Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem

To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café ^TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=168188
26 messages

Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem

04 Jul 20 - 09:58 PM (#4062871)
Subject: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory
From: Mrrzy

My vote for new national anthem (somebody can write verses naming the rest of the states)...

Listen here.

Lyrics are already in the Trad.

05 Jul 20 - 12:14 PM (#4062951)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: EBarnacle

According to Sonny Ochs, the states named were ones he had visited.

05 Jul 20 - 03:54 PM (#4062974)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

Ooh cool. But I'd like to list'm all for national anthem purposes.

Missing:

Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawai'i
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North & South Dakota
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Utah
Vermont
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

If that helps...

05 Jul 20 - 07:47 PM (#4062994)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Elmore

Always liked this song. Always loved Pete Seeger, but he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.

05 Jul 20 - 08:28 PM (#4062999)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: GUEST,Gerry

Mrrzy, you would have liked the original version of The Good Reuben James, in which Woody Guthrie listed all the 100 or so crew who died when the ship went down.

But, no love for the District of Columbia? and Puerto Rico? Guam? American Samoa? don't they get to be part of the power & the glory?

05 Jul 20 - 10:19 PM (#4063002)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: EBarnacle

The entry I put above, does not account for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut where he variously lived and visited. Even so, that's a lot of states to get into a chorus.

05 Jul 20 - 10:20 PM (#4063003)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark

I love this song, which grows deeper and deeper the more one listens to it. On first hearing it many years ago, I dismissed it as Phil Ochs's attempt to grab a chunk of "This Land Is Your Land" real estate.

Its title, by the way, is not "The Power and the Glory." It is "Power and the Glory," and the first word refers specifically to American power, of the kind the country fell into in the years after World War II, and the hubris (Ochs had the Vietnam War in mind) that flowed from it, to the tragic diminishment of the ideals that should have led the national experiment.

Ochs sings that it is not power that represents glory, but traditions of liberty, always worth preserving and treasuring. Power is passing, while liberty should be eternal.

This is Ochs's wisest, most moving, and lasting political song. It should be the national anthem, but I suppose there are those who would reject its sentiments as too radical. In fact, it couldn't be more American.

06 Jul 20 - 12:42 AM (#4063013)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

My sentiments exactly.

And yeah, I shoulda thought of Puerto Rico etc. Sorry, Aunt Carmen!

06 Jul 20 - 12:57 AM (#4063014)
Subject: DT Corr: Power and the Glory (Phil Ochs)
From: Joe Offer

Here are the lyrics from the Digital Tradition. Any corrections?

THE POWER AND THE GLORY (DT)
(Phil Ochs)

Come and take a walk with me thru this green and growing land
Walk thru the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk thru the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk thru the sun and walk thru the rain

This is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her story shall rest on us all

From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me, who could ask for more

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

Copyright Appleseed Music
Recorded by Phil Ochs on All the News That's Fit To Sing
@American @patriotic
filename[ POWGLORY
SOF

THE POWER AND THE GLORY (corrected)
(Phil Ochs)

Come on and take a walk with me thru this green and growing land
Walk thru the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk thru the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk thru the sun and walk thru the rain

CHORUS: Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all

From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me, who could ask for more

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

(repeat first verse and chorus,
and repeat "on us all" in last chrous)

Copyright Appleseed Music
Recorded by Phil Ochs on All the News That's Fit To Sing
@American @patriotic
filename[ POWGLORY
SOF

4th verse of "The Power and the Glory":

Heard from Fred Stollnitz - Fred says Phil Ochs wrote this verse, but it was not on the Phil Ochs recording.

06 Jul 20 - 06:39 AM (#4063055)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: GUEST,Gerry

Joe, the stanza that starts "This is a land full of power and glory" is used as a chorus, sung after each verse. And in the last line of the chorus, it's "glory", not "story".

06 Jul 20 - 08:32 AM (#4063068)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: GUEST,Gerry

Some further, minor, corrections:

Song begins, "Come *on* and take a walk with me ...."

Chorus begins, "*Here* is a land ...."

Last line of chorus, there isn't any "Her", just starts with "Glory".

First line of last stanza, "her" should be "the".

The first stanza is sung again after the last stanza.

06 Jul 20 - 08:43 AM (#4063071)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

Aw man I like my mondegreen better! I have always heard the last line of the chorus as Her power shall rest on a song!

06 Jul 20 - 10:23 AM (#4063081)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Doug Chadwick

(somebody can write verses naming the rest of the states)...

Nine states covered in the song already. To include the rest of the states, territories and DC would require five or six extra verses.

06 Jul 20 - 10:30 AM (#4063082)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Doug Chadwick

damn! Caught the submit button with my thumb ... again.

To continue ...

... This would give a good song a quality that is essential to any national anthem - that of being exceptionally boring.

DC

06 Jul 20 - 03:26 PM (#4063117)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Joe Offer

Thanks for all the tips. I think I've got a good, corrected version now.
-Joe-

06 Jul 20 - 11:03 PM (#4063186)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: GUEST,Gerry

Albert Brooks' take on a new national anthem, 1972.

07 Jul 20 - 12:07 PM (#4063244)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

La Marseillaise, L'Abidjanaise, not boring...

Yeah. Didn't the Animaniacs do the states?

07 Jul 20 - 12:11 PM (#4063245)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

Yes but with the capitals. Hmmm.

07 Jul 20 - 04:06 PM (#4063268)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: keberoxu

The one and only time I heard Theodore Bikel live,
he opened the show with this very song,
giving no introduction and no remarks,
letting it speak for itself.

And, like Mrrzy, I have a mondegreen, but a different one.
Probably to do with Bikel's accent, bless him.
I thought Bikel sang
"Her glory shall rest on her soul,"
because I didn't understand "us all."

08 Jul 20 - 05:33 AM (#4063320)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Donuel

Sorry about the thread drift but more votes would go to America the beautiful or this land is your land.

08 Jul 20 - 08:41 AM (#4063335)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

I would like this land is your land but it smacks of manifest destiny. If this land was made for anyone it was the now-exterminated native peoples.

09 Jul 20 - 11:15 PM (#4063583)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Neil D

Almost anything would be better than the current anthem. One of the worst written songs ever and very difficult to sing correctly.

10 Jul 20 - 10:06 AM (#4063642)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Donuel

And America the beautiful is unfair to the ugly ?

10 Jul 20 - 10:33 AM (#4063647)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Stilly River Sage

I was scrolling down to the bottom of this to add my two cents and I see other titles have arisen so I'm not drifting completely off topic. I remember having more than one conversation about changing the national anthem with my mom, and she always wanted America, the Beautiful, mostly because it was easier to sing.

On the Wind Band Literature web site it discusses the poem's author Katherine Lee Bates in every way but saying the word lesbian as a professor of English literature at Wellesley College and the composer of the tune as Samuel Augustus Ward, a church organist from New Jersey.

I agree with my mother, the song is easier to sing, I'm glad a song written by a lesbian woman has always gotten such attention, but the two things working against it are the mentioned elements of god and pilgrims. I'm not fond of either of them. The "alabaster cities gleam" reminds me of the description Sinclair Lewis gave of the city of Zenith in the novel Babbitt. But whatever.

Except for Och's incomplete list of states (does that mean someone else is going to write more lyrics? The debate will NEVER end in that case!) his song should be in the running.

10 Jul 20 - 11:30 AM (#4063652)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: Mrrzy

No, America the Beautiful is unfair to nonmonotheists.

12 Jul 20 - 08:51 PM (#4063935)
Subject: RE: Phil Ochs' Power and Glory-new national anthem
From: keberoxu

if the link works, it goes to the one recording in which
Phil Ochs includes that last verse.

"The Broadside Tapes," Phil Ochs

And here, the YouTube poster spells out
what he hears Phil Ochs singing:

But this land is still troubled by men who have to hate;
They twist away our freedom and twist away our fate.
Law is their weapon, and treason is their cry:
You can stop them if you try.