Utah Phillips - bum on the plush

Subject: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: olddude
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 06:38 PM

First time I saw this video, priceless
Utah

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: Deckman
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 06:50 PM

BREATHTAKING .... We've lost a giant. bob

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 09:43 PM

Yeah!

Who are the greater burden on society -- the idle poor, or the busy rich? If you have any doubts after listening to Mr Phillips, read the news.

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 02 Dec 10 - 11:33 PM

Loved it and watched several related clips, too. Utah is one of the first folk singers I took my son to see when he was a child for the music but also for the messages behind the music.

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: Big Mick
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 09:15 AM

Every time I perform "Hallelujah I'm A Bum" I do the "bum on the plush". Sure wish I could do it like that. This is why the man is such a role model to me. He is authentic from the inside out and top to bottom. I miss him.

Mick

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: topical tom
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 11:32 AM

What a marvellous story-teller, singer-songwriter and humanitarian he was! Oh, what I wouldn't give to hear him live once more!

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: olddude
Date: 03 Dec 10 - 04:53 PM

some people should live until they are 300 and Utah is one of them

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: Stringsinger
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 12:57 PM

What I didn't ever get was that Utah was able to put the song in context with the story.
Woody could do this. Every song was personalized with experience that came across honestly. I missed him doing this.

The other thing that I find missing in many folk-type performers is a definable social conscience (OK socialist if you like). Utah had a bag-full. Joe Hill came on the stage with him.

My regret is that I never had a chance to meet and talk with him. My father was in Union Square the night Joe Hill was assassinated. My father used to hang with Jack London and knew the inside of many a boxcar. I feel as though I knew Utah without ever having met him. The closest I came besides Woody would have been Al Grierson.

The IWW was written out of the school text book history. It's a complete denial of the idealism that fueled the so-called "popular front", which you won't hear about much today with the new political poison gas in the congress gaining in the atmosphere.

Utah was a historian on top of entertainer and songwriter. He represents a time in history when there was a kind of distinctly American optimism which gave rise to the folk music that many of us prize.

I miss him without ever having known him.

Subject: RE: Utah Phillips - bum on the plush
From: gnu
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 01:08 PM

Ditto... ditto... ditto...