Comments on: Saving America: Here’s a solution, with strings attached

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 14 May 2012 06:38:49 +0000

Our announcer also needs more banjo. Notice he sat down and sat it out.

By: griff

griff — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:53:08 +0000

Abolish the Fed.

By: Pondering_It_All

Pondering_It_All — Sat, 12 May 2012 21:56:21 +0000

Interesting thing about “old-time banjo music” is that it’s not really old enough to qualify: Although a few musicians were already using the three finger picking style, almost nobody outside of Appalachia had heard it until around 1945 when Earl Scruggs joined The Bluegrass Boys. Before that, the banjo was almost always used in a strummed-chord accompaniment style. By 1962 his Ballad of Jed Clampett was heard in living rooms across America every week, and he won the Grammy for Foggy Mountain Breakdown in 1969. (And then played that song at the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in Washington, DC before a half million fellow anti-war protestors.) Earl Scruggs passed away in March. He is sorely missed.

By: Almandine

Almandine — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:47:40 +0000

An interesting look at America – almost – gone by. What I found useful in placing it in context was the description of the kids who listened to the banjo in times past… dressed as their folks thought “respectable”… not with tattoos and spiked hair – i.e., typical rural Americans with a sense of place and purpose. I grew up similarly, at gospel singings on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday nights, learning those common down home values that attach to music, community, and family. Those are, indeed, sorely needed for our society.

Here’s another enjoyable look at simple, rural life that easily replaces what we’ve come to know as the “necessary” daily grind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RaFApVP0zU

Good stuff, Doug.