Tuesday, February 01, 2011

But We Do Sing "Sweet Home Alabama"

I read this:

Israel's West Bank settlers need a good song, but not "Sweet Home Alabama" By Greg Richter -- Birmingham News

If West Bank settlers are forced to leave in an effort at Israeli/Palestinian peace they'll need a good song to make their troubles easier to swallow, Mira Sucharov writes on The Huffington Post. Sucharov compares the settlers to Southerners who lost the Civil War, but retained their pride. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band did a lot to make non-Southerners feel for the defeated -- even if they still didn't think the cause was just, she says.

"Five years after The Band's anthem, Lynyrd Skynyrd released 'Sweet Home Alabama.' It was a rebuttal to Neil Young's 'Southern Man,' Young's scathing indictment of Southern racism," Sucharov notes. "But as musically awe-inspiring as 'Sweet Home Alabama' is, it lacks the depth and heft of raw, Dixie emotion that The Band conveyed in 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.'"


and immediately recalled a wedding I attended at Mitzpeh Yericho.

The father of the groom, David Bannister, had played with the Beatles and the music during the wedding also included....Sweet Home Alabama:



So, there.

___________

By popular demand:

Sweet Home Jerusalem Rock Hit



^

2 comments:

Suzanne Pomeranz said...

Even better:

"Sweet Home, Sweet Jerusalem"
http://www.wejew.com/media/2701/Sweet_Home_Jerusalem_Rock_Hit/

Enjoy!

yoni said...

thanks for the posting of the wedding band i put together in traditional israeili (improvisational) style.

you may be interested to know the singer, a close friend of mine, is originally from manchester, england, made aliyah around the age of 15, and is a veteran of the 1st lebanon war, from which he still suffers ptsd. he has no idea what the song is about (i tought it to him) or it's implications. :)
he's also a hardcore chabadnik, for whatever that's worth.

the wedding was a lot of fun, and the "revellers", who also knew nothing about the song, seemed to enjoy themselves.