The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from the days that I now call the “Generation Of ‘68,” we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics.(1968 being a watershed year for lots of things from Tet in Vietnam bringing home the reality of the lost war to the American bourgeois political upheavals that led to Chicago hell in the summer and the May events in Paris which showed the limits that a student-based vision of the "newer world" we sought.)

Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on who survived the 1950s red scare or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who survived the red scare and the Stalinists had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us. Yes, we young stalwart in-your-face- rebels were going to re-invent the world we had not made and we needed no old fogies to put a damper on our efforts. See we were going to re-invent that world without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads the minute the American government felt the least bit threatened. (Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970 and for me personally May Day 1971 when we without anywhere near adequate forces or much of a strategy were going to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war stand as signposts to those failures.) Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists.
Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time New Left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s young left-wing militants.

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A Frank Jackman comment (2014):

Recently I wrote a short piece in a left-wing political blog centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the active left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a few years back, the continuing failed efforts to stop the incessant American war machine, and the lack of serious and righteous response to the beating that the working classes and oppressed in this country (and internationally) have taken from the ruling class and their hangers-on a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I had run into in the various campsites and had talked to on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses.

I noted there, and the point is germane here as I try to place the remnant of old New Left represented by the contributors in The Rag Blog in perspective, that is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory which I mentioned in the article still holds true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working-class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

That said I have also made a note that some of theories from the old days, now being re-tread by some of the old New Left denizens of this blog as if nothing had changed since the 1960s,  made me think that making the revolution the old-fashioned Marxist working class way is the beginning of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure though back in the day I was as likely as anybody to adhere to all kinds of new theories (mainly because the old theories being old must be irrelevant, a notion that was widespread then) but life, political life, itself has already made its judgments on the worth of those theories for pulling humankind ahead. The class struggle exists, although in a very one-sided manner right now, one-sided on their side not ours, and any theory, any plan worth its salt, worth the righteous oppressed rising up against it should reflect that and at its core the teachings of Marx and his progeny still make sense.   
A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor The Historic Leader Of The Bolshevik Revolution-Vladimir Lenin  

 

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. I will make my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space tomorrow  (see also review in American Left History April 2006 archives). I have made some special points here yesterday about the life of Rosa Luxemburg (see review in American Left History January 2006 archives). In this 100th anniversary period of World War I it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, to define himself politically. Probably the best way to do that is to look at Lenin’s experiences through the prism of his fellow revolutionary, early political opponent and eventual co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution Leon Trotsky.

A Look At The Young Lenin By A Fellow Revolutionary

The Young Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1972

The now slightly receding figure of the 20^th century Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party and guiding light of the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the first attempt at creating a socialist society has been the subject to many biographies. Some of those efforts undertaken during the time of the former Soviet government dismantled in 1991-92, especially under the Stalin regime, bordered on or were merely the hagiographic. Others, reflecting the ups and downs of the post- World War II Cold War, painted an obscene diabolical picture, excluding Lenin’s horns, and in some cases not even attempting to exclude those. In virtually all cases these efforts centered on Lenin’s life from the period of the rise of the Bolshevik Social Democratic faction in 1903 until his early death in 1924. In short, the early formative period of his life in the backwaters of provincial Russia rate a gloss over. Lenin’s fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky, although some ten years younger than him, tries to trace that early stage of his life in order to draw certain lessons. It is in that context that Trotsky’s work contains some important insights about the development of revolutionary figures and their beginnings.

Although Trotsky’s little work, originally intended to be part of a full biography of Lenin, never served its purpose of educating the youth during his lifetime and the story of it discovery is rather interesting one should note that this is neither a scholarly work in the traditional sense nor is it completely free from certain fawning over Lenin by Trotsky. Part of this was determined by the vicissitudes of the furious Trotsky-Stalin fights in the 1920s and 1930s for the soul of the Russian Revolution as Trotsky tried to uncover the layers of misinformation about Lenin’s early life. Part of it resulted from Trotsky’s status of junior partner to Lenin and also to his late coming over to Bolshevism. And part of it is, frankly, to indirectly contrast Lenin’s and his own road to Marxism.

That said, this partial biography stands up very well as an analysis of the times that the young Lenin lived in, the events that affected his development and the idiosyncrasies of his own personality that drove him toward revolutionary conclusions. In short, Trotsky’s work is a case study in the proposition that revolutionaries are made not born.

To a greater extent than would be true today in a celebrity-conscious world many parts of Lenin’s early life are just not verifiable. Partially that is due to the nature of record keeping in the Russia of the 19^th century. Partially it is because of the necessity to rely on not always reliable police records. Another part is that the average youth, and here Lenin was in some ways no exception, really have a limited noteworthy record to present for public inspection. That despite the best efforts of Soviet hagiography to make it otherwise. Nevertheless Trotsky does an admirable job of detailing the high and low lights of agrarian Russian society and the vagaries of the land question in the second half of the 19^thcentury. One should note that Trotsky grew up on a Ukrainian farm and therefore is no stranger to many of the same kind of problems that Lenin had to work through concerning the solution to the agrarian crisis, the peasant question. Most notably, is that the fight for the Russian revolution that everyone knew was coming could only be worked out through the fight for influence over the small industrial working class and socialism.

I would note that for the modern young reader that two things Trotsky analyzes are relevant. The first is the relationship between Lenin and his older brother Alexander who, when he became politicized, joined a remnant of the populist People’s Will terrorist organization and attempted to assassinate the Tsar. For his efforts he and his co-conspirators were hanged. I have always been intrigued by the effect that this event had on Lenin’s development. On the one hand, as a budding young intellectual, would Lenin have attempted to avenge his brother’s fate with his same revolutionary intellectual political program? Or would Lenin go another way to intersect the coming revolutionary either through its agrarian component or the budding Marxist Social Democratic element? We know the answer but Trotsky provides a nicely reasoned analysis of the various influences that were at work in the young Lenin. That alone is worth the price of admission here.

The other point I have already alluded to above. Revolutionaries are made not born, although particular life circumstances may create certain more favorable conditions. Soviet historians in their voluntarist hay day tried to make of Lenin a superhuman phenomenon- a fully formed Marxist intellectual from his early youth. Trotsky once again distills the essence of Lenin’s struggle to make sense of the world, the Russian world in the first instance, as he tries to find a way out the Russian political impasse. Trotsky’s work only goes up to 1892-93, the Samara period, the period before Lenin took off for Petersburg and greener pastures. He left Samara a fully committed Marxist but it would be many years, with many polemics and by using many political techniques before he himself became a Bolshevik, as we know it. And that, young friends, is a cautionary tale that can be taken into the 21^st century. Read on.

Out In The James Dean Night-With Robert Altman’s Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, starring Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, directed by Robert Altman, 1982

Jeff Sterling, the now retired journalist whose by-line appeared in many of the coffee-table magazines put there by those of the generation of ‘68 who still felt an unread urge to at least display tokens of their youth, was devoted to all things James Dean, an interest he would carry from his youth and throughout his working life. Had seen in Dean’s larger-than- life figure more than the other icons of the era like the young brash Brando with his brooding sexuality, his “better move on brother if you don’t want all hell coming down on your head,” his Johnny swagger around the women with a “take ‘em or leave ‘em” pose which for young Jeff defied all the anguish and trauma of his own girl-driven youth a kindred spirit. Or Elvis as much as he was driven, girl-driven to palely imitate the “King” with his sullen baby boy pose (that sullenness more than one girl, more than one tween girl of Jeff’s acquaintance was willing to turn into a smile), those sideburns and that hair combed just so, and those endlessly moving, gyrating, swiveling or whatever he could do with them hips that spoke of satin sheets and sweaty nights. Both, whatever else they projected, exuded an aura of long and fruitful lives about them whereas Dean, even a quick flash look at him exuded a certain casted dark shadow, a certain fatalistic view of the world turning him over soon much like his own then.

Assuredly Jeff was not attracted to Dean like some fan club groupie with a room filled with commercial memorabilia, his family had little extra money to do much more than provide an occasional outing at the Saturday matinee up at the old Strand Theater over by the Fields Corner Redline subway stop in the Dorchester section of Boston where he had grown to manhood in one of those infamous crowded triple-deckers that covered the area like a spider’s web. Nor was he like some blurry-eyed budding girl like one of his sister’s friends who did have Photoplay movie magazine cut-out photos of Dean all over her bedroom walls because she thought his blue-eyes, his blond hair, hell, even his world wary smirk which she had confessed to that sister she would not mind trying to change in person were “boss.” And Jeff decidedly was not one of those who twenty, thirty, forty years later still commemorated Dean’s 1955 death date like doing so would bring back the crushed crash dead, bring back some lost garden, bring back that long faded youth which would be eternally Dean’s. 

Jeff, as he told his old Dorchester streets friend, Tim Riley, a few weeks before at the Sunny Grille over a few cups of wine, had simple identified with the brooding smoldering figure of Dean not from the obvious film choice, 1955s Rebel Without A Cause, a preview of the jail-break from square cubed parents, ditto authority and cookie-cutters that his generation would take full throttle over the next decade or so, but the more literary East of Eden (adapted from a John Steinbeck novel of the same name) where Dean suffered all the angst, alienation, confusion, sexual stirrings and questioning the hypocrisy of the world that he had no say in creating that Jeff himself had endured. (When somebody had asked him how he only ten or so when that film came out was able to see Eden when she was watching Snow White or some Disney film he told her it was simply family economics since his parents could not afford a baby-sitter so they could go alone they dragged all the kids along, kids who got in free by the way accompanied by a parent in those days.)       

Jeff drew a distinction between the obviously alienated Rebel Dean caught up in some greater West Coast social drama dealing with JDs, hot-rod culture, and guys with time and discretionary money on their hands and the more subtle truths in Eden. So Jeff saw in the almost biblical Cain and Abel saga of Eden a replication of his own growing up times, of trying to make sense of a world he didn’t create, and didn’t feel like he fit into. Saw too, maybe post hoc since what would a barely teen-aged boy know of such things, James Dean along with Marlon Brando, Elvis and a few others as important coming of age icons for his generation’s jailbreak leap in the 1960s. That said, Jeff was at pains to insist whenever he was called on the subject by one of his old-time corner boys, including the night he was discussing the subject with Tim Riley, that he did love the midnight “chicken run” scene in Rebel, having himself ridden shot-gun for Dwayne Hutton on a few midnight runs when some redneck guys from Dedham or Norwood wanted to challenge Dwayne’s reign as king of the hill on the flats around the old Naval Air Station near the bay.

Although Jeff has never been a fanatic about his tastes he nevertheless will take any appropriate occasion to wax poetic about the first of a line of creative guys, white guys mainly, who lived by the motto-“live fast, die young, and make a good corpse.” As he told Tim when they were at the Sunny Grille thanks to modern technology he has been able to watch such classic (and only major) Dean films as Rebel Without A Cause, Giant, and East Of Eden in the comfort of his own home. And has been able to watch other related documents to the Dean legend like Robert Altman’s Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. He had recently re-watched the film and one night he was talking with another of his old high school friends, Sam Lowell, over a few glasses of white wine at Simmy’s Grille over in Gloversville about the highlights of the film and reminiscences of a review that he did when that film came out in the 1980s for the now long defunct East Bay Other in California:

“Who knows who, where or when some new trend, some new icon will hit the population right between the eyes, will speak to some unnamed, maybe un-nameable, feeling that makes a person whole for a few minutes. You can name the icons in a couple of minutes though the ones that strike your own generation most easily come to mind and that for my generation would include the unseen subject of Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,  James Dean. Not everybody, including this reviewer, did like the women from that small Texas town did and form a club, create a shrine to, or commemorate the personage of James Dean but many drew some kind of sustenance from his life, his story, and that mumbling confusion about what was happening to him in a world that he did not create, and which he had no say in creating that he projected on the screen. That look stirred many more people than those aficionados like the women in this film.             

This is an intriguing film in many ways from the single set setting of the inside of a Woolworths’ Five and Dime store to the dramatic secrets that these women have held within themselves since they formed the James Dean Fan Club in 1955 and had enshrined his memory psychically and psychological since his death that year. There was probably no more iconic site in small town America in the 1950s beside some steepled church or the post office on Main Street than the local branch of the national Woolworth’s chain. That home for every cheap gimcrack known to humankind was central to the growing up experience of lots of small town baby-boomers and their older brothers and sisters who bought their first small gifts for some sweetheart there, or had something to eat at the lunch counter (make mine a grilled cheese sandwich and lime rickey in season, please at the one I frequented in Uphams Corner), or, and here is where we separate out the generations, find out who was touched by the Dean glow, played the jukebox three songs for a quarter that was conveniently located within arm’s reach at that counter. Later events, the sit-ins of early 1960s down south to integrate those damn counters (and support efforts by those in the North who picketed in front of the store in Boston including this reviewer) would seriously tarnish the image of that idyllic scene as would the triumph of the mall in finishing such stores off in small town downtown.                      

Strangely this film although it is about devotees of the James Dean mystique is very little about him and plenty about what drove the various personalities to join the club  and to keep the flame alive twenty years later. And the almost mythical hold that his person held in their lives, for good or evil. Apparently James Dean cast spell on the ability of the women to tell the truth, if only to themselves. Starting with the leader of the club, Mona (played with great aplomb and feeling by Sandy Dennis) who was so hooked on the Dean legend that she created a separate universe for herself claiming that the illegitimate child, Jimmy Dean, that she conceived was Dean’s child, moving on to Sissy (played by Cher with that world-weary and wariness that she has brought to many roles) who has lied to herself that her husband was coming back after he had rejected her after her breast cancer operation, and, finally, to the other central figure, Joanne (played by Karen Black with that slippery sexuality she brought to many roles) who as it turned out had been, back in the day, a guy, Joe, who it turned out had been transgender and had had  an operation to prove it. Oh yeah, and who back in the day had impregnated Mona and thus the other unseen Jimmy Dean of the title. Nice work, Robert Altman.                

Of course some films are meant to further some storyline, others like this one are conceived to highlight the interplay between characters and in this film that is exactly what you get. Get the interplay between the characters (including the lesser characters which fill out the cast, tough and cynical Stella Mae, fertile Edna Mae, and the older woman, Juanita who managed the store) through flashbacks to events in 1955 interspersed with the 1975 actions all confined to that single store. Moreover the interplay between the characters at any given moment made you think the whole experiment could blow up any minute as the deep secrets keep slowly getting revealed to show, well, to show that these women were made of ordinary human clay, just wanted something to believe in, something greater than themselves and their ordinary human clay lives. Join the club, sisters, join the club.        

Johnny Prescott’s Itch- With Kudos To Mister Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula

GENE VINCENT

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one that I know
She's the one that loves me so

Say be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the one that gots that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that walks around the store
She's the one that gets more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

 

 

He had the itch. John Prescott had the itch and he had it bad, especially since his eyes flamed up consumed with hell-bend flames when he saw Elvis performing live on the Ed Sullivan Show one Sunday night. And he had it so bad that he had missed, unbeknownst to his parents who would have been crestfallen and, perhaps, enraged, his last few piano lessons. Sure, he covered his butt by having saxophonist Sid Stein, drummer Eddie Shore, and bass player Kenny Jackson from his improvisational school jazz combo, The G-Clefs (yah, yah, I know  a well-thought out name for a musical group) come by his house to pick him up. While standing at the Prescott door parents the sidemen went through the “well aren’t things looking up for you boys,” and “they seem to be” scene without missing a beat. But as soon as Kenny’s 1954 Nash Rambler turned the corner of Walnut Street Johnny was a long-gone daddy, real long-gone. And where he was long-gone but not forlorn to was to Sally Ann’s Music Shop over on the far end of West Main Street. Now the beauty of Sally Ann’s was that it was, well, Sally Ann’s, a small shop that was well off the main drag, and therefore not a likely place where any snooping eyes, ears or voices that would report to said staid Prescott parents when Johnny went in or out of the place. Everyone, moreover, knew Sally Ann’s was nothing but a run-down past its prime place and if you really wanted all the best 45s, and musical instrument stuff then every self-respecting teenager in town hit the tracks for Benny’s Music Emporium right downtown and only about a quick five-minute walk from North Clintondale High where Johnny and the combo served their high school time, impatiently served their high school time.

Now while everybody respected old Sally Ann’s musical instincts she was passé. She had been the queen of the jitterbug night, appearing weekly in the USO shows and dances  in waterfront Boston in the 1940s while the war was on, had been on top of the be-bop jazz scene, had been at Birdland the night Charley had hit the high white note, with Charley, Dizzy, Thelonius and the guys early on right after the war, guys whom the G-Clefs covered, covered like crazy. More importantly she had nixed, nixed big time that whole Patti Page, Teresa Brewer weepy, sad song thing in the early 1950s when some energy ran out on the music scene. Still around town, among the young who counted, counted big time with their newly minted parent-derived discretionary income she was passé, old hat when it came to the cool blues coming out of Chicago, and the be-bop doo wop that kids, white kids, because there were no known blacks, or spanish, chinese, armenians, or whatever, in dear old Clintondale were crazy for ever since Frankie Lyman and his back-up guys tore up the scene with Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

But her greatest sin, although up until a few weeks ago Johnny would have been agnostic on that sin part, was that she was behind, way behind the curve, on the rock ‘n’ rock good night wave coming though and splashing over everybody, including deep jazz man, Johnny Prescott. But Sally Ann had, aside from that secluded locale and a tell-no-tales-attitude, something Johnny could use. She had a primo Les Paul Fender-bender guitar in stock just like the one Gene Vincent used that she was willing to let clandestine Johnny play when he came by. And she had something else Johnny could use, or maybe better Sally Ann could use. She had an A-Number One ear for guys who knew how to make music, any kind of music and had the bead on Johnny, no question. See Sally Ann was looking for one more glory flame, one more Clintondale shine moment, and who knows maybe she believed she could work some Colonel Parker magic and so Johnny Prescott was king of the Sally Ann day.

King, that is, until James and Martha Prescott spotted the other G-Clefs (Kenny, Sid, Eddie) coming out of the Dean Music School minus Johnny, minus a “don’t know where he is, sir,” Johnny. And Mr. Dean, Johnny’s piano instructor, was clueless as well, believing Johnny’s telephone story about having to work for the past few weeks and so lessons were to be held in abeyance. Something was definitely wrong if Mr. Dean, the man who more than anyone else recognized Johnny’s raw musical talent in about the third grade had lost Johnny's confidence. But the Prescotts got wise in a hurry because flutist Mary Jane Galvin, also coming out the school just then, and overhearing the commotion about Johnny’s whereabouts decided to get even with one John Prescott by, let’s call a thing by its right name, “snitching” on him and disclosed that she had seen him earlier in the day when she walked into Sally Ann’s looking for an old Benny Goodman record that featured Peggy Lee and which Benny’s Emporium, crazed rock ‘n’ rock hub Benny’s would not dream of carrying, or even have space for.

The details of the actual physical confrontation with Johnny by his parents (with Mr. Dean in tow) are not very relevant to our little story. What is necessary to detail is the shock and chagrin that James and Martha exhibited on hearing of Johnny’s itch, his itch to be the be-bop, long-gone daddy of the rock ‘n’ roll night. Christ, Mr. Dean almost had a heart attack on the spot when he heard that Johnny had, and we will quote here, “lowered himself to play such nonsense,” and gone over to the enemy of music. As mentioned earlier Mr. Dean, before he opened his music school, had been the roving music teacher for the Clintondale elementary schools and had spotted Johnny’s natural feel for music early on. He also knew, knew somewhere is his sacred musical bones, that Johnny’s talents, his care-free piano talents in particular, could not be harnessed to classical programs, the Bachs, Beethoven, and Brahms stuff, so that he encouraged Johnny to work his magic through be-bop jazz then in high fashion, and with a long pedigree in American musical life. When he approached the Prescotts about coordinating efforts to drive Johnny’s talents by lessons his big pitch had been that his jazz ear would assure him of steady work when he came of age, came of age in the mid-1950s.

This last point should not be underestimated in winning the Prescotts over. James worked, when there was work, as a welder, over at the shipyards in Adamsville, and Martha previously solely a housewife, in order to pay for those lessons (and be a good and caring mother to boot) had taken on a job filling jelly donuts (and other donut stuff) at one of the first of the Dandy Donuts shops that were spreading over the greater Clintondale area.

Christ, filling donuts. No wonder they were chagrined, or worst.

Previously both parents were proud, proud as peacocks, when Johnny really did show that promise that Mr. Dean saw early on. Especially when Johnny would inevitably be called to lead any musical assemblage at school, and later when, at Mr. Dean’s urging, he formed the G-Clef and began to make small amounts of money at parties and other functions. Rock ‘n’ rock did not fit in, fit in at all in that Prescott world. Then damn Elvis came into view and corrupted Johnny’s morals, or something like that. Shouldn’t the authorities do something about it?

Johnny and his parents worked out a truce, well kind of a truce, kind of a truce for a while. And that kind of a truce for a while is where old Sally Ann entered in again. See, Johnny had so much raw rock talent that she persuaded him to have his boys (yes, Kenny, Sid and Eddy in case you forgot) come by and accompany him on some rock stuff. And because Johnny was loved by Aunt Sally (not Sally Ann, just old Aunt Sally by then) was loved, loved in the musical sense if not in the human affection sense by the other boys they followed along. Truth to tell they were getting the itch too, a little.

And that little itch turned into a very big itch indeed when at that very same dime-dropper, Mary Jane Galvin’s sweet sixteen party concert (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl to have such a party that was going out of fashion among the hip younger girls who had dreams of seashore conquests and no time for dopey parties), the G-Clefs finished one of their covers, Dizzy’s Salt Peanuts with some rock riffs. The kids started to get up, started dancing in front of their seats to the shock of the parents and Mary Jane (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl), including the senior Prescotts, were crazy for the music. And Johnny’s fellow G-Clefs noticed, noticed very quickly that all kinds of foxy frails (girls, okay), girls who had previously spent much time ignoring their existences, came up all dreamy-eyed and asked them, well, asked them stuff, boy-girl stuff.

Oh, the Sally Ann part, the real Sally Ann part not just the idea of putting the rock band together. Well, she talked her talk to the headmaster over at North Clintondale High (an old classmate, Clintondale Class of 1925, and flame from what the boys later heard) and got the boys a paying gig at the upcoming school Spring Frolics. And the money was more than the G-Clefs, the avant guarde G-Clefs made in a month of jazz club appearances, to speak nothing of girls attached. So now the senior Prescotts are happy, well as happy as parents can be over rock ‘n’ roll. And from what I hear Johnny and the Rocking Ramrods are going, courtesy of Aunt Sally, naturally, to be playing at the Gloversville Fair this coming summer. Be-bop-a-lula indeed.

Victorian Secrets-Hugh Dancy And Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Hysteria

DVD Review     

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Hysteria, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, 2012

No question medical science like all great progressive movements got moving along through fits and starts. It was not all that long ago (in human history terms) that soap, simple soap, could help keep up hygiene and sickness away, including keeping hands clean on the operating table. Nor was it all that long ago that bleeding the body with leeches was the cure-all for many ailments. So medicine has truly moved in a jagged path. Take for instance the subject of the film under review, Hysteria, what in Victorian times was labelled female hysteria, you know when no one used the s-x word to discuss anything, when women, women of means anyway went to doctors, reputable doctors to have what ailed them fixed. And what ailed them was sexual frustration brought on by everything from dissatisfaction in bed with her bedmate to problems with menopause.     

Now that medical treatment required time, energy and money and so like lots of things in this wicked old world an invention, the vibrator, got discovered almost by accident to, ah, privatize the treatment. Make treatment more widely available and cheaper. The film’s story-line goes along showing how the discovery was made by Doctor Granville (played by Hugh Dancy) after he had been so “overworked’ using the old massage, proper massage with cover method of inducing orgasms on the medical table, and how the vibrator became the new next best thing and made the inventors and manufacturers rich. And assuredly many women happy.

Of course a straight forward account of that invention would be, well, pretty boring on its face if it was just a matter of developing a new therapy rather than some porno worthy “sex toy.” The “real” story line, the “boy meets girl” story line that drives a lot of films like this is  the coy budding romance between the good doctor and his doctor- employer’s older daughter, Charlotte (played by fetching Maggie Gyllenhaal), a modern day feminist who drives him crazy but who in the end proves that he is worthy of her, is worthy of being her husband and letting the better angel of his nature emerge. Of course that “boy meets girl” invention has been going on for a long time and the status of the medical profession at any given time has been unable to provide a treatment to ease matters of the heart. Enough said.           

video/photos/song:Boston Martin Luther King Day speakout 1/17/2015
by Michael Borkson Email: nosanctions (nospam) yahoo.com	18 Jan 2015
Boston Common-Jan. 17, 2015: The weekly sat. peace vigil at Park St. in Boston held its annual Martin Luther King Day weekend vigil and speakout.
Boston Common-Jan. 17, 2015: The weekly sat. peace vigil at Park St. in Boston held its annual Martin Luther King Day weekend vigil and speakout. We played several recordings of MLK's speeches from the 1950s-1960s over our sound system,which attracted a good sized crowd despite the 20 degree cold. Vigil members then spoke on how MLK would view the war, racism, and poverty he spoke about and protested,in context of 2015-- the US wars around the world, the racism of police violence against people of color, the wars abroad draining dollars needed to fight poverty at home. Here are links to photos and video I took: Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/protestphotos1/sets/72157649933561070/ Video: http://youtu.be/xR41Y0iZ-94 Video of song I wrote-The Ballad Of Martin Luther King(no war, racism, poverty): http://youtu.be/vr1SaraI6Pg
Click on image for a larger version
Click on image for a larger version
Click on image for a larger version
See also: http://www.stopallwars.com

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and  Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate  ….            

From 'The Song of Tiadatha ' In this war the Hun has brought us, Some have learnt to make returns out, Some have learnt to write out orders. Some have learnt the way to kill Hulls, Some to lead the men that kill them, Some have learnt to cope with bully, Learnt to shave with army razors, Learnt to make the best of blizzards, Mud and slush and blazing sunshine, Learnt to coax a little comfort Out of bivvies, barns and dug-outs, Learnt of things they never dreamed of In July of 1914. And they all have learnt this lesson, Learnt as well this common lesson, Learnt to hold a little dearer All tile things they took for granted In July of 1914- Whether it be Scottish Highlands, Hills of Wales or banks of Ireland, Or the swelling downs of Dudshire, Or tile pavement of St. James's -- Even so my Tiadatha. So I leave him and salute him Back in his beloved London, Knowing that the war has one thing (If no others) to its credit -- It has made a nut a soldier, Made a silk purse from a sow's ear, Made a man of Tiadatha And made men of hundreds like him. And the world has cause to thank us For that band of so-called filberts, For those products of St. James's, Light of heart and much enduring, Straight and debonair and dauntless, Grousing at their small discomforts, Smiling in the face of danger. Who have faced their great adventure, Crossed through No Man's Land to meet it, Lightly as they'd cross St. James's. Eyes and heart still full of laughter, Till the world had cause to wonder Till tile world had cause to thank us For the likes of Tiadatha. Cendresselles, September 1918 Part XVII, "Home at Last," pp. 142-44. Major Owen Rutter (1889-1944)

When LaVerne  Baker Snapped Her Fingers And Jim Dandy Came A Calling

Over the past several years as I have done what seems like an endless series of sketches on the music that I came age to (growing up chronological “came of age” not the political or social kind), the music now known as classic rock and roll (around mid-1950s to mid-1960s)I have noted that there was a serious dearth of female performers who could hold their own in that genre in those days unlike the later part of the 1960s when you had many like Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Rhonstadt and on and on who could belt out the lyrics with the likes of Mick and the other boys.       

I have noted, seriously noted, Wanda Jackson’s pivotal place in that earlier pantheon and, of course, no survey of the classic age could be complete without paying homage to Ms. LaVerne Baker. Would, well, just not be complete, no question. She, like Ruth Brown, came out of the rhythm and blues beat that would blend with other stuff like rockabilly guitar licks to make up rock and roll and her classic Jim Dandy will always be a testament to her contribution. In a sense she is the female counterpart to Big Joe Turner and his Shake, Rattle and Roll for putting an extra beat, an extra sexy beat, and an extra energy in R&B which drove us crazy. Was there any kid, any guy anyway I don’t remember whether gals did it, who did not click those thumbs to perdition when LaVerne held forth on that number and a bunch of other finger-popping tunes she ran through in the late 1950s.               

Here is a little comparison- Elvis (you know who I mean without the last name, right) did a great version of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night but I frankly like LaVerne’s jumpier and hell-raising version better. So yes Ms. Baker did pay her dues, paid those dues double-time as a female rocker and as a black artist who confronted those benighted Southern dance halls-whites on one side, blacks on the other with a rope, Jesus, a rope between them, under Mister James Crow while she held forth at a time when you could tell by the film clips you see of such times that every kid in the room what ready to bust out dancing with whoever wanted to jump. Hey I guess I haven’t lost a step after all since I am listening to Jim Dandy as I write this one hand is started to voluntary finger-pop. Lordie, Lordie. 

P.S. We caught LaVerne's act late one night in a jazz club in Cambridge after she had had some serious medical problems and thus was wheelchair bound. She still ripped the place up. Got it.        

The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

 

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Markin comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And of late  (2014) a fetish for running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. This year it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had million in the streets for a few minutes. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

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Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

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Another note from Frank Jackman  

There are many ways in which people get “religion” about the issues of war and peace, about the struggle to oppose the imperial adventures of the American government.  Learn that it is our duty to oppose those decisions as people who are “in the heart of the beast” as the late revolutionary Che Guevara who knew about the imperial menace both in life and death declared long ago. My own personal “getting religion” and those who I have worked with in such organizations as Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and later Veterans For Peace (VFP) came from a direct confrontation with the American military establishment either during or after our service. Those were hard confrontations with the reality of the beast back in those days and it is no accident that those who confronted the beasts then are still active today. Remain active as a whole new threat to world peace emanates from Washington into the Middle East highlighted by the air wars in Syria and Iraq and the now new lease on life in Afghanistan.     

In a sense the military service confrontation form of “getting religion” on the issues of war and peace is easy to understand given the horrendous nature of modern warfare and its massive weapons overkill and disregard for “collateral damage.” Less easy to see is the radicalization of older women, mothers, mothers of soldiers like Cindy Sheehan in reaction to the senseless death of their loved ones. As pointed out above whatever political differences we have I will always hold Ms. Sheehan’s heroic actions in confronting on George W. Bush then President of the United States and the “yes man” for the war in Iraq started in 2003 (the various aspects of the Iraq saga have to be dated since otherwise confusion prevails) in high regard. She took him on down in red neck Texas asking a simple question-“if there were no weapons of mass destruction, not even close, why did my son die in vain?” Naturally no sufficient answer ever came from him to her. There she was a lonely symbol of the almost then non-existent anti-war movement. And then she started, as this blog of hers testifies to, to put the dots together, “got religion,” got to understand what Che meant long ago about that special duty radicals and revolutionaries have “in the heart of the beast.” And she too like those hoary military veterans I mentioned is still plugging away at the task.      

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