Live From The Woody Guthrie Centennial Concert

Susan and I went down to Club Nokia as guests of the Grammy Museum and relished in the almost four hours of standing-room-only awesome that was last night’s Woody Guthrie Centennial Concert.

Below is the video view from my iPhone as Rage Against The Machine’s absolutely incredible Tom Morello, tore up the place with the music he wrote for Guthrie’s unsung lyrics titled “Ease My Revolutionary Mind.” The “choir of angels singing” that Morello references during the intro include the likes of Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Joel Rafael and Joe Henry (the phone’s picture quality blows, but the sound quality of the great song is solid):

Artists who came out to celebrate Woody Guthrie’s birthday included: Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Dawes, John Doe, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Joe Henry, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Morello, Van Dyke Parks, Joel Rafael Rob Wasserman, and Ronny Cox.

For a 2009 Blogging.la series on songs about Los Angeles, about a week after what would have been Guthrie’s 97th birthday, I wrote of discovering his little-known “The New Year’s Flood” a ballad he penned in the wake of the devastating 1934 disaster that struck the Crescenta Valley, killing at least 40 people.

 

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Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."