As We Enter The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

As We Enter The 100^th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear
"He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
And in two toungues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same

-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches

By Alex Radley

  

Jim Anderson’s great-grandfather whom Jim just barely knew before he passed away was very proud of his military service in World War I with what he always called Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force. And for a long time, certainly as long as he lived Jim was on his knee proud too. Jim’s grandfather in his turn was proud, quietly proud not speaking much about his experiences in the Pacific war part of World War II as was common among that generation according to Jim’s father who told him very little when he questioned his father about the medals that were tucked in a family chest covered in a heavy clothe jacket. Jim’s father in his turn, also quiet about the specific of his service in Vietnam, would say that overall whatever the “damn,” his word when he mentioned that war, purpose of fighting that war was which still eluded him that he was proud of his service. But Jim remembered distinctly nights when he would hear his father being consoled by his mother when he woke up screaming with what must have been nightmares although like Jim said not much was spoken about the matter. And Jim for a long time, having no reason to doubt it, held all of this family pride in his person. As much as a person who did not serve could. Then his generation’s war, the Iraq war of 2003 came and although Jim had no inclination to join up to fight what his grandfather called “the heathens” he did have to think, or better rethink some stuff about war, and guts and glory, and about the horrible waste.              

All of this was aided by his then girlfriend, Susan, whom he called Susan of the Flowers since she had that retro-something out of the 1960s hippie look, and who was now his wife who was fervently against the Iraq war build-up and dragged him  along with her when they were students at Michigan. Peace, really pacifism, came easily to Susan since she had been brought up a Friend, a Quaker, although she was “lapsed” if you can be in such a society unlike Jim’s own Catholicism where he would make people laugh (not his parents though) by saying being lapsed was almost a sign of grace. Jim remembered the first time that she gave him a copy of Christmas in the Trenches he was shocked, great-grandfather- derived shocked that enemy soldiers, close quarter combatants  would call their own short haul “truce” in that World War I that he had been so proud of. That got Jim looking into the matter more closely especially when after all the protesting they had done (along with millions of others throughout the world) in the build-up to the Iraq War Bush II went ahead and blew the place apart for what turned out to be no reason at all. “Fake information” in today’s fevered newsprint world.        

World War I was an important watershed in the history of war because with the strategy of trench warfare on the ground killing would be done for the first time on an industrial scale (although for its day, especially at Cold Harbor, the American Civil War would give a gruesome preview of what was to come when things got out of hand. What had started out as something of a “jolly little show” quickly over by Christmas 1914 assumed by all sides including organizations like the international social democracy which had clamored for a decade or more before the guns started firing but who bowed to the nationalist fervor of their respective countries when the first shots rang out. And so Christmas in the trenches, several Christmases as it turned out. So that little soldierly truce story which  Susan would keep bringing to his attention each year when he needed an example of a small break from the madness down at the base, down where the guys fought the “damn” thing (this “damn” Jim’s).

After having completely failed to stop the Iraq war in 2003 Jim started what has now become a long if sporadic investigation of what could have made a difference, what could have stopped the madness in its tracks and that would always bring him back to those soldiers down at the base, down there in the killing fields of France. Not at the base of the Iraq war since there was very little dissension at the time in the ranks of the all-volunteer army and National Guard units sent to do the dirty work, the “walk-over.” Not the small action of the truce in in Christmas in the trenches but a little later, toward 1917 when all hell broke loose in Russia. A Russia whose armies were melting away on the Eastern Front. Melting away, and who knows to what extent before the February Revolution exposed the house of cards, with agitation from the Bolsheviks who Jim had believed in good family anti-communist from believed were the source of all evil in the world to hear his grandfather speak on the subject.   

Ideology aside, as hard as that is to dismiss in this kind of situation, the Bolsheviks had a hard and fast policy that their youth essentially would not volunteer to go in the Czar’s peasant-build Army but if drafted (dragooned really) they were to go and see what they could do in their units when and if a chance came up to break the stalemate. This was a very different policy from the individual acts of resistance, refusal to be drafted, that were epidemic during his father’s war which included many friends of Susan’s parents who were not Quakers but didn’t want to fight in an immoral war. Jim very carefully approached his father about what he thought of those draft resisters. His answer startled Jim when he said for a long time he held a very big grudge against the draft dodgers he called them but more recently he believed that they may have been right after all. Told Jim a story about a couple of guys in his unit in Pleiku who wanted the unit to refuse to go out on some half-baked mission. They quickly wound up in Long Binh Jail, LBJ, as it was called and the unit went out anyway and sustained heavy loses, got him wounded the first time. His father didn’t know what happened to those guys except he hoped they survived but even with them he said they probably were right. Maybe if a couple more guys had stuck with them something could have happened. Yes, Jim thought when he was thinking about it later, but that was music for some future. For now we have that little dust-up one Francis Tolliver Christmas.             

Free All The Political Prisoners-From Those Outside The Walls To Those Inside-Its The Same Struggle-Build The Resistance

Free All The Political Prisoners-From Those Outside The Walls To Those Inside-Its The Same Struggle-Build The Resistance   

This holiday time of year (and Political Prisoner Month each June as well) is when by traditions of solidarity and comradeship those of us who today stand outside the prison walls sent our best wishes from freedom to our class-war sisters and brothers inside the walls and redouble our efforts in that task.  

Don't forget Mumia, Leonard Peltier, Reality Leigh Winner, The Ohio 7's Tom Manning and Jaan Laaman and all those Black Panther and other black militants still be held in this country's prisons for  risking their necks for a better world for their people, for all people.

“America-Where Are You Now We Can’t Fight Alone Against The Monster”- “Captain America: Winter Soldier” (2014)-A Film Review

“America-Where Are You Now We Can’t Fight Alone Against The Monster”- “Captain America: Winter Soldier” (2014)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Vance Villon

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel Jackson, Robert Redford, from the Marvel Comic series, 2014   

As I mentioned recently in my very first piece in this space The Dragon Man Goes Awry (check the December 2017 archives) I came into this work post-Allan Jackson the deposed site administrator now situated according to his close friend Sam Lowell, another writer here, out in Utah in what some have called retirement and others have called a “purge,” a controversy I don’t want to delve into because frankly I know very little and the rumor around the blogosphere is that same Sam Lowell is going to gather up all the various strands of the dispute, what did or did not happen, and who was harmed or not and write about it all soon.

The only point at which I intersected with the previous regime other than knowledge of my father-in-law Phil Larkin’s long-time friendship with Jackson, indirectly, was when I approached the new site administrator, Greg Green, and asked him if it would be possible to do a Captain America film review. The first one, The First Avenger subsequently assigned to a younger writer than me Kenny Jacobs is the one I had in mind with the idea of the Captain being the foundation stone as a resistance leader against the troubles laid on humankind by the bad guys who always seem to be with us. Given the nature of the times, the dreaded 2017 real time of this impeding cold civil war in America which might very well turn hot, very hot given the tensions and what one writer using a forest fire as his metaphor called the social timber ready to burn. This civil war business something that as young as I am I could never have imaged would turn up in my lifetime.

I had heard that Allan Jackson (who used the moniker Peter Paul Markin during his tenure the genesis of which has been explained in previous posts by other writers, young and old, so I need not go into it since it really involves stuff that Phil Larkin would know more about than me) had refused to countenance any writer reviewing anything related to comics. That despite his own well-verified youthful love of comics, and of films related to comic book entries like Superman and Batman. Greg said sure, go ahead but don’t get too heavy on the history of such comics and center on the plot and why such films are made. That is what I had intended to do since I frankly don’t have enough information about those old days and the effect of comics on the youth of America to go into that thicket much.

All of this was before the “controversy” between Phil and young up and coming writer Kenny Jacobs over who was to do the first review in the trilogy although last in the series so far-Captain America: Civil War blew up. In the end neither wanted to do the review but Greg to placate the younger writer and test his range with an old black and white film review had Phil wound up doing the piece. As part of his introduction Phil went out of his way to grouse about why the hell was he doing a kid’s thing review when a kid was getting the plum Bogie movie review which he would have been all over (Kenny did a good job on it). When Kenny wound up doing the review for the first film in the series The First Avenger he, in his turn, groused about having to do a review of something that interested him less than Phil despite his youth. You will not find me either grousing or saying like they both respectively did WFT about this assignment. I wanted it and here it is. Vinny Villon]         

              

****

Like most action packed movies, movies which depend on their very reason for existence on X number (some huge X number) of fast paced action per minute stunts and scenes the film under review Captain America: The Winter Soldier has plenty of that and very little on heavy dialogue or plotline. Except go forward, blindly or not, and crush the bad guys whatever guise they appear under. Of course since this film is the second in the series (which now stands at three) we already know how the character of Captain America came about during World War II. I think Phil Larkin hit the nail on the head (and even disgruntled Kenny used the idea) when he said that they had taken a 4-F runt, a scrawny weakling right off of what would have been then a matchbook cover Charles Atlas kick sand in your face advertisement and made him a he-man. A he-man who could jump high, jump down better, run like the wind even through New York City traffic no mean accomplishment, bump kill bad guys and have time for a nap before lunch. Just the kind of guy who all by his lonesome could eat a Panzer division alive during the big one . Get this though to get through the action of the first film the Captain, after dealing a death blow to a failed mutant experiment named Red Skull, had a moral obligation, at least by his lights to ditch a plane headed to that very New York City carrying horrible energies in as always a small box into the Artic snows to resurface seventy years later after being in a deep freeze for that long. Looking young and a bit bewildered by the sights and sound of New York City.  

But that was mostly old hat by now. Obviously, mutant or not, a guy with the Captain’s powers is something worth having on your side. Here Captain America played by Chris Evans is working for the big time espionage agency S.H.I,E.L.D which is trying  to on the face of it bring world peace or something like that via getting rid of bad guys and settling for less than paradise in the process. That operation is opposed by the remnants of that nasty Hydra criminal enterprise that Red Skull had played a central role in who are up to their old tricks of trying to grab the latest technologies to control the world assuming humankind preferred stability and peace through a strong security apparatus than fudge along not knowing what will happen at any given moment. The key leaders Fury, played by Samuel E. Jackson and Pierce, played by now hard to view ex-beauty mummified Robert Redford who in his day would have probably had the Captain America role handed to him on a platter.            

Of course the Captain is not working solo these days for a high-flying intelligence operation as he has a wingman and a jumping jack played by ubiquitous Scarlett Johannsson. Fellow mutants to work the means streets.  The task is to prevent Hydra from grabbing some very high-end helicopters which can direct massive fire wherever whoever is guiding the thing wants. And guess what Hydra’s enforcer in chief is- the winter soldier, a bad ass dude no question who just happens to be an old Brooklyn growing up buddy of Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan, who wound up working, for or against his will it is never quite clear, for Hydra. And doing a very good job of it.

That turning to evil purposes by old Barnes, by the transformed winter soldier makes perfect sense. Especially as if as claimed he was subject to Soviet-era brainwashing. What I had, have, a hard time getting around is the fate of Pierce, of Robert Redford, who as it turns out was a Hydra “mole,” working the espionage racket. A guy who went to the mat with Butch Cassidy to waste the bad guys in the old West, a guy who put a greedy New York stockbroker into cheap street working the old con in The Sting turns out to be nothing but a cheapjack secret agent for the nefarious forces loose in the world. How the mighty have fallen. Therein lies one cautionary tale. The other don’t trust anybody from Brooklyn-or Queens if you know what I mean.   

Present At The Creation- Marvel Comics “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)-A Film Review

Present At The Creation- Marvel Comics “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

Captain America: The First Avenger, starring Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, 2011, Marvel Productions

[Now it is my turn to say WFT, although I could have probably gotten what the initials stood for long before my fellow reviewer on this site long time contributor Phil Larkin decoded the latest shorten terms in modern text-twitter-Internet world. His WTF reason, Phil’s, was that he went here on this site publicly to grouse about having to do another film in this so-far Captain America trilogy rather than what he considered should have been his plum assignment doing a review of his hero actor Humphrey Bogart’s  in one of his lesser later films from the 1950s Deadline-USA. A film about the even then declining (against television) newspaper racket’s struggle for the big story and how to beat off the stiff competition of the other news sources in the big cities.     

Under the new regime, manager Greg Green and the newly instilled Editorial Board, which Phil showed great disrespect for by calling that panel toadies of Greg’s, each writer has the option of airing his or her grievances in the introduction to their articles. With no particular role for either Greg or the board except as something like “gatekeepers” to avoid letting any personal obscure animosities spill into cyberspace. New as I am to this site I have no quarrel with that policy which seems right after what other writers have told me the previous manager Allan Jackson’s never-ending attempts to sweep any writerly controversies under a very deep rug. I have no quarrel either with Phil grousing in public about how he was short-shifted on what he expected to be his assignment. What I do object to and feel a need to mention if only in passing is my “cred” to do the Bogart review.        

Phil seems to believe that if you were not at least alive, as neither I nor my parents were, to have seen the film you are reviewing then that mere fact disqualifies you from reviewing the damn thing. He probably got that idea, an old idea in any case, from his buddy-buddy relationship with Allan Jackson and the coterie of older writers he surrounded himself with until a few years ago. Jackson  seeing the writing on the wall that the older writers were either running out of creative steam or were so hung up on the 1960s when most of them came of age, including Jackson, that they needed younger writers to stop the drainage of younger reader away from the site. While, in general, we younger writers will write material reflecting our coming of age experiences I reject the idea in this specific case that Phil was the only one who could do justice to the Bogart piece.

As I mentioned in my review, and either Phil missed or consciously ignored, I was spoon-fed on Bogie movies as a kid because my parents who met in the 1980s in Ann Arbor were crazy for Bogie (and for the four films with his honey Laruen Bacall especially) after having gone to the campus film department’s periodic retrospectives on the age of black and white films. Later too when they had their version of nostalgic for Bogie they would traipse me along with them to some commercial retro-theater like the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts when they were graduate students. So I will special plead my “cred” on that film. In any case Greg, to placate Phil I guess although that era was supposed to be over with the departure and what some writers have called the exile of Allan Jackson, has assigned me what was supposed to be Phil’s second review in the Captain America trilogy. Truth is I know and care less about that whole Marvel comic book operation than Phil could ever know but being a good sport and also able to feast off of his first review to avoid any heavy lifting I consented. I am, unlike the apparently more paranoid Phil, confident that this introduction will see the light of day. Kenny Jacobs]          

********

Phil Larkin in his review of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War made the appropriate point that these basically mutant creations of humankind’s off-beat fantasies who squared off in that film pale in comparison with a guy like hard-boiled no nonsense private eye Phillip Marlowe, sea-worthy Captain Harry Morgan, closet anti-fascist resistance fighter Rick of Rick’s Café Americian out in the Kasbah, or for that matter unjustly convicted for murder escapee Vincent Parry Bogie. See I am stealing Phil’s stuff already. I won’t deal with the other mutants here since they, except for bad guy Winter Soldier, played by Sebastian Stan and a cameo by youthful inventor Stark aka Ironman, play no role here in The First Avenger saga but this Captain America specimen aka Steve Rogers out of Brooklyn, played by hulky Chris Evans, is a good example of why I shunned such matter when I was a kid. Phil was beautiful in noting that the idea of taking a ninety-eight pound weakling right out of a matchbook cover Charles Atlas “kick sand in your face” advertisement and turning him in 1945, or anytime, in a humanoid monster and then conveniently deep freezing him is kind of a hoot. Filling him up with a ton of what were, are, probably toxics did wonders for his ability to leap, do the 400 meters fast, and collide into people with his trusty shield but left his short on the brains side. Strictly a bronzed beauty-male version in a tight outfit for all the girls, young women, regular women in the theater audience to ogle over.      

Well enough of bursting the bubble and let’s take what we are given for a plotline which Greg Green, the managing editor, now rather irritatingly,  has again insisted that I make sure to outline to give the reader a leg up on what the thing is about. So using the “present at the creation” 1945 motif from the headline let’s get to how this whole mess started when the kid who used to have sand kicked in his face by girls or get his ass whipped by guys got to be on humanity’s short-list of saviors. First off blame it on some screwy doctor who convinces the scrawny weakling to be a trial balloon in one of his experiments to make super-human fighters by the bushel load to fight the bad guys, real bad guys the Nazis and their friends and hangers-on. Bingo he is in although not knowing he was not the first to go into the program. A Frankenstein, who will go by the name Red Skull once he arrives on the scene, is running amok trying to seize some advanced technology which will make him the numero uno bad guy pulling guys like Hitler and Mussolini off their pedestals.

So the quest for the golden fleece, for the fountain of youth, or whatever they are searching for is on. In this case a super-powerful energy source to do the do with Red Skull’s mad scientist colleague’s mad world-controlling inventions. Red Skull has it but not for long as the newly minted Captain America chaffing under the bit doing war bond drives instead of off-handedly saving the world (and creating as Phil noted many more innocent casualties than lowering the count on bad guys). So he moves off dead center and goes mano a mano with Red Skull finally grabbing the valuable energy elixir in a big air fight in which Red Skull comes up with the short end of the stick. Problem is our good Captain is left to guide the plane to safe harbors but can’t avoid crashing into big cities if he does so he “falls on his sword” taking the plane down in the Artic to wake up some seventy years later a stranger in a strange land-New York City. To continue saving a world even wackier than when he wound up in that deep freeze. End of story.

No, not quite, because comic he-man adventures or not there has to be a love interest here his Peggy, a British intelligence agent and all around whizz which naturally fizzles out when duty calls. As well we have a preview of what will come up in future episodes when his high school buddy, Barnes, who is presumed dead, will give his old buddy the masked man more trouble than he could shake a stick at. Yeah, I am with Phil, WTF, yawn.     

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days, Maybe More, Of ......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars

From The Veterans For Peace- The Twelve Days, Maybe More, Of  ......The Struggle Against The Endless American Wars

Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-A Not Beatles "Anna"

Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-A Not Beatles  "Anna" 

A YouTube clip to give some flavor to this subject from the original recorder Arthur Alexander which is where the Beatles heard it first.


Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. And those songs provide our movement with that combination entertainment/political message that is an art form that we use to draw the interested around us. Even though today those interested may be counted rather than countless and the class struggle to be whiled away is rather one-sidedly going against us at present. The bosses are using every means from firing to targeting union organizing to their paid propagandists complaining that the masses are not happy with having their plight groveled in their faces like they should be while the rich, well, while away in luxury and comfort.  

But not all life is political, or rather not all music lends itself to some kind of explicit political meaning yet speaks to, let’s say, the poor sharecropper at the juke joint on Saturday listening to the country blues, unplugged, kids at the jukebox listening to high be-bop swing, other kids listening, maybe at that same jukebox now worn with play and coins listening to some guys from some Memphis record company rocking and rolling, or adults spending some dough to hear the latest from Tin Pan Alley or the Broadway musical. And so they too while away to the various aspects of the American songbook and that rich tradition is which in honored here.   

This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up. 

A Story goes with it

You Got That Right Brother-The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On Your Mind -With Arthur Alexander's Anna In Mind  

 By Alex Radley  

A YouTube film clip of Arthur Alexander performing his classic Anna later coveted on a cover by the Beatles.

Johnny Prescott daydreamed his way through the music that he was listening to just then on the little transistor radio that Ma Prescott, Martha to adults, and Pa too, Paul to adults, but the main battles over the gift had been with Ma, had given him for Christmas. In those days we are talking about, the post-World War II red scare Cold War 1950s in America, the days of the dreamy man in the family being the sole provider fathers didn’t get embroiled in the day to day household kids wars and remained a distant and at times foreboding presence called in only when the dust-up had gotten out of hand. And then Papa pulled the hammer down via a classic united front with Ma. Johnny had taken a fit around the first week in December in 1960 when Ma quite reasonable suggested that a new set of ties to go with his white long-sleeved shirts might be a better gift, a better Christmas gift and more practical too, for a sixteen year old boy. Reasonable since alongside Pa being that sole provider, being a distant presence, and being called in only when World War III was about to erupt in the household he also worked like a slave for low wages at the Boston Gear Works, worked for low wages since he was an unskilled laborer in a world where skills paid money (and even the skills that he did have, farm hand skills, were not very useful in the Boston labor market). So yes ties, an item that at Christmas time usually would be the product of glad-handing grandmothers or maiden aunts would in the Prescott household be relegated to the immediate family. And that holiday along with Easter was a time when the Prescott boys had in previous years gotten their semi-annual wardrobe additions, additions provided via the Bargain Center, a low-cost, low rent forerunner of the merchandise provided at Wal-Mart.                

This year, this sixteen year old year, Johnny said no to being pieced off with thick plaid ties, or worse, wide striped ties in color combinations like gold and black or some other uncool combination, uncool that year although maybe not in say 1952 when he did not know better, uncool in any case against those thin solid colored ties all the cool guys were wearing to the weekly Friday night school dances or the twice monthly Sacred Heart Parish dances the latter held in order to keep sixteen year old boys, girls too, in check against the worst excesses of what the parish priests (and thankful parents) thought was happening among the heathen young.

No, that is not quite right, that “Johnny said no” part, no, he screamed that he wanted a radio, a transistor radio, batteries included, of his own so that he could listen to whatever he liked up in his room, or wherever he was. Could listen to what he liked against errant younger brothers who were clueless, clueless about rock and roll, clueless about what was what coming through the radio heralding a new breeze in the land, a breeze Johnny was not sure what it meant but all he knew was that he, and his buddies, knew some jail-break movement was coming to unglue all the square-ness in the over- heated night. Could listen in privacy, and didn’t have to, understand, didn’t have to listen to some Vaughn Monroe or Harry James 1940s war drum thing on the huge immobile RCA radio monster downstairs in the Prescott living room. Didn’t have to listen to, endlessly Saturday night listen, captive nation-like listen to WJDA and the smooth music, you know, Frank Sinatra, Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, and so on listen to the music of Ma and Pa Prescott’s youth, the music that got them through the Depression and the war. Strictly squaresville, cubed.

Something was out of joint though, something had changed since he had begun his campaign the year before to get that transistor radio, something or someone had played false with the music that he had heard when somebody played the jukebox at Freddy’s Hamburger House where he heard Elvis, Buddy, Chuck, Wanda (who was hot, hot for a girl rocker, all flowing black hair and ruby red lips from what he had seen at Big Max’s Record Shop when her Let’s Have A Party was released), the Big Bopper, Jerry Lee, Bo, and a million others who made the whole world jump to a different tune, to something he could call his own. But as he listened to this Shangra-la by The Four Coins that had just finished up a few seconds ago and as this Banana Boat song by The Tarriers was starting its dreary trip through his brain he was not sure that those ties, thick or uncool as they would be, wouldn’t have been a better Christmas deal, and more practical too.

Yeah, this so-called rock station, WAPX, that he and his friends had been devoted to since 1957, had listened to avidly every night when Johnny Peeper, the Midnight Creeper and Leaping Lenny Penny held forth in their respective DJ slots, had sold out to, well, sold out to somebody, because except for late at night, midnight late at night, one could not hear the likes of Jerry Lee, Carl, Little Richard, Fats, and the new rocker blasts, now that Elvis had gone who knows where. Killer rocker Chuck Berry had said it best, had touched a youth nation nerve, had proclaimed the new dispensation when he had proclaimed loud and clear that Mr. Beethoven had better move alone, and said Mr. Beethoven best tell one and all of his confederates, including Mr. Tchaikovsky, that rock ‘n’ roll was the new sheriff in town. But where was Chuck, where was that rock blaster all sexed up talk and riffs to match now that everybody was reduced to Bobby Darin, Bobby Rydell, and Bobby, hell, they were all Bobbys and Jimmys and Eddies and every other vanilla name under the sun now not a righteous name in the house. As Johnny turned the volume down a little lower (that tells the tale right there, friends) as Rainbow (where the hell do they get these creepy songs from) by Russ Hamilton he was ready to throw in the towel though. Ready to face the fact that maybe, just maybe the jail-break that he desperately had been looking forward to might have been just a blip, might have been an illusion and that the world after all belonged to Bing, Frank, Tommy and Jimmy and that he better get used to that hard reality.   

Desperate, Johnny fingered the dial looking for some other station when he heard this crazy piano riff starting to breeze through the night air, the heated night air, and all of a sudden Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 blasted the airwaves. Ike whose Rocket 88 had been the champion choice of Jimmy Jenkins, one of his friends from after school, when they would sit endlessly in Freddy’s and seriously try to figure out whose song started the road to rock and roll. Johnny had latched onto Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll which Elvis did a smash cover of but who in Joe’s version you can definitely hear that dah-da-dah beat that was the calling card of his break-out generation, as well as the serious sexual innuendo which Frankie Riley explained to one and all one girl-less Friday night at the high school hop. Billy Bradley, a high school friend who had put an assortment of bands together and so knew more than the rest of them combined, had posited Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall as his selection but nobody had ever heard the song then, or of James. Johnny later did give it some consideration after he had had heard the song when Billy’s band covered it and broke the place up.

But funny as Johnny listened that night it didn’t sound like the whinny Ike’s voice on Rocket 88 so he listened for a little longer, and as he later found out from the DJ, it had actually been a James Cotton Blues Band cover. After that band’s performance was finished fish-tailing right after that one was a huge harmonica intro and what could only be mad-hatter Junior Wells doing When My Baby Left Me splashed through. No need to turn the dial further now because what Johnny Prescott had found in the crazy night air, radio beams bouncing every which way, was direct from Chicago, and maybe right off those hard-hearted Maxwell streets was Be-Bop Benny’s Chicago Blues Radio Hour. Be-Bop Benny who everybody who read the rock and roll magazines found easier at Doc’s Drugstore over on Hancock Street knew, had started Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino on their careers, or helped.

Now Johnny, like every young high-schooler, every "with it" high schooler in the USA, had heard of this show, because even though everybody was crazy for rock and roll, just now the airwaves sounded like, well, sounded like music your parents would dance to, no, sit to at a dance, some kids still craved high rock. So this show was known mainly through the teenage grapevine but Johnny had never heard it before because, no way, no way in hell was his punk little Radio Shack transistor radio with two dinky batteries going to ever have enough strength to pick Be-Bop Benny’s show out in Chicago. So Johnny, and maybe rightly so, took this turn of events for a sign. When Johnny heard that distinctive tinkle of the Otis Spann piano warming up to Spann’s Stomp and jumped up with his Someday added in he was hooked. You know he started to see what Billy, Billy Bradley who had championed Elmore James way before anybody knew who he was, meant when at a school dance where he had been performing with his band, Billie and the Jets, he mentioned from the stage before introducing a song that if you wanted to get rock and roll back from the vanilla guys who had hijacked it while Jerry Lee, Chuck and Elvis had turned their backs then you had better listen to the blues. And if you wanted to listen to blues, blues that rocked then you had very definitely better get in touch with the Chicago blues as they came north from Mississippi and places like that.

And Johnny thought, Johnny who have never been too much south of Gloversville, or west of Albany, and didn’t know too many people who had, couldn’t understand why that beat, that dah, da, dah, Chicago beat sounded like something out of the womb in his head. But when he heard Big Walter Horton wailing on that harmonica on Rockin’ My Boogie he knew it had to be in his genes.

Here’s the funniest part of all though later, later in the 1960s after everybody had become a serious aficionado of the blues either through exposure like Johnny to the country blues that got revived during the folk minute that flashed through the urban areas of the country and got big play at places like the Newport Folk Festival or like Jimmy Jenkins through the British rock invasion the blues became the dues. It was especially ironic that a bunch of guys from England like the Stones and Beatles were grabbing every freaking 45 RPM record they could get their mitts on. So if you listened to the early work of those groups you would find thing covered like Shake, Rattle and Roll (Big Joe’s version), Arthur Alexander’s Anna, Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster and a ton of stuff by Muddy Waters. Yeah, the drought was over.  

I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s "Shadows In The Night"CD In Mind

I Did It My Way-With Bob Dylan’s "Shadows In The Night"CD In Mind

By Sam Lowell 

Recently I did a review of Bob Dylan’s CD, Shadows In The Night, a tribute to the king of Tin Pan Alley Frank Sinatra. (No, not as part of the never-ending and getting weird for material bootleg series which I believe is up to volume thirteen or some such number with outtakes and such overriding any real music certainly nothing that hasn’t been done better on the long list of classic album CDs like Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It All Back Home) I noted that such an effort was bound to happen if Dylan lived long enough. Strange as it may seem to a generation, the generation of ’68, the AARP generation, okay, baby-boomers who came of age with the clarion call put forth musically by Bob Dylan and others to dramatically break with the music of our parents’ pasts, the music that got them through the Great Depression and slogging through World War II, he has put out an album featuring the work of Mr. Frank Sinatra the king of that era in many our parents’ households. The music of the Broadway shows, Tin Pan Alley, Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ the Gershwins’ and so on. That proposition though seems less strange if you are not totally mired in the Bob Dylan protest minute of the early 1960s when he with Blowin’ In The Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin’, whether he wanted that designation or not, was the “voice of a generation,” catching the new breeze a lot of us felt coming through the land.

What Dylan has been about for the greater part of his career has been as an entertainer, a guy who sings his songs to the crowd and hopes they share his feelings for his songs. Just like Frank when he was in high tide. What Dylan has also been about through it all has been a deep and abiding respect for the American songbook (look on YouTube to a clip from Don’t Look Back with him doing Hank Williams’ Lost Highway or stuff from the Basement tapes with everything for Williams to Johnny Cash to some old stuff he must have heard coming up in growing up Hibbing, Minnesota). In the old days that was looking for roots, roots music from the mountains, the desolate oceans, the slave quarters, along the rivers and Dylan’s hero then was Woody Guthrie. But the American songbook is a “big tent” operation and the Tin Pan Alley that he broke from when he became his own songwriter is an important part of the overall tradition and now his hero is Frank Sinatra as well.

I may long for the old protest songs, the songs from the album pictured above, you know Blowin’ In The Wind, The Times Are A Changin’ stuff like that, the roots music and not just Woody but Hank, Tex-Mex, the Carters, the odd and unusual like Desolation Row or his cover of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night but Dylan has sought to entertain and there is room in his tent for the king of Tin Pan Alley (as Billie Holiday was the queen). Having heard Dylan live and in concert over the past several years with his grating lost voice (it was always about the lyrics not the voice although by comparison that young voice seems not to bad if not always on key) I do wonder though how much production was needed to get the wrinkles out of that voice to sing as smoothly as the “Chairman of the boards.” What goes around comes around.             

When Super-Heroes Go Mano a Mano-“Captain America: Civil War” (2016)-A Film Review

When Super-Heroes Go Mano a Mano-“Captain America: Civil War” (2016)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Phil Larkin

Captain America: Civil War, starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johannsson, 2016

[WTF and anybody who is ready this freaking review will know exactly what I am saying and not worry about the kids, since kids don’t come anywhere near this site because they are way too busy texting each other or doing some unearthly social media vamping. Yes, WTF am I, a guy who has shaded three score and ten doing reviewing a Marvel Comic film production about some silly guy who had been frozen since about 1945 and ever since being defrosted has been running his ass off (remember it is okay-no kids will see this) trying to save every American city that he can from various evil parties, parties from a place which bear a striking affinity to the late USSR, the Soviet Union today’s just plan Russia-and Crimea. And now in a brawl with other super-heroes over turf and policy Yeah, what the hell. 

Here is my take and it burns me up because a film that I should have naturally reviewed, Deadline-USA, a late effort by legendary actor Humphrey Bogart which while not his best or most classic work (Casablanca, To Have And Have Not, The Big Sleep, Key Largo are in my book) should have been mine by right. I, who spent many a Saturday afternoon double film matinee with one stretched out bag of popcorn in the second-run Strand Theater in North Adamsville about forty miles south of Boston watching and many times more than once to get out of the chaotic household I grew in at least am old enough to have seen the films before the dust settle on them. Unlike the kid, the young man, this Jacobs kid, who new site manager Greg Green had assigned to do the review, his first, and who came right out and said that he went to the re-run theaters in Michigan with his parents, his parents for God’s sake, when he was nothing but a kid, Didn’t even understand half of what was going on. 

   

No. This coup has all the earmarks of new site manager Greg Green’s work although I am sure he will deny this simple truth as will this new toady Editorial Board who has bowed to his every wish getting even with me for supporting one hundred per cent, and still supporting, the recently deposed long-time site manager and a childhood friend Allan Jackson. I don’t expect this comment to see the light of day. Probably I will be pieced off with one of those not enough space excuses and told I can have it to introduce my next article when again space limitations will be cited and I will be pieced off until infinity or the end days come around. Bullshit (don’t worry even a stray curious kid has long ago stopped reading this screed as some meanderings of an old three score and ten guy if they know how much that is and that is not a given). But onto the review. Phil Larkin] 

Frank Jackman who writes here now on anything as per the new so-called Editorial Board rule but who used to be the senior political commentator under Jackson and a good one has spent most of the last year proclaiming to everybody who will listen or read that we are in the age of Trump in a cold civil war situation for real. And there is plenty if not definitive proof of that escalating this year rather than as Trump publicity hounds would have it become a dead issue. Compare that real not “fake” storyline with the stuff that this film is throwing your way as Captain America yet again bounces of buildings and people with maybe a scratch or two since they took him out to defrost a few years back comes firing at you (having been in deep freeze since 1945 if you can believe that therefore unlike three score and ten me looking like about twenty-five or whatever graphic the studios are shooting for).   

That said and I hope you can hold your ability to suspend your disbelief long enough for me to give you what my old friend Sam Lowell calls the “skinny” here  (a guy who nevertheless stabbed his old friend Alan in the back by voting with the kids to send him packing).  I will grant no question the super-hero grift is a tough racket. Even with a motley of those with some specialized skills like speed, iron, being good with a bow and arrow, spidery, flame-throwers, robotic, double- flip artists who have the ability to fend off the bad guys they are too few in number to keep the world save from the creeps for long. Moreover for every action they, these so-called avengers, take against the creeps, usually not many at least in the leading cadre  there is “collateral damage” as they say, innocents by the scores, hundred, thousands,  get wasted through no fault of their own.

The question becomes, ever for those running kinds who make up the avenger herd, a moral one. Against cutting off a few bad guys who will just be replaced by another crop how many innocents must die. That is the premise behind the duel to the death here not only against the bad guys but with a falling out among the good guys when push comes to shove between the immoral rogues and the guilty accommodators. And it will be push come to shove when the various super-heroes pick up sides. Those who are willing to come under some international control commission to become essentially a super elite special forces operation working under instructions and those who want to roam free and kill whatever they can and let the devil take the hinter-post.       

Leading the rogue element, the don’t give a fuck about casualties, is this former ninety-eight pound weakling out of an old matchbook Charles Atlas kick sand in your face advertisement who gets boosted up like crazy so he can run, fight and bounce off walls is the aforementioned Captain America played by bean-head Chris Evans. This is the third film in the series so we already know his bio-and his trail of destruction. He can do everything but think beyond the killing fields he has created. Leading the civilized avengers, a brainy guy who can actually think before he acts Stark aka Ironman, played by Robert Downey, Jr. who is, catching on about that collateral damage outweighs whatever bad guys get wasted argument, willing to take himself and some others into that elite unit under international control. That is how the good guys divide up and since they all have checkered pasts the line-up splits down the middle. Of course the joker is the bad guys led by the totally berserk Winter Solider, played by Sebastian Stan, who is really an old buddy of the Captain’s who has been brain-washed by the Russians to do their dirty work. A little Cold War I scenario familiar from Le Carre novels and James Bond films.      

So the so-called tensions between the two factions mount especially when Winter Soldier allegedly blows an international conference building to smithereens with heavy causalitie. Wrong fall guy as it turned out and when he is captured miraculously he goes over the Captain’s side just like the old days once he is out of range of his handlers and their nefarious skills. But there are still those government toady avengers to deal with and so the two sides go mano a mano until, well, until it is discovered that some over-the top nefarious fourth party, a Doctor Zemo has been manipulating the whole controversy for his own sense of revenge. So all the old gang get back together after waylaying each other in such a manner that mere mortals would have gone beyond the pale long ago-or held some serious long-standing grudges. Yeah, now you know why I said WTF. Give me a hard-boiled rough-edged private detective, a salty sea captain ready to do his bit for the cause, ditto a nightclub/café owner in the Kasbah, or another private detective who sends a gun-simple femme fatale over for the big step-off Bogie just regular anti-hero any day.        

As We Enter The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

As We Enter The 100^th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear
"He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
And in two toungues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same

-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches

By Alex Radley

  

Jim Anderson’s great-grandfather whom Jim just barely knew before he passed away was very proud of his military service in World War I with what he always called Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force. And for a long time, certainly as long as he lived Jim was on his knee proud too. Jim’s grandfather in his turn was proud, quietly proud not speaking much about his experiences in the Pacific war part of World War II as was common among that generation according to Jim’s father who told him very little when he questioned his father about the medals that were tucked in a family chest covered in a heavy clothe jacket. Jim’s father in his turn, also quiet about the specific of his service in Vietnam, would say that overall whatever the “damn,” his word when he mentioned that war, purpose of fighting that war was which still eluded him that he was proud of his service. But Jim remembered distinctly nights when he would hear his father being consoled by his mother when he woke up screaming with what must have been nightmares although like Jim said not much was spoken about the matter. And Jim for a long time, having no reason to doubt it, held all of this family pride in his person. As much as a person who did not serve could. Then his generation’s war, the Iraq war of 2003 came and although Jim had no inclination to join up to fight what his grandfather called “the heathens” he did have to think, or better rethink some stuff about war, and guts and glory, and about the horrible waste.              

All of this was aided by his then girlfriend, Susan, whom he called Susan of the Flowers since she had that retro-something out of the 1960s hippie look, and who was now his wife who was fervently against the Iraq war build-up and dragged him  along with her when they were students at Michigan. Peace, really pacifism, came easily to Susan since she had been brought up a Friend, a Quaker, although she was “lapsed” if you can be in such a society unlike Jim’s own Catholicism where he would make people laugh (not his parents though) by saying being lapsed was almost a sign of grace. Jim remembered the first time that she gave him a copy of Christmas in the Trenches he was shocked, great-grandfather- derived shocked that enemy soldiers, close quarter combatants  would call their own short haul “truce” in that World War I that he had been so proud of. That got Jim looking into the matter more closely especially when after all the protesting they had done (along with millions of others throughout the world) in the build-up to the Iraq War Bush II went ahead and blew the place apart for what turned out to be no reason at all. “Fake information” in today’s fevered newsprint world.        

World War I was an important watershed in the history of war because with the strategy of trench warfare on the ground killing would be done for the first time on an industrial scale (although for its day, especially at Cold Harbor, the American Civil War would give a gruesome preview of what was to come when things got out of hand. What had started out as something of a “jolly little show” quickly over by Christmas 1914 assumed by all sides including organizations like the international social democracy which had clamored for a decade or more before the guns started firing but who bowed to the nationalist fervor of their respective countries when the first shots rang out. And so Christmas in the trenches, several Christmases as it turned out. So that little soldierly truce story which  Susan would keep bringing to his attention each year when he needed an example of a small break from the madness down at the base, down where the guys fought the “damn” thing (this “damn” Jim’s).

After having completely failed to stop the Iraq war in 2003 Jim started what has now become a long if sporadic investigation of what could have made a difference, what could have stopped the madness in its tracks and that would always bring him back to those soldiers down at the base, down there in the killing fields of France. Not at the base of the Iraq war since there was very little dissension at the time in the ranks of the all-volunteer army and National Guard units sent to do the dirty work, the “walk-over.” Not the small action of the truce in in Christmas in the trenches but a little later, toward 1917 when all hell broke loose in Russia. A Russia whose armies were melting away on the Eastern Front. Melting away, and who knows to what extent before the February Revolution exposed the house of cards, with agitation from the Bolsheviks who Jim had believed in good family anti-communist from believed were the source of all evil in the world to hear his grandfather speak on the subject.   

Ideology aside, as hard as that is to dismiss in this kind of situation, the Bolsheviks had a hard and fast policy that their youth essentially would not volunteer to go in the Czar’s peasant-build Army but if drafted (dragooned really) they were to go and see what they could do in their units when and if a chance came up to break the stalemate. This was a very different policy from the individual acts of resistance, refusal to be drafted, that were epidemic during his father’s war which included many friends of Susan’s parents who were not Quakers but didn’t want to fight in an immoral war. Jim very carefully approached his father about what he thought of those draft resisters. His answer startled Jim when he said for a long time he held a very big grudge against the draft dodgers he called them but more recently he believed that they may have been right after all. Told Jim a story about a couple of guys in his unit in Pleiku who wanted the unit to refuse to go out on some half-baked mission. They quickly wound up in Long Binh Jail, LBJ, as it was called and the unit went out anyway and sustained heavy loses, got him wounded the first time. His father didn’t know what happened to those guys except he hoped they survived but even with them he said they probably were right. Maybe if a couple more guys had stuck with them something could have happened. Yes, Jim thought when he was thinking about it later, but that was music for some future. For now we have that little dust-up one Francis Tolliver Christmas.