Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In Jukebox Night-With Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem In Mind Spanish Harlem

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In Jukebox Night-With Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem In Mind
Spanish Harlem




There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
It is the special one, it's never seen the sun
It only comes out when the moon is on the run
And all the stars are gleaming
It's growing in the street
Right up through the concrete
But soft and sweet and dreaming
There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
With eyes as black as coal
That looks down in my soul
And starts a fire there and then I lose control
I have to beg your pardon
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)

*******
Sometimes it is hard to figure out why a certain memory draws certain other memories out although today, musically, which is what I want to talk about, just flipping to YouTube and its cross-references makes that statement more explicable since one is almost automatically bombarded with about seven million songs with some memory meaning. Meaning maybe a memory of that first record hop at school, elementary school in the 1950s, just by the reference. Or that first time you noticed that girls were, well, kind of interesting or at least approachable at some basement family room “petting” party. (The first “private” time when adults may be hovering around unseen but when they are persona non grata with the confines of the party room and a time when lights low or out the first “feels” occurred however innocent or bewildering for either sex. That basement family room also serving as fall-out shelter, fully-stocked, if the Russkies decided to blow one by us.) Better just a little time later, although time seemed then to drag infinitely by and you tried to hurry it up then, when you started dreaming about that brunette on television (you can fill in your own color preference) swaying back and forth provocatively, provocatively in your mind anyway, just for you after rushing home after school to watch American Bandstand. Or later when the hormones really kicked in that first night time junior high school dance with her, the her with the faraway eyes whose bubble soap (or maybe some “stolen” scent from the top of mother’s dresser) drove you crazy. Yeah, I like the latter better since that scenario would mean that she was provocatively trying to drive you crazy with her amateur womanly wiles. Moving on to that first double-date night down by the seashore watching the “submarine races” and you copped a “feel” (for those who did not have a seashore to go down to in order to look for those locally famous submarines at midnight, sorry, but okay so maybe at a drive-in movie, or that spot out by the dam or up in the foreboding hills known strictly as a lovers’ lane). Then before you know it you had graduated high school and the memories got fonder but faded with time until you got to the 2000s night and you woke up in a sweat thinking about that girl with the faraway eyes and that damn bubble soap smell that filled your nostrils (and wondering, wondering did she really have the cunning to steal that mother’s scent right off the top of her dresser). 

Recently I have, seemingly endlessly, gone back to my early musical roots, my memory roots, in reviewing various commercial compilations of classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. That classic rock designation signifying the “golden age of rock,” the time of some Les Paul guitar zip rocket 88 Ike Turner, zap finger-snapping the big man flapping shake, rattle and roll Big Joe Turner, from long side-burned, sexy-eyed (yeah guys can say that now about guys without blushing), sneering one night of sin hunger Elvis, from sweet little sixteen Mister’s girl hunger telling Beethoven his time had passed Chuck Berry, from the back of a flatbed truck  double girl hunger high school confidential Jerry Lee, the time of the original jail break-out and not the smoother later patched-up stuff-ouch!. While time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes (and lesser singers like blueberry hill Fats and he/she good golly Little Richard) it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

We had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about such notable phenomena as the pre-chain convenience store mom and pop corner variety store corner boy hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (naturally unfiltered, not some “faggy” (yeah, that’s what we said then and what did we know about such things, such same-sex things that were whispered then and are now laughingly out in the open, anyway) Kents, Winstons or Marboros but real coffin nails Luckies, Camels, or Pall Malls) hanging from the sullen lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. Complete with foxy tight cashmere-sweaterd girls hanging off every bump and grind of that twisted machine. And, of course, about the pizza parlor, you name it House of Pizza, Marios’s, Mama Mia’s,  juke-box coin-devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions on that order please as I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl coming in the door thing. Another of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, please. Ditto for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing (and where Mister Ben E. King at some point was “walking with the king” to get us close on his la la la’s in Spanish Harlem.

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores, pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and as had been shown in the cover art on one of that rock and roll series CDs I reviewed also at the daytime beach. While boy or girl watching. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on that daytime beach scene, for example, showed a dreamy girl waiting for her platters (vinyl records, okay, check on it) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. And tee-shirted sullen guy (could have been you, right?) just hanging around the machine waiting for just such a well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days, and still do if anybody is asking), maybe chatting idly was worth at least a date or, more often, a telephone number to call. Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Jesus. But lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in, and where that white-tee-shirted guy on the cover seemed to be clueless. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of about a dozen slang words for girl in our old working-class neighborhood usually made up by or learned from corner boy leader Frankie Riley who had a thing for old time detective novels and films where he would pick them up) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking, usually to girlfriends, as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

Then you made your move-“Have you heard Spanish Harlem. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to... for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the following songs. Here’s the list and there are some stick-outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” just mentioned above on tough nights):

1)   My Boyfriend's Back-The Angels: it seemed that every good-looking girl had some hidden boyfriend stashed away for just that occasion when you got too close and she sprung the hurting news on you without grace, worse scorned you for thinking that you had a chance beyond “being friends” when everybody, everybody who counted, knew she had been going with Joe College from State U who had graduated from high school a couple of years before forever. Although if you thought about it for a minute the real problem had been the break-down in your “intelligence” network, you know, your Monday morning before school boys’ lav info session where you gathered the scoop on the weekend doing and discreetly asked around about that Laura something, the one who you had been eyeing in study for about a week before you made your big move and got your hopes up.  Or at least had gotten “the word” from one of your corner boys, maybe Josh, maybe Frankie, who were sworn to not leave you in the lurch on such matters and make you the laughing stock of subsequent Monday morning boys’ lav talkfests about the weekend doings. No, you had to jump in with both feet, hell, both feet and both hands, on the basis of a furtive glance that she threw you way in the corridor one day. Hadn’t you learned by then that those subtle furtive glances were thrown at every guy with anything going for him by the Lauras of this wicken old teen world. Join the club brother, join the club.     

  2)Nadine (Is It You?)-Chuck Berryanything by Chuck by definition in the theme and tenor of his lyric, or by the various hot licks he laid down on his guitar spoke of sex, back seat of the car sex which was just fine then when you were young and agile. Young and agile and if the moment was right and you had some Chuck playing on the car radio permanently tuned to WMEX down by the seashore (or wherever that local lovers’ lane was far from prying adult eyes and far from children glares) and you needed every inch and ounce of young and agile in that damn crowded backseat that somebody, some S.O.B car manufacturer though was saving profits by making as small as possible you still managed to do what you, and she (or he for she or whatever combinations pass these days in the love circle) started out to do because otherwise why were you down by that seaside far from prying eyes.    

 3)Spanish Harlem-Ben E. King: I have already pointed out the central importance of this song come late night school dance night when you want that she you were eyeing all evening to slow dance with you on that last chance to dance, and you were looking for that one moment when you could put your hands down her back toward her ass and she didn’t brush you off, didn’t seem to mind at all in that dark hall moment. Thanks, Brother King. 

 4) Come & Get These Memories-Martha and the Vandellas: well, it is not dancing in the streets but Martha and the girls had that Motown sound down. That sound that got everybody up and dancing just to be dancing, dancing close or dancing apart but just dancing. A big relief for bad dancers and semi-wallflower guys like me. The real full-time wallflowers that hugged the gym walls like they were a life-saver thrown in the sea just kept to their walls as they always did but the rest of us decided to live a little dangerously, and we survived.  

 5) Little Latin Lupe Lu- The Righteous Brothers: every guy, at least every guy I knew, wondered about that Latin girl thing from these guys like maybe we missed something, like maybe there was something to that Tia Taco thing, that high-blown Spanish blood lust thing. Problem, big problem around our way was that there was no way to verify or not verify that hot blood thing since there were zero, nada nunca nada, Latinos in our high school, hell, in the whole town. Needless to say no blacks either, none. The closest we came to dark-skinned ethnics was a girl from Lebanon who seemed very exotic. It would be a long time and a couple of thousand miles south in old Mexico before I got the message that those hermanos were laying down.         

6)It's Gonna Work Out Fine-Ike and Tina Turner: Yeah, we all know now, have had it knocked into our heads that Ike was not nature’s noble man but they rocked on this one with that drop dead guitar work of Ike’s and Tina’s on fire singing.

 7) When We Get Married- The Dreamlovers:  after a bunch of busted marriages, a few off-hand affairs that didn’t work out and a few things that did that kid’s rush to the blissfully wedded aisle with his ever-loving honey seems kind of wishful thinking now. And you know what in those days I had a lot of the same feelings although not directed to a specific person since the routine was finish high school, get a job or go on in school, get married, have two point three children, one white picket fence with whitewashed house attached, have a dog named Spot or Rover and bliss. Yeah, life turned out a little different, no, a lot different.

8)Dear Lady Twist –Gary U.S. Bonds: Brother Bonds saved more two-left feet guys in this universe than you could shake a stick with his twist mania where you could look pretty good all tangled up as long as everybody else was too. Except don’t watch this lad, me, too closely because his tangled up is off the beat even though his kindly partner was courteous enough to mention that, said he was a great dancer. Said it in such a way that they wound up sitting down by the seaside shifting sand before the night was over where she admitted that her tangling up was off too. Get this, and suggested we form a club, a two left- feet club, with two members. Well, okay.   

9) If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody –James Ray: the national anthem for guys who did not get to dance that last chance dance, damn, after eyeing her all evening until your eyeballs got sore. And you suddenly learned if you did not know already, and maybe you should have, maybe some boys’ locker room guy, come brethren corner boy, heck, your older brother, consulted wiser heads to find out that the good-looking women of the world, the Lauras mentioned above throw out those furtive glances just for kicks, just to see what sore eye-balled guys would do. And guess what 16 or 68 it does not get any better. Jesus.  


 10) I Count the Tears-The Drifters: a great backup song just in case Spanish Harlem had already been played and Loopy Lenny the DJ was not into taking requests or maybe the borrowed record was worn out from play or the guy running the record-player if not Loopy Lenny had absolutely no sense of what a high energy, high hormonal count teenage crowd wanted to hear late at night. Wanted to have a chance for that last dance.   

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Frankie Riley’s Theory- With Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep” In Mind –Take Two

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Frankie Riley’s Theory- With Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep” In Mind –Take Two  



JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"

(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
**********
I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one, wrote these death-dealing lyrics above. Of course I would not touch a hair on the head of well-side-burned pretty boy Jody Reynolds since I may need to use his song sometime myself so I will reserve my fury for Delores Nance for leading Jody astray on this one. As far as getting her iPhone number and e-mail, well, okay since this song goes back a way I will give some choices just to show I am not a guy hung on being very, very up-to-date with the latest communications technology and don’t realize that not everybody has made their mark on the information superhighway. Hell I won’t be particular and will be old-fashioned enough to just request the landline number and street address of Ms. Nance. She, in any case should be made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be real justice in this case made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the morals of the youth of his time. Yeah, the more I think about the matter before us that latter choice seems most fitting.

Why all the hubbub? Why am I insisting on deep Socratic measures for some poor Tin Pan Alley denizen? Well read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics printed above for your perusal on Endless Sleep. Old Jesse Lee, let’s call him that, although as in most cases with these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things like Johnny Angel, teen angel, earth angel, be-bopper, him, her, she, he, they, etc. like giving names to angry anguished teens in the red scare cold war night was akin to aiding and abetting the Russkies or was some grave matter of kinky national security concerns, and his honey have had a spat, of unnamed origin so we never get to figure out who had justice on his or her side. Okay, so maybe it was a bigger one than usual but in the whole wide-world historic meaning of things still just a spat. Laura, high-strung Laura, again name made up although not the angst to give some personality to this sketch since we revealed Lee’s name and nothing much has happened to him as a result. Judging from her reaction thought whatever irked her was a world-historic dispute, and she just flat-out flipped out. Nothing new to that phenomenon as teenagers have been flipping out since they invented teenagers about a century maybe more ago although they have not always called what said teenagers did “flipping out.” And, as teenagers often will do in a moment of overreaction to some slight, Laura had gone down to the seaside to end it all. Throw her young body, whether it was shapely or not we never find out either but figure with a name like Laura she is, well, “hot,” high school hot or Jesse Lee and his big ass ’57 Chevy would have no truck with her to begin with, into the sea. Lee in desperation, once he heard from some inevitably unnamed third party, I say apparently unnamed although maybe it was from some more reliable source like Susie Darling, Laura’s best friend since elementary school, what Laura had done, frantically tried to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the churning “sea” is relentlessly, almost sexually cone hither calling out for him to join her. Jesus what a scene.

And that last part, the part where the sea, or Laura now acting as the ocean’s agent, practically begs for a joint teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged parents either, should, or should have, put his or her foot down and gone after the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines (although like I say not me, not me just in case that she I am eying right now might have a crush on Jody, or actually like such deathly lyrics). Yeah, I know old Jesse Lee saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers. Right?

Of course, from what I heard third-hand from a friend of a friend who claims to have scoped out what really happened, this quarrel that old Lee speaks of, and that Laura went ballistic over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Lee’s guy friends and their girls down at old Jack Slack’s bowling alleys or whatever the name of the bowling alleys were in there town to roll a few strings Saturday or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. (I have used Jack Slack’s bowling establishment here since that is where me and my corner boys hung out, hung out one night discussing the meaning of all of the acts in this very song so Jack Slack’s will do nicely to fill in a name for what ailed our beloved couple.) Jesse Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid despite his corner boy reputation and some things said about his style around town, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king. The king riding around in a big old car, some pink Caddy, dressed in some gaudy Hawaiian shirt and white beach pants attire, singing some lamo syrupy songs that in his Sun Records days when he was young and hungry and talking about one night of sin and jailbreak-out stuff he would have thrown out the studio door, having plenty of dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to help him spent that dough. Of such disputes the battle of the sexes abound, and occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that take on the dispute, which sounds reasonable to me, I think old Jesse Lee had much the best of it. And, also off of that same take I am not altogether sure I would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear, sweet Laura. Just kidding.

Okay, okay I know what everybody is going to say, or at least think now. What has this guy not at least given Laura her say, her day in court to explain he dramatic behavior. This information was harder to glean because I had to get it from a friend of Laura’s friend Susie Darling. Susie sworn on a stack of seven bibles or something that she would not reveal to anyone Laura’s motivation under penalty of death. Of course in the ethos of the times and age that swearing unto death business just meant telling only one other person, a girl person in this case, come Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest. So according to this hearsay what Laura was miffed about was that Jesse Lee had not been paying enough attention to her of late, had been almost every night out with his corner boys doing wheelers with his car or whatever guys do when their honeys are not on board. So the drive-in movie idea was to get Jesse Lee to pay more serious attention to her was not about the movie, not about Elvis although Laura, like every other girl in America had her dreams about how she could tame Elvis in a flash if she could just get close to him, but about “doing the do.” See Laura a few weeks before had let Jesse Lee have his way with her but since then-no go. And she wanted to do it. But here is the kicker the place where Laura went into the sea is exactly the place where they had first made love. Jesus.               


But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little having grown up so near it that I could roll down a hill and take a splash. Love the sea and its tranquility, of the effect that those waves, splashing waves too, have on my temperament. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anyone, anything, any object that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And Laura should have too, should have known on that dark rainy night the power of the sea. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should tempt the fates, and Lee’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.


The whole scenario once I thought about it reminded me, although I offer this observation in contrast, of the time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, out there near Point Magoo in California never having seen the ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had, all I knew or remembered about how to ride out a riptide to pull her out. To save her from the briny deep. And that Angelica error was out of sheer ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.

Traipsing Through The Arts -In Cold Civil War Times-The Benumbed Will Always Be With Us-In Lieu Of The Inside Scoop On Sex And Sensibility In The Artistry Of Edward Hopper-Down And Dirty With The Holy Goofs


Traipsing Through The Arts -In Cold Civil War Times-The Benumbed Will Always Be With Us-In Lieu Of The Inside Scoop On Sex And Sensibility In The Artistry Of Edward Hopper-Down And Dirty With The Holy Goofs

By Laura Perkins –

But, first… (originally an introduction but now its own piece) 

[I often wondered, questioned him about it too, why Sam Lowell, my long-time companion and fellow writer at American Left History as well as associated and connected publications, on occasion used brackets to introduce an idea, maybe get something off his mind when what he wanted to write about went into the other direction. What he would answer, and did recently when I inquired again, is that sometimes you don’t want to mess up the thread of what your main topic is with a lot of bilious ramblings. That notion struck right to the heart of why I asked the question. Through default, basically Sam being hung up on another project, site manager Greg Green asked me to start out a series on various pieces of art, American art for now, in order to correct what he saw as an on-going imbalance in the subjects covered at publications under his direction. Art getting short shrift against politics, literature and music. After giving him the obligatory “I am no art critic” which he countered with “Hell, you are the only one left standing who will admit to having gone to an art museum,” getting an assurance that Greg would have my back if I went a little sideways in my pieces I agreed.           

Fair enough and I thought that would be that. Although Sam, through many years of experience, especially on-line knows that you never know who is going to get their hackles raised by anything put on the Internet. Who will discover quite by chance when Googling something totally different that he or she has found a nice little home to throw grenades from-and that at least metaphorically not too far off the mark. Not to belabor the point unnecessarily Sam pointed out that one time when he was writing a big piece for Allan Jackson, the previous site manager, on the history of rock and roll he was waylaid by an irate clot of what he assumed were older women who had not gotten off the notion that “rock and roll was the devil’s music” and that he ought to ashamed to even be talking about the subject. Here is the ouch part, that lasted unendingly right up to the very last piece in the series. So you see what can happen almost by accident. (By the way an 2018 encore presentation of that history edited by Allan drew no fire from that quarter either they have passed from the scene or are holding forth elsewhere.)

That being dogged by holy goofs and lonely hearts had been the case with the first three artists, 19th century artists, who I covered. My common theme, consciously pursued, was to highlight the off-hand sexuality of the three pieces under review (Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X, Alexander’s Isabella, and the Pot Of Basil and Whistler’s The White Girl so the knowledgeable art devotee will know where I was heading). Two things happened as a result. The first is that I got into a running battle with a three-named Boston Brahmin progeny attempting to whitewash any thought of sex or sensuality in high society painting back then. The thorn in the side’s name was Arthur Gilmore Doyle and he was relentless for a while stating the obvious- “I am no art critic.” Fortunately, with a little help from Sam and his vast experience with these people who apparently have plenty of time on their hands I finally got him off my ass, yes, I said that to him directly, by a cute little devise, or rather two, one was to head to the 20th century where every artist almost by definition is going on and on about sex and sensuality and by NOT saying anything at all about the “s” words in my fourth piece, my overview of some of Edward Hopper’s works.

That seemingly was the easy part. The hard part still with me is what Sam calls the “trolls,” those unlike say Doyle who at least was trying to make an argument, an art argument, just go on and on about whatever drove them to this publication in the first place. What I have gathered in though is a clot, cohort of born-agains, evangelicals, some kind of Christian cultists. Not all from the same denomination, not all with the same theology by any means but all with that tell-tale readiness to smite anything that is not some straight-forward homage to the Christian god. They have on occasion formed what Frank Jackman would call an unholy united front to denounce not my views on art, heavens no, they could care less about that but that I have talked about sex and sensuality in the public square. Worried themselves sick that any susceptible young person might see these reviews and do, do, do I don’t know what except maybe rapidly go back to texting or something (this worry courtesy of one woman who signed her name Irate Christian mother). WTF.

Now, and talking to Sam bears this out, normally this publication is far removed from any interest such types might have, left-wing politics, culture war stuff, literary things which are far removed from the salvation trips they like to pursue. In any case from early on, from that first piece about the whorish ways of Madame X (who everybody now knows was the wannabe courtesan Madame Guiteau who climbed her way up the high society ladder an old-fashioned way not acceptable today, not in the wake of the #MeToo movement certainly.) Here is the odd thing, the very odd thing about the collective troll response-there was not an ounce of Christian pity or sorrow for what Madame had to do to get ahead in a world where a woman’s profession beauty was her calling card. I don’t like it, don’t like that woman had to do it to get ahead in a narrow world but I don’t condemn her for eternity These holy goofs obviously have forgotten the streetwalker Mary Magdalene who had to ply her trade to keep herself ducats or whatever the coin of the realm was back then in their vaunted Jesus story. She may, or may not, have slept with him before becoming a follower, although most certainly with at least one of the apostles. Not all of them were closet homosexuals or asexual by any means the jury is still out on Jesus’ sexual orientation. Yet if I am not mistaken MM became a saint, at least in the Catholic Church so you never can tell. 

What is outrageous for me to hear and see is these good Christians who apparently in their theology don’t have room for post-mortem salvation threw mud at Madame X’s name, called her whore, slut, lesbian (never proven as far as a I know and beside the point since sleeping your way to the top in those days, in the 19th century, was as much a co-ed sport as in modern times), defamer, slattern and a whole bunch more that do not bear repeating here. What made this craziness hard for me to hear was that say a guy like David Trout, an evangelical preacher of some note who slept with half his congregation, male and female, or like Reverend Ben Devine who was charged under the Mann Act drew a pass from these same people, get “redemption” just because they said they were sorry and asked the “Lord’s forgiveness.” Bullshit.

[Weirdly, apparently the trolls only salivate at the “s” words, nobody high-born or low challenged my insight about Madame X’s hideous bird-like nose forcing her to never allow a frontal portrait which would have at least given us a common theme around concepts of beauty in various ages, you know artistic ideas.] 

It didn’t get any better with Alexander’s Isabella, where I mentioned that Isabella way back in the 1500s was obviously involved in some dark satanic lustful severed head cult which has been going on since about John the Baptist and maybe before and that the plants, on good authority, were not basil but poppies, the stuff of opium and heroin dreams. They went wild on that one talking about pagan worship and Keil the devil’s servant, Keil being me as the messenger. Me, making it okay for them to blaspheme beloved Johnny who if I am not mistaken believed that only adults who have Jesus within should be baptized naked as jaybirds in a river running north to south and all others should wait until they meet those conditions. Yeah, Johnny was a weird dude as Salome or whoever had their insatiable desires granted with that severed head to while away her sweaty nights. Frankly I had never heard of Keil, assumed they were taking their lead from the Bible, from Scripture and when I looked it up I was shocked to find that there was a Keil who had indeed been the devil’s earthly servant but that from the Zoroaster religion, the religion of ancient Iran.     

Although if I am not mistaken were are in modern times many of the respondents gave their dire warnings of the approaching End Times (they always capitalize so I will follow their lead and maybe avoid a couple of Punch and Judy rabbit punches by a guy named Oswald who has been particularly adamant that I was maybe more than Keil the devil’s servant but maybe the big man himself in woman’s clothing, it would not be the first time that a woman had led the candid world astray according to reliable sources). What the hell End Times has to do with analyzing a private severed head community of  aficionados is beside me unless of course that is their way to warn me off where I have been heading. Of course it goes downhill from there once they get up to speed (really once somebody, somebody other than me since I refuse to get involved in the back and forth which would waste my time, time I could be spending looking at art works for future “sketches,” that’s Sam’s term for what we do, I prefer in general “piece” signifying a chunk of something, a nugget in the mother lode). 

They, really Wanda from Wabash on this tidbit, went on and on about the sanctity of blood ever since Christ pored it for a foreboding world and that some secret cult involving of all people Johnny the B, was beyond the pale, was outre. Funny nobody in this day in age involved as we are in the epidemic opioid crisis gave a rat’s ass about that discovery that the plants were serious opium producers even if Bella did pine away for her Johnny Cakes without a care in the world after handling the product.         

As I mentioned once this clot, no, Laura, be respectful, cohort, got on a roll, started to get into that ecstatic funk they brew up once they get holy rolling and moaning about E.T., about salvation about the redemption of the blood (making me wonder if they were really serious about being down on that cultish severed head worship) they kept accumulating brethren until it got rather maddening-I was getting a thousand hits a day of people reading and responding to each new twist on stuff that basically was an art-lover’s opinion. Here is where it really got weird when I started in on Whistler’s The White Girl and through much more research than I thought I would ever need discovered that what Brother Whistler was really paying homage to was not his live-in girlfriend at the time (mistress or whatever he was telling the landlady who was starting to worry that her freaking cold water flats were becoming the homesteads for “immoral” purposes, maybe low-end bordellos) but the sanctified whore of Babylon. The key: that wolf’s head which has been the “sign” of the courtesan, the ad that tells everyone who wants to know that she was open for business. I thought nothing of it but if you thought I took a beating with the pagan severed head cult take on Isabella’s fetish you should have seen how crazy they were to denounce the whore of Babylon, the poor gal who decided to model for and play house with old Whistler. I swear if I had said Jezebel I couldn’t have gotten a more rabid response from these yahoos.

The last piece though, the one that got Doyle off my ass was like a feast for this evangelical crowd once I said not one word about sex or sensuality. They were all in ready to fill in the blanks for me. That is when I finally figured out none of this had anything to do with art, which I kind of knew anyway but with giving them essentially a free whipping girl to proselytize around their fringes, grab people, maybe the young and dissolute who needed some saving, maybe some who need to work out some simple theology, need to spent all day Sunday not at some art museum or on the golf links but sweating in some backwater uncooled church listening to some reprobates going on and on about say E.T. Here was the key-“and everybody knows, every art lover knows, that once you get into the 20th century (and now beyond) everything from abstract expressionism to color field work is all about sex.” Which of course is true and allowed me to skip having to mention anything about it when I dealt with staid old Hopper. It broke Doyle but only inflamed the, uh, cohort.

Basically, the crowd took on every piece of modern art possible except of course the Velvet Elvis stuff that adorns their trailer living rooms and perhaps the famous painting of dogs playing poker. Not to critique it but to cast it to the ash heap. I finally found out what it must have been like when Hitler and the boys called for burning books and destroying “degenerate” art. Found out how nasty some people can be when the hammer comes down and there are no known limits to their depravity. I will give one example which should suffuse because despite the Promethean uphill battle I am facing just to avoid all their hateful bullshit I will be discussing below in the real part of this piece sex and sensuality in Hopper, dirty old man. In Hopper’s most recognized work Nighthawks there are three customers, two, a man and a woman, whom you can see and a third, a man with his back to the viewer and of course the fourth is the rum-dum wino night short order cook serving up the goo. Serving the washed-out coffee and the steamed unto death midnight special calculated so since the clientele at the midnight hour have passed beyond caring about quality food have drunken the whiskey sills dry. Out of this devil’s work scene Wanda was able to see that the woman, “the fallen woman,” Wanda’s term so you know where this is going already, what was she called a modern day whore of Babylon (with the accompanying twelve million citations from Scripture about her, our your doom without J.C. which need not detain us just check the Bible at your local library), and was ready to “go to work” on the poor jamoka beside her. Get this though the rum-dum night cook was pimping her off (with another Wanda twelve million quotes along the same line about abetting and begetting sin, the eternal same line that I have been dealing with for weeks). This about par for the course.

[Again nobody gave a damn about the true revelation on Hopper, that he had flunked drawing people’s faces where they had to show something more than an ironic world-wary smile in what passed for art class in his day. An interesting real art tidbit which goes a long way to explaining his “king of the mopes” reputation.]   

There you have in a nutshell about why I have followed Sam Lowell’s advice and put the bullshit, the publicity flak hand-outs and press agent noise here where any self-respecting reader can totally ignore the noise but I just had to vent a little-Laura Perkins]               

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The Church Hall Dance Night- With Danny and the Juniors At The Hop In Mind






From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah, at the hop!
Well, you can rock it you can roll it
You can slop and you can stroll it at the hop
When the record starts spinnin'
You chalypso* when you chicken at the hop
Do the dance sensation that is sweepin' the nation at the hop
Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop
Well, you can swing it you can groove it
You can really start to move it at the hop
Where the jockey is the smoothest
And the music is the coolest at the hop
All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop
Let's go!
Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop
Let's go!
[Instrumental Interlude]
Well, you can rock it you can roll it
You can slop and you can stroll it at the hop
When the record starts spinnin'
You chalypso* when you chicken at the hop
Do the dance sensation that is sweepin' the nation at the hop
Well, you can swing it you can groove it
You can really start to move it at the hop
Where the jockey is the smoothest
And the music is the coolest at the hop
All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop
Let's go!
Ah, let's go to the hop
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop (oh baby)
Let's go to the hop
Come on, let's go to the hop
Let's go!
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah, at the hop!
*********

Funny how memory draws you in, draws you in tight and hard once you focus in just a little. Take this combination. Recently I have been involved in writing some little sketches for my North Adamsville High School reunion Class of 1964 website. You know never before revealed stuff (and maybe should not be revealed now except I believe the statute of limitations has run out on most offenses) about what went on in the class rooms when some ill-advised teacher turned his or her on the class; the inevitable tales of triumph and heartbreak as told in the boys’ or girls’ Monday morning before school talkfest about what did, or did not, go on over the weekend with Susie or Billy; the heart-rending saga of being dateless for the senior prom; the heroics and devastating defeats of various sports teams especially the goliaths of the gridiron every leaf-turning autumn; the mysteries of learning about sex (I thought this might get your attention, innocent exploration or not) in the chaste day time down at the summer-side beach, or late at night after not watching the double feature at the outdoor drive-in movies (look it up on the Internet that there was such a way to watch them); date night devouring some hardened hamburgers complete with fries and Coke at the local all-know drive-in restaurant (ditto look up that too); older and car-addled taking the victory spoils after some after midnight “chicken run”; spending “quality time” watching breathlessly the “submarine races” (ask somebody from North Adamsville about that); and, just hanging out with your corner boys at Doc’s Drugstore throwing dimes and quarters in the jukebox to while the night away. Yeah, strictly 1960s memory stuff.   

Put those memory flashes together with my, seemingly, endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a commercial classic rock and roll series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. I noted in one review and it bears repeating here while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music. Those two memory-inducing events coming together got me thinking even further back than high school, back to elementary school down at Adamsville South where music and sex (innocent, chaste variety) came together at the record hop (alternatively called the sock hop if in your locale the young girls wore bobby sox rather than nylons to these things. Nylons being one of the sure signs that you were a young women and not merely some stick girl so the distinction was not unimportant).    

See we, we small-time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word meaning not knowledgeable, not the malicious sense, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off to the radio or when we scurried home right after school to watch American Bandstand when that program came on in late afternoon. And we hungry to be “hip” (although not knowing that word, not knowing that out in the adult world guys, guys mostly, guys in places like North Beach in Frisco town or the Village in New Jack City were creating the ethos of hipness which we would half-inherit later as latent late term “beats”) wanted to emulate those swaying, be-bopping television boys and girls if not on the beauties of that medium then with some Friday or Saturday night hop in the school gym or in some church basement complete with some cranky record player playing our songs, our generation-dividing songs (dividing us for the prison of our parents music heard endlessly, too endlessly if there is such a concept).

Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billy who I will talk about some other time, who claimed, with a straight face, to the girls that he was Elvis’ long lost son. My friend’s twelve to Elvis’s maybe twenty. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway). And the local hop put paid to that notion, taking the private music of our bedroom dreams and placing us, for good or evil, out on the dance floor to be wall-flower or “hip” (remember we did not know that term then, okay.)   

But can you blame me, or us, for our jail-break visions and our clandestine subterranean life-transistor radio dreams of lots of girls (or boys as the case may be), lots of cars, and lots of money if we could just get out from under that parental noise. Now getting back to that rock and roll series I told you that I had been reviewing. The series had many yearly compilations but as if to prove my point beyond discussion the year 1956 has two, do you hear me, two CDs to deal with that proposition that I mentioned above. And neither one includes Elvis, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley or some other stuff that I might have included so you know we are in the golden age when there is that much good non- Hall of Fame stuff around.

Needless to say Larry Larkin, my old corner boy from North Adamsville home town day Phil Larkin’s cousin, remained a step ahead of everybody around Ashmont Street in the Dorchester section of Boston during those days, those days when that seismic change occurred in our youthful listening habits. (And Larry would transfer whatever cultural knowledge he had picked up on those Dorchester mean streets, mostly useful except more often than not wrong on the do’s and don’ts of sex, to Phil, known as “Foul-Mouth” Phil among the corner boy brethren who would pass it on to us). Everybody, everything had to change, had to take notice of the break-out, if only to cut off the jailbreak at the pass. And that is where Larry Larkin’s step ahead of everybody else came into play, everybody else who counted then, and that was mainly the junior corner boys who hung around in front of Kelly’s Variety Store on Adams Street where generations, at least two by that time and more since, of elementary school boys learned the corner life, for good or evil, mostly evil as a roster of those who wound up in the various county and state prisons would testify to.

And not just any elementary school corner boys but parochial school boys. That is what was significant about my bringing attention to the environs of the Dorchester section of Boston, a section loaded down with every kind of ethnic Catholic, recent immigrant or life-time denizen of the triple decker night, and where it seemed there was a Catholic church on every corner (and there almost was, and to prove the point Dorchester boys, girls too lately, identified themselves after being from “Dot” identified themselves by what parish they belonged to, say Saint Brendan’s on Main Street, Saint Gregory on Dorchester Avenue, Saint Anne’s on Neponset Avenue and so on, a phenomenon you would not notice in say Revere or Chelsea).

If there seemed to be a church on every corner there was sure to be a bevy, if that is the way they are gathered, of parish priests ready to guide the youth in the ways of the church, including at Saint Brendan’s one Lawrence Joseph Larkin. And one of the things that had upset that 1950s era bevy of priests at that parish (and at other parishes and had caused concern in other religious groupings as well) was the effect that the new music, rock and roll, in corrupting the morals of the youth. Was making them zombies listening on those transistor radios that seemed to be attached to their ears to the exclusion of all else. Was making them do lewd, yes, lewd, moves while they were dancing (and not even dancing arm and arm with some girl but kind of free-form about three feet away from each other as if the space between was some sacred land to be worshiped but not defiled, blasphemy, pure blasphemy) at what they called record hops, or sock hops, or some such thing on Friday nights at the public school Eliot School over on Ashmont Street. Was making them a little snarly when dealing with adults a snarl they learned from the television or movies with guys named Elvis or James leading them on, begging them to follow them in the great break-out.  Worse, worse of all was the danger of dangers, sex, which bad as the fast dancing was when they did an occasion slow dance was very improper, the guys hands drifting down to the girl’s ass and she not even swatting it away. So yes there was something like a panic about to erupt.

And formerly pious altar boy Larry Larkin was leading the charge, was the first to wear those damn longer sideburns like he was some Civil War general. To constantly rake his hair with that always back pocket comb to look like Elvis’ pompadour style (strangely Larry was a dead-eye blue-eyed blonde kid, so go figure). He had introduced the new flaky dance moves like the Watushi learned from eternal afternoon rush home from school American Bandstand, from his older brothers   or from “Foul-Mouth” Phil’s latest intelligence from his older brothers , that had priests and parents alike on fire, had been the villain who had introduced the move of the boy putting his hand almost to a girl’s ass when slow dancing (the girls learned to not swat them away on their own so don’t blame Larry for that one), and a mass of other sins, mortal and venial. All learned, according to the priests, at that damn (although they did not use that word publicly) secular school over on Ashmont Street. The priests and a few like-minded parents were determined after a collective meeting of the minds among themselves to put a stop to this once and for all.      

Their strategy was simplicity itself, with few moving parts to complicate things-“if you can’t fight them, join them.” So come the first Friday night in November of the year of our Lord 1957 Saint Brendan’s Parish used its adjacent auditorium for its first sock hop. Worse, worse for Larry, hell, worse for everybody who learned anything at all from him, and liked it, boy or girl, the priests had ordered from their Sunday pulpits  that every parent with teenagers was to send their charges to the hop under penalty, of I don’t know what, but under penalty. And thus the long chagrin death march faces come that first hop night.                       

Obviously there were to be certain, ah, restrictions, enforced by the chaperones inevitable at such gatherings of the young, those chaperones being the younger priests of the parish who were allegedly closer to the kids, had a clue to what was going on, or else dour older boys and girls, probably headed to the seminaries and convents themselves, or those who were sucking up to the priests for sin brownie point. Banned: no lipstick or short dresses (short being anything above the ankle practically in those days) on girls and ties and jackets for boys and no slick stuff on their hair. Worse, worst of all no grabbing ass on the slow dances (not put that way but the reader will get the picture). Yes, boring made more so by the selection of records that were something out of their parents’ vault with nothing faster than some Patti Page number yakking about old Cape Cod or Marty Robbins crooning about white carnations cranking out on the old record player that had been donated by Smiling Jack’s Record Store over on the Boulevard. (Jack O’Malley, proprietor of the shop, a notorious drunk and skirt-chaser in his off hours obviously in desperate need of indulgences, no question).           

Enter Larry Larkin who had been dragged to the front door of the auditorium by his parents and who were duly recognized by Father Joyce, the young priest put in charge of the operation by Monsignor Lally (although Larry had not been too hard dragged since Maggie Kelly was to be there, yes, he had it bad for her). Now everybody knew that Phil had a “boss” record collection either bought from his earnings as a caddie over at the golf course on weekends and in the summer or “clipped” from Smiling Jack’s (and if the reader needs to know what “clipped” meant well we will just leave it at Larry did not pay for them). They also knew he has a pretty good record player with an amplifier that his parents had bought for him the Christmas before last. None of that stuff some of which had used by Loopy Lenny the DJ over at the Eliot School sock hops would be used this evening and some of the kids commented on the fact that Larry came record empty-handed. Yes all the signs where there for a boring evening.   

But here is where fate took a turn on a dime, or maybe not fate so much as the fact that the new breeze coming through the teenage land was gathering some fierce strength in aid of the jail-break many like Larry knew was coming, had to come. About half way through the first part of the dance when more kids were milling around than dancing, talking in boy-girl segregated corners, when even the wallflowers were getting restless and threatening to dance, and they never danced but just hung to their collective walls, definitely before the intermission, all of a sudden from “heaven” it seemed came blaring out Danny and the Juniors At The Hop and the formerly downbeat scene started jumping with kids dancing up a storm (including a few former wallflowers who too must have sensed a portent in the air). The priests bewildered by where the music was coming from tried to investigate while Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock came on with the kids dancing fast like crazy (including some off-hand grabbing ass usually reserved for slow dances). Irate and failing to find the source of the “devil’s music” Father Joyce, red-faced (whether because he knew that the closed dance doomed him among the kids or because he was going to on the carpet with the Monsignor and probably consigned to do the 6:00 AM weekday masses) declared the dance over. Done. And that was the last time Saint Brendan’s Parish sponsored a sock hop for their tender youth charges.         

Oh, yes, how does Larry Larkin last seen among the milling around crowd on the dance floor fit into this whole mix. Simple, he had hired Jimmy Jenkin, a non-Catholic ace tech guy older friend of his brother, Jack, and therefore not subject to the fire and brimstone of hell for his heathen actions, to jerry-rig Larry’s sound system in a room with an electric outlet near up near the rafters of the auditorium, a place that the good priests were probably totally unaware of. Money well spent and a kudo to Jimmy. And Larry, well, if you want to see Larry (and “Foul-Mouth” Phil, now a regular weekly visitor at his cousin’s, ready to bring the new dispensation across the river to Adamsville) then show up some Friday night at the Eliot School where he will be dancing to the latest tunes with Maggie Kelly in tow. 
Enough said.          

Hey, here are some stick-outs records from Larry’s collection used by Loopy Lenny at the Eliot School that every decent hopping, be-bopping record hop (or sock hop, okay) spun out of pure gold:
Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins (Elvis covered it and made millions but old Carl had a better old rockabilly back beat on his version); In The Still Of The Night, The Five Satins (a doo wop classic that I am humming right this minute, sha dot do be doo, sha dot do be doo or something like that spelling, okay); Eddie, My Love, The Teen Queens (incredible harmony, doo wop back-up, and, and “oh Eddie, please don’t make me wait too long” as part of the lyrics, Whoa!); Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry ( a deservedly early break-out rock anthem. Hell I thought it was a big deal just to trash my parents’ Patti Page old Chuck went after the big boys like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.); Be-Bop-a-Lula, Gene Vincent (the guy was kind of a one hit wonder but Christ what a one hit, "yah, she’s my baby now"); Blueberry Hill, Fats Domino (that old smooth piano riffing away); Rip It Up, Little Richard (he/she wild man Richard rips it up); Young Love, Sonny James ( dreamy stuff that those giggling girls at school loved, and so you "loved" too); Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (for a minute the king be-bop, doo wop teenage angel boy. Everybody wanted to be the doo wop king or queen, including my friend Billy); See You Later, Alligator, Bill Haley and The Comets (yah, these “old guys” could rock, especially that sax man. Think about the expression  people still use “see you later alligator”); and Since I Met You Baby, Ivory Joe Hunter (every dance pray, every last dance pray, oh my god, let them play Ivory Joe at the end so I can dance close with that certain she I have been eyeing all night).

Note: I have mentioned previously the excellent album cover art that accompanied each classic rock series compilation. Not only do they almost automatically evoke long ago memories of red hot youth, and those dreams, those steamy dance night dreams too, but has supplied this writer with more than one idea for a commentary. One of the 1956 compilation album covers is in that same vein. The cover shows what looks like a local cover band from the 1950s getting ready to perform at the local high school dance, not a record hop but if they are worth anything at all they will play the songs us po’ boys were listening to on the transistor radio or via that cranky record player lent by somebody for the occasion at the hop. Although the guys, especially the lead vocalist, look a little skittish they know they have to make a good showing because this is their small-time chance at the big time. Besides there are about six thousand other guys hanging around in their fathers’ garages ready and willing to step up if the Danny and the Bluenotes fall flat. If they don’t make that big splash hit like Danny and the Juniors did with At The Hop, the first song that got me jumping, jack they are done for.

This live band idea was actually something of a treat because, from what I personally recall, many times these school dance things survived on loud record playing dee-jay chatter, thus the term “record hop.” From the look of it the school auditorium is the locale (although ours were inevitably held in the school gym), complete with the obligatory crepe, other temporary school-spirit related ornaments and a mesmerized girl band groupie to give the joint a festive appearance.


More importantly, as I said before, at least for the band, as they are warming up for the night’s work, is that they have to make their mark here (and at other such venues) and start to get a following if they want to avoid another dreaded fate of rock life. Yes, the dreaded fate of most bands that don’t break out of the old neighborhood, the fate of having to some years down the road play at some of the students they are performing for that night children’s birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings and the like. That thought should be enough to keep these guys working until late in the night, jamming the night away, disturbing some old fogy Frank Sinatra fans in the neighborhood, perfecting those covers of Roll Over Beethoven, Rip It Up, Rock Around The Clock and Jailhouse Rock. Go to it boys, buy the ticket and ride the furies.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Teen Dance Club Night-Sonny James’ Young Love

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Teen Dance Club Night-Sonny James’ Young Love




Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

They say for every boy and girl,
There's just one love in this old world,
And I, I kn-ow, I, I, I've found mine.
The heavenly touch of your embrace,
Tells me no one will take your place,
A, A, A, A, ever in my heart.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

Just one kiss from your sweet lips,
Will tell me that your love is real,
And I, I, I can fe-el that it's true.
We will vow to one another,
There will never be another,
Lo-ve for you, or for me.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

********
I have always been intrigued by the different little social gatherings that dominated our teen-age lives back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To a certain extent every generation of teen-agers since they invented the category as enough kids in a family made it to that age and had enough free time on their hands to form a distinct segment of society has had some of the same institutions, you know school, sports, special day parties and periodic dances stuff like that. Although I am not as familiar with the inner workings of today’s millennial generation I do not believe that I have heard much about an institution that was mainstay while I was growing up, the teen dance club. The place where you were allowed to go and have fun and of which parents approved which should have made us suspect, and would have later but while we were dealing with trying to fit the fixture into our lives we looked forward to its weekly charms.    

The teen dance club memory just did not suddenly come up and hit me out of the blue but was a result of some work I have been doing of late that brought it to the fore. I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, tunes that our local jukeboxes devoured many a hard-earned father nickel and dime it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation. The generation of ’68, the generation that slogged through the red scare cold war night, survived and, for a minute, were ready to turn the world upside down in the mid to late 1960s before the wave ebbed and we wound up fighting something like a forty plus year rearguard action to maintain some semblance of dignity, and who had just started to tune into rock music as some sort of harbinger of things to come, that jailbreak previously mentioned.  

And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word, not the derogatory sense), we hardly wet-behind-the-ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who would now claim otherwise, claiming some form of amnesia about when that beat hit them square in the eyes, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, stuff parents did not have a handle on and stuff we saw as our way out of the box that was being fit around us. Kid’s stuff, sure, but still stuff like a friend of mine, my elementary school best friend “wild man” Billie who I will talk about more some other time, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he, all ten years old of him, was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night when Elvis (and us, us too) were young and hungry.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will and we owe a lot to whoever put that idea together especially for poor ass projects boys with too little space as it was) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll-never get-to-heaven-listening-to-that-devil's- music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, Pa like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway. I would come to know that song more closely, too closely later but that is another story) were supposed to satisfy our jail-break cravings.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered, of course) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. And, of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them).

But the crème de la crème to beat all was the teen night club. Easy concept, and something that could only have been thought up by someone in cahoots with our parents (or maybe it was them alone, although could they have been that smart). Open a “ballroom” (in reality some old VFW, Knight of Columbus, Elks, etc. hall that was either going to waste or was ready for the demolition ball), bring in live music on Friday and Saturday night with some rocking band, ours the Ready Rockers who did good covers on all but Elvis since they lacked his implicit sexual energy  (but not too rocking, not Elvis swiveling at the hips to the gates of hell rocking, no way), serve the kids drinks…, oops, sodas (Coke Pepsi, Grape and Orange Nehi, Hires Root Beer, etc.), and have them out of there by midnight, no later, unscathed. All supervised, and make no mistake these things were supervised, by something like the equivalent of the elite troops of the 101st Airborne Rangers. Usually some maiden teachers dragged in to volunteer and keep an eye, a first name eye on things, or some refugees from the sporadic church-sponsored dances who some priest or minister dragooned into volunteering with heaven held out as a reward but eagle-eyed for any unauthorized hand-holding, dancing too close or off-hand kissing.    

And we bought it, and bought into it hard. And, if you had that set-up where you lived, you bought it too. And why? Come on now, have you been paying attention? Girls, tons of girls (or boys, as the case may be). See, even doubting Thomas-type parents gave their okay on this one because of that elite troops of the 101st Airborne factor. Those hardened surrogate parents with the beady eyes and tart tongues. So, some down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedo from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that he just painted to spec, was no going to blow into the joint and carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, never to be seen again. No way. That stuff happened, sure, but that was on the side. This is not what drove that scene for the few years while we were still getting wise to the ways of the world. The girls (and guys) were plentiful and friendly in that guarded, backed up by 101st Airborne way (damn it). And we had our …sodas (I won’t list the brands again, okay). But, and know this true, we blasted on the music. The music that was on the compilations I have reviewed, no question. And I will tell you some of the stick outs that made my pray for dance card:
Save The Last Dance For Me, The Drifters (oh, sweet baby, that I have had my eye on all night, please, please, James Brown, please save that last one for me, and on too few occasions she did, or her kindred did later when I had other roving eyes so I came out about even); Only The Lonely, Roy Orbison (for some reason the girls loved Ready Rockers’ covers of this one, especially one night, not a teen club night but a night the Rockers were playing a church hall teen dance Friday night when a certain she planted a big kiss on my face, well, on my lips after I sang, really more like lip-synched  that one along with the band. Unfortunately she soon had a boyfriend and I was strictly past history but the memory of that kiss lasted lots longer); Alley Oop, The Hollywood Argyles (a good goofy song to break up the sexual tension that always filled the air, early and late, at these things as the mating ritual worked its mysterious ways and despite prying prudent eyes hand-holding, dancing too close and off-hand kissing got done, got done much more than our parents would ever know); Handy Man, Jimmy Jones( a personal favorite which dove-tailed into my “style” then,  as I kept telling every girl, and maybe a few guys as well just to keep them away from the ones I was seriously eyeing, that I was that very handy man that those self-same gals had been waiting, waiting up on those lonely weekend nights for. Egad! Did I really use that line?); Stay, Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs (nice harmonics and good feeling, and excellent for dancing too close on); New Orleans, Joe Jones (great dance number as the twist and other exotic dances started to break into the early 1960s consciousness and great too because awkward self-conscious dancers like me could “fake it” with juke moves since we were basically dancing by ourselves on the fast ones); and, Let The Little Girl Dance, Billy Bland (yes, let her dance, hesitant, saying no at first mother, please, please, no I will not invoke James Brown on this one, please). Oh yeah, and Sonny James’ Young Love that got the girls all juiced and happy to dance close even with guys like me with sweaty hands and unsure feet.


So you can see where the combination of the dance club, the companionship, and that be-bop rock beat that we could not get enough of would carry us along for a while. Naturally the thing could not go on forever, our forever, once we got older, once we tasted cigarettes and liquor (okay, okay beer) and once parents took fright when too many down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedos from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that they just painted to spec, started blowing into the joint to carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, carry them away gladly never to be seen again.

On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-Those Who Honor Lenin, Luxemburg, And Liebknecht Are Kindred Spirits- From The Pen Of Rosa Luxemburg- A Guest Commentary

Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated January 29, 2010, honoring the 3 L's and a polemic from the pen of Rosa Luxemburg, the "Rose Of The Revolution", on the course of, and in defense of, the Russian Revolution then in full bloom.

Makana’s Haunting Song from Russian Nuclear Bunker

Makana’s Haunting Song from Russian Nuclear Bunker
“Standing in the tomb-like space, my soul began to cry in the form of song,” says Makana. As one of over a million people in Hawai'i who were told on January 13, 2018 that they were about to be hit by a nuclear missile, renowned Hawai’i artist Makana said, “Waking to an alert of a nuclear attack in Hawai’i got me thinking. Why is this even a possibility?”
When Makana found out that the US and Russia possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, he was inspired to travel to Russia: “I wanted to experience this other country, people and land first hand. This journey led to the creation of relationships and then art to share with the public on both sides of the ocean. My intention is to inspire and remind us all to humanize one another, to dignify and be curious about each other. The conversations that do get broadcast are political conversations, of threat, of geopolitics. But those conversations have virtually nothing to do with the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people in our two nations. We need to create direct relationships. It’s the only way that we – nationally and individually – will ever achieve security and peace.”
Makana was the first American ever to descend into Russian nuclear fallout shelter Bunker 703. Makana was inspired to improvise a song on the spot. What we witness in the video is the process of lyrics and music being created and sung for the very first time. The moment was captured on film with a hand-held camera and microphone.
In one take, Makana created the haunting ballad, Mourning Armageddon, both a song of mourning and a call to action. Images inside the bunker are otherworldly, indelible. The surreal acoustics reverberate inside a chamber, hermetically sealed and deep enough to withstand a nuclear blast--evoking the sound of a kind of nuclear chamber music, a post-apocalyptic “wake for the world.”
”We’re in bed with annihilation,” Makana says. “There is a phrase in Hawaiian: "KÅ«'Ä“ i ka papau make"- Resist annihilation. “It’s time for people everywhere to do that.”

Mourning Armageddon (Lyrics)
I’m underground
What a sound
All around
How did I get down here
So low
Where did all the people go
In my mind
I don’t know if it’s real
When I think
What could happen
Why they built this
Why it came to be
Why we build places like this
With our mind
Oooooh
With our mind
But it’s just a container
And it’s up to us
To change
Gotta see each other
As friends not enemies
We can bring peace
I hope we never have to build another shelter
Like this
Never gonna build another bunker
Like this
Oooooohhh
Oooooohhh
I’m underground
Hear this sound
All around
How did I get down here
So low
Where did all the people
All go
In my mind
It was all
Just a dream
 
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 607-4255
http://www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

'Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.'
~ Henry David Thoreau 

On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-HONOR LENIN, LUXEMBURG AND LIEBKNECHT- THE THREE L’S-Honor Karl Liebknecht! -Reichstag Meeting, December 2, 1914, and Liebknecht's Document Explaining Why He Voted "No"

Markin comment

EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. HERE’S WHY WE HONOR KARL LIEBKNECHT
*******
Karl Liebknecht
The Future Belongs to the People

Reichstag Meeting, December 2, 1914, and Liebknecht's Document Explaining Why He Voted "No"


AT the second War Session of the Reichstag, Dec. 2, 1914, Karl Liebknecht not only voted against the War Budget – the only member of the Reichstag so to vote – but also handed in an explanation of his vote, which the President of the Reichstag refused to allow to be read, nor was it printed in the Parliamentary report. The President banned it on the pretext that it would entail calls to order. The document was sent to the German Press, but not one paper published it.

The full text of the protest was received by way of Switzerland. It runs as follows:

"My vote against the War Credit Bill of to-day is based on the following considerations. This War, desired by none of the people concerned, has not broken out in behalf of the welfare of the German people or any other. It is an Imperialist War, a war over important territories of exploitation for capitalists and financiers. From the point of view of rivalry in armaments, it is a war provoked by the German and Austrian war parties together, in the obscurity of semi-feudalism and of secret diplomacy, to gain an advantage over their opponents. At the same time the war is a Bonapartist effort to disrupt and split the growing movement of the working class.

"The German cry: `Against Czarism!' is invented for the occasion – just as the present British and French watchwords are invented – to exploit the noblest inclinations and the revolutionary traditions and ideals of the people in stirring up hatred of other peoples.

"Germany, the accomplice of Czarism, the model of reaction until this very day, has no standing as the liberator of the peoples. The liberation of both the Russian and the German people must be their own work.

"The war is no war of German defense. Its historical basis and its course at the start make unacceptable the pretense of the capitalist government that the purpose for which it demands credits is the defense of the Fatherland.

"A speedy peace, a peace without conquests, this is what we must demand. Every effort in this direction must be supported. Only by strengthening jointly and continuously the currents in all the belligerent countries which have such a peace as their object can this bloody slaughter be brought to an end. "Only a peace based upon the international solidarity of the working class and on the liberty of all the peoples can be a lasting peace. Therefore, it is the duty of the proletariats of all countries to carry on during the war a common Socialistic work in favor of peace.

"I support the relief credits with this reservation: I vote willingly for everything which may relieve the hard fate of our brothers on the battlefield as well as that of the wounded and sick, for whom I feel the deepest compassion. But as a protest against the war, against those who are responsible for it and who have caused it, against those who direct it, against the capitalist purposes for which it is being used, against plans of annexation, against the violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, against unlimited rule of martial law, against the total oblivion of social and political duties of which the Government and classes are still guilty, I vote against the war, credits demanded.

KARL LIEBKNECHT.
BERLIN, December 2, 1914.


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