The Class Struggle Continues...In Boston
Saturday, May 10, 2014
In Honor Of May Day 2014-From The American Left History Blog Archives-All Out On May Day 2012: A Day Of International Working Class
Solidarity Actions- An Open Letter To The Working People Of Boston From A
Fellow Worker
All Out For May
1st-International Workers Day 2012!
Why Working People Need To Show Their Power On May Day 2012
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. I will stop there although I could go on and on. Sounds familiar though, sounds like your situation or that of someone you know, right?
Words, or words like them, are taken daily from today’s global headlines. But these were also similar to the conditions our forebears faced in America back in the 1880s when this same vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind, Jay Gould, stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades but now it is just more public and right in our face) American working people have taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Start off with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers like at General Electric or the auto plants). Move on to paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, in some cases literally paying nothing, we pay). And finish up with mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a life-time deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and many women and the grievances voiced long ago in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like hell, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.
I have listed some of the problems we face now to some of our demand that should be raised every day, not just May Day. See if you agree and if you do take to the streets on May Day with us. We demand:
Why Working People Need To Show Their Power On May Day 2012
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. I will stop there although I could go on and on. Sounds familiar though, sounds like your situation or that of someone you know, right?
Words, or words like them, are taken daily from today’s global headlines. But these were also similar to the conditions our forebears faced in America back in the 1880s when this same vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind, Jay Gould, stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades but now it is just more public and right in our face) American working people have taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Start off with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers like at General Electric or the auto plants). Move on to paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, in some cases literally paying nothing, we pay). And finish up with mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a life-time deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and many women and the grievances voiced long ago in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like hell, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.
I have listed some of the problems we face now to some of our demand that should be raised every day, not just May Day. See if you agree and if you do take to the streets on May Day with us. We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker
Unions! No More Wisconsins! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work!
Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure
(bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars- Troops
And Mercenaries Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off
The World!
* Full citizenship rights for
all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the
minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home
foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student
loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many
publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public
transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! For free quality
public transportation!
To order to flex our
collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging
series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within
our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a
one-day strike around some, or all, of the above-mentioned demands.
*We will be organizing at
workplaces where a strike is not possible for workers to call in sick, or take
a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.
*We will be organizing
students from kindergarten to graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think
tank to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up
campus picket lines, and to rally at a central location.
*We will be calling in our
communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where
possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
All out on May Day 2012.
************
Rain beating down, rain-beaten, as downcast as the
weather a sock-soaked, rain jacket-soaked, pants-soaked Frank Jackman
around 10:00 AM gathered up the small
remnant of materials at hand. Those that he had actually decided to carry from
the underground parking facility a few blocks from where he stood just then at
the corner of Franklin and Congress Streets in downtown Boston when he realized
that the thousand or so protestors were not going to materialize that day. The
reason that Frank had been in the downtown area, not one of his usual haunts,
was to participant in the May Day 2012 protest actions at the State Street
Bank. Frank had been helping to organize the actions all spring ever since a
call came out from Occupy Wall Street
in January to build for a General Strike on May Day. Although Frank, and some
of the other organizers, had not been naïve enough to believe that they could
bring off a General Strike in Boston that year he, and they, believed that a
serious mass action closing down one big symbol of Wall Street’s and the
financial markets catastrophic effect on the American and world economy could
be planned and be successful as a first effort. And gather important media
coverage as well.
So the May Day organizing committee made up of mainly
younger radicals and student supporters with a sprinkling of old-timers like
Frank had planned, had planned not in the old-fashioned way by counting heads
but by responses to a social networking campaign.
As May Day approached the committee, Frank included,
began to think that upwards of one thousand people might show up at the bank
and that they could effectively close it down for several hours, with or with
arrests, but with good media coverage. The reason for that wide-spread belief
was that the Facebook event page that
they had created had posted several thousand “likes” and “will comes.” Moreover
many committee members were being deluged with requests for information and for
flyers (although Frank as active as anybody on the networking sites did not see
a “spike”). In any case Frank, who had volunteered to show up at the meeting
point early and bring all the necessary materials for the action in his car was
also carried away by the prospects of a successful action.
In the event Frank did not even bring a quarter of the
material that he had transported in his car from Cambridge and most of that as
he now realized had not needed to be
transported either. That many thousand “likes” turned out to be about fifty
bedraggled protestors who to avoid freezing in the rain walked around shouting slogans
to crowd-less streets. Crowd-less and media-less since the several well-known
media vans that had gathered expecting to see a reportable melee had left by 8:00
AM looking for as one reporter snidely remarked on camera “real news”. Sure
Frank was disappointed, sure he was crest-fallen, sure his was a little angry that
some of the younger committee members thought that the vague social-networking
streams that they lived and died by would come through like this was Cairo or
someplace like that. But mainly he realized the very severe limits of cyberspace
organizing when the deal went down. He hoped, as he wiped some raindrops off
his face, that not a few of those “likes” were at least out of bed by then.
Short Phillip Marlowe Sketch
The Assistant Murderer
Tough hard guys, and once in a while
a wayward gal, have been trying to commit the perfect murder since they
invented murder with Cain slaying Abel, and maybe before. And some guys, some
hard guys, have actually gotten away with it for one reason or another mainly
by disposing of the body in some way so the damn thing is never found and the
cops tire of the case and throw it in the cold files to lie there forever. But
the average citizen, and I should know since it is my business, the private
snoop business, to know trying to commit the perfect crime leaves too many
moving parts and so winds up facing the hangman, facing those high-hung gallows
and judgment day. The only way it happens, and don’t take this as the norm,
okay is if the thing is set up that way. Here’s what I mean. The organization I
work for, the International Operations Organization got a call from a loner
private eye, Philip Marlowe, down in Los Angeles saying he needed some help on
a political case, political in that some reform politician he had known in the
old days was murdered and it looked like a professional hit ordered by the in
power city machine. I was sent down from
my station in Frisco since I had worked with him previously on a missing load
of rare jade case that had turned south on him. As it turned out this reformer
was nothing but a skirt-chaser and he ever-loving wife, tired of his sordid
affairs put a couple of slugs in him to even things up. Nothing unusual in that,
happen all the time. What was unusual and put it in the perfect crime category
is that before this guy died he set the crime scene up to point away from
wifey. And she walked, walked when Philip and I let her walk away without a
murmur.
But that is not the normal case,
take the case of the Lampreys, Jim and Adele, and John Snyder. Seems that this Snyder saved the Lampreys’
lives down in Mexico around the time of the revolution, you know Pancho Villa,
Zapata and those guys. They were being held for ransom by some desperados and
he coolly put together an attack that sprung them. That was their story anyway.
So they were forever indebted to him and in return helped him on some shady
capers back in the old U.S.A. One thing led to another and there was a falling
out of what was supposed to have done what and who was supposed to get the
bigger cut of the dough that went sour. So John Snyder wound up dead, very
dead, in some forsaken ravine down around Del Mar near the cliffs. The
insurance company that had insured Snyder called us in when they were getting
ready to pay out on a big number policy to one Adele Snyder. It didn’t take
much to turn that one over since Adele had actually been married to Snyder down
in Mexico, had abandoned him for Lamprey and headed north. That was how Snyder
got them to do his work in the states not some desperado tale down in
Sonora. He was going to squawk to the coppers about bigamy after that failed
caper and the pair beat him to it one rainy night. The insurance money lured
them out and once I got my mitts on them they break like a cheap piece of
china. So learn something will you let the murder racket to the professionals
and stay away from such doings.
Down With The Death Penalty-
Texas Judge Reluctantly Denies Stay of Execution for Robert Campell
A federal judge has reluctantly rejected a Texas inmate's bid to stop his lethal injection because the state won't disclose where it got the drugs, saying his hands were tied because of higher court rulings.
But in a two-page ruling, district judge Kenneth Ellison said a botched execution in Oklahoma two weeks ago "requires sober reflection on the manner in which this nation administers the ultimate punishment."
Ellison's denial of a stay of execution for Robert James Campbell brought relief to his victim's family and outrage from his lawyers.
"I don't know if the execution will give us closure, but I'm hoping it will," said Israel Santana, cousin of Alejandra Rendon, the 20-year-old bank teller Campbell was convicted of raping and murdering in 1991.
If Campbell, 41, is executed on Tuesday, he will become the first U.S. prisoner put to death since last month's debacle in Oklahoma in which Clayton Lockett appeared to regain consciousness and writhe in pain.
In court papers, Campbell had cited Lockett's execution — which prompted the White House to order a federal review of state execution procedures — in asking for a reprieve.
He noted that like Oklahoma, Texas keeps the source of its execution drugs under wraps, blocking inmates from investigating whether the drugs were properly prepared.
Ellison, in his ruling, urged the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider previous rulings that upheld drug-secrecy and seemed "to shield crucial elements of the execution process from open inquiry. "
Nevertheless, he said, those rulings prevented him from halting Campbell's execution.
The outcome was cheered by Rendon's family, who were worried that the Oklahoma botch might buy Campbell more time.
"As far as the execution being cruel and inhumane, I don't see that," said Santana, a criminal defense lawyer. "What she was put through was cruel and inhumane.
"I would love to tell Robert Campbell: Would you like to be put to sleep or would you rather be brutally raped and shot? My cousin was not given a choice. Nobody can even fathom the terror she went through."
Courtesy of Israel Santana
Rendon, 20, was abducted from a gas station, sexually assaulted, taken to a field and shot in the back. A witness said Campbell bragged that he told Rendon, "Run, bitch, run," before firing.
The young woman — described by her cousin as "bubbly" and always full of excitement — was buried in the gown she would have worn at her wedding four months later.
"I don't know if the execution will give us closure, but I'm hoping it will," Santana said.
A state appeals court this week rejected Campbell's claim that his IQ is too low for him to be executed, and that decision is being appealed. Ellison's ruling will also be appealed -- to the Fifth Circuit.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
While Oklahoma has put its executions on hold until a state investigation into what went wrong is finished, Texas has said the Lockett case should not affect its cases because it has a different protocol.
Texas uses pentobarbital obtained from a compounding pharmacy. In the Lockett case, Oklahoma was trying a new three-drug cocktail for the first time: the sedative midazolam, the paralytic vecuronium bromide and the heart-stopper potassium chloride.
Oklahoma prison officials admit that they could not find a suitable vein in Lockett's arms or legs and took the unusual step of running a catheter into his vein.
All the midazolam had been administered and the two other drugs were flowing in when, prison officials say, his vein collapsed.
Lockett then struggled and mumbled, witnesses said. The execution, which lasted 43 minutes, was halted but he died minutes later.
One of Campbell's lawyers, Maurie Levin, said that in light of the complications, it is "unthinkable" for Texas to proceed with an execution.
'Substantial risk of torturous death'
"It is deeply shameful that Texas has more interest in protecting the identity of the supplying compounding pharmacy than they do in ensuring that they carry out executions in a humane manner," she said in a statement.
"Texas carries out more executions, by far, than any other state. Death penalty states around the country —including Oklahoma — are pausing to be sure future executions do not submit prisoners to the substantial risk of the torturous death experienced by Mr. Lockett in Oklahoma.
"Yet Texas is vigorously pursuing Mr. Campbell’s execution, at the same time they have decided to suddenly shroud the process in secrecy," Levin said. "This is unacceptable, and should not be tolerated in a civilized society.”
Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night- The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Four
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-
Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Dove Linkhorns of the world, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores, having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.
A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night
If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of the bourgeois-driven push (okay, okay maybe going back further to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys) to get ahead in this wicked old world leaving you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city where youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, landed on your ass more than a few time but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done. Yeah so if you are wondering then what, have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed you off your sainted wheels, and got you into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, not faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half, sisters and brothers), and need some solace, need to reach back to roots, reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay).
If the norms of don’t rock the boat, the norms of keep your head down, keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual, and excuse, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, speaking some unknown language maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.
If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side, sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, gotten it taken away like some maiden virginity, those who never had anything but lost, not those who never had a way to be lost), dopesters inhaling, in solidarity hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor stiff out of his room rent for kicks, out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote if that earth angel connection comes through, creating vision of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get“connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night), hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japans ), the driftless (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them”too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.
If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup trestle, some Hoboken broken down pier, the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world, then Tom Waits is your stop.
Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record (CD okay) and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living, looking for busted black-hearted angels (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless gin mill), for girls with Monroe hips (swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and flaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells (descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys, get real, and left for dead with cigar wrapping rings, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold to something, and for all the misbegotten.
Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Dove Linkhorns of the world, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores, having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.
"America, Where Are You Now...."- Stepphenwolf's The Monster-Take Two
A YouTube Film Clip Of Stepphenwolf Performing Monster. Ah, Those Were The Days
Commentary/CD REVIEW
Steppenwolf: 16 Greatest Hits, Steppenwolf, Digital Sound, 1990
Steppenwolf: 16 Greatest Hits, Steppenwolf, Digital Sound, 1990
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
The heavy rock band Steppenwolf, one of many that was thrown up by the musical counter-culture of the mid to late 1960's was a cut above and apart from some of the others due to their scorching lyrics provided mainly, but not solely, by gravelly-voiced lead singer John Kay. Some bands played, consciously played, to the “drop out” notion of times, drop out of rat-race bourgeois society and it money imperative, its white picket fence with little e white house visions (from when many of the young, the post-World War II baby-boomer young, now sadly older), drop out and create a niche somewhere, some physical somewhere perhaps but certainly some other mental somewhere and the music reflected that disenchantment, Much of which was ephemeral, merely background music, and has not survived (except in lonely YouTube cyberspace). Others, flash pan “music is the revolution,” period exclamation point, end of conversation bands assumed a few pithy lyrics would carry the day and dirty old bourgeois society would run and hide in horror leaving the field open, open for, uh, us. That music too, except for gens like The Ballad Of Easy Rider, is safely ensconced in vast cyberspace.
Steppenwolf was different. Not all the lyrics worked, then or now. Not all the words are now some forty plus years later memorable. After all every song is written with current audience in mind, and notions of immortality for most songs are displaced. Certainly some of the less political lyrics seem entirely forgettable. As does some of the heavy decibel rock sound that seems to wander at times like, as was the case more often than not, and more often that we, deep in some a then hermetic drug thrall, would have acknowledged, or worried about. But know this- when you think today about trying to escape from the rat race of daily living then you have an enduring anthem Born To Be Wildthat still stirs the young (and not so young). If Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone was one musical pillar of the youth revolt of the 1960's then Born To Be Wild was the other.
And if you needed (or need) a quick history lesson about the nature of American society in the 1960's, what it was doing to its young, where it had been and where it was heading (and seemingly still is as we finish up the Afghan wars and the war signals for intervention into Syria and Iran, or both are beating the war drums fiercely) then the trilogy under the title "The Monster" (the chorus which I have posted above and lyrics below) said it all.
Then there were songs like The Pusher Man a song that could be usefully used as an argument in favor of decriminalization of drugs today and get our people the hell out of jail and moving on with their lives and other then more topical songs like Draft Resister to fill out the album. The group did not have the staying power of others like The Rolling Stones but if you want to know, approximately, what it was like for rock groups to seriously put rock and roll and a hard political edge together give a listen.
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
(Monster)
(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
--Used with permission--
Born To Be Wild
Words and music by Mars Bonfire
Words and music by Mars Bonfire
Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild
Born to be wild
© MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
--Used with permission--
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
--Used with permission--
THE PUSHER
From the 1968 release "Steppenwolf"
Words and music by Hoyt Axton
You know I've smoked a lot of grass
O' Lord, I've popped a lot of pills
But I never touched nothin'
That my spirit could kill
You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round
With tombstones in their eyes
But the pusher don't care
Ah, if you live or if you die
God damn, The Pusher
God damn, I say The Pusher
I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man
You know the dealer, the dealer is a man
With the love grass in his hand
Oh but the pusher is a monster
Good God, he's not a natural man
The dealer for a nickel
Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams
Ah, but the pusher ruin your body
Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream
God damn, The Pusher
God damn, God damn the Pusher
I said God damn, God, God damn The Pusher man
Well, now if I were the president of this land
You know, I'd declare total war on The Pusher man
I'd cut him if he stands, and I'd shoot him if he'd run
Yes I'd kill him with my Bible and my razor and my gun
God damn The Pusher
Gad damn The Pusher
I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man\
© Irving Music Inc. (BMI)
--Used with permission--
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