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f7701
This is one of those songs you fall in love with the first time you hear them. Huge and instant classic. Levon's voice is already powerful enough to perform a song like this on his own with just a guitar and a beat, but to top it all off this live version includes maybe his most powerful rendition accompanied by a moody wall of sound of all the other instruments with nostalgic winds and epic string sections. How can anyone listen to this and not want to listen to it again?
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Lurjoe
also most people get the meaning completely wrong, it's not glorifying the confederacy it's mourning the fact that poor people in the south were duped by the promise of a better life only to have their livelihoods destroyed and their family members killed. The idea that a half-Jewish half-Native American guy from Canada (Robbie Robertson) would write a song glorifying slavery or something is pretty nutty
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atom217
The ignorance? Someone please explain. It WAS The Band's intention to shed a sympathetic light on the south, despite the outdated outlook on race at the time that this song is set. No one is saying "yay, slavery!". It was wrong and everybody knows that now. People just need to take a step back and understand context without jumping to absolutes like "this is racist". It's political correctness gone mad! The only way we can improve society is to empathize with those we disagree with, and understand why they do what they do so we can figure out how to change collective minds.
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atom217
I love the pro-rebel POV of this song. Nothing else can make me sympathize with the confederacy, and despite the fact that the confederacy were in favor of slavery, this song helps paint them as normal people rather than solely racist bastards. It's a beautiful sentiment, if you ask me.
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MackSpane
Oh, hey Druid66, as I said, I love the song, but there's ZERO question the song is about the burning of Atlanta by Sherman. Who uses it for what, I don't know, and don't even know if it's relevant. It's just the verses which scream pro-rebel civil war ("honey come quickly, there goes Robert E. Lee"??? Can it be more obvious?) which baffle me. Either way, it's still a great song.
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TheDarkSide73
I met Levon and the rest of the guys..My step dad was their sound engineer back in the 70s..
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