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Joni Mitchell, from the 1970 show.
Credit: Alan Katowitz
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It's been almost 30 years since a concert in Vancouver, British Columbia, helped launch Greenpeace. Back then, on Oct. 16, 1970, three artists named Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Phil Ochs put on a fundraiser to protest U.S. nuclear bomb tests near Amchitka, Alaska. The sounds of that Vancouver concert have been restored, and are being sold as a two-disc set to benefit the organization's ongoing efforts.
Greenpeace is one of those groups that challenges government and industry to halt harmful practices by negotiating solutions, conducting scientific research, introducing clean alternatives, carrying out peaceful acts of civil disobedience and educating and engaging the public.
The recording, titled "Amchitka," contains never-before-heard songs (unless you were there), duets and chatter "that capture the confidence and hope of the times," says Bruce Cox, executive director of Greenpeace Canada.
"It carries a timeless message that change is possible."
The CD goes for $21 and mp3s can be had for $19.98.
The never-before-released stuff includes a Mitchell/Taylor duet of Mr. Tambourine Man.
The Amchitka concert was organized by the late Irving Stowe, co-director of the Don't Make a Wave Committee (which had the opposite idea).
He masterminded a plan to send a group of Canadian activists, in an old halibut trawler, to the Aleutian Island of Amchitka. The plan was to sail into harm's way and protest the biggest underground nuke test that the U.S. had ever conducted.
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| Robert Keziere/Greenpeace |
The concert raised $17,000 (Canadian) and enabled the boat to shove off in the fall of 1971. The crew was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard before they made it to island, but Greenpeace sailed into the media spotlight.
And the testing was canceled in 1972. Coincidence?
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