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
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When Rockabilly Rocked The Be-Bop 1950s Night- “Rock This Town-Volume 2”- A CD Review
Rock This Town, Volume 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1991
The bulk of this review was used to review Volume 1 as well:
The last time that I discussed rockabilly music in this space was a couple of years ago when I was featuring the work of artists like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis who got their start at Sam Phillips’ famed Sun Records studio in Memphis. Part of the reason for those reviews was my effort to trace the roots of rock and rock, the music of my coming of age, and that of my generation, the generation of ’68. Clearly rockabilly was, along with country and city blues from the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Ike Turner and rhythm and blues from the likes of Big Joe Turner, a part of that formative process. The question then, and the question once again today, is which strand dominated the push to rock and rock, if one strand in fact did dominate.
I have gone back and forth on that question over the years. That couple of years ago mentioned above I was clearly under the influence of Big Joe Turner and Howlin’ Wolf and so I took every opportunity to stress the bluesy nature of rock. Recently though I have been listening, and listening very intently, to early Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and I am hearing more of that be-bop rockabilly rhythm flowing into the rock night. Let me give a comparison. A ton of people have done Big Joe Turner’s classic rhythm and bluish Shake, Rattle, and Roll, including Bill Haley, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee. When I listen to that song as performed in the more rockabilly style by them those versions seem closer to what evolved into rock. So for today, and today only, yes Big Joe is the big daddy, max daddy father of rock but Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl are the very pushy sons.
And that brings us to this treasure trove of rockabilly music presented in two volumes of which this is the second; including material by those who have revived, or kept the rockabilly genre alive over the past couple of decades. I have already done enough writing in praise of the work of Sam Phillips and Sun Records to bring that good old boy rockabilly sound out of the white southern countryside. There I noted that, for the most part, those who succeeded in rockabilly had to move on to rock to stay current and so the rockabilly sound was somewhat transient except for those who consciously decided to stay with it. Here are the examples that I used for volume one and they apply here as well:
“…the best example of that is Red Hot by Bill Riley and his Little Green Men, an extremely hot example by the way. If you listen to his other later material it stays very much in that rockabilly vein. In contrast, take High School Confidential by Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee might have started out in rockabilly but this number (and others) is nothing but the heart and soul of rock (and a song, by the way, we all prayed would be played at our middle school dances to get things moving).” Enough said.
Stick outs here on Volume 2 include: C’mon Everybody, Eddie Cochran (probably better known for his more bluesy, steamy, end of school rite of passage Summertime Blues, a very much underrated performer whose career was cut short when he was killed in a car accident; Let’s Have A Party, Wanda Jackson (one of the few famous women rockabilly artists in a very much male-dominated genre); Red Hot ( a cover of the famous one by Bill Riley featured in Volume 1), Robert Gordon and Link Wray; Rock This Town (title track from the group that probably is the best known devotee of the rockabilly revival), The Stray Cats.
The Set-Up-With Crime Novel Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind
By Zack James
Alexander Slater had always been ever since he was a kid, maybe ten or eleven if not before, a big fan of hard-boiled detective novels and films based on those novels by guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Rich O’Connor, Sid Stein, and Lanny Drew. Had spent many a Riverdale hometown Saturday afternoon in the late 1950s in the faded run-down, gum-strewn on the floor, cobwebs in the balcony seats, toilet in the men’s room a relic of plumbing around the time of the original Cranes who made their fortunes providing such hard-wear to the growing population in need of indoor plumbing and whose castle overlooked Crane’s Beach up north of Riverdale about seventy-five miles away, old-fashioned popcorn cooker which always, always provided burnt kernels at the bottom of the box Majestic Theater on Mooney Street just off of the downtown shopping area watching re-runs of the classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Lady In The Lake, The whole Thin Man series, The Last Kiss, Girl Hunt, and The Lost Ones. That downtown area also beginning to fade as the stores, Doc’s Drugstore, the 5&10, Morley’s Clothing store, Sam’s Furniture store and the like that used to cater to the town’s needs moved out to the strip malls or all-purpose malls out on Route One a few miles from downtown.
Of course as a kid all Alexander cared about, along with his regular crew of Saturday matinee double-feature companions, Skip James, Jack Callahan, Johnny Rizzo, Five-Fingers Murphy, Frank Jackman and sometimes before his family moved out of town so his father could take a job in the emerging computer industry at Honeywell about forty miles away along Route 128, was that they had enough money to cover the admission (trying as boys universally would then, probably still do, to get the under twelve reduced admission price long after they had entered their teens), were being “grounded” for some silly home or school infraction , and, maybe, just maybe, that for once the popcorn although always with burnt offerings was not stale. So Alexander had through the marvels of cinematic technology and the printed page been able to form a very distinct idea about what a private detective should be like, what he looked like and how he handled himself in the rough spots.
That ideal was probably epitomized by Sam Slade in The Maltese Falcon on the screen (the 1940s one that made Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, famous not the two earlier ones which he had never seen until a few years ago via Netflix he had ordered the pair online and was seriously disappointed in those efforts, as was his wife Mary who while not nearly as much a fan of the private detective did love the Bogie version of the Falcon) and in some short stories done by Hammett by scrambling through a few libraries and second-hand bookstores looking for compilations. In a word a guy and it was always guys then still was a lot now although he had read a few interesting female detective stories, working class guys, tough, tough enough to by sheer will and pluck to outsmart his well-organized criminal opponents, hard-boiled no question, no sap for anybody even women which every guys knows is easy enough to become when the skirts going swishing by, with a code, a beautiful code of honor that he follows as best he can, maybe not to the letter but as best he can in the spirit, hard-drinking which somehow focused the senses whenever the bottle in the lower desk draw came out, and a rough and ready sense of justice, of tilting after windmills for the good of the cause.
And there that image stayed for a fairly long time until Alexander went out into the world of work after high school. He had taken shop classes in school, printing shop and so immediately after high school he had taken a full-time job with Mister Calder, the best commercial printer in town, whom he worked for after school and on weekends in high school. In due course after a few years in the dreaded Army in Vietnam which took a certain toll on him when he came back to the “real” world, a few years “finding himself” through dope, rock and roll, and following the hitchhike road that many guys of his generation took for a while when Mister Calder retired he took over the shop located in the first floor of the Tappan Building on Lancaster Street right off of downtown (in the opposite direction from the now long gone old Majestic if you were familiar with Riverdale back in the 1970s or earlier).
At one time, back in the 1940s, early 1950s, the eight story Tappan Building was what they would call today the anchor of the downtown business section. Was the pride of Riverdale what with prosperous small law firms, a few doctors’ offices when doctors had their own private practices more, a couple of dentists, a few reputable insurance companies, nothing big, no Fortune 500 firms but substantial, solid professional. As those firms and professionals drifted out to the strip malls or were eaten up by larger firms elsewhere the once glorious Tappan Building began a long decline into “seen better days.” The owners kind of gave up on the place, not keeping it up with leaking faucets in the restrooms, un-waxed public area floors, unreliable elevators, and the sanctified smell of decay that follows such downward spiraling enterprises. Alexander had taken over for Mister Calder well into the decline of the building but since the leasing arrangements with the owners provided for cheap terms and the fact that his printing business was not one in need of a “good front” he never felt the need to move, probably a wise move once the high tech moguls made self-printing for most occasions a worthwhile effort.
Alexander thus observed the decline of the Tappan Building first-hand as the type of businesses switched from prosperous professionals to shady characters. A couple of “repo” men, a few failed dentists whom you would not want within fifty feet of your mouth, maybe farther away, a couple of chiropractors, some no-name insurance firms, a notary public, a least a few guys who were running some kinds of scams out of their offices, and a detective agency. Fred Sims’ Detective Agency although all the years that he knew Fred he was the sole detective.
Fred had been in the building since the mid-1960s but between Alexander’s military service and his wanderlust he did not meet Fred until he took over for Mister Calder. Once they met, met in Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan, a place that is still there although Dolly’s granddaughter runs the place now and has changed it from a smoked-filled ham and eggs, coffee and crullers place to more healthful food and clean atmosphere for those who own the condos that had been created as a result of converting many of the old buildings, schools and churches in the area, they hit it off from the beginning although Fred was a good decade older than Alexander.
Fred, let’s be clear, was not, hear this, was not, and probably never would be Alexander’s image of a private detective build up from childhood (although in fairness to Fred he was the very first real P.I. he had run into). Short, bald, with unkempt side hairs sticking out of the baseball cap that he wore indoors and out, and almost never took off, an old Robert Hall’s, if you remember that name in men’s clothing from another age, shaggy sport’s jacket, one of three he owned and alternated, threadbare socks, turned at the heel shoes, black, and many days, many no client days, a fair amount of stubble on his face. His office on the fifth floor reflected that persona, no real “front.” A hand-printed cardboard sign advertising his name and business on the front door, a small waiting room (which made Alexander laugh for all the years that he knew Fred he never saw anybody in that room), dust in the corners, a well beyond its prime coatrack of uncertain steadiness, a couple of mismatched chairs, a small end table with magazines describing the first Apollo landing in 1969, an office area with a snarled desk, unmatched chair, and a few, too few file cabinets if Fred was prosperous which he was not. Later when they were easier to figure out he did purchase a computer but otherwise over the years the place had, and would continue to have, that beleaguered downward spiral look.
Alexander one time early on remarked, no, made the mistake and remarked, that Fred was no Bogie while they were sitting at the counter of Dolly’s having their coffee and. Apparently this kind of remark was Fred’s pet peeve because he commenced to rail against the popular notion of what a private detective looks like, what his office looks like, and the real cases that he handles. They are not the murder cases of cinematic and book renown, the public cops, detectives handle that, well or poorly, but in some then twenty years in the business he had never seen any private detective brought in to solve a murder and only once had heard that a very rich guy who had the dough to do so and was frustrated with the public coppers and their inability to solve the kidnapping/murder of his young daughter actually had a private detective savvy enough to solve the crime, after two years on the trail.
No the real work was bullshit stuff. Some barber from Gloversville whose wife ran off with a salesman and he wanted her back her, fast, maybe three days, and not too many expenses. Some “repo” work the average repo guys wouldn’t handle or wouldn’t be allowed by the insurance companies to handle. Back in the day a few Peeping Tom snooping around motels cases looking for adultery when the grounds for a civil divorce were harder to find. A lost dog or other pet once in a while if somebody was attached to the animal, although they usually found their ways home on their own or were never seen again. Looking for long lost relatives, usually fruitless since those relatives wanted to be lost from view. Maybe checking out a scam or two, flimflam stuff.
Definitely not looking for lost falcon statutes filled with riches and history with dead bodies and greedy people hovering around. Definitely not taking on some high-powered criminal gang when an old general with wild daughters one of whose husband is missing. Definitely not being employed by some man-mountain to find his long lost and wants to stay lost Velma. Definitely not trying to find some eccentric rich inventor guy whose thin shadow had disappeared in the mist and somebody liked that idea.
So that day Alexander got his comeuppance, got a first-hand real world view of what private investigation was all about. Thereafter Fred, when the met for their coffee and at Dolly’s or sometimes when Alexander after work would go up to Fred’s office for a shot of whiskey from that bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of that snarled desk (and one of the few commonalities between real and film detectives) Fred would tell him stories about his previous cases, or cases that he had heard about from other P.I.s around the area when they ran into each other at some meeting or on a spree. Except the one time when Alexander became a moving part in a case that Fred would wind up getting involved in before the coppers stepped in.
One day a guy, an ordinary looking guy, about thirty, fairly well-dressed, a sports coat and tie, trimmed hair and short beard, not from around Riverdale but with a New England accent, probably Maine, came into Alexander’s print shop looking for a customized job, a small job but in those days as people were self-printing more extensively the small jobs were drying up (fortunately the big commercial orders were still coming in at their normal pace). He wanted fifty copies of what he called a missing person’s poster, you know with photo of the person and description of last known place, who to contact and so on, done on the press and not the copy machine. No problem. Alexander handled the order while this young guy waited.
A few weeks later the person who had come in with missing person photograph turned up dead, very dead along the bank of the Waban River. Not only very dead but very murdered from the bullet holes through his mangled soggy shirt. Chief Powers of the Riverdale Police came into Alexander’s print shop to find out what he knew about the situation since in the dead man’s back pocket there was a water-logged copy of the missing person poster that had a print shop mark on the right corner. Alexander told the Chief what he knew, said he wanted to help any way he could but the young guy was just a young guy and his description and demeanor would have fit a million young guys. As had the guy the sheriff was looking for. That pretty much ended Alexander’s involvement in the case, probably the case would go into those cold files that most murder cases go into if somebody doesn’t jump and confess with all hands open.
Or so he thought. A few weeks later a young woman, Lara Barstow was the name she gave him, came into Alexander’s printing shop with a shopworn copy of the poster he had created for the murdered young man, and asked to see the proprietor. Since he was that person he introduced himself and asked how he could help her (although he was a little suspicious that an average young good-looking woman like Lara would have any connection with the crime, or crimes associated with the young man for whom he had done the work or the young man on the poster). Lara soon cleared things up, “I have been to the police and they told me what happened to my brother Emmet, how he was found murdered out on the riverbank. They said that as far as they were concerned the case was still open but that they had no further leads to work on so that unless they got something that is probably where the case would stand.” [The police did not mention “cold case” file but Lara said she knew what they meant].
Lara then started to cry a bit and Alexander not knowing what to do offered his handkerchief and asked if he should call his wife to assist her in her time of troubles. Lara stiffened at that and told Alexander that she did not need that kind of help but that she was determined to find out who had killed her brother and asked if he had any ideas. Then Alexander, secretly thrilled as the prospect told her that on the fifth floor of the building that they were standing in his friend, Fred, a private detective, had his office and that maybe he could look into the matter. Lara said that she did not have any serious resources (her word), meaning money but that if Fred was able to do something to find the murderer and clear up a legal situation then she would be coming into some funds. Alexander thinking to himself that this was starting to be something out of the movies let that statement ride only saying, “Let’s see what Fred says,” and led her to the elevator and the fifth floor office. (On the way she did not comment on the urine smell in the foyer, the seedy dilapidated aspect of the elevator and its slowness, or the condition of the outside building windows, broken panes letting the weathers in, on the fifth floor as they left the elevator which made him a little wary since her whole demeanor was of some old-fashioned gentile upbringing but he figured she was desperate, concentrated on her task, or indifferent to such matters).
Fred, despite the seedy condition of his office, already commented on by Alexander and nothing had changed since the last time he had been up in the office for a few drinks so no further comment is necessary, was smooth affable charm itself when greeting and listening to Lara’s story. And listen he, they did for the story really did have a Hollywood feel to it.
“Emmet Barstow is, ah, was, my older brother, who had gotten into a lot of trouble when he was in prep school at Exeter Academy several years ago. I don’t know if I should tell you the nature of the trouble since it was a rather delicate matter.” Fred stopped her right there and said he needed to know everything, everything in this weak fact case, or he would not be able to help her. She continued, “Well, ah, see there was this other boy, this Prescott Devine, a pervert, you know, a homosexual, who tricked Emmet into having sex with him, having sex and taking photographs as it turned out.” [Fred and Alexander gave each other knowing eyes about what was to follow.] You know what happened next, Prescott forced my brother to continue with his wicked designs while in school and later asked for money to avoid a public scandal in our household. So Emmett paid, or rather my father paid before he died and after that Mr. Sidney, the lawyer who has handled our estate until we come of age paid.
"Then Prescott faded from view for a couple of years until several months ago after my father died he showed up at our door looking for more money. Emmett gave him what he could but somehow he got wind of my father dying and remembered that Emmett was to inherit a large sum of money upon his death, something he had told Prescott when he was in the throes of love at the beginning [said bitterly]. The terms of the will were that Emmett would inherit almost everything when he turned twenty-five as long as he was alive, and if he were not then I would inherit. But only inherit if there was no cloud over his death. That part had been added only a few months before my father’s death so he must have had a premonition of something happening.” She paused, then continued, “Emmett had been trying to find Prescott for a while after he had come to our house in order to tell him that he was no longer afraid of any scandal, that he would take his chances with society, our society which might be able to overlook what could be a youthful indiscretion, and maybe just a bout of loneliness. Somebody whom they went to school with told Emmett that Prescott was in this area living in Gloversville and that was why he had the posters made. He was going to distribute them around and the thousand dollars for information figured to draw somebody out who might know his whereabouts. That’s all I know until the police called to have me come and identify Emmett’s body. The police have kind of let it go to hell and I need your help.
Fred wise to the ways of the world although not used to dealing with upper middle class young women, as clients anyway except once he had a girlfriend from the leafy suburbs but the parents practically imprisoned her when they found out he did not have three names in his moniker, you know Ward Stewart Lawrence, stuff like that the Brahmins go for, told Lara he needed a one hundred dollar cash retainer before he could represent her in her time of sorrows. She opened her pocketbook, pulled out five Jacksons and they were in business.
Fred said later that he sensed something was wrong from that moment, the moment she gave him the cash like she expected him to ask for cash rather than haggle over a check or something but Alexander said that was just Fred’s wishful thinking after the fact when the whole thing blew up in his face and the cops had to pull him out of the line of fire. To leave the reader in no suspense at this point Fred went out and did several days of investigation trying to locate the guy who told her brother that Prescott was in the area. He did locate him finally but the lad, a young man whom Fred using the old time expression was “light on his feet,” and fearful to say anything at all. Fred pressed the issue though and the kid (Fred did not use that word) folded. It seems the kid, Fred said he would not use his name in order to get the information he wanted, also fell under the spell of Prescott, had his pants down more than once over the “crush” he called it, and had done Prescott’s bidding telling Emmett that Prescott was in Gloversville. A couple of days late Fred traced Prescott to a bed and breakfast place outside Gloversville.
He figured that he would just go in and talk to Prescott but before he could enter the door to Prescott’s room there was a volley of gunfire aimed his way through the door. He got on the ground first and worked his way back to the kitchen where he called the cops, called the sheriff’s office because he was not sure Gloversville had its own police department. The sheriff came with a few deputies, and a few sharpshooters from the State Police SWAT team. After a couple of futile attempts at coaxing Prescott out they went in full blazes (Alexander said if anybody wanted to know the details of the firefight check with the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office they would have all the details. After a few minutes the firing from Prescott’s room stopped. The cops went into room and recovered the body, recovered two bodies really, for the other body belonged to one Lara Barstow.
The way things figured out later piecing together everything found in Prescott’s room and later at Lara’ house what happened is when Prescott came to confront Emmett for dough at his house he somehow caught Lara’s eyes, gave her a tumble or two, maybe more. Whether he was just working the scam of a lifetime for a lowlife like him or he had some affection for Lara who knows. What is known from some legal papers found at Lara’s house is they formed a scheme to kill Emmett and have her inherit the family money (when she turned twenty-five as well a lawyer handling the trust before that time). Prescott must have known from that Exeter kid that Emmett was on his trail. They probably met somewhere and Prescott put a couple of nasty slugs in him and shipped him off down the Waban River and easy street. What fouled the whole thing up was the part about having to know the cause of Emmett’s death before the trust could even be touched in the future. The whole Lara tall tale story in Fred’s office was to see if they could find a fall guy, maybe some hobo or something. Not every criminal, smart or stupid always figures things out right but that was what it looked like.
Maybe Lara thought just hiring Fred would satisfy the terms of the trust. Who knows. But when Fred was able to find Prescott he, they panicked. And that was that. So Alexander forever after will be able to say he was part of solving a private detective-type crime. He was just glad, glad as hell that he had not accompanied Fred when he had asked him to go to Prescott’s room. He thought save that part for the movies.
Rock and Roll Will Never
Die, Part One-Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s
“Pirate Radio” ( )- A Film Review
DVD Review
By Film Critic Emeritus
Sam Lowell
[Yes, I am now retired
but I did so with the caveat that I would on occasion dredge up my tired brain
and write a little something if it interested me. Current film critic in this
space, my old friend and adversary from American
Film Gazette days, Sandy Salmon has mentioned to me on many occasions that
he had not been washed clean (my expression not his) by the high tide of rock
and roll that was the common lynchpin of our generation. Moreover he did not
“give a damn” (his expression) about rock and roll reflecting in my view that
stiff upper lip upbringing that he went through in New York City which included
huge doses of classic music. You know Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and the crew.
The guys that the late rock and roll legend Chuck Berry gave notice to in his
classic statement of the case for rock-Roll
Over Beethoven- that some new sheriffs were in town.
The long and short of it
was that I noticed that one of the films up for review was Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s
Pirate Radio which is nothing but a
rather recent slice of life homage to the genre. Sandy was not going to review
the film and so I have entered the lists to save this beauty of a tribute from
statutory neglect. I might point out that another such effort, Jack Black’s School Of Rock was also slated for
extinction and so I will review that one shortly as well. Sam Lowell]
Pirate Radio, starring
Philipp Seymour Hoffman, 2009
Probably all films are
directed to the largest audience possible although they may be particularly
targeted to a certain segment like I believe that the film under review Phillip
Seymour Hoffman’s Pirate Radio while
entirely suitable for all audiences has special meaning for those of us who
were washed clean by the that big wave of rock and roll that swept over us in
our 1950s and early 1960 youths. I am not foolish enough at this late date in
the 21st century some sixty plus years after the genre first
exploded onto the scene to tell anybody that rock and roll has had the staying
power to ignite the two or so generations after the explosion but I will
venture to say as I have in the headline to this review that one way or another
rock and roll will never die. One hundred years from now, especially now that
YouTube technology has insured preservation some shy, backward, alienated
teenagers, tweens too, will be snapping their figured to Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven. And maybe watch
this film to try and understand what it was like when men and women performed
rock and roll for keeps. Will gravitate toward the film if for no other reason
than the time capsule sound track will guide them to the source.
Here’s the play. If you
can believe this back in the day, back in the early 1960s when rock had already
passed its first bloom “the authorities” in this case the British authorities
but it could have been any governmental agents, churchmen, school
administrators, and above all parents in America (or any place on the planet
where the category of “teenager” had currency) banned rock and roll from the
state-run airwaves. Damn. Except some guys thought of an ingenious way to go
around that prohibition by rigging up ships with radio studio equipment and
related technologies and anchoring them out beyond the British legal
jurisdiction, anchored them in international waters. The kids in the British
Isles just like hear then could listen on their coveted transistor radios up in
the privacy of their parents forbidden bedrooms. (Transistor radios by the way
were the iPod /MP3s of their day.)
One drawback was that
the radio station crew had to stay on board and so the wacky crew and their
antics and animosities headlined by Hoffman are given full play. That did not
stop the furor to live and die by the motto “drugs, sex, and rock and roll
(although the one female on board was a lesbian there was no shortage of
mainland female listeners ready, willing and able to take the nearest boat out
to join the crew. Various segments of the film deal with the sex lives, or
non-sex lives of the larger than life looney tunes on board.
Naturally this flaunting
of the law, this thumb in the eye drove the governmental bureaucrats crazy,
drove them to a white heat to get rid of the crew of crazies and degenerates
who were corrupting the morals of the youth of the nation (this would be mild
compared to what would go down later in that same decade). And in the end
through treachery and convenient legislation they would prove victorious in
their attempts to shut down the operations. Left the ship being highlighted out
in the deep to flounder. But in the end the crew was saved by their audience,
literally, coming out and rescuing them. Yeah, with an audience like that no
wonder everybody believed, fervently believed that rock and roll would never
die. Enough said.
In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-January 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Three
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
For a number of years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 in each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period in honoring revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since every January
Leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered in separate incidents after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.
I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in which he eventually wound up in prison only to be released when the Kaiser abdicated (correctly went to jail when it came down to it once the government pulled the hammer down on his opposition), on some previous occasions. The key point to be taken away today, still applicable today as in America we are in the age of endless war, endless war appropriations and seemingly endless desires to racket up another war out of whole cloth every change some ill-begotten administration decides it needs to “show the colors”, one hundred years later in that still lonely and frustrating struggle to get politicians to oppose war budgets, to risk prison to choke off the flow of war materials.
I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” About her always opposing the tendencies in her adopted party, the German Social-Democracy, toward reform and accommodation, her struggle to make her Polish party ready for revolutionary opportunities, her important contributions to Marxist theory and her willing to face and go to jail when she opposed the first World War.
This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find, and are in desperate need of a few good heroes, a few revolutionaries who contributed to both our theoretical understandings about the tasks of the international working class in the age of imperialism (the age, unfortunately, that we are still mired in) and to the importance of the organization question in the struggle for revolutionary power, to highlight thestruggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically.
Below is a third sketch written as part of a series posted over several days before Lenin’s birthday on the American Left History blog starting on April 16th of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in the Russia of the Tsar toward the end of the 19th century and early 20th century which will help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and the ones that Lenin had to get a handle on.
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Ivan Smilga was persona non grata in Moscow after his sojourn to bloody Siberia and that was the one and only reason he had crossed the country to Saint Petersburg. That and the feeling that he needed a new start, a fresh start. That bloody Siberia sojourn was the result of an unwise decision to right the wrongs of this world, or at least of his world, by conspiring with known radical students and worker militants in Moscow to kidnap various high officials for ransom in order to gain some small rights in return. The whole thing exploded in his face (in their faces) when one of the workmen “snitched” to save his own neck and Ivan got a two year sentence for his mistake (since he was late in on the conspiracy and the idea had come from that workman snitch he was given a lenient sentence. They others received ten to twenty years at hard labor, including ten to Suslov who had expected only two like Ivan. Perfidious Okhrana). After that Ivan swore, swore off of politics as a way to change the world, to change his world. Now that he had applied for and had been taken on as a blacksmith apprentice in the Putilov Ironworks he vowed to keep his hands busy and his head away from the world’s woes. Again Ivan got the job due to his size and strength which the head blacksmith noticed right away when he saw in him in the superintendent’s office and told the metal work foreman to grab him with both hands. Fortunately, fortunately for Ivan (and the revolution) he was able to cover up his two years in Siberia by saying he had gone back to the farm after being dismissed by Smythe and Son and unlike later under Stalin the legal “paper trail” behind him never caught up in sprawling Saint Petersburg where the foreign concessions were not as concerns about paperwork as by ability to adjust to the factory system.
Then Elena Kassova entered, or rather re-entered, his life. He had known her as a fellow-worker, a machine-tender, in the John Smythe and Son textile factory in Moscow where he worked taking the rolls of fabric off the machines, her machine, before he became a gang boss. Since in those days before he was finally laid off as “redundant” by the company he was well respected as a worker and had not taken to drink he was eyed by many young women as a possible “catch.” He had caught Elena’s eye as well although as a pious country girl she had refrained from flirting with Ivan like some of the other girl machine-tenders who practically threw themselves at the giant of a man. Through the vagaries of commerce Smythe and Son had closed their Moscow plant and relocated to Saint Petersburg. Elena had followed having no other recourse or resources in Moscow. While in Saint Petersburg she had applied to the Putilov works in order to better herself. After some time she was employed in the foundry doing small piecework. Ivan and Elena met one evening coming out of the plant, had greeted each other, and Ivan had walked her home.
That story about Elena moving on to the Putilov Works to better herself was just that though, a story. While in Moscow, Elena had joined a readers’ circle not just any readers’ circle, but a Workers Benefit Circle. These circles met ostensibly to read, but were actually organizing committees for establishing Tsarist-banned trade unions. Some had imbibed the new socialist ideas coming from Europe, especially Germany and especially the Marxist wing of that movement. (Other trends the Bakunin and Kropotkin tendencies in anarchism, workers co-operatives, social reformism, Christian socialism translated through the Orthodox religion held by most Russians got some play as well.) Elena had been drawn into the work by some students at Moscow University and had shown so much promise that she was “ordered” to go to Saint Petersburg in order to establish circles in that metropolis where there were many plants, including the expanding Putilov, that needed to be organized.Her task at the time that she met Ivan was thus to help organize a strike at the Works for higher pay and only half a day’s work on Saturday. After several weeks she tried to recruit Ivan to the work knowing that he was well respected among the apprentice blacksmiths, knowing that he had been the organizer of the “Luddite” operation one Saturday night which wreaked hauling machinery at the Smythe factory in Moscow (it had become common knowledge among the tight-knit working class neighborhoods), and knew he had served “time” (that knowledge coming one night after Ivan had had too much vodka and was trying to impress Elena with his manly prowess).
Ivan turned Elena down cold, told her whatever she thought, that he had learned the error of his youthful ways and was looking to make no waves so that he could concentrate his energies on his dream of becoming a master blacksmith and eventually opening his own shop. Elena, wise to the ways of the world and trained to keep her full motives in check, continued to work on Ivan. Of course unknown to Ivan who thought it was just a matter of gaining higher wages and more time off that drove Elena was the hard fact that she had become a revolutionary, had come to see the trade union struggle as just an organizing tool to a grander scheme.
Then one day the workers on the night shift at the Putilov factory called a strike over the firing of several workers, including a couple of apprentice blacksmiths. The next morning Elena called out the workers in her section on the day shift, mainly women. She then cornered Ivan as he was about to walk into his work shed and told him to join the strike. She said it in such a way that Ivan knew that if he crossed the line that would be the last that he saw of Elena. And he was not finished with Elena, not by a long shot. And so he said this to her, “I will fight to get more money, I will fight for a shorter day and I will fight to get my brothers rehired but that is it. No more politics for me, no more.” Now due to some weaknesses of organization, and some crossing of the lines and increasing police menacing they did not get any more money or less time after that strike but after three days they were able to get those fired brothers back. And Ivan had thought they had done a fine thing. Elena had just scowled.
Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know
Frank Jackman comment:
One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.
To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).
Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.
Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.
The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project
By Frank Jackman
The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.
But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing. Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.
That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.
Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Tylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.
Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.
Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”
Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.
Stop Continuing To Let The Military Sneak Into The High Schools-Down With JROTC And Military Recruiter Access-What Every Young Woman Should Know
Frank Jackman comment:
One of the great struggles on college campuses during the height of the struggle against the Vietnam War back in the 1960s aside from trying to close down that war outright was the effort to get the various ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps, I think that is right way to say it) programs off campus. In a number of important campuses that effort was successful, although there has been back-sliding going on since the Vietnam War ended and like any successful anti-war or progressive action short of changing the way governments we could support do business is subject to constant attention or the bastards will sneak something in the back door.
To the extent that reintroduction of ROTC on college campuses has been thwarted, a very good anti-war action indeed which had made it just a smidgen harder to run ram shot over the world, that back door approach has been a two-pronged attack by the military branches to get their quota of recruits for their all-volunteer military services in the high schools. First to make very enticing offers to cash-strapped public school systems in order to introduce ROTC, junior version, particularly but not exclusively, urban high schools (for example almost all public high schools in Boston have some ROTC service branch in their buildings with instructors partially funded by the Defense Department and with union membership right and conditions a situation which should be opposed by teachers’ union members).
Secondly, thwarted at the college level for officer corps trainees they have just gone to younger and more impressible youth, since they have gained almost unlimited widespread access to high school student populations for their high pressure salesmen military recruiters to do their nasty work. Not only do the recruiters who are graded on quota system and are under pressure produce X number of recruits or they could wind doing sentry guard duty in Kabul or Bagdad get that access where they have sold many young potential military personnel many false bills of goods but in many spots anti-war veterans and other who would provide a different perspective have been banned or otherwise harassed in their efforts.
Thus the tasks of the day-JROTC out of the high schools-military recruiters out as well! Let anti-war ex-soldiers, sailors, Marines and airpersons have their say.
