A new video takes us to the locations of some of the famous scenes from the movie Groundhog Day (1993) in Woodstock, Illinois.
The events in the film take place in the location of the famous annual groundhog event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But the town used in the film was actually Woodstock, Illinois.
In this video from the Onion A.V. Club, Sean O’Neal visits the locations for much of Groundhog Day, which was directed by Harold Ramis and starred Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.
Check out the video:
For more on the origin of the holiday and more on how the movie created a feud between Ramis and Murray, check out this story.
Groundhog Day was not the first time that Woodstock, Illinois was featured in a film. Woodstock’s jail and courthouse appeared in Planes, Trains, And Automobiles.
What is your favorite scene in Groundhog Day? Leave your two cents in the comments.
We hope everyone has a safe Super Bowl Sunday. There are not a lot of songs about football, but Chimesfreedom favorite Marty Brown wrote a love song that begins with a football story. The song, “At My Weakest Moment,” was inspired by Tony Romo’s fumble in the Wild Card playoff game against Seattle in 2006.
With the Dallas Cowboys trailing the Seahawks 21-20 with 1:19 left in the game, Dallas kicker Martin Gramatica prepared for an easy 19-yard field goal to win the game. Romo received the snap to hold the ball for the kicker, but he fumbled the ball on the snap. Romo then tried to run the ball into the end zone but he was tackled. The Seahawks won the game.
Singer-songwriter Marty Brown is a Cowboys fan, even though he hails from Kentucky. He was despondent after the Dallas loss, and he used that heartbreak as inspiration to connect to another kind of heartbreak in his song “At My Weakest Moment,” which appears on his independently released CD All-American Cowboy. Brown imagined himself in Tony Romo’s place, wondering if his lover would still be there for him at his weakest moment.
Apparently, Brown did not want to directly memorialize a low moment for his team (or perhaps he needed a one-syllable name in the lyrics). He changed the team in his song from his Cowboys to the Colts. Check it out.
Marty Brown, “At My Weakest Moment”
Of course, everyone has their ups and downs. The heartbreaks do not last forever, and neither do the celebrations. After Seattle beat the Cowboys in the 2006 playoffs, they found their own disappointment in the next round of the playoffs, when they lost on an overtime field goal to the Chicago Bears. Overcoming that “weakest moment,” in 2014 they made it to the Super Bowl and won.
What is your favorite football song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
I was one of the lucky folks who were at Madison Square Garden this week to see Billy Joel begin his residency at that venue in New York City. As you can see from my cell phone photo above, we were not exactly in the front row. But it did not matter, Joel put on a great show.
Other writers will review the show, but there is not much to say. If you are a Billy Joel fan, you will love the show no matter what anyone says. Joel’s voice, aided by some occasional throat sprays throughout the concert, sounds just as good as it ever did. The New York venue suits him well, and he seemed sharper and more engaged than when I last saw him around two decades ago. The backing band, full of folks from the New York area, are in top form, with the instrumentalists doing double-duty as great backup singers on songs like “The Longest Time.”
Few artists have as many pop hits as Billy Joel. No matter what you thought of the songs at the time, if you lived through the time when his songs were a staple of pop radio, those songs are a part of your life. During the show, Joel mixed the hits with some deeper cuts to give a good balance to the performance.
Joel also talked to the audience and made jokes throughout the night while sitting at his piano, introducing several of the songs by citing the album and the year. From the New York appropriate opener “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” through the songs like “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” and “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” the crowd loved every minute.
Here is the full set list: “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)”; “Pressure”; “Summer, Highland Falls”; “The Longest Time”; “Blonde Over Blue”; “Everybody Loves You Now”; “All for Leyna”; “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)”; “Where’s the Orchestra?”; “Allentown”; “Big Man on Mulberry Street”; “New York State of Mind”; “Zanzibar”; “The Entertainer”; “She’s Always a Woman”; “Don’t Ask Me Why”; “The River of Dreams”; “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”; “Layla (Piano Coda)”; “Piano Man”. Encore: “Big Shot”; “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”; “You May Be Right”; “Only the Good Die Young”. For a further show review, check out the article at Rolling Stone. To compare this setlist to his New Year’s Eve performance, check out that Brooklyn setlist.
At the start of the show, Joel said he had no idea how long his once-a-month residency would last. But with shows already sold out for the next seven months and other shows booking up, it is clear that fans will fill the seats as long as the Piano Man plays.
What is your favorite Billy Joel song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In light of Pete Seeger’s passing, PBS will be airing it’s American Masters documentary on the folksinger,Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, on Friday, January 31 at 10:30 p.m. (and other times). Check your local listings and set your DVRs. Below is a short excerpt from that documentary with Seeger singing “To My Old Brown Earth.”
To my old brown earth, And to my old blue sky, I’ll now give these last few molecules of “I.”
And you who sing, And you who stand nearby, I do charge you not to cry.
Seeger wrote “To My Old Brown Earth” after attending the funeral of John T. McManus, co-founder of the radical newspaper, The National Guardian. Seeger later explained that when he sang at the funeral he regretted that he did not have an appropriate song. So he went home and wrote “To My Old Brown Earth,” a song about death but also a song about hope: “Guard well our human chain,/ Watch well you keep it strong.”
Update: For a limited time the documentary is streaming on the PBS website.
In September 1967, CBS found Pete Seeger’s performance of his song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” too controversial for TV.
The great folksinger Pete Seegerpassed away in January 2014 at the age of 94. He was born on May 3, 1919 in Manhattan, and he went on to become an important activist on a number of issues throughout his life. And he taught us how important folk music can be. It is impossible to sum up his impact on music and on the world, but one story about a TV show appearance tells us a lot.
The Smothers Brothers
The Smothers Brothers became famous for their battles with censors during the run of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS from 1967 to 1969. I have been reading the interesting book Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” by David Bianculli, which documents the career of the two brothers along with some of the ups and downs of their TV work. One of the instances of censorship recounted in the book is the way that Pete Seeger’s performance of “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” was cut from the show.
In Dangerously Funny, Bianculli explains how the brothers worked to get Pete Seeger on their show. Television networks had effectively blacklisted Seeger from most TV shows because of the singer’s political views. The brothers convinced CBS to allow Seeger to appear on their show, and Seeger appeared on the premiere episode of the second season of the show on September 10, 1967.
But CBS would cut out one of Seeger’s songs, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” CBS censors had asked Seeger to omit the last verse of the song, but after he refused to do so and sang the entire song, CBS edited out the song from the show.
“Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”
“Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” recounts a story about World War II captain (“back in 1942”) leading his men. He takes his men deeper and deeper into the “big muddy” as the “big fool” tells them to push on until the captain gets sucked into the mud.
CBS censors had asked Seeger to omit the last verse of the song, which connected the story to the Vietnam War. Seeger, noting that the last verse was the whole point of the song, refused to do so and sang the entire song during taping. So CBS cut the song from the broadcast.
CBS had a reason for being cautious. The network previously received complaints from President Lyndon Johnson about another episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. So the network did not want Seeger to use the verse referring to Pres. Johnson as a “big fool.” Well, I’m not going to point any moral; I’ll leave that for yourself; Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking, You’d like to keep your health. But every time I read the papers, That old feeling comes on; We’re — waist deep in the Big Muddy, And the big fool says to push on.
The September 10, 1967 Broadcast
Although some sources state the show broadcast on September 19, most sources put the show on September 10, which is consistent with the show’s Sunday broadcasts. During this episode, Bobbie Gentry and Pete Seeger performed but Seeger’s performance of “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” was cut.
A video shows the Pete Seeger segment as it was broadcast, with “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” cut out. At 1:12, after the Seeger segment opened with Seeger already singing “Wimoweh” with the audience, Seeger has a banjo. Then a few seconds later after a cut, he is holding a guitar.
After “Wimoweh,” Seeger originally sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” during the taping. But since CBS cut out the song, we see Seeger next singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” with a different instrument.
Seeger’s Return to The Smothers Brothers
The following post on YouTube claims that this clip below of Seeger singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” is the performance that was cut from the season 2 premiere. But, as you can see, Seeger is wearing different clothes than he had for the Season 2 premiere, so this video is from a later performance on the show that actually aired.
After CBS cut out the song from the September broadcast, Tom Smothers made sure that the story of the censorship appeared in the media. Because of the bad press, and probably because the Vietnam War had become even more unpopular in recent months, the Smothers Brothers were allowed to invite Seeger back later in the season, when he again sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”
Seeger was a class act who agreed to return after being cut in the previous appearance. CBS this time aired the song.
The Legacy of the Battle with Censors
Only three days after CBS finally showed Pete Seeger singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite made his own controversial appearance. He closed his February 27, 1968 broadcast with what would become his famous commentary about the Vietnam War. Cronkite, though, did not have to hide his sentiment in a tale about World War II.
Maybe because Pete Seeger, Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers, and others had not been afraid to speak out against the war, Cronkite, who was then one of the most respected people in America, could make his famous editorial about his views on the Vietnam War. Check it out.
On his website, Seeger recounted his experience with “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: “Of course, a song is not a speech, you know. It reflects new meanings as one’s life’s experiences shine new light upon it. . . . Often a song will reappear several different times in history or in one’s life as there seems to be an appropriate time for it. Who knows?”
Who knows? Amen. Rest in peace.
What is your favorite censored song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
A new video takes us to the locations of some of the famous scenes from the movie Groundhog Day (1993) in Woodstock, Illinois.
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