Various Artists - Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-3-2009, Part 1

Pete Seeger had a remarkable music career, and a remarkably long one. By the time of this concert, he was truly a living legend. This concert celebrated his 90th birthday. (He went on to live four more years, until 2014.) It's staggering to consider he began performing music in public before the start of World War II, and he was still going at this concert, sixty years later! This concert was a benefit for the Clearwater Project, which Seeger had been involved in for a long time. But it also was a tribute to Seeger, and a celebration of his career, including his progressive activism. It's such a big concert that I decided it was best to split it into three parts. This is the first part.

Seeger made such a big musical impact that practically everyone in the folk music genre, and lots of people in other genres like rock, jazz, and country, wanted to be a part of this concert. There are quite a few guests mostly singing Seeger songs, and songs associated with Seeger, for this album, as you can see from the song list. But keep in mind this is just the first of three parts, and most of the "big names" were saved until later.

The music here has never been officially released in an audio format, as far as I know. But it has been released on DVD. It also has been shown on PBS stations. I converted the video to audio, then chopped it into mp3s. Due to that source, the sound quality is excellent.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk (Native American Indian Cultural Alliance)
02 Blessing of the River (Native American Indian Cultural Alliance)
03 talk (Tim Robbins)
04 talk (John Mellencamp)
05 If I Had a Hammer (John Mellencamp)
06 talk (John Mellencamp)
07 A Ride Back Home (John Mellencamp)
08 talk (Ani DiFranco)
09 Which Side Are You On (Bruce Cockburn & Ani DiFranco)
10 John Henry (Tom Paxton, Tom Morello, Eric Weissberg & Jacob Silver)
11 talk (Michael Franti)
12 Dear Mr. President (Michael Franti, Laura Cortese, Eric Weissberg & Patterson Hood)
13 Oh Freedom (Patterson Hood, Toshi Reagon, Bernice Reagon, Abigail Washburn, Guy Davis & Jacob Silver)
14 talk (Billy Bragg)
15 L'Internationale (Billy Bragg)
16 Union Maid (Billy Bragg, Mike & Ruthy Merenda & Dar Williams)
17 talk (Toshi Reagon)
18 Sailin' Up, Sailin' Down (Pete Seeger, Taj Mahal, Steve Earle, Toshi Reagon & Warren Haynes)
19 False from True (Guy Davis, Steve Earle & Warren Haynes)
20 The Water Is Wide (Emmylou Harris with Teddy Thompson, Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Rufus & Martha Wainwright)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/q3gpWv1z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rnhWiIfmBLCCUty/file

The cover image of Seeger is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert.

Various Artists - Folk America at the Barbican - Greenwich Village Revisited, Barbican Theatre, London, Britain, 2-13-2009

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been finding a lot of new BBC related music lately, as I keep searching for things for my big BBC project. I recently stumbled across this. It seems that in 2009, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg hosted a TV series about American folk music. The final episode (the fourth, I think) was this concert, which starred some of the most important singers from the 1960s folk movement. As you can tell from the subtitle, "Greenwich Village Revisited," there was a particular emphasis in picking people from the influential Greenwich Village scene in New York City. In addition to Bragg, a Briton who first got famous in the 1980s, the concert starred Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Carolyn Hester, Eric Andersen, and Judy Collins.

The entire concert was acoustic in nature, which was fitting, given the folk music they were paying tribute to. Each singer got to sing two or three songs (actually four in the case of McGuinn), and then they all came together at the end to do "Amazing Grace" as an encore.

If you like this type of music, this is a really nice concert. I believe it's unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 I Ain't Got No Home (Billy Bragg)
02 talk (Billy Bragg)
03 My Back Pages (Roger McGuinn)
04 talk (Roger McGuinn)
05 Oh Freedom (Roger McGuinn)
06 talk (Roger McGuinn)
07 Eight Miles High (Roger McGuinn)
08 talk (Roger McGuinn)
09 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Roger McGuinn)
10 talk (Billy Bragg)
11 talk (Carolyn Hester)
12 The Last Thing on My Mind (Carolyn Hester)
13 talk (Carolyn Hester)
14 The House of the Rising Sun (Carolyn Hester)
15 talk (Billy Bragg)
16 I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night (Billy Bragg)
17 talk (Billy Bragg)
18 Violets of Dawn (Eric Andersen)
19 talk (Eric Andersen & Roger McGuinn)
20 Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen with Roger McGuinn)
21 talk (Billy Bragg)
22 Both Sides Now (Judy Collins)
23 talk (Judy Collins)
24 Anathea (Judy Collins)
25 Someday Soon (Judy Collins)
26 talk (Judy Collins)
27 Amazing Grace (Judy Collins & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MsBkvi6j

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kYDFYTvdQgOVFwe/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. However, I did a lot of manipulation in Photoshop to get it just as I wanted it. I started with a screenshot taken during the final song. But the image quality was very low-res. So I then took screenshots of the heads of each of the people in the image. I pasted those in for higher quality. I then ran the resulting image through the Krea AI program to iron out the kinks from having this really made out of six images. That helped. But then I did it again, and that helped some more.