Best of Broadside 1962-1988 [Box set]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Historically, a broadside was a song (without music) or poem printed on one side of paper, dealing with a topical issue that usually was of a political nature. Itinerant writers peddled broadsides for a few cents, and their message served to spread the news or perhaps create a controversy about a current event.

In 1962 Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen began publication of Broadside, a topical song magazine that quickly would help to start a national movement. After the cold war '50s, a social, cultural, and political revolution was in the air. Broadside began publishing hundreds of songs of social dissatisfaction by musicians who later became the leading lights of the folk and protest movements. Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and dozens more all had their songs first published in Broadside.

This five-CD set is a marvelously comprehensive document of the magazine's songs and songwriters, all of whom were recorded by Folkways Records. The lyrics of each song are printed and extensive information is given about the context in which the song was created. Background material is provided on all of the songwriters, too.

The discs are compiled primarily around the main topics: labor, nuclear weapons, social injustice, Vietnam, civil rights. Eighty-nine songs in all are featured, most of which loosely could be termed "folk music" in style: basic rhythms, acoustic instruments, spirited singers. Listening to the songs and following the annotations serve to remind one of an era of potent protest in this country when music really mattered, and the songs themselves were the primary means of expressing dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

Broadside was a small publication, primarily a labor of love, but its historic legacy looms large when all of its material is brought together in such a well-researched, well-presented compilation as this one. --Wally Shoup

Album Description
The Best of Broadside, Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine. 89 songs, including some never commercially released. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. 5-CD boxed set. 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.

Tracks:

Links On The Chain - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Blowin' In The Wind - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Paths Of Victory - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
The Ballad Of Ira Hayes - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Ain't That News - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
The Times I've Had - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Go Limp - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Ding Dong Dollar - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Mack The Bomb - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
The Civil Defense Sign - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Let Me Die In My Footsteps - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Hiroshima, Nagasaki Russian Roulette - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
What Have They Done To The Rain? - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Ballad Of William Worthy - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Train For Auschwitz - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Do As The Doukhobors Do - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
Christine - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside
As Long As The Grass Shall Grow - Various Artists- Best Of Broadside

Tracks:

John Brown
Take Me For A Walk
The Willing Conscript
Kill For Peace
Plains Of Nebrasky-O
Benny Kid Paret
What Did You Learn In School Today?
Changin' Hands
Welcome, Welcome Emigrante
Shady Acres
Lord, Hold Back The Waters
Ballad Of Donald White
Song For Patty
A Very Close Friend Of Mine
Long Time Troubled Road
Hard Rain's A-Gonna-Fall

Tracks:

Mississippi Goddam
We'll Never Turn Back
Freedom Riders
Father's Grave
Baby I've Been Thinking
I'm Going To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
The Ballad Of Martin Luther King
Carry It On
Birmingham Sunday
The Migrant's Song
El Picket Sign
La Lucha Continuara
Contra La Por
Mrs. Clara Sullivan's Letter
If It Wasn't For The Union
More Good Men Going Down
Sundown
My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away)
Draglines
My Father's Mansion's Many Rooms

Tracks:

Pinkyville Helicopter
Hell No, I Ain't Gonna Go
We Seek No Wider War
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy
Vietnam
Hole In The Ground
To Be A Killer
New York J-D Blues
Little Boxes
Not Enough To Live On But A Little Too Much To Die
The Faucets Are Dripping
Bizzness Ain't Dead
Business
Legal-Illegal
Brown Water And Blood
The Aberfan Coal Tip Tragedy
Lafayette
The Ballad Of Earl Durand
Plastic Jesus

Tracks:

Burn, Baby, Burn
The Cities Are Burning
Nothing But His Blood
You're Just A Laughing Fool
Time Is Running Out
But If I Ask Them
Ragamuffin Minstrel Boy
Changes
Bound For Glory
Victor Jara
We Will Never Give Up
Inez
Gonna Be An Engineer
Don't Talk To Strangers
Catcher In The Rye
The Time Will Come

Amazon.com

Historically, a broadside was a song (without music) or poem printed on one side of paper, dealing with a topical issue that usually was of a political nature. Itinerant writers peddled broadsides for a few cents, and their message served to spread the news or perhaps create a controversy about a current event.

In 1962 Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen began publication of Broadside, a topical song magazine that quickly would help to start a national movement. After the cold war '50s, a social, cultural, and political revolution was in the air. Broadside began publishing hundreds of songs of social dissatisfaction by musicians who later became the leading lights of the folk and protest movements. Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and dozens more all had their songs first published in Broadside.

Broadside was a small publication, primarily a labor of love, but its historic legacy looms large when all of its material is brought together in such a well-researched, well-presented compilation as this one. --Wally Shoup

Album Description

The Best of Broadside, Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine. 89 songs, including some never commercially released. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. 5-CD boxed set. 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.

Customer Reviews:

Folk Music to hear and play.......2007-02-09

on my website a page referring to the Broadside Ballads is one of the oldest pages archived. at last i got this interesting volume of American Folk Ballads as a songbook with comments and more examples to listen to and learn from to inspire ones own musical road.

JohPWilbrand

Best of Broadside Review.......2007-01-09

I am very pleased with this anthology of folk songs from the 60's to the 80's. There are artists I haven't heard in years; there are songs I haven't heard before. The collection covers nearly 30 years of thought-provoking folk music by well-known and little-known singers. I thoroughly enjoy these CDs.

wonderful collection!!!!!.......2001-08-11

This collection of music is incredible - I have enjoyed every song...from hearing Phil Ochs to Peter La Farge and then some!!!!I thank these folks for compiling this collection - I used to read Broadside in Cambridge Massachusetts which was a similar publication and am thankful that no one has forgotten the spirit of the times!!! The music is very beautiful and topical....Thanks again Sis and Gordon!!!!

Superb slice of history.......2000-09-22

I am sure I would have loved The Best of Broadside even if had been less innovatively packaged, but the scrap-book format is an excellent idea, and the essays, notes, lyrics and discographies leave nothing to be desired. (I have to confess, though, that I'm a wee bit concerned about the way the CDs are housed - I'm not too hot on the idea of jewel boxes, so their absence doesn't bother me, but some sort of protective sleeves for the discs would probably have been useful.) The real treasure, of course, is contained in the five discs, with their broad range of topical songs from Broadside recordings supplemented by a handful of appropriate tracks from other sources as well as a sprinkling of previously unreleased numbers. The likes of Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs are well represented and there are a number of fascinating contributions from the young Bob Dylan - but even more valuable are the songs by artists whose works would be hard to come by elsewhere, such as Sammy Walker, Len Chandler, the Rev Kirkpatrick, Thom Parrott and even Sis Cunningham herself. This box set is a worthy, loving and superbly produced tribute to Broadside magazine. And as a slice of American social history that captures the spirit of the times, it is absolutely indispensable - both on its own, and as a companion volume to the exhaustive (but less affordable) Songs For Political Action. Don't think twice - just get a-hold of it!

An amazing achievement - worth 10 stars if possible........2000-09-19

This is one of the classic box sets of all times and is most definitely a "celebration of songwriters and their songs." It is thoroughly researched, contains a stellar collection of the classic songs that defined the times, and is presented in a wonderfully creative format that captures the spirit of the Broadside magazine. The 89 cuts on the 5 CD's are a treasure trove of songs by all the well-known and lesser known folk heroes of this very special time. Be prepared to spend many enjoyable hours listening to some of the finest early recordings from Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and many others.

I ordered this set sight unseen, and I was not really expecting to be blown away by it. I currently own a number of Bear Family box sets and other Smithsonian sets. If I arranged all these sets by quality, this set would not only be at the top, but would be a good distance beyond that. The couple of friends I have shown it to have echoed my feelings. In fact, I am seriously considering ordering two more sets before they go out of print in order to stash them away for my future grandchildren.

Even if this set were selling in the $100+ range, this set would still be a phenomenal bargain!

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