Y is there now."
The turbulent, fertile late-'60s/early-'70s moment is best represented by such classics as Marvin Gaye's 1971 "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," which had a major impact on the songwriters of tomorrow.
"Certainly Neil Young is enormous," Pearl Jam's Gossard says of artists who have influenced singer Eddie Vedder and the group in general to incorporate green issues into their music. "All of our favorite artists sing about how the personal and the political blend in the world to some degree. It's such an important way for people to create art but also have an impact on the planet at large; by telling stories about the realities some people don't necessarily hear about or see."
Between R.E.M.'s litany of global ills on 1987's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" ("slash and burn return"), Talking Heads' wry 1988 song "Nothing but Flowers" and the B-52s' 1990 track "Channel Z" ("market crash! polar shift!"), several bands during the second Reagan term and the Bush Sr. years blended the political and the personal into their environmental storytelling.
"In the '80s, I was starting to write about political topics and the environment was one of the things that really needed to be addressed and discussed," R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe says. "I think a lot of that had to do with basically recognizing that the Reagan administration may well turn into the Bush administration."
Stipe cites a science class in the early '70s for helping spark his lifelong attention to the issue, but says 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant was "a huge influence on [me] on how socially relevant topics, in the hands of a good writer, can go hand in hand with music and writing lyrics."
But listeners still weren't quite sure what to make of the message, as evidenced by a 1991 Earth Day show in Boston featuring Jackson Browne, Queen Latifah and Bruce Hornsby, among others. The crowd of 37,000-plus cheered the musicians, but loudly jeered the political speakers, among them Jesse Jackson and Sen. John Kerry.
"They're booing the speakers and applauding the musicians," Indigo Girls' Amy Ray told Billboard in 1991. "But many of us have the same views and the same message."
As this first decade of the millennium draws to a close, the political nature of the crisis has become far more accepted. Indeed, Al Gore's environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" enjoyed wide support, and spawned a best song Academy Award for its closing track, Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up."
Now, Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson are among the current crop of acts writing to fit the times. "No Cars Go," from the former's 2007 album "Neon Bible," says, "We know a place where no planes go. We know a place where no ships go. No cars go" and then "Let's go!"
Just as Seeger wrote a ditty called "Garbage" and sang it on a "Sesame Street" album with Oscar the Grouch in 1974, Johnson put his voice and acoustic guitar to use in a children's song. "The Three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)" appeared on the 2005 soundtrack to "Curious George."
Guster guitarist Adam Gardner, whose company Reverb oversees the greening of major tours, says Johnson "is truly combining [it all into] an environmental campaign . . . It's an environmental campaign simultaneous with a Jack Johnson rock tour. That's just who he is."
But is it an issue for blue state bands? Red state bands? "It has to be nonpartisan. I think we need to be green states; I'm pushing for that," McGuinn says. He believes music "is becoming like a little plant coming through the crack in the sidewalk now; the green things are breaking through the cracks. I would love to see it get greener and less paved over, like the Joni Mitchell song."
"It may be the rising of the oceans [that is] the wake-up call the whole human race needs," Seeger says. "The harder you bounce a ball down on the sidewalk, the higher it bounces. Whether a Republican or a Democrat gets in, I think some of the best things are going to happen in the next few years."
Up here so high I start to shake, Up here so high the sky I scrape, I've no fear but for falling down, So look out below I am falling now, Falling down,...not staying down, Could’ve held me up, rather tear me down, Drown in the river
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