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This concert was played at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. a place that I've been to for Eight Concerts.
We saw Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson do a Campaign fundraiser before Carter Was President. The Entire Carter Family and the Entire Nelson Family closed the Show with... "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and everyone in the Audience sang along...
I saw the Grateful Dead Three Times there... Before they became too popular and started Playing at RFK Football Stadium... One Dead Show happened during a POWERFUL Thunder and Lightning Rainstorm and all the Electricity went out... So the Two Drummers Kept on Playing... Because Drums do not Need Electricity... and I Swear... Mickey did a Tom Tom Fill that went... DUM DE DUM DUM, DE DE DE DE, DOO DOO DOO DOO KABOOM! The Thunder Played the Last Note...
and then walking over the bridge to the Parking Lot we got to see a RAGING CREEK... Quite Powerful... thankfully I was high on LSD that night.
We went to James Taylor... Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays, Blondie... ASIA...
We went to James Taylor... Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays, Blondie... ASIA...
We Lived in Columbia because Dian & Dick recommended it. Halfway between Washington & Baltimore and Very Close to Ft Meade...
Heather Cox Richardson Oct 4
On Saturday, October 3, the Power to the People festival, organized by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, took over the stage at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. On two stages were rock, alternative, and hip hop royalty, joining together to remind Americans of their agency to change the future and reclaim American democracy.
The line-up of musicians was legendary. Joan Baez, Jack Black, Cypress Hill, Dropkick Murphys, Flavor Flav, Foo Fighters, The Linda Lindas, Mike McCready, Killer Mike, Dave Matthews, Public Enemy, Nathaniel Rateliffe, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Stills, and Serj Tankian, among others, covered seven decades of American music.
The festival featured a “Freedom Village” where attendees could find ways to get involved in government, grassroots organizing, education, mutual aid, and social impact organizations. Festival organizers donated a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales to VoteRiders, a nonpartisan organization that works to overcome barriers to voting and make sure everyone who is eligible can vote.
Both in person and in the live stream of the concert, artists urged Americans to remember that they have the power to throw the Trump administration out of office and, together, to build a better nation.
The artists at the event pointedly demonstrated their right to free speech. They were explicit and thorough in their spoken descriptions of their anger at the Trump administration and billionaires who have taken over the country, and they chose songs that needled Trump—John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son,” for example—or excoriated his policies: Baez and Rateliff sang Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Springsteen sang “Streets of Minneapolis,” and the Dropkick Murphys’ sang “Don’t Call Me a F*cking Terrorist,” the last two both written in the wake of the Minneapolis shootings by ICE agents.
They emphasized their freedom to express themselves by singing Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
The ten-hour concert ended with the performers singing Guthrie’s famous anthem “This Land is Your Land,” written in 1940 as the Great Depression dragged on. Guthrie wrote it to reclaim the United States of America for its working people. “This land is your land,” he wrote, “this land is my land/From California to the New York islands/From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters/This land was made for you and me.”
Tonight Morello sang a verse often left out of the anthem: “In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple/By the relief office, I saw my people/As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/Is this land made for you and me?”
Famously, Guthrie painted on his guitars the words “This Machine Kills Fascists,” a slogan he took from the World War II machinists and workers who put stickers saying “This Machine Kills Fascists” on their heavy equipment to express their support for the war effort. Guthrie believed that music could fight the hatred, ignorance, and greed that built fascism just as powerfully as a gun.
Tonight Morello reminded the audience: “Every act of art is an act of resistance.”
Curiously, today’s concert took place on the anniversary of the day that Woody Guthrie died in 1967. And eighty-six years after he wrote “This Land is Your Land,” his work continues to echo.
“This is still America,” Springsteen told the audience of the administration’s tyranny, “and this will not stand.”
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