#971. Lineage of Song: “Piece of My Heart”

 

Janis Joplin

Melissa Etheridge

Here’s another I hesitated to share in the early period of this thing, even though I love it. Again, I have no particular interest in Joplin, and I was genuinely confused that Etheridge didn’t emerge from her version a bigger star. In fact the opposite seemed to happen. But by that point a lot of cultural observers seemed intent to downplay anything that could compete, at the very least, with earlier memories. Which I don’t get. In the longterm you hurt all of it. Later generations (now) are robbed of the lineage. It’s kind of why we currently have a much less rich and celebrated music scene now. You can’t stand out if your predecessors were downplayed. You can’t build on a foundation somebody removed. I get that some of this is jealousy, that so many of the icons of yesteryear died young, that they never had a chance to take victory laps. And maybe in a lot of minds that actually somehow became preferable, since we now have the tendency to punish longevity. Doesn’t make it any less screwed up.

#970. Lineage of Song: “Landslide”

 

Fleetwood Mac

Dixie Chicks

Here’s another song I lost resisted including, even though it was a personal favorite. I didn’t grow up with much awareness of Fleetwood Mac, so I had no particular reason to have affection for the original version of “Landslide.” When the Chicks came out with theirs, I just knew I loved it. Then they had to go and sacrifice their popular career on the altar of political approval. Well.

#969. Lineage of Song: “This Land Is Your Land”

 

“When the World’s On Fire,” Carter Family

Woody Guthrie 

Bing Crosby

Bruce Springsteen

Obviously still on my A Complete Unknown high, I came up with this post, this is the song Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger pretends to sing innocently (and here I really am just realizing the subversiveness about Bob Dylan Seeger eventually completely forgets is in the spirit of what Seeger himself is doing at the start of the movie and in the spirit of the man who wrote this song, and the song itself, differentiated mostly because Dylan is fighting to be himself).

“This Land Is Your Land” is probably Woody Guthrie’s most successful song. It sounds plainly patriotic in the chorus, but when you get into the meat of it (it’s not as clear cut as Springsteen’s later “Born in the U.S.A.”) you realize Guthrie is protesting private despoiling of the country’s natural bounties (specifically when he reaches a fence). Guthrie became an icon best known by reputation and name rather than his bountiful output, so it certainly needs reminding that he really does have an iconic song to his credit. If there’s a failing to Complete Unknown, it’s that it doesn’t make it explicit that Seeger is using the song in a roundabout ironic fashion. Really, it’s the lynchpin to the whole movie. Once you see it you realize the depth of it. It’s one thing to see Dylan visiting Guthrie at the clinic repeatedly, another to realize that it becomes symbolic of the private lives they’re leading. Anyway, that title has a lot of context.

#968. Lineage of Song: “Turn, Turn, Turn”

 

Pete Seeger

The Byrds

Ah, so this is definitely one I composed in the aftermath of A Complete Unknown, where Seeger is played by Edward Norton, who has been able to settle into doing exactly what he wants after very uncomfortably existing in the early parts of his career in the mainstream. His starring role in The Incredible Hulk, the second entry in the MCU, was the definitive tipping point. He became known as “difficult to work with,” mostly stemming from taking over the production of his masterpiece, American History X. Seeger, meanwhile, seems to have been the last of the true believers in the folk music scene, the bridge between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. That aspect of Unknown is alone worth savoring, how Dylan navigates his early career, clearly enthralled with the dying Guthrie while forging ahead with Seeger, Joan Baez, rejecting their attempts to pigeonhole him, theirs and fans. Music as we know it would be poorer had he agreed. His legacy will continue to evolve over the coming decades. I’m currently working my way into a country act named Colter Wall, who sounds like a young version of the older Johnny Cash. He keeps denying it, but it’s absolutely there. His music seems to have been unearthed, like he’s tapping what Cash was always trying to mine. Bob Dylan is and was a more complete phenomenon than Cash. Just imagine the Bob Dylan version of Colter Wall. It’s going to happen. Wall plays in obscurity. He’s another Canadian act tapping into traditional American sounds, like the Dead South. Maybe the Bob will emerge from that, too. Or just show up in the anonymous music circuits most of us will never experience. Radio doesn’t look for these acts, and the expanse of the internet hides everything it finds. Such is what we have to navigate.