Dave Marsh on Pete Seeger

[I think I'm gonna ditch the piece on Pete Seeger I've been writing. Dave Marsh doesn't make several of the points I was going to, but those he does, he does better than I could and he's got some that never occurred to me. This is reprinted with permission from RRC, Rock & Rap Confidential. The permission reads, in Pete's spirit:

Please feel free to forward or post this RRC Extra widely. We only ask that you include the information that anyone can subscribe free of charge to Rock & Rap Confidentialby sending their email address to rockrap@aol.com.

So do it.]

A GOLDEN THREAD, A NEEDLE….
by Dave Marsh

I met Pete Seeger about 40 years ago on the Clearwater, a refurbished 19th century sloop which had begun its then seemingly hopeless task of cleaning up the shores and waters of the Hudson River. Like a lot of the things that Pete got involved in, it was a hopeless task until it turned out to be common sense.

That day, we cruised Long Island Sound, if I remember right, from Port Jefferson to Oyster Bay, which is not very far, and back, which is still not very far. It was worth every minute, and would have been if only for the chance to spend time aboard the 106 foot, single-masted Clearwater, a gorgeous vessel, stable even in Long Island Sound’s considerable chop and carrying as cargo volumes of lore and lessons about the costs of environmental neglect.

You could say that those early Clearwater voyages were the precursors of the present-day celebrity cruise, but with fewer celebrities. No more were needed. Pete Seeger was not only the enduring star of American folk music, he was its leading evangelist and one of the greatest singer/musicians this part of the planet has produced. I remember Pete singing though not what songs, and some lectures about the important work of the ship and the ecology of the Sound and the Hudson River region, though not their specific content. The presentation did its best to be as folkie as a much-darned pair of wool socks, and unmistakably also an event with a star and a crew and an audience, never exactly commingled. It was also a strong, healthy political event, by which I mean that each of us left with a sense of mission and some ideas about how to execute it.

I wasn’t there to clean up the Sound, though I was glad to be part of the movement, or to hear Pete perform, though I knew the importance of his music. I was there to write a story for Newsday, the Long Island daily. I did what you do in those situations, where you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you, which mostly means I watched and listened and took mostly the kind of sensory notes that you don’t write down on the spot.

When we docked everyone headed for the parking lot. Pete and his wife Toshi had several bags. I introduced myself, not only because we were meant to talk for a few minutes, but as a prelude to asking if I could help carry their stuff.

I got no further than, “Hi, I’m Dave Marsh from Newsday,” before Pete turned to me and snapped—and I mean snapped, like he was already booking me for malingering—“Grab a couple of those bags. It’s good for white collar workers to do physical labor.” Thus spoke the Harvard gentleman to the brakeman’s son who’d never owned a necktie. And no, I didn’t come up with my usual smartass retort. He was Pete Seeger, who had changed not only my life but the world, and the alternative to silence was insulting him as much as he’d just insulted me, and…well, for once it was not in me.

That incident was one of the best lessons I ever had several times over. I learned lessons I’d chew on for, apparently, the rest of my life: The relation between stardom and shyness, between changing the world and retaining your self, and between trusting your perceptions and remembering not to suppose anything until you’ve made sure the person about whom you’ve just supposed it is not a cartoon.

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The "Teenage Kicks" Gap

Back in the Early Mesolithic Era, when I got my rock and roll on vinyl slabs and paid a substantial chunk of my disposable income for it, there were some songs that every up and coming new band learned and covered—tunes like “House of the Rising Sun” and, even before you tackled that, “Land of 1000 Dances” (which conveniently has only one chord). And that was within a couple years of hit versions becoming substantial radio, jukebox and party standards.

This FotM is a tribute to a little-heralded gem, a song that is only a decade younger than those chestnuts, but seems to be one of the definitive tunes young bands take on, right up to the present, 30 years later. It’s a song I suspect relatively few ‘60s-era boomers have more than a vague memory of, but I am convinced that it is one of the greatest tunes in rock and roll history.

Here gentle reader, is “Teenage Kicks” by The Undertones, a first generation punk band from Derry in occupied Northern Ireland.



The “Teenage Kicks” Gap appears most strikingly in a book by first generation rock critic and people’s fighter, Dave Marsh, The Heart Of Rock & Soul. Immensely interesting and useful, his annotated list of “The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made” contains nary a mention of this wonderful tune. Yet in the 20 years since Marsh published it, few songs have shown the staying power of “Teenage Kicks.” Probably the most vivid external demonstration of its greatness is the fact that hundreds of bands make it one of the songs they cut their teeth on. If you are willing to spend hours rummaging around YouTube you will find homemade videos of this played (and sung a capella) in garages, living rooms, basements, junior high talent shows, and cruddy bars. To spare you the search—or perhaps to whet your appetite for it--here are the Ice Cold Idiots, a trio with the combined age of 33 when they recorded this.



Yet another sign of a song’s greatness is how well it lends itself to interesting and imaginative covers. Skipping over such worthies as Snow Patrol and Nouvelle Vague, I close my argument with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, doing The Undertones justice.

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