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Utah Phillips
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Utah Phillips speaking at Waldheim Cemetery, Forest Park (outside Chicago) in May 1986
And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
In another thread I mentioned a song about a hobo, and look what jumped out of the Jack in the Box.
I’ve never heard of Utah Phillips. Is he related to Nevada Smith?
Looks more like Yosemite Sam. Sounds like Cyril Belfrage (or his daughter Sally.)
Sal did have some nice things to say about railroads - in India…
Chuck (BHSS 55)
You can look him up on Youtube. Check out his tall tale, “Moose T*rd Pie”.
If the moderators are concerned about RR relevance, the story is about working on a crew of Gandy Dancers. As they say on the radio program WHATD’ YA KNOW?, “Sticklers for the truth should get their own show”.
Tom
Excerpt from the Globe and Mail, June 16, 2008
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/incoming/unapologetic-wobbly-folk-singer-found-a-second-home-in-canada/article17987785/?page=all
A new generation discovered him in recent years, as the singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco collaborated with him on two albums, earning Mr. Phillips his only Grammy Award nomination for Fellow Workers (1999). His lone commercial success was a talking story titled Moose Turd Pie, about a “pasture pastry” served a railroad crew. His songs were covered by Joe Ely, Joan Baez, Tom Waits, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Flatt and Scruggs, among others.
He had a large tattoo of a 4-4-0 on the underside of his forearm (left IIRC). On his version of the Wabash Cannonball he talks about riding the last westbound and getting off at Tolono (a little south of Champaign). Heck I was getting on at Tolono for my last Cannonball ride west to Decatur so I guess I saw him there as well as in concert some years later.
When John (Denver) Deutschendorf covers a Utah Phillips song, it can’t compare to the original. Denver also tried to ruin Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans”.
Tom
My Fav Quote from Utah Philips-
We, the American People, are enormously wealthy. You know that? Who owns all of those trees in the national forests? (This is not a rhetorical question.) We do! Who owns all of that off-shore oil you read about in the newspaper, huh? We do! Who owns all of those minerals under the federal lands? We do! It’s public property, you know. But we elect people to go to Washington—who are those assholes?—what have we gotten ourselves into now?—they go to Washington, they lease off what we own, public property, to private companies to sell us back our own stuff for the sake of a greasy buck. That’s dumb.
- The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, Righteous Babe Records (1996)
I guess it is fun to have a favorite quote from labor organizer, folk singer, and poet “Utah” Philips. I guess promoting Mr. Philips’ views are topical for this forum and for “Steam and Preservation” because of his affection for the working people throughout the history of our nation’s railroads.
And I suppose the sentiments expressed in that quote are just that, sentiments, emotions that many of us share. And as he is described as a poet, poetry is fundamentally about feelings, sentiments, and emotions as evoked by the written word.
But how much of that short paragraph is factual? And were one to discuss the factual merits of the paragraph, how many negative emotions would that evoke? Until such point that a Moderator comes by and “locks” the thread.
Is this quote with its vulgar language (to make a point about we are feeling, don’t you know) in the spirit of this Web site? Are we asked, no, demanded to accept this paragraph at face value, and if this quotation goes against what another person feels or values, is that person barred from commenting on it so as to
^
Not everybody agrees with everybody. That is the beauty of the USA.
Yeah, not everyone agrees, for sure.
There was a PBS documentary about how some mining interests were getting rich off mineral leases on Federal lands like Mr. Philips is suggesting. They were mining gold, I tell you, on Federal lands, and gold is this wealth that belongs to all of us only some rich guys are making a greasy buck, right?
The documentary also made the point that it took one of these monster off-road Diesel-electric dump truck loads of ore to collect enough gold to make one person’s wedding ring. That tells me a bunch of things that appear not to be included in the documentary or in the folk songs.
This gold ore is largely plain old dirt with a hint of gold dust in it if it takes, what, a 100 ton truck load to extract one wedding ring. If it weren’t for the monster off-road Diesel-electric truck, there would be no wedding ring for some young bride of some lucky guy, just some Federally owned scrub land with a bunch of dirt on it. Same holds for the working men and women who drive the truck and operate the scoop shovel to fill it along with operate the refining operation that somehow is able to pull a wedding ring out of a 100 tons of Federal dirt. Without the labor of those people, no wedding ring, just a bunch of dirt that Mr. Phillips thinks is so valuable.
And it took prospecters and geologists to figure out that the worthless dirt on one patch of Federal land is just dirt and the worthless dirt on another patch of Federal land is dirt with just enough gold mixed in that some rich dude can make his greasy buck off our national wealth after purchasing all that equipment and hiring all of those working men and women and after selling the wedding ring for some lucky guy t
The railroads still own vast land holdings above and beyond there right of ways, The Union Pacific is the only railroad formed under a Federal Charter and yet Amtrak has to get on its hands and knees and beg for trackage rights.
Those mineral rights and timber rights are for lease from the federal government, and the lease is open to anyone thru competative bidding, so if you feel strongly about it, put in your bid.