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The singers and musicians on this CD vary widely in age and political background. We ourselves are veterans of the anti-war movement and the anti-WTO Seattle protests; we are anarchists, feminists, Marxists, trade unionists, community organizers, animal rights activists. It is the music which has brought us together.
This CD is the culmination of three years of good times and bad times, laughter and tears, hard knocks and knock off their socks, sillyness and seriousness. Email Folk_This@yahoo.com to let us know what you think about our CD, send us a new song, or ask if you can join the band (we're always looking). We hope to hear from you! |
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The long awaited debut CD from Bay Area folk legends, fresh from a picket line and anarchist cafe near you. Perhaps more than anyone else in recent history, Folk This! have been at the forefront of both revitalizing the folk canon, and through music, linking the struggles of the present with our rich history of resistance. Two female voices, two male voices, some incredible acoustic guitar pickings, and a dash of banjo, mandolin and bass present 13 songs. Some will be familiar (including new interpretations of Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Joe Hill and Victor Jara), others not so well known. All are possessed with a vocal beauty, lyrical passion and crackling instrumentation which will have you singing along in no time. These guys rock more than most so called punks. This is the real street punk. Really rather good.
-- American Music Press, April/May 2003
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Don't be fooled by the title "Banks of Marble", the new recording by Folk This! - this isn't simply a rerecording of the same versions of the folk songs we love but have heard a million times. Folk This! incorporates beautiful harmonies better than anyone I've heard in a long time. Many songs on the CD are familiar and none are originals, but there are several I haven't heard before.
The first song, 'Coal Tattoo', which Folk This! describes as "a tribute to the American working class" is one of the best. About an out-of-work union miner, stained and battered from years in the mines, its lyrics will resonate for Wobblies in any job.
Another you may not have heard is "In Contempt." Written in the 1950's, its words on the ever-widening expanse of prisons in our society could easily have been written yesterday.
My personal favorite on the recording is "Rote Zora." Rote Zora was a revolutionary armed feminist group in Germany in the 1980's, named after a German story book character, a sort of female Robin Hood. The original artist is not known, but was likely someone involved in the German autonomous movement. The song is to the tune of Pippi Longstocking, but as I listened to the words it was familiar for another reason. The German punk band Slime did their own version, the only one I had heard before this CD. Folk This! sings it in German and then in English, and both are great.
More familiar songs on the CD include "Banks of Marble" and "We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years," but done with the beautiful harmonies that run through the album. The lyrics of their version of 'Banks of Marble" are somewhat between the tame one sung by Pete Seeger and the more extreme one you may remember if you were at the General Assembly in Winnipeg.
Folk This! appropriately opens "We Have Fed You All" with the preamble to the IWW Constitution, not sung, but read with voices intertwining throughout. The song then begins, and like most of the pieces here, the harmonies remind us that not only is our labor the source of all value, but the source of all beauty as well.
For these songs and others - from "Birmingham Sunday," the terrible story of the four girls killed by the Klan in the church bombing of 1963, to "One More Parade", one of Phil Och's best anti-war songs - "Banks of Marble" ought to be part of your collection.
Folk music, from the simple chords of Woody Guthrie to the rich depth of Joan Baez to the memories and stories of our own Utah Phillips, is a reminder of the places we've been and those we've yet to go. Folk This! provides us with a beautiful soundtrack to carry us down that long dusty road.
Joshua Logan, Industrial Worker, May 2003
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