Editorial Review:

Album Description:
The Best of Broadside, Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine. 89 songs, including some never commercially released. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. 5-CD boxed set. It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. Underground--yet Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and dozens of others first published songs like 'Blowin' in the Wind,' 'Little Boxes,' and 'Society's Child,' in Broadside. The Best of Broadside features 89 songs from the Folkways collection, tapes from the Broadside magazine office, and some tracks released on other labels. The set contains a variety of performers, topics, and musical styles that tell tales spanning the 25 years of the Broadside era (1962-1988), but many of them address contemporary issues as well, since the new millennium has not see the end of warfare, nuclear threat, ethnic conflict, immigrants' suffering, women's unequal rights, ecological devastation, and social injustice. This is the underground music that fueled the innocent-sounding Folk Revival on the one hand and the explosions of angry rock and rap on the other. The Best of Broadside brings an era, its musicians, and its many stories to a new audience. The extensive notes feature the graphics of the original Broadside magazine and provide information on the careers of its many musicians with extensive discographies, the stories behind most of the songs as well as their full texts. They also describe the dramatic history of the magazine itself--a remarkable achievement of dedicated musicians and social activists.

Amazon.com:
Historically, a broadside was a song (without music) or poem printed on one side of paper, dealing with a topical issue that usually was of a political nature. Itinerant writers peddled broadsides for a few cents, and their message served to spread the news or perhaps create a controversy about a current event.

In 1962 Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen began publication of Broadside, a topical song magazine that quickly would help to start a national movement. After the cold war '50s, a social, cultural, and political revolution was in the air. Broadside began publishing hundreds of songs of social dissatisfaction by musicians who later became the leading lights of the folk and protest movements. Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and dozens more all had their songs first published in Broadside.

This five-CD set is a marvelously comprehensive document of the magazine's songs and songwriters, all of whom were recorded by Folkways Records. The lyrics of each song are printed and extensive information is given about the context in which the song was created. Background material is provided on all of the songwriters, too.

The discs are compiled primarily around the main topics: labor, nuclear weapons, social injustice, Vietnam, civil rights. Eighty-nine songs in all are featured, most of which loosely could be termed 'folk music' in style: basic rhythms, acoustic instruments, spirited singers. Listening to the songs and following the annotations serve to remind one of an era of potent protest in this country when music really mattered, and the songs themselves were the primary means of expressing dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

Broadside was a small publication, primarily a labor of love, but its historic legacy looms large when all of its material is brought together in such a well-researched, well-presented compilation as this one. --Wally Shoup









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Disc 1:

1. Links on the Chain - Ochs, Phil
2. Blowin' in the Wind - Dylan, Bob
3. Paths of Victory - Dylan, Bob
4. The Ballad of Ira Hayes - LaFarge, Peter
5. Ain't That News? - Paxton, Tim
6. The Times I've Had - Spoelstra, Mark
7. Go Limp - Comfort, Alex
8. Ding Dong Dollar - Glasgow Song Guild
9. Mack the Bomb - Schimmel, Nancy
10. The Civil Defense Sign - Spoelstra, Mark
11. Let Me Die in My Footsteps - Dylan, Bob
12. Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette - Page, Jim
13. What Have They Done to the Rain? - Reynolds, Malvina
14. Ballad of William Worthy - Ochs, Phil
15. Train for Auschwitz - Paxton, Tom
16. Do as the Doukhobors Do - Reynolds, Malvina
17. Christine - McGinn, Matt
18. As Long as the Grass Shall Grow - LaFarge, Peter

Disc 2:

1. John Brown - Dylan, Bob
2. Take Me for a Walk (Morning Dew) - Dobson, Bonnie
3. The Willing Conscript - Paxton, Tom
4. Kill for Peace - Kuperberg, Tuli
5. Plains of Nebrasky-O - Andersen, Eric
6. Benny Kid Peace - Turner, Gil
7. What Did You Learn in School Today? - Paxton, Tom
8. Changin' Hands - Ochs, Phil
9. Welcome, Welcome Emigrante - Saint-Marie, Buffy
10. Shady Acres - Ian, Jonis
11. Lord, Hold Back the Waters - Mclean, Will
12. Ballad of Donald White - Dylan, Bob
13. Song for Patty - Walker, Sammy
14. A Very Close Friend of Mine - Black, Richard
15. Long Time Troubled Road - Andersen, Eric
16. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall - Dylan, Bob

Disc 3:

1. Mississippi Goddam - Simone, Nina
2. We'll Never Turn Back - Gober, Bertha
3. Freedom Riders - Ochs, Phil
4. Father's Grace - Chandler, Len
5. Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking) - Ian, Janis
6. I'm Gonna Get My Baby Out of Jail - Chandler, Len
7. The Ballard of Martin Luther King - Poor Boy Michael St
8. Carry It On - Turner Gil
9. Birmingham Sunday - Farina, Richard
10. The Migrant's Song - Krug, Peter
11. El Picket Sign - Valdez, Luis
12. La Lucha Continuara - Rose-Redwood, Danny
13. Cantra la Pro - Padilla, Raimon
14. Mrs. Clara - Seeger, Pete
15. If It Wasn't for the Union - McGuinn, Matt
16. More Good Men Going Down - Cohen, Dave
17. Sundown - Cunningham, Agnes
18. My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away) - Cunningham, Agnes
19. Drag Lines - Silverstein, Debora
20. My Father's Mansions - Seeger, Pete

Disc 4:

1. Pinkville Helicopter - Parrott, Thom
2. Hell No, I Ain't Going Go - Jones, Matt
3. We Seek No Wider War - Ochs, Phil
4. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy - Seeger, Pete
5. Vietman - Kaplan, Pau
6. Hole in the Ground - Parrott, Thom
7. To Be a Killer - Houston, Wes
8. New York J-D Blues - Friesen, Agnes
9. Little Boxes - Reynolds, Malvina
10. Not Enough to Live on But Too Much to Die - Milluis, Mike
11. The Faucets Are Dripping - Reynolds, Malvina
12. Bizzness Ain't Dead - Guthrie, Woody
13. Business - Seeger, Pete
14. Legal-Illegal - MacColl, Ewan
15. Brown Water and Blood - Ampolsk, Jeff
16. The Aberfan Coal Tio Tragedy - Parrott, Thom
17. Lafayette - Williams, Lucinda
18. The Ballard of the Earl Durand - Artman, Charles
19. Plastic Jesus - Cromarty, George

Disc 5:

1. Burn, Baby, Bur - Collier, Jim [1]
2. The Cities Are Burning - Kirkpatrick, Rev. F
3. Nothing But His Blood - Kirkpatrick, Rev. F
4. You're Just a Laughing Fool - Kirkpatrick, Rev. F
5. Time Is Running Out - Smith, Wendy
6. But If I Ask Them - Cunningham, Sis
7. Ragamuffin Minstrel Boy - Walker, Sammy
8. Changes - Ochs, Phil
9. Bound for Glory - Walkek, Sammy
10. Victor Jara - Guthrie, Mitchell
11. We Will Never Give Up - Lems, Kristin
12. Inez - Grant, Bev
13. I'm Gonna Be an Engineer - Seeger, Peggy
14. Don't Talk to Strangers - Gaylord, Chris
15. Catcher in the Rye - Walker, Sammy
16. The Time Will Come - White, Elaine

Rating: - Folk Music to hear and play
on my website a page referring to the Broadside Ballads is one of the oldest pages archived. at last i got this interesting volume of American Folk Ballads as a songbook with comments and more examples to listen to and learn from to inspire ones own musical road.

JohPWilbrand

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Rating: - Best of Broadside Review
I am very pleased with this anthology of folk songs from the 60's to the 80's. There are artists I haven't heard in years; there are songs I haven't heard before. The collection covers nearly 30 years of thought-provoking folk music by well-known and little-known singers. I thoroughly enjoy these CDs.

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Rating: - wonderful collection!!!!!
This collection of music is incredible - I have enjoyed every song...from hearing Phil Ochs to Peter La Farge and then some!!!!I thank these folks for compiling this collection - I used to read Broadside in Cambridge Massachusetts which was a similar publication and am thankful that no one has forgotten the spirit of the times!!! The music is very beautiful and topical....Thanks again Sis and Gordon!!!!

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Rating: - Superb slice of history
I am sure I would have loved The Best of Broadside even if had been less innovatively packaged, but the scrap-book format is an excellent idea, and the essays, notes, lyrics and discographies leave nothing to be desired. (I have to confess, though, that I'm a wee bit concerned about the way the CDs are housed - I'm not too hot on the idea of jewel boxes, so their absence doesn't bother me, but some sort of protective sleeves for the discs would probably have been useful.) The real treasure, of course, is contained in the five discs, with their broad range of topical songs from Broadside recordings supplemented by a handful of appropriate tracks from other sources as well as a sprinkling of previously unreleased numbers. The likes of Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs are well represented and there are a number of fascinating contributions from the young Bob Dylan - but even more valuable are the songs by artists whose works would be hard to come by elsewhere, such as Sammy Walker, Len Chandler, the Rev Kirkpatrick, Thom Parrott and even Sis Cunningham herself. This box set is a worthy, loving and superbly produced tribute to Broadside magazine. And as a slice of American social history that captures the spirit of the times, it is absolutely indispensable - both on its own, and as a companion volume to the exhaustive (but less affordable) Songs For Political Action. Don't think twice - just get a-hold of it!

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Rating: - An amazing achievement - worth 10 stars if possible.
This is one of the classic box sets of all times and is most definitely a "celebration of songwriters and their songs." It is thoroughly researched, contains a stellar collection of the classic songs that defined the times, and is presented in a wonderfully creative format that captures the spirit of the Broadside magazine. The 89 cuts on the 5 CD's are a treasure trove of songs by all the well-known and lesser known folk heroes of this very special time. Be prepared to spend many enjoyable hours listening to some of the finest early recordings from Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and many others.

I ordered this set sight unseen, and I was not really expecting to be blown away by it. I currently own a number of Bear Family box sets and other Smithsonian sets. If I arranged all these sets by quality, this set would not only be at the top, but would be a good distance beyond that. The couple of friends I have shown it to have echoed my feelings. In fact, I am seriously considering ordering two more sets before they go out of print in order to stash them away for my future grandchildren.

Even if this set were selling in the $100+ range, this set would still be a phenomenal bargain!