Sound Bytes music review: The Best of Broadside 1962-1988.

The Best of Broadway 1962-1988
various artists
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
2000
89 tracks

From the liner notes: BROADSIDE. It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment...the dramatic history of the magazine itself--a remarkable achievement of dedicated musicians and social activists.

Full Version

When my friend taste tests something delicious, she doesn't say so right away. She says she's not sure and will need another taste before she decides. She may not decide until she's eaten the whole thing. With this release, I feel much like my friend. You see, I was sent only that first taste, a sampler with only eleven songs. But what songs they are! One taste. Okay, maybe eleven tastes. Crack folk music. I was hooked. I went to bestofbroadside.com and found clips (but only clips, and short ones at that) of all 89 songs in the boxed set. Now I think I should take five hours to listen to all five CD's before I decide if I really do like this release. My soul hungers for more.

Oh well, I'll work with what I've got.

The full title of this release is The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: anthems of the American underground from the pages of Broadside magazine. Quite a mouthful. It all sounds very academic and scholarly but it's also a great listen.

The Best of Broadside 1962-1988 is a must-have for anyone with an interest in the history of modern folk music and its roots in the folk tradition. In fact, I'd also strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the roots of contemporary pop and rock music.

Here are songs by many of the seminal influences on folk and rock music in the last half of the Twentieth Century, often in raw, early versions. More than forty years on, these recordings have the same vitality that originally drew audiences to them. Many of today's so-called singer-songwriters would do well to listen closely to this release from beginning to end, and more than just once.

Artists include Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Ewan McColl, Malvina Reynolds, Mark Spoelstra, Bonnie Dobson, Eric Anderson, The Fugs, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, and many more. This release is a marvelous archive for any folk presenter, performer, or songwriter.

As might be expected, some of the songs are dated by their political content, but others stand up as well today as they did when they were written. Some issues just don't go away quickly, and these songs are still relevant commentary on those issues.

Quality of performance, and even of some of the writing, is at times uneven. Any listener will feel some songs are not quite as good as others. However, with the patina of age, all of these songs shine. Hearing them again (and, frankly, some for the firtst time) carries with it the warmth of comfortable retrospect.

This box set also includes a full-size spiral bound book: more than 100 pages of songs, extensive notes, graphics from the original Broadside magazine, and much more.

Now, doesn't that have you just licking your lips for another taste?

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From the liner notes: BROADSIDE. It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. Underground--yet Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and dozens of others first published songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Little Boxes," and "Society's Child," in Broadside. The Best of Broadside features 89 songs from the Folkways collection, tapes from the Broadside magazine office, and some tracks released on other labels. The set contains a variety of performers, topics, and musical styles that tell tales spanning the 25 years of the Broadside era (1962-1988), but many of them address contemporary issues as well, since the new millennium has not see the end of warfare, nuclear threat, ethnic conflict, immigrants' suffering, women's unequal rights, ecological devastation, and social injustice. This is the underground music that fueled the innocent-sounding Folk Revival on the one hand and the explosions of angry rock and rap on the other. The Best of Broadside brings an era, its musicians, and its many stories to a new audience.
The extensive notes feature the graphics of the original Broadside magazine and provide information on the careers of its many musicians with extensive discographies, the stories behind most of the songs as well as their full texts. They also describe the dramatic history of the magazine itself--a remarkable achievement of dedicated musicians and social activists.

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