From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 96^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution-On Capitalist Democracy

Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

Workers Vanguard No. 968
5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)
November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)
***********

Workers Vanguard No. 1002	11 May 2012

TROTSKY

LENIN

On Capitalist Democracy

(Quote of the Week)

The press agents of the imperialist bourgeoisies all peddle the supposed intertwining of capitalism and political democracy as if the two had formed as peas in a pod, a myth reinforced by the reformist left. In fact, the capitalist class, for whom democratic forms serve to cover its class rule, can and will resort to the most extreme police-state regimes to crush any working-class assault on the institution of private property. Writing in 1935 in the aftermath of the rise of Hitlerite fascism in Germany, British political philosopher Harold Laski explained the conjunctural and reversible nature of democracy under capitalism. Laski, a Marxist academic, was a left social democrat who wrote incisively on the capitalist state.

The transition from feudal to bourgeois society was only accomplished by heavy fighting. There is no reason to suppose, unless we assume that men are now more rational than at any time in the past, that we can transform the foundations of bourgeois society without heavy fighting also; and the assumption of greater rationality is an illusion born of special historical circumstances and now fading before our eyes....

It was only when the combination of war-weariness and the Russian Revolution began to strip the mask from the tragic drama of war that men began to realize, in any numbers, how accidental was the union of capitalism with democracy. It was the outcome, not of an essential harmony of inner principle, but of that epoch in economic evolution when capitalism was in its phase of expansion. It had conferred political power upon the masses; but it was upon the saving condition that political power should not be utilized to cut at the root of capitalist postulates. It would offer social reforms so long as these did not jeopardize the essential relations of the capitalist system. When they did, as occurred in the post-war years, the contradiction between capitalism and democracy became the essential institutional feature of Western civilization....

What looms before us is a battle for the possession of the state-power. What is now clear is the vital fact that the class-relations of our society have become incompatible with the maintenance of social peace. They have brought to light the contradiction between our power to produce and our power to distribute in a way that makes the great paradox of our time—our poverty in the midst of potential plenty—intolerable to those who have to pay the price for it. Yet in the choice between peaceful transformation, and the maintenance of privilege at the cost of conflict, the owners of property now, as in an earlier day, are prepared rather to fight for their legal privileges than to give way.

—Harold Laski, The State in Theory and Practice (Viking Press, 1935)

***Out In The1950s Low-Down Be-Bop Crime Noir Night- Lizabeth Scott’s “Two Of A Kind”

DVD Review

Two Of A Kind, starring Edmond O’Brien, Lizabeth Scott, Columbia Pictures,1950
One of the unspoken premises of the crime noir (other than the by now obvious one that crime doesn’t pay, or at least not pay for those at the bottom of the crime chain) is that there is a “code of honor” among thieves. Code there may be, although that premise is open to serious question as the film under review, Two Of A Kind, explores but it has been honored more in the breech than the observance. That said, this is a rather nifty little B-side film that can’t quite decide whether it is a light-hearted, flirty camping on the crime noir genre or wants to go full bore in the low-rent be-bop crime noir night.

Why? Well the plotline certainly promises a “big score” on the crime front even though guns and rough stuff are, mostly, in the background. No nasty armed robberies or off-hand murders here. This one is about a scam, a beautiful everybody gets plenty of dough and can retire to Rio scam. On paper. And for a while it seems to be getting up a full head of steam toward that goal. But like all scams, or almost all scams, a little what the hell happened reality sets in.

Here husky-throated and fetching, 1950s-style blond fetching, Elizabeth Scott as Brandy, a girl who has to look out for herself in any way a 1950s girl can, and a wealthy man’s lawyer, Vincent, have cooked up a scheme to grab ten million in dough by stealth. But what they need, desperately need, is a third party to play the role of this wealthy man and his wife’s long lost son. Enter small time grafter, Lefty (played by crime noir stand-out Edmond O’Brien, see D.O.A.) who is down on his uppers and whose “resume” fits the bill as the son, except he needs a little work to flush out the role- he needs to get his finger smashed to smithereen to look authentic. (Ouch, even fifty years later.)

And he goes for it, smashed finger and all. And goes, by the romantic interest way, for Lizabeth Scott (who like I said before is a girl who had to look out for herself and has already pinned herself to that lawyer so there will be some trouble, no question). And she, off-handedly, goes for him along the way. So the plan is unfolding beautifully, including working on a dizzy young dame who has entre to the wealthy man’s home, when all of a sudden the tables are turned. The old guy doesn’t tumble for the scam and all bets are off. But see nobody goes to the slammer on this one. Nobody gets shot up, or even ruffled up (except said lawyer has to get out of town) so the big build-up turns this one into a comedic crime noir. Is there such an animal, or is it against nature? Still this one was one of the better B-film noirs based on the dialogue and the little twists around the scam. Oh yah, in case you forgot, crime doesn’t pay.

**From The Archives (2012)-Reflections In The Dorchester Day Wind- From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

As I stepped up the steps from the Morrissey Boulevard entrance to the Columbia MTA station in the “high Dorchester” section of old home town Boston that noontime June 3rd morning I was suddenly overcome with thoughts of how much this old transit/transfer section of town from my neighboring North Adamsville grow up home to downtown and points north had been part of my growing up life. Oops on that Columbia station reference, except maybe for old-time townies. I ‘forgot’ that the station had long ago been renamed from old housing project ghetto hellhole dump for Boston’s poor, black and white, but increasing black as time wore on and the whites fled to neighboring North Adamsville and points south, Columbia Point. Of course the stop is now named the JFK (no need to identify those Boston-etched initials, even to newcomers, although for how much longer I don’t know)/ UMass MBTA station reflecting its new designation as the site of the JFK Presidential Library and the ever-sprawling although still commuter-bound Boston branch of the state university system.

The reason that I am taking these steps, these now suddenly fraught with memories steps, is in order to take the old Redline subway down the line a few stops to the still same old name Ashmont station. From there to then walk a few blocks (actually about twenty but memory failed) further down Dorchester Avenue (hereafter “Dot” Avenue, we don’t have to be formal here, not in Dorchester, christ, not in Dorchester) to meet up with some ex-military veteran activists united in Veterans for Peace who are marching this day in the annual Dorchester Day parade and have invited me to march with them. I can hardly believe though that this is actually my first Dorchester Day parade under any pretext (held annually on the first Sunday in June for about a billion years now in order to celebrate the landing party that founded the place. It was not always part of Boston but had its own separate history back about half a billion years ago). So this will be a story about memory, yes, always memory these days, about how the peace message that these gutsy veterans bring with them in hard-hit working class and immigrant- heavy Dot, and about the twelve millionth reworking of the “what goes around comes around.” But let’s get started.

Okay, so I “safely” entered the JFK/UMass station and after successfully passing my new “Charlie” card through the scanner (there is a story here but I will let that pass) I head downstairs almost automatically to the waiting platform. Except, as a fairly infrequent user of the “T” of late, and of this stop almost beyond memory, I almost went to the wrong platform. Reason: this Redline station separates one branch going to old traditional Ashmont the other winding its way to North Adamsville and points south as the public transportation system has grown tentacles to all reaches of the Greater Boston area. But I right myself in time, walk right, and wait a few minutes for the old redeye to come into the station with much fanfare.

The trip was uneventful as a ride, no screaming kids, no drunks riding the rails to shake the shakes on the cheap, no petty larceny eyes waiting to pounce, but was filled with memory tips as we joggle alone parallel to the ever present triple-deckers adjacent to line. House after house stuck almost together like one with their three back porches showing laundry and storage, In the old days these triple-deckers represented that first trek (including by some of my more distant relatives, the close ones hail from hard Irish South Boston, “Southie”) out toward the southern old suburbs and more space. Now they represent, increasingly, the lasting abode of blacks, browns, and immigrants who did not survive the seemingly never-ending 2008 home-ownership bubble, or who never got that far. Next stop Savin Hill, same comment, and same stuck together three-deckers along the line (although farther from the din of the tracks, closer to the bay, better housing stock can be found).

Ah, then the curve turn to Fields Corner and I see a couple of hats doffed from old- time passengers, one seemingly ancient beyond description and time, while we pass the ancient Roman Catholic Church (Saint Anne’s, maybe?) seen from the curve. (In the old days, jesus, the whole train load would be men doffing hats or women crossing themselves, including hatless kid me, I think).

Of course Fields Corner memory was more than just train doffs and crosses but was filled with treks from North Adamsville. Why? Well, kid why. See the train sprawl to the suburbs mentioned earlier started after I left this part of town. Back in the day (nice, huh) no Redline went to North Adamsville and so to get to town (or beyond to mecca Harvard Square) you waited, waited endlessly for the clickety-clack privately-run Eastern Massachusetts bus or just walked. Me, I walked, kid walked, hey it was only a couple of miles, just a lark most days except meltdown dog days August. Just go over the North Adamsville Bridge walk up Neponset Avenue, cut up Adams Street and then presto, take a token and take freedom (the why of freedom has been told before and need not detain us here) and hang-out Boston Common or Friday night/ early Saturday morning Harvard Square. Next.

Shawmut, seldom stopped at and known mainly for the white invasion into the area by young 1970s radicals (SDS remnants, Progressive Labor, all kinds of Maoists and Trotskyists beyond mention looking to immerse themselves in the tiny real Boston working class. Good luck, brothers and sisters). They mainly hovered around the Melville Street Victorians and big houses (simple math- divide up seven rooms among seven roommates and you could swing the rent, or in some cases afford the cheap mortgage). Somebody told me a while back , and I was amazed since most of those ancient minute warriors have long since gone to academia ghettos or at least the quiet, very quiet so as not to disturb their sleep, suburbs, that a few refugees still hold forth there and even make some noise on local issues. Hats off, if that is true. But time to move on.

Okay end of the line beautified Ashmont and walk. Ashmont of a thousand (maybe not that many, not as many as Southie anyway) Irish (Irish by bulk clientele and thus Irish) bars, ladies by invitation only, thus not invited, for manly bouts of whiskey straight up (and maybe, depending on dough and days, a beer chaser), furtive arguments about baseball or some misty sport or name, and a few busted ribs or noses. I knew the inside of a fair share of them, walking home, Dorchester home, not youth North Adamsville home, and was not welcome like the ladies in a couple of the rougher ones (“slumming” so it seemed ), no dough for carfare used for one last shot instead. And Ashmont of youth alternative to Field Corner home, sometimes when I had a pressing problem, a pressing kid problem, meaning, naturally, girls, or something like that, and the extra walk time down Gallivan Boulevard gave resolve to the question (hey, minute resolve on the girl thing, hell, even I knew, or suspected, eternity angst on that one)

Walk, human walk machine walk, since wee kid eternity down at the old Adamsville projects, and carless father, mostly carless father (or clunkers that meant carless in short order) , and too impatient to wait for another branch of that privately run Eastern Massachusetts bus, and so walk. And today I walk because in my planning I had assumed more time that I needed for random Sunday service trains and so I could old time walk to eat up time before the one o’clock step-off. And so walk, walk right in into that cluster of hard-bitten veterans (mainly now ancient times Vietnam era or older, jesus) getting ready to “show the colors” to do unequal “battle” once again against the American monster war machine. And we, they, do.

***The Queen Of Parlor Detection- Agatha Christie’s “Then There Were None”- A Film Review

DVD Review

Then There Were None, starring Barry Fitzgerald, directed by Rene Clair, 1945
No question that I like my detective stories to feature hard-boiled, world- wary, world-weary tough guy detectives ready to take a slug or two for some windmill cause, or, better, for some wayward dame, for some two-timing femme fatale who gets her comeuppance (or not) as he keeps that shoulder to the wheel seeking to eke some rough justice out of this wicked old world. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe come easily, and readily, to mind. As do such films as The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man.

Of course before Hammett and Chandler toughened up the crime-fighting world with their hard-edged windmill- seekers of rough justice such heavy lifting was done in parlors, and drawing rooms. Figured out by gallants, professional or not. And the queen of parlor detection was Agatha Christie who spent a life’s career creating such works, such works as the film adaptation of her work under review, Then There Were None.” (And a later film version under the title Ten Little Indians)

Now Ms. Christie never recoiled from piling the corpses high (although usually not in the parlor, or drawing room) and she does not fail us here. Here ten people of various class backgrounds and professions are invited to a seaside English manor house (of course, Ms. Christie was, ah, English and manor houses have lots of rooms to stuff corpses and big parlors too) by a Mr. Owen for some nefarious purpose. What joins the ten together is that all bear various amounts of responsibility for the deaths (murders?) of one or more persons. And while the law was not able to bring them to even rough justice it is soon apparent, as the bodies pile up, that Mr. Owen is seeking to be his own avenger. Except of course one cannot go around committing mass murder by the numbers (literally with a ten, nine..., countdown right on the dinner room table to keep a scorecard tabulation) especially since the villain of the piece (one of the ten) perhaps did not peruse the records as carefully as he/she should have and not everybody is guilty of murder, or anything.

Maybe there are fewer corpses (although sometimes not by much) but give me that windmill-tilting, take a punch for the good of the cause, hard-boiled detective, especially those twisting in the wind over some two-timing frail every time. Agatha, your time has passed.

***The Night Of The Living Dead- “Edmond O’Brian’s Crime Noir –D.O.A.

DVD Review

D.O.A., starring Edmund O’Brian, directed by Rudolph Mate, Cardinal Pictures, 1950
Hey, over the couple of years that I have been periodically reviewing crime noirs I’ve seen it all. Bad gees getting away with murder, almost. Good gees getting the wrong end of the deal and just barely getting a little justice in this wicked old world before the scales turn, slightly. I’ve seen tough guy detectives take every beating imaginable before they, at the last second, grab the brass ring. I’ve seen more two-timing twisted sister femme fatale dames pile the corpses high and some skirt- crazy guys grinning saying they were just misunderstood, almost. Yah, I’ve seen it all, brother. Well, not quite all, as the film under review, D.O.A., starring rugged good looks 1950s actor Edmond O’Brian makes fatally clear. I‘ve never done a review where the dead guy is still walking. That is usually saved for a genre, horror films, that don’t interest me, almost.

Let me back up (as is done in the film to explain that last point, otherwise this would be an exceedingly short review of an exceedingly short film). Average notary (for our purposes) Frank (played by the aforementioned Mr. O’Brian) needs a holiday bad. Bad from his closing in honey ready to make her kill (marriage and white picket fence cottages for two, okay). So naturally being a California desert guy and wanting to go wild he heads for be-bop 1950s San Francisco (just as the beat geist begins its climb up those seven hills, or whatever number there are). But Frank picked a wrong day, a wrong weekend, wrong month, hell, and a wrong millennium to “break out.”

Seems a regular work-a-day notary (accountant too) can know just a little too much. So in the language of the genre, he has to take “the fall.” And he does, as a nefarious guy who has something to hide slips him the mickey. But what a mickey, a totally fatal, no cure, done, dead, if still walking dose done while, well, while he is preoccupied picking up one of those high-flying “beat” hanger-on women that were filling up the town just then. So that is why our boy Frank is a dead man walking. And the rest of the film, the fast-paced film, by the way, with great black and white shots (especially of a be-bop jazz group blowing that high white note to kingdom come in the fog-bound ‘Frisco night- shades of some Jack Kerouac dream song, or maybe Allen Ginsberg, a young Allen Ginsberg), is spent frantically unfolding how Frank got himself killed. And some remorse over not treating his honey back in the desert so good.

A great film but I still have this lingering question. Since he knew (including getting a second medical opinion on the question) he was doomed in a day or two, a week at the most, why was not reveling in wine, women and song, especially that high-flying frail from the bistro, instead of almost getting himself “killed” (early) trying to find the truth? You will be scratching your head too after you see this one. And you should.

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- Saturday Night With “Roy The Boy”- Roy Orbison

DVD Review

Roy Orbison: Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, various all-star musicians and backup singers including Bruce Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett, 1987
Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis come easily to mind when thinking about classic rock ‘n’ roll (yah, the early 1950s stuff not the my 1960s coming of age stuff, although that is good too, mostly). And about where you were, and who you were with, and what you were doing when you heard those voices on the radio, on the television, or when you were "spinning platters" (records, for the younger set, okay, nice expression, right?). The artist under review, Roy Orbison, although clearly a rock legend, and rightly so, does not evoke that same kind of memory for me. Oh sure, I listened to Blue Bayou, Pretty Woman, Running Scared, Sweet Dreams, Baby and many of the other songs that are performed on this great black and white concert footage. And backed up by the likes of T-Bone Burnett, who may be the top rhythm guitarist of the age (and who has also gotten well-deserved kudos for his work on Jeff Bridges’ Crazy Hearts), Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen. With vocal backups by k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt. All who gave energized performances and all who were deeply influenced by Roy’s music. That alone makes this worth viewing.

Still, I had this gnawing feeling about Roy’s voice after viewing this documentary and why it never really “spoke” to me like the others. Then it came to me, the part I mentioned above about where I was, and who I was with, and what I was doing when I heard Roy. Enter one mad monk teenage friend, Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood. Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, and, oh yah, Frankie, my bosom friend in high school.

See, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday, working- class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway that was also conveniently near our high school too. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it sit for a while and no eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven. (People who know such things told me later that kind of cold is the way you are supposed to eat pizza anyway, and as an appetizer not as a meal.)

Moreover, this was the one where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination. Jesus, he could flip that thing.

One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio I think his name was, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie and the Roy question, alright.

So there nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eying in school until my eyes have become sore), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally- bottled root beer, and, incessantly (and that incessantly allowed us to stay since we were “paying “ customers with all the rights and dignities that entailed, unless they needed our seats), dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.

Here is the part that might really explain things, though. Frankie has this girl friend (he always had a string of them, which what was cool about him, but this was his main squeeze, his main honey, his main twist, his main flame and about sixty-seven other names he had for them). The divine Joanne (his description, I could take or leave her, and I questioned the divine part, questioned it thoroughly, on more than one occasion). See though Frankie, old double standard, maybe triple standard Frankie, was crazy about her but was always worried, worried to perdition, that she was “seeing” someone else (she wasn’t). You know guys like that, guys that have all the angles, have some things going their way but need, desperately need, that always one more thing to “complete” them.

But sweet old clever “divine” Joanne used that Frankie fear as a wedge. She would always talk (and talk while I was there, just to kind of add to the trauma drama, Frankie’s drama) about all the guys that called up bothering her (personally I didn’t see it, she was cute, for sure, and with a nice figure but I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if she turned me down, others in those days yes, and gladly, but not her). This would get Frankie steaming, steaming so he couldn’t see straight. Once he actually couldn’t eat his pizza slice he was so upset and Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, ALWAYS ate his pizza. Even fatherly Tonio took notice.

Worst, was when old doll, old sweetheart, Joanne would drop coins in the jukebox to play… Roy Orbison’s Running Scared over and over. And make Frankie give her good coin, his good coin to boot. It got so bad that old Frankie, when Joanne wasn’t around, would play it on his own. With his own money, no less. So, I guess, I just got so sick of hearing that song and that trembling rising crescendo voice to increase the lyrical power that I couldn’t see straight. But, really, you can’t blame Roy for that, or shouldn’t. Watch this DVD. I did and just turned the old volume on the remote down when that song came on. And think of poor old lovesick Frankie and his divine Ms. Joanne. That’s the ticket.
**********
Running Scared- Roy Orbison, Joe Melson
Just running scared, each place we go
So afraid that he might show
Yeah, running scared, what would I do
If he came back and wanted you

Just running scared, feeling low
Running scared, you love him so
Yeah, running scared, afraid to lose
If he came back which one would you choose

Then all at once he was standing there
So sure of himself, his head in the air
And my heart was breaking, which one would it be
You turned around and walked away with me

Fwd: Nov. 9 - Solidarity Day with Boston School Bus Drivers

Tue Nov 5, 2013 5:58 am (PST) . Posted by:

wildcatg777

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Gillis <Steve.Gillis@bostonschoolbusunion.org>
To: bostonsolidarity <bostonsolidarity@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Nov 5, 2013 8:38 am
Subject: Nov. 9 - Solidarity Day with Boston School Bus Drivers

Greetings All,

Please help us spread the word on your lists and social media about Solidarity Day with the Boston School Bus Drivers, USW Local 8751, two of whose leaders, Steve Kirschbaum and me, were just fired by Veolia Transportation in the aftermath of the company's lockout on Oct. 8th.

Date: Saturday, November 9th
Time: 1:00 PM
Gather: corner of Dorchester Ave. & Hoyt Street (Freeport St. bus yard in Dorchester / Veolia Transportation HG)

In Solidarity,
Steve Gillis

bostonschoolbus5.org

tinyurl.com/kyo9hys

https://www.facebook.com/events/581768885204711/?notif_t=plan_user_joined






--
Steve Gillis
Vice-President, USW Local 8751
The Boston School Bus Drivers' Union
25 Colgate Road, 3rd floor
Roslindale, MA 02131
Tel: 617 524-7073
Cell: 617 733-2950
Fax: 617 524-1691
email: Steve.Gillis@bostonschoolbusunion.org
www.BostonSchoolBusUnion.org

Stopping the Next Middle East War A UJP forum: Syria, Iran, Israel and the US; and an update on Arab Spring Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 7:00 pm Cambridge Friends Meeting • 5 Longfellow Park, off Brattle St • Harvard Sq T • Cambridge The peace movement helped stop the US attack on Syria but the underlying causes of conflict in the Middle East remain. Already, warmakers want more pressure on Iran instead of responding to the Iranian initiative to relax tensions. Israel's repression of the Palestinians continues, Saudi Arabia wants regional power, the military rules in Egypt and US sanctions hurt the people. Publlic opinion is skeptical about another war -- can the peace movement build on stopping the Syria attack to deepen and consolidate antiwar sentiment? Is Arab Spring abated or repressed, or will this powerful movement for democracy help create peace? The dynamics of the Middle East are complex, inter-related and need to be understood as a whole. Continuing education and understanding tricky Middle East politics are keys to effective action. Mark Solomon, former national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, will review the current situation and update on Arab Spring. Jeff Klein of Dorchester People for Peace and Mass. Peace Action will report on his recent trip to Palestine and discussions of the Syrian situation and the connection to Iran. Elaine Hagopian, professor emeritus of sociology at Simmons College, will comment on how Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US all hope to use the conflict in Syria to check and roll back the influence of Iran. Vijay Prasad, professor of international affairs and South Asian studies at Trinity College, is invited to provide a taped presentation on US policy in the Middle East. for more information: 617 383 4857 or mcfarland13@gmail.com United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today. info@justicewithpeace.org 617-383-4857 www.justicewithpeace.org

No War With Iran: Virtual Town Hall

For years we have been hearing that the U.S. and Iran are on the brink of war. But with a series of positive exchanges between the U.S. and Iran's recently elected president, the two countries be on the brink of something much different: peace.

But peace will not be won easily. As we speak, pro-war groups are working to force a vote on new sanctions in the Senate, ratchet up war threats in the House, and derail U.S.-Iran negotiations.
It is up to us to prevent war, stop sanctions, and secure peace. And it is up to ensure the Massachussetts Congressional delegation stands on the right side of history.

What can we do to ensure our elected officials stand in support of a peaceful deal with Iran instead of working on the side of war and sanctions?

Join members of Massachusetts Peace Action as well as Massachusetts members of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), for a Virtual Town Hall to launch a state-wide No War with Iran campaign.

No War with Iran Virtual Town HallCo-hosted by Massachusetts Peace Action, FCNL, and NIAC

Featured Speakers:

Jamal AbdiPolicy Director, NIAC

Kate GouldLead Lobbyist on Middle East Policy,FCNL

Yasmin RadjyOutreach Director,NIAC

Jeff KleinMass. Peace Action,Moderator

Register now for log-in and call-in information

Tuesday, November 19
7 - 8pmVia Google Hangout & Teleconference

Agenda:
Briefing: Current U.S-Iran Relations
Analysis: Iran Issue on Capitol Hill
Introduction: Grassroots Organizing on the Iran Issue
Overview: Next Steps & the Massachussets Grassroots Action Plan
Space is limited, register today!

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Join Socialist Alternative for a Discussion on Our Historic Election Results! Both races are too close to call! Although it looks like we probably won't gain a seat, this is a huge breakthrough for socialist ideas. Please come along to this important discussion tonight! Wednesday, Nov. 6th at 7pm Encuentro 5 in Downtown Boston 9 Hamilton Place, near the Orpheum Theater Near the Park St. and Downtown Crossing T Stops https://www.facebook.com/events/685426528143082/ Both Ty Moore in Minneapolis and Kshama Sawant in Seattle have a chance at winning elections as open socialists independent of the two parties of big business. Come to this discussion on Socialist Alternative's analysis of these elections and possible next steps for the left. BACKGROUND: Ty Moore and Kshama Sawant, both Socialist Alternative members, made a historic impact Tuesday. Both candidates were backed by a coalition of unions, socialists and Greens. Both are building vibrant social movements like Occupy Homes in Minneapolis and the "Fight for 15" in the Seattle area. Please come to this important discussion about how this was achieved and what the next steps forward can be for the left. Three articles to check out: http://socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=2223 http://socialistalternative.org/news/article22.php?id=2224 http://socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=2222

***Yes, You Better Boot That Thing-Early Women Blues Singers From The 1920s Be-Bop Night-Take Two

A YouTube's film clip of Victoria Spivey performing "TB Blues". Wow.

Yes, you had better boot that thing was a great line from a blues number back in the 1920s or so. And if I have to tell you that expression has a sexual significance, was a double entendre then maybe you best move on. The songs of this period, blues songs anyway are filled with lyrics that contain those elusive double meanings. And if you wanted to hold your audience you had better be as suggestive as hell, or as the law would allow. One of the interesting facts about the development of the blues is that in the early days the recorded music and the bulk of the live performances were done by women. At least they were the most popular exponents of the genre filling up the concert halls, gin joints, and theaters down South (segregated Mister James Crow down south which would last until well after the heyday of women blues singers supremacy) and in the Jazz Age for the lucky ones following the northern star to the Cotton Clubs of the cities.

I have tried elsewhere in this space to redress that grievance by reviewing the works of the likes of Memphis Minnie, Ida Cox and Ivy Anderson, among others. I also have scheduled a separate appreciation of one of the four women featured on this CD, Alberta Hunter. This CD format thus falls rather nicely in line with my overall intention to continue to highlight some of these lesser known women artists. Moreover, as fate would have it, this compilation included the work of Victoria Spivey, a singer that I have mentioned elsewhere and have wanted to discuss further. Finally, the conception of the producers here is enhanced by breaking up the CD into two parts-the urban blues part represented by Hunter and Spivey and the country blues part represented by Bessie Tucker and Ida May Mack. While both this trends have always shared some common roots and musicality they also represent two distinct trends in blues music as reflected in the increasing urbanization of the American black population in the 20th century.

Let’s use the urban/country divide as a frame of reference. The smoother style of Hunter and Spivey obviously reflected the need to entertain a more sophisticated audience that was looking for music that was different from that country stuff down home. And that laid back country style was seemingly passé in the hectic urban world. Tucker and Mack reflect that old time country hard work on the farm, hard scrabble for daily existence found, as well, in the songs of their country blues male counterparts. What unites the two strands is the personal nature of the subject matter- you know, mistreating’ men, cheatin’ guys, two-timing fellas, money taking cads, squeakin’ man-stealing women friends, the dusty road out of town, and just below the surface violence and mayhem, threatened or completed. And that is just an average day’s misery.

So what is good here? I won’t spend much time on Alberta because I have looked at her work elsewhere but please give a listen to “My Daddy’s Got A Brand New Way To Love,” the title tells everything you need to know about this song and is classic Alberta. Of course for Bessie Tucker you need, and I mean need, to hear the title track “Better Boot That Thing” and then you will agree that you, man or woman, best stay home and take care of business. As for Ida Mack I flipped when I heard her saga of a fallen woman as she moans out on “Elm Street Blues” and her lament on “Wrong Doin’ Daddy”. However, what you really want to do is skip to the final track and listen to “Good-bye Rider” which for the nth time concerns the subject of that previously mentioned advice about “not advertising your man.” to your friends.

Victoria is just too much on“Telephoning The Blues,” again on that two- timing man, wronged woman theme.“Blood Hound Blues” demonstrates that she was not afraid to tackle some thorny issues, including a reverse twist here about a woman driven to kill her hard-hearted physically abusive man, was jailed, escaped and is on the lam as she sings this song. The song that knocked me out on this more socially-oriented theme is her “Dirty Tee Bee Blues” about the tragic suffering of a gal who went the wrong way looking for love and adventure and now must pay the price. Powerful stuff.

A special note on Victoria Spivey. I have mentioned, in a review of some film documentaries (four altogether) entitled “American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-1966” that were retrieved a few years ago by German Cinema and featured many of the great blues artist still alive at that time on tour in Europe, that Victoria Spivey had a special place in the blues scene not only as a performer and writer (of songs and goings-on in the music business) but that she was a record producer as well (Spivey Records).

Back in the days when music was on vinyl (you remember them, right?) I used to rummage through a second hand- record store in Cambridge (talk about ancient history). One of my treasured finds there was a Spivey Records platter featuring Victoria, the legendary Otis Spann (of Muddy Waters’band), Luther “Guitar” Johnson, and a host of other blues luminaries. She, like her black male counterpart impresario Willie Dixon (who she occasionally performed with), was a pioneer in this business end of the blues business, a business that left more than its fair share of horror stories about the financial shenanigans done to “rob” blues performers of their just desserts. That, however, is a tale for another day.

***Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Three

He wrote of small-voiced people, the desperately lonely, alienated people who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s or Tom Waits’ take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen doorways.

He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal moment. Waiting eternally waiting to get well, to get some kicks. Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them. Not for him the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers proving breadbaskets to the world, the prosperous small town drugstore owners, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon (although one suspects that he could have) for in the pull and push of the writing profession they had (have) their muses. Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice, the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard (although again one suspects he could have, if so inclined, shilled for that set). No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him a name took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.

And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.

Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20^th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table, come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze, mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.

I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poacher, highwaymen, the “what did some sociologist call them, oh yeah, “the master-less men, those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.

The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless hot rod boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better cut your throat world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.

He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.

He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.

He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.

***Thoroughly Modern…-John Cusack’s High Fidelity –A Film Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

High Fidelity, starring John Cusack, Jack Black, 2000

Modern age issues can be very trying things, very trying indeed. Oh no, not the questions of war and peace, the degradation of the planet, the struggle against the three great tragedies of life-hungers, death, and sex but, well wait a minute let me back up, because we do want to deal with that last issue in the film under review, High Fidelity, Yes, we want to deal with the very modern issue of, uh, boy and girl relationships, a staple of the Hollywood production line. But in a little different way because instead of the person who is suffering youthful angst and alienation being a young woman that is the usual vehicle for introducing this subject we have a guy, played John Cusack, who is unman-like, if there is such a word, spilling his guts out (sorry) about his lifelong trial and tribulations with, uh, boy-girl relationships. Stuff that most guys keep deep within their psyches but which in the modern confessional age is open for public inspection. The way this introspection is dealt with in the film is by a verbal dairy of sorts with Brother Cusack giving us a blow by blow description of his personal wars going back, going back to middle school for chrissakes. I had better give the skinny of the plotline so you know what I mean.

Take one confused record store owner specializing in rarer and hard to get oldies but goodies and one public service lawyer who are having, well, having trouble in their relationship, and are ready to split up and go their separate ways. Reason, public service lawyer reason, one sad sack record store owner is not “growing.” (By the way for those who are young, who live in mall country, or who satisfy their musical tastes by down-loading their selections on every conceivable electronic gadget a record store is a place where you go in and buy records. You know, vinyl, 45s, 78s. Still don’t get it, then look it up on Wikipedia please.) The film revolves around the hard fact that Brother Cusack has always been, or thinks that he has always been, a loser in the boy-girl love wars and he takes us back through his stormy relationships (to him but to us we have seen and heard that song before) going back to middle school for chrissakes (oops, I already said that). So we are treated to a trip down memory lane (aided by many, many songs from various periods as background-kudos for that) through the litany. Of course when the deal goes down, this is after all a Hollywood boy-girl story, he sees where he could be a little less shallow, a little more open, and so he is redeemed in the end. Gets the girl, again.

Well, okay it is not the stuff of great tragedy, modern or ancient, and his character flaws do not doom him to the depths of hell but that main story line is not what makes this one so entertaining. What does is the interplay between Cusack and his employees at the record store, mainly one mad man Jack Black. Now a lot of what Jack Black does is frankly sophomoric and sometimes it seems like he has only one note to play but every time he was on-screen he redeemed this thing. Made me laugh despite myself. Not bad, huh. Makes you want to go out and buy records (see note above for the clueless on this word). Enough said.