This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
All ballots must be postmarked with today's
date, Friday, Dec 4th. Ballots will
be counted at the National Office on Tue, Dec 8th by volunteers of the St. Louis
Chapter. A special
blast will be sent with the election results when all ballots have been
counted. Back to
Top
Escalation of War Calls Us To Act for Peace
The terrorist attacks in Paris seem to have had their
desired effect. The French government has responded by declaring a three month
state of emergency, curtailing civil rights and freedom of speech. Hundreds of
Muslim families there are being terrorized in midnight raids. Climate change
activists planning peaceful protests at the Paris climate change summit have
been criminalized. <Full Statement> Back to
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Consider a Lifetime Membership in
VFP
If you are not a LIFETIME member, please
consider becoming one. Perhaps you have a deserving member in your chapter, a
family member, or a veteran who is not yet a member whom you would like to honor
with a LIFETIME membership. As LIFETIME members we are bound together with the
30-year history of VFP and to LIFETIME members who have gone before us and those
yet to come. Contact Doug
Zachary by email doug@veteransforpeace.org or by phone (Home 512-549-3530 or
Cell 512-629-3812) for more information. Back to
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This Week - VFP Delegation Arrived on Jeju Island
Click image to enlarge photo
Several VFP
members are in Jeju Island this week to support the protests against the naval
base construction at the Gangjeong facility. Read Ellen
Davidson's Report from Delegation Back to
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We Need Your Story of Why You Joined
VFP!
The personal
story of a Veterans For Peace member is the most powerful tool we have to
educate others on the reality of war. If you
are a current member, help us by sending:
FINAL WEEK TO REGISTER FOR CUBA in January
2016 We will
embark on our third VFP trip to Cuba: Jan 22-29, 2016. Members and supporters
of our message of peace are welcome to join us. However, please be advised that
we take 15 people, and there are only 2 spaces available. Our tours are
led by VFP member and Cuban documentary film maker, Jim Ryerson, who has been to
the island more than 25 times. If you are interested, please contact Jim. Like
the other 2 trips, this one will sell out.
VFP National
participated in the Giving Tuesday campaign for the first time this year. In a
24-hour period, we raised $2,170 by reaching out beyond our membership.
Deadline Today to Purchase Album in Memory of Jacob
George
The Jacob George Memorial Album Project has completed
three albums of Jacob's music in his memory. The project needs to raise $11,500 or sell 250 albums
before Dec 4th. The albums would make a great tabling item.
If interested in hosting an album release party in your
area, contact Amanda Spitfire at cha0ticlove24@gmail.com To make a
donation or learn more about this project, click here.
Each year since 2012, members of Việt Nam's Hoa Binh
(Peace) Chapter 160 of Veterans For Peace invite up to 20 veterans,
non-veterans, spouses & peace activists to come to Việt Nam for an insider's
2-week tour. The Hoa Binh chapter is the first & only overseas VFP chapter
of American veterans living in Việt Nam!
The mission of the tour is to
address the legacies of America’s war, as well as visit a beautiful country
& form lasting ties of friendship & peace. For more information, email Nadya Williams @ nadyanomad@gmail.com
President,
Barry Ladendorf is visiting with VFP Korean officials this week. He
will be visiting the demilitarized zone and updating signatures on the the
Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) that was originally signed in
2006.
Dec 24 - Anniversary of Christmas Truce of
1914 Jan 18,
2016 - MLK Day Mar 27-
April 2, 2016 - Shut Down Creech AFB Apr 15
- GDAMS (Global Day Against Military
Spending)
Apr 22 - Earth Day May 14-21,
2016 - Sam's 5th Annual Ride for Peace, Raleigh, NC to
Washington, DC May
30 — Memorial Day (Observed) Aug 11-15,
2016 - VFP Annual Convention at Clark Kerr campus of University of
California Berkeley, CA Sep
21—International Day of Peace
In 2001, a full page ad appeared in the New York Times
featuring VFP member Greg Nees’ letter to President Bush asking for calm
deliberation in the formation of our post-9/11 policies.
Support The Partisan Defense Committee's Holiday Appeal -Free All Class-War Prisoners!
My yearly comment on behalf of the Holiday Appeal-Frank Jackman
I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).
Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Of course this year we lost Hugo Pinell, George Jackson’s comrade-in-arms from the San Quentin Six to a murderous vendetta. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.
Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. One year though, and it now bears repeating each year, after I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner the late Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.
Birthday Vigil for Chelsea Manning In Boston Saturday December 19th Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama- Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!
In honor of Chelsea Manning’s 28th birthday (December 17th) this December 19th 2015, responding to a call from the Chelsea Manning Support Network, Payday Men’s Network and Queer Strike, long-time supporters of freedom for Chelsea Manning from the Boston Chelsea Manning Support Committee, Veterans For Peace, along with the weekly Saturday vigil at Park Street organized by the Committee for Peace and Human Rights will celebrate Chelsea’s birthday. We invite you to join us. Currently actions are planned for London and other cities.
Supporters are encouraged to also organize an event in their area, and The Chelsea Manning Support Network and Payday Men’s Network and Queer Strike will publicize it. Write to http://www.chelseamanning.org/ or payday@paydaynet.org for more information and to share details of your event.
Boston vigil details:
1:00-2:00 PM Saturday, December 19
Park Street Station Entrance on the Boston Common
Imprisoned in 2010 and held for months under torturous conditions, Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in August 2013 for releasing many military secrets about US crimes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among other things.If this stands, she’ll be out in 2045. We cannot let this happen- we have to get her out! We will not leave our sister behind. Bring yourself and encourage others to attend and sign the petition for a presidential pardon from Barack Obama in this important show of support to Chelsea Manning
Free Chelsea Manning Now-We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind
The following short remarks were addressed to group of fellow veterans and other peace and social activists at a Boston Armistice Day commemoration by Frank Jackman.
I am proud today as a member of Veterans for Peace to be giving this update on the situation of heroic Wiki-leaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning now serving a thirty-five years sentence out in the prairies of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth for telling the American people the truth about the atrocities and other nefarious actions of the military and of the government. Today, we should take a moment to speak for the anti-war resisters as well as the fallen in battle. Speak out in support of the resisters in this the 100th anniversary year of the beginning of the organized anti-war movement to World War I when a few brave people told their respective leaders to take their wars and go to hell. Add the name Chelsea Manning into that mix these days.
Last year when I updated Chelsea’s case on this occasion I noted that once all the hoopla of the trial and sentencing was over the case would fall under the radar as the appellate process and other legal actions ran their long courses. That continues to be the case. I have to report this year that her appellate counsel are still diligently working on reading the transcripts, the trial if you will recall was the longest and produced the most paperwork in Army history, and developing the issues to present to the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals the first crucial step in the long appeals process that may very well wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course appeals like every other aspect of the justice system cost money, and plenty of it. This year when things were financially dicey an appeal went out which raised the two hundred thousand dollars necessary for the attorneys to go forward. Thanks to all who helped out with this aid.
As for Chelsea’s personal situation as a woman in a man’s prison according to Jeff Patterson from Courage to Resist, the organization which has been the central organizer of the political and legal efforts on Chelsea’s behalf, she is doing well, has friends out in Fort Leavenworth and has after a successful ACLU suit been given her hormonal treatments. Thus far however her request to wear her hair at Army style woman’s length has been denied.
Reflecting the marvels of modern communication and publication Chelsea Manning has not been left without resources even in prison. She is a contributor to the Guardian on-line and writes a blog for Medium. She also has a Twitter account which you can access from the Chelsea Manning Support Network site. Recently she wrote up a proposal to reform the FISA courts, not an easy task to either write about or an organization to reform.
Locally over the past year we commemorated Chelsea’s fifth year in the government’s dungeons in May and her birthday last December and will do so again this coming December at one of the Park Street weekly vigils. We have also taken every occasion like this one to keep her case before the public as well as by marching in events like the Pride parade in June with a banner as well as urging all to sign the Amnesty International/Courage to Resist on-line petition for President Obama to pardon Chelsea before he leaves office. We will continue to support freedom for Chelsea until she is released- we will not leave our sister behind. Free Chelsea Manning Now!
*****In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind
From
The Pen Of Zack James
A
few years ago, maybe more like a decade or so, in an earlier 1960s folk minute
nostalgia incantation fit Sam Eaton, who will be described further below, had
thought he had finally worked out in his head what that folk moment had meant
in the great musical arc of his life. Had counted up, had taken up and put
value on its graces, did the great subtractions on its disappointments, that
lack of beat that he had been spoon fed on in his head having heard maybe in
the womb the sweats of some backbeat that sounded an awful lot like a band of
the devil’s angels giving battle to the heavens, and got his head around, his
expression, its clasps with certain young women, some absolute folkie women met
in the Harvard Squares of the heated horny sex night and loves too not always
with folkie women but just the muck of growing up and taking what came his way.
So he had taken a back-flip, his expression, when he was required not out of
his own volition like that great prairie fire burning before about why he felt
after all these years that he needed to go back to what after all was a very
small part of his life now that he was reaching four score and seventy, going
back over the terrain of a small part of the musics that he had cultivated since
early childhood.
Some
of those musics from his parents’ slogging through the Great Depression and
World War II be-bop swing big band Saturday night get your dancing slippers
imposed on his tender back of brain not to be revived and revisited until many
years later when he had heard some ancient Benny Goodman be-bop clarinet
backing up a sultry-voiced Peggy Lee getting all in a silky sweat rage because
her man like a million others was not a do right man but had been chasing her
best friend the next best thing when he got his wanting habit on and Peggy
turned ice queen when he ran out of dough after shooting craps against the
dealer and decided he had been wrong to dismiss such music out of hand. Some of
the music along the edges of his coming from that edgy feeling he got when he
heard the classic rock that just creeped into his pre-teen brain and lingered
there unrequited until he found out what in that beat spoke to his primordial
instincts, what caused his feverish nights of wonder, of what made him tick, of
what he had missed.
Folk,
the folk minute he deeply imbibed for that minute, at least the exciting part
of the minute when he heard, finally heard, something that did not make him
want to puke every time he turned on the radio, put his ill-gotten coins,
grabbed from mother’s pocketbook laying there in wait for his greedy hands or
through some con, some cheapjack con he pulled on some younger kids in Jimmy
Jakes’ Diner jukebox to impress a few of the girls in town who were not hung up
on Fabian or Bobby, heard something very new in his life and so different from
the other musics that he had grown up with that he grabbed the sound with both
hands. He thought that sweating a decade ago where he done a few small pieces
to satisfy his literary sense of things and put them in a desk drawer yellow,
fray and gather dust until he passed on and somebody put the paper in a
wastebasket for the rubbish men, thought he had ended those thoughts, closed
out the chapter. Recently though he did another series of short citizen-journalist
sketches of scenes from that period for various folk music related blogs and
social media outlets. Sam had done that series at the request of his old time
friend, Bart Webber, who will also be described in more detail below, from
Carver, an old working-class town about thirty miles south of Boston which at
the time was the cranberry capital of the world or close to it, and close
enough to have been washed by the folk minute that sprouted forth in Harvard
Square and Beacon Hill in Boston.
Sam
and Bart who in their respective youths had been very close, had been corner
boys together when that social category meant something, meant something about
extreme teen alienation and angst combined with serious poverty, dirt poor
poverty as in hand-me-down older brother clothes, as in no family car for long
periods between old wreak of cars, of many surly peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, many Spam suppers, all fashioned to make these young men forever
talking about big break-outs, about getting something for them and theirs but
also for big candy-ased dreams too all put paid to, as one would expect of sons
of “boggers,” those who cared for and harvested those world famouscranberries, but also close because that was
the way that corner boys were then, “having each other’s backs” was the term
they used which confused even the best of the social scientists who
investigated the phenomenon when that corner boy life meant juvenile
delinquency, meant some unfathomed anger, some lack of socialization, some
throwback to primeval muds, to some rising of the unkempt heathens they were
payed to watch out for. Meant as well worry to those in power who were trying
to weld society as one piece of steel to fight the internal and external red
scare Cold War fight.
Like
a lot of high school friends the cement that bound them in high school, that
alienation, that comradery, those best left unsaid larcenous moments, the
“midnight creeps” in Bart’s words when somebody asked him later what had made
him and the corner boys put their reputations at risk for such small gain, a
fact which also played a part in that “having each other’s back” broke apart
once they graduated, or rather in their case once they had sowed their wild
oats in the 1960s, those wild oats at the time meaning “drugs, sex, and rock
and roll” combined with drifting the hitchhike road west in what one of their
number, the late Pete Markin, called the search for the great blue-pink
American West night.
Sam
had stayed out in the West longer before he drifted back East to go to law
school and pursue a professional career. Bart had returned earlier, had gotten
married to his high school sweetheart and had started up and run a small
successful specialty print shop based on the silk-screening tee-shirt and
poster craze in Carver. They would run into each other occasionally when Sam
came to town but for about twenty years they had not seen each other as both
were busy raising families, working and travelling in different circles. One
night though when Sam had been sitting in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner over on Spring
Street in Carver having a late dinner by himself after having come to town to
attend the funeral of a family member Bart had walked in and they then renewed
their old relationship, decided that some spark from high school still held
them together if nothing else that they both had been deeply formed, still held
to those old corner boy habits toward life whatever successes they had
subsequently enjoyed.
Along
the way to solidifying there new relationship they would alternate meetings,
some in Carver, some in Boston or Cambridge where Sam lived. On a recent trip
to Boston to meet Sam at the Red Hat at the bottom of Beacon Hill Bart had
walked pass Joy Street which triggered memories of the time in high school when
he and his date who name he could not remember but she was a cousin of Sam’s “hot”
date, Melinda Loring, who they went to school with and whom Sam was crazy to
impress even though Melinda was not the daughter of a “bogger” but of school
teachers and so from among the town’s better element and he was constantly on
eggshells that she would toss him aside once she had figured out he was just
another Fast Eddie corner boy trying to get into her pants, had taken them on a
cheap date to the Oar and Anchor coffeehouse which stood at the corner of Joy
and Cambridge Street to hear Lenny Lane who was an up and coming folk singer
whom Sam had met on one of his clandestine midnight trips to Harvard Square on
the Redline subway to hang out at the Hayes-Bickford.
That
cheap part of the cheap date thing was important since Bart and Sam were as
usual from hunger on money in the days when around Carver, probably around the
world, guys paid expenses on dates, girls just looked beautiful or if not
beautiful glad to not be forever hanging around the midnight telephone waiting
for some two-timing guy to call them up for a date, and so short of just
hanging at the Hayes for free watching weirdoes, con men, whores plying their
trade, drunks, winos and occasional put upon artists, poets, writes and
folk-singers perfecting their acts on the cheap, for the price of a couple of
cups of coffee, a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” for the
performer you could get away with a lot especially when Bart was doing Sam a
favor with that cousin (and worse could have gotten in trouble if Besty
Binstock, his high school sweetheart. found out he was two-timing her although
the two-timing involved the possibility of some off-hand sex with that cousin
who was supposed to be “easy” but that in another story although come to think
of it the situation could serve as another prime example of “having each other’s back”
when one of them was up against it).
Bart
remembered that he had been very uncomfortable that night since he had had some
feelings of guilt about two-timing (and lying to) Betsy starting out, had had
trouble talking about anything in common, school, sports, the weather, with
that cousin since she said she was doing Melinda a favor in order that she could
go to Boston with Sam which Melinda’s mother would have balked at if she had
told her they were going into Boston alone, going into Boston with a “bogger”
alone. Moreover she knew nothing, cared nothing for folk music, didn’t even
know what it was, said she had never heard of the thing, was fixated on Bobby Vee,
dreamy guys, or something like that. What made that date worse was that Bart
too then could hardly bear the sound of folk music, said repeatedly that the
stuff was all dreary and involved weird stuff like murder and mayhem done on the
banks of rivers, in back alleys, on darkened highways just because some woman
would not come across, Jesus, strangely thwarted love reminding him of Sam’s
forlorn quest for Melinda which seemed like some princess and pauper never the
twain shall meet outcome, or hick stuff about home sweet home down in some
shanty town in some desolate cabin without lights or water which sounded worse
than Boggertown, singing high holy Jehovah stuff that made him wince, and of the
hills and hollows in some misbegotten mountains made his teeth grind. So not a
good mix, although it did turn out that the cousin was “easy,” did think he was
dreamy enough to have sex with (with their clothes mostly on which was how more
than one quicky one night stand wound up down by the boathouse near the Charles
River after they had split from Sam and Melinda after the coffeehouse closed and
that helped but had been the result of no help from the folk music they
half-listened but more some dope that she had in her pocketbook after she passed
had a joint around to get things going.
After
telling Sam about his recollections of Joy Street and that cousin, whose name
was Judy Dennison Sam told him and who Sam had gone out with and agreed was a
little sex kitten once she was stoned Bart started asking some questions about
folk music. Sam said he was not finished with that Judy story, told Bart that fling
was after the thing with Melinda had passed due not to class distinctions but
to that hard fact that she was saving “it” for marriage, and had been very glad
that he had that run and was not sorry he did. Bart started in again and asked
Sam a million questions about various folk-singers and what had happened to
them, were they still playing, still alive since Sam although he did not have
the same keen interest of his youthful folk minute still kept small tabs on the
scene, the now small scene through his long-time companion, Laura Perkins whom
he met one night at the Café Nana several years before when Tom Tremble was
playing there after Sam had not heard him in about forty years. The reason for
Bart’s interest given that above he had said that the genre made his teeth
grind was that after that night with Judy Bart did go on other double dates
with Sam and Melinda, and later Suzanne when she was Sam’s next flame and a
real folkie, to folk places and while he still would grind his teeth at some of
the stuff did develop more tolerance for the genre, especially if the date Sam
set up was a real foxy folkie girl (thinking on it now he couldn’t believe how
unfaithful he had been to Betsy in those days but she too was saving “it” for
marriage and some of those young women were very willing and had apartment or
dorm rooms too).
The
upshot of all of Bart’s questions was that Sam found that he was not really
except for Tom Tremble who had lost his sweet baby James voice, forgot lyrics
and had “mailed it in” that night he had met Laura and was cold “stonewalled”
by the audience but possibly motivated by that old folkie feeling, or maybe just
feeling sorry for a guy who had a big local following back in the day when the
“basket” went around everybody put some dough in, Sam and Laura included, and a
couple of other guys up on what had happened to the old-time folkies since for
years he had merely listened on radio station WCAS and when that station went
under WUMB out of U/Mass-Boston or listened to records, tapes or CDs. (Sam got
big points from Laura that first night when he panned Tom, who Laura had never
heard before being enough younger not to have been bitten by the folk minute
craze and she agreed that Tom had “mailed it in”.) Since he was not all that
familiar with what had happened to most of them he thereafter did some
research, asked Laura some questions to lead the way and wound up writings that
series of sketches. One series entitled Not
Bob Dylan about the fate of prominent male folk-singers was a direct result
of the Sam and Bart conversation. Here’s what he had to say about Tom Rush who
back in the day he knew best from hanging around the old Club 47 on Mount
Auburn Street:
“…Other
than enigmatic Bob Dylan who is the iconic never-ending tour male performer
most people would still associate with that folk minute period they would draw
a blank on a list of others who also were aspiring to make names for themselves
in the folk milieu. I am not talking about guys like Lenny Lane who had one hit
and then went back to graduate school in biology when he couldn’t get another
contract, when his well ran dry, or like Tom Tremble who had a big local
following around the old Club Nana when it was on Mount Auburn Street in
Cambridge not where it is now on Brattle Street but who did mainly covers and
just never broke out or Mike Weddle who had good looks, a good stage presence,
had the young women going crazy but who just walked away one day when some good
looking woman from Radcliffe came hither and he “sold out” to her father’s
stockbroking business.
I’m
talking about people like Tom Rush from New Hampshire who lit up the firmament
around Cambridge via the Harvard campus folk music station, Dave Von Ronk the
cantankerous folk historian and musician who knew more about what happened in
the early, early days in the Village at the point where “beat” poetry was
becoming passe and folk was moving in to fill in the gap, Phil Ochs who had
probably the deepest political sensibilities of the lot and wrote some of the
stronger narrative folk protest songs, Richard Farina who represented that
“live fast” edge that we were bequeathed by the “beats” and who tumbled down
the hill on a motorcycle, and Jesse Collin Young who probably wrote along with
Eric Andersen and Jesse Winchester the most pre-flower child lyrics mid-1960s
hippie explosion before folk got amplified of the bunch.
My
friend Bart had just seen a fragile seeming, froggy-voiced Bob Dylan in one of
stages of his apparently never-ending concerts tours up in Maine and had been
shaken by the sight and had wondered about the fate of other such folk
performers. That request turned into a series of reviews of male folk-singers
entitled Not Bob Dylan (and after that, also at Bart’s request, a
series entitled Not Joan Baez based on some of the same premises except
on the distaff side (nice word, right, you know golden-voiced Judy Collins and
her sweet songs of lost, Carolyn Hester and her elegant rendition of Walt
Whitman’s Oh Captain, My Captain,
Joan’s sister Mimi Farina forever linked with Richard and sorrows, and Malvina
Reynolds who could write a song on the wing, fast okay, and based as well on
the mass media having back then declared that pair the “king and queen” of the
burgeoning folk music minute scene).
That
first series (as had the second) had asked two central questions-why did those
male folk singers not challenge Dylan who as I noted the media of the day had
crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky coffeehouse night
(then, now the few remaining are mercifully smoke-free although then I smoked
as heavily as any guy who though such behavior was, ah, manly and a way to seen
“cool” to the young women, why else would we have done such a crazy to the
health thing if not to impress some certain she) and, if they had not
passed on and unfortunately a number have a few more since that series as well
most notably Phil Ochs of suicide early, Dave Von Ronk of hubris and Jesse
Winchester of his battle lost over time had come, were they still working the
smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes
the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and
Boston. (What I call the U/U circuit since while other church venues are part
of the mix you can usually bet safely that if an event is scheduled it will be at
a U/U church which is worthy of a little sketch of its own sometime in order to
trace the folk minute after the fanfare had died down and as a tribute to those
big-hearted souls at radio stations like WCAS and WUMB and in places like Club
Passim whose efforts have kept the thing going in order to try to pass it on to
the younger generations now that demographics are catching up with the folkies
from the 1960s heyday). Moreover, were they still singing and song-writing,
that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent,
especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back
then. The days when the ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley Cole
Porter/Irving Berlin/ Jerome Kern kingdom.
Here
is the general format I used in that series for asking and answering those two
questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the
characters who rose and fell during that time:
“If
I were to ask someone, in the year 2005 as I have done periodically both before
and after, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I
were to get any answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. That
“getting any answer” prompted by the increasing non-recognition of the folk
genre by anybody under say forty, except those few kids who somehow “found”
their parents’ stash of Vanguard records (for example, there were other folk
labels including, importantly, Columbia Records which pushed the likes of Dylan
and John Hammond forward) just as some in an earlier Pete
Seeger/Weavers/Leadbelly/ Josh White/Woody Guthrie records in our parents’
stashes. Today’s kids mainly influenced by hip-hop, techno-music and just
straight popular music.
And
that Dylan pick would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly
dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be since he clearly had tired of
the role, or seemed to by about 1966 when he for all intents and purposes
“retired” for a while prompted by a serious motorcycle accident and other
incidents) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events
of that watershed year, especially the Democratic Convention in America in the
summer of that year when the old-guard pulled the hammer down and in Paris
where the smell of revolution was palpably in the air for the first time since
about World War II, when those, including me, who tried to “turn the world
upside down” to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was
reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the
never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg
recordings, the copyrighting of every variation of every song, including
traditional songs, he ever covered and the squelching of the part of the work
that he has control over on YouTube he fits the bill as a known quality.
However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their
niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work
and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such
singer/songwriter.”
“The
following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a
number of male folk singers from the 1960s and it is certainly an appropriate
question to ask of Tom Rush as well. Did they aspire to be the “king” of the
genre? I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out
wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had
some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and
strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was
singing about at the time, particularly the No Regrets/Rockport Sunday combination
which along with Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm and Joshua Gone Barbados
were staples early on. During much of this period along with his own songs he
was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell and her Urge For
Going and The Circle Game, so it is not clear to me that he had that
same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.
I
just mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice
version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of
here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian
homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets,
as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is
apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene
fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood
are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although
you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up
National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”
Whether
Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the
documentary, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from
childhood to the very recent past (2014) at some point he did lose the flaming “burn
down the building fire,” just got tired of the road like many, many other
performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and
returned to the stage occasionally, most dramatically with his annual show Tom
Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each
winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no
regrets” which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an
important oral tradition turn, as folk historian.
He
takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to
those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that
would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless
to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his
own fitful start in getting his material recorded, or rather fitful starts,
mainly walking around to every possible venue in town to get backing for record
production the key to getting heard by a wider audience via the radio and to
become part of the increasing number of folk music-oriented programs, the
continuing struggle to this day from what he had to say once you are not a
gold-studded fixture.
“Other
coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt,
another performer with a ton of talent and song-writing ability who had been on
the scene very, very early on who eventually decided that his artistic career
took first place, get a nod of recognition. As does the role of key radio
folk DJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the folk show, picked up
accidently one Sunday night when I was frustrated with the so-called rock and
roll on the local AM rock station and flipped the dial of my transistor radio
and heard a different sound, the sound of Dave Von Ronk, where I started to
pick up my life-long folk “habit”).
So
if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses
and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night (for the price of a couple of
cups of coffee sipped slowly in front of you and your date, a shared pastry and
maybe a few bucks admission or tossed into the passed-around “basket” you got
away easy and if she liked the sound too, who knows what else) or, ouch, want
to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the
record player as you go out the door Saturday night to your own adventures
watch this documentary and find out what happened to one Not Bob Dylan when the
folk world went under.
No, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note and work it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments, high as hell, to get to. Frankly I was too, way too young to appreciate such work and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed. No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.
No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in my 1950s growing up time and which I have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age to later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music and decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.
About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away when they let it all hang out.
Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, before since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues, away.
So, yes, count me among the guys who are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out into the deep blue sea night. Count me too among Duke’s boys, down at Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.
Saturday, December 5th - 3 PM Encuentro 5 (9A Hamilton Place)
Featured speakers: Genevieve Morse Shop Steward and Executive Board member Mass Teachers Association - CSU*; Socialist Alternative Cameron Bateman Labor Rep, Mass Nurses Association* And more TBA!
The US labor movement is in deep turmoil. The defeats in Wisconsin, Michigan and other former hotbeds of industrial unionism show that a new way is needed in leading the fight back for the organized working class.
In unions around the country, the question of who to support in the presidential elections is being hotly debated. Many union leaderships are pushing for endorsing Hillary Clinton, a known Wall Street lackey and former Wal-Mart board member, against the wishes of the rank-and-filers supporting insurrectionary candidate Bernie Sanders.
The recent decision by one of the biggest unions in the US to support Hillary, an opponent of the $15 an hour minimum wage, over Sanders, a huge $15 supporter whose biggest campaign donors are almost all from organized labor, has caused a massive uproar of discontent among the rank-and-file.
Come out and discuss with several union leaders about the need for labor to come out against support for HIllary Clinton and how union democracy can be restored to help rebuild a fighting labor movement. When we fight, we win!
(*Personal Capacity)
Fight for a better world and help rebuild an organized socialist movement.
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All ballots must be postmarked with today's
date, Friday, Dec 4th. 
The terrorist attacks in Paris seem to have had their
desired effect. The French government has responded by declaring a three month
state of emergency, curtailing civil rights and freedom of speech. Hundreds of
Muslim families there are being terrorized in midnight raids. Climate change
activists planning peaceful protests at the Paris climate change summit have
been criminalized. <Full Statement>
If you are not a LIFETIME member, please
consider becoming one. Perhaps you have a deserving member in your chapter, a
family member, or a veteran who is not yet a member whom you would like to honor
with a LIFETIME membership. As LIFETIME members we are bound together with the
30-year history of VFP and to LIFETIME members who have gone before us and those
yet to come.
The Jacob George Memorial Album Project has completed
three albums of Jacob's music in his memory. The project needs to raise $11,500 or sell 250 albums
before Dec 4th.
Dates of travel: Mar 14 - Mar 30,
2016
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