PETE SEEGER
(Handstamp Heritage Series No. 12)

Sonoma State College
October 12, 1978

01. Oh, Had I a Golden Thread
02. Lonesome Valley
03. Amazing Grace
04. Rosin the Beau / Acres of Clams
05. I'm Gonna Be an Engineer
06. The Foolish Frog
07. Skip to My Lou
08. Aimee McPherson
09. Viva la Quince Brigada
10. Hush Little Baby
11. The Water is Wide
12. Garbage
13. Wimoweh (Mbube)
14. Precious Friend
(total time: 68.15)




General Notes:

I was a student at Sonoma State University from 1986 to 1991, and was and am a big folkie. At one point I was able to borrow a cassette from the campus library of this performance by Pete at my school, then known as Sonoma State College. The tape was labeled "A Benefit for KSUN," the campus radio station. I'm not sure the exact venue, but the campus had very few buildings at that time, and Pete's reference to it feeling "like singing in the bathtub" leads me to assume it's in the Gym. The last song features the Any Old Time String Band.

Pete's in fine voice, especially on the dramatic "Viva la Quince Brigada." Great also to hear a terrific version of "Aimee McPherson," a hilariously lurid true-life tale of a 30s radio preacher ruined by a sex scandal, to the tune (sort of) of "Minnie the Mooche." Pete's version of his sister Peggy's "I'm Gonne be an Engineer" is very touching, and I can't help thinking Pete's the only man alive who could pull it off.

Probably the best track of all is the walkthrough of the folk song "Rosin the Beau," taking it through 150 years of iterations from 19th century pop to its use as an anthem of the 70s anti-nuke movement. This is the kind of thing Pete does best.


Recording Notes:

As I said, I dubbed this cassette-to-cassette from a copy in the collection of the SSU library. It sounded pretty bad, with a lot of hiss. I dubbed this to wav from an Akai HX-1 deck, via a Pioneer SX-750 Receiver and an M-Audio 2496 soundcard. I'm running Soundforge 8.0 on my pc. I removed the worst part of the noise with Soundforge's Parametric EQ at 7290Hz and again at 6900Hz. I also did a little leveling of the L and R channels and made some of the abrupt cuts into gentler fades. I wouldn't say it sounds great, but to my ears it's acceptable and certainly worth hearing.


Art Notes:

I’ve enclosed some simple artwork in a pdf file. If printed without scaling, this should be approximately the right size to form a “book” front such as might be used in a plastic “slim” cd case.


iwalkedwithazombie@comcast.net