Woody Guthrie said it.....

The world is filled with people who are no longer needed and who try to make slaves of all of us. They have their music and we have ours. Theirs the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare, and without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our song of freedom to we'd not have any opposite to compare music with. Like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never know its speed, its power."

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow."

With an excerpt from that quote I posted - also most of his books, and many of his CD's. I love Woody as much as anything.

I appreciate your original post!

Nora Guthrie was in it. 90% of it was shot post 2000. Very relevant. Ever listen to Wilco's "Mermaid Avenue" albums which I bet you know (but others might not) is all based on Woody's words that he never put to music?

I have both volumes. Plus, I saw Billy Bragg in concert with his own band, The Blokes, and he did plenty of "Mermaid Avenue" material in addition to his own... talked to the audience a lot between songs, especially about Woody. I bought a Woody Guthrie T-shirt (union-made of course!) with him on the front with his "This Machine Kills Fascists" guitar, and on the back, ANOTHER great quote by Woody, and then Billy Bragg's name. Very cool.