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
Will The Real James Bond
Stand Up –Part VI-Timothy Dalton’s “License To Kill” (1989)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Alden Riley and Sandy
Salmon
License to Kill, Timothy
Dalton, Cary Lowell, 1989
The knowledgeable reader
is probably wondering what the hell is going on when two film reviewers who are
allegedly fighting a “mock heroic” battle over the merits their chosen “real”
James Bonds, Sean Connery for Sandy Salmon and Pierce Brosnan for Alden Riley
are jointly contributing to a review of yet a third Bond, James Bond player
Timothy Dalton in License To Kill. But
perhaps that knowledgeable reader missed something a while back when this
“fight to the death” started after Sandy had given Sean Connery top billing as
the “real” James Bond and Alden had asked the new site manager Greg Green to
give him space to tout Pierce Brosnan. Both reviewers agreed that those two
were the only real candidates for number one and so they agreed, half-heartedly
agreed since they are in another dispute over what is happening to the site
currently now that any talk about the internal struggle that roiled the blog
last year and mention of the previous leadership is verboten, to collectively
trash Timothy Dalton’s pathetic excuse of a Bond player.
Alden had put that Brosnan
request in the form of “blackmail” of a new kind when he threatened a “vote of
confidence” showdown among the writers when Greg first balked at the request. That
vote of no confidence doing in the previous unmentionable leadership. Greg the
beneficiary of Alden’s leadership of the purge of the previous site manager in
order to gain his job took the hint immediately and granted Alden’s wish. Initially
Greg’s idea in resurrecting the seemingly never-ending Bond series for review at
this site was the great success that such reviews had among the younger readers
over at his previous job as site manager at American
Film Gazette when the films came out. He thought such efforts might help
stem the declining youth readership here as well. (That was the basis for the
ill-fated although not completely abandoned run of comic book-derived
super-heroes as well.) Greg had only expected to have Sandy, formerly the
Senior Film Critic under the old regime, do a quick run through of the Connery
films to see what would happen. Alden, formerly the Associate Film Critic under
that same old regime then threw his complaint in the mix and the “battle” was
joined.
That “battle” a little
heated at times, at around the “water cooler” times, not necessarily reflected
in the reviews themselves got a boost when Alden started to complain out loud
about his “demotion” along with everybody else to just writer status and about
the new rule that the old site manager should essentially become a non-person
after that internal struggle purge. Sandy, who had actually supported the old
regime manager tried to cool Alden down. Greg stepped in with the Dalton
suggestion as a means to lower the temperature. We shall see.
********
No question that the
long running seemingly never-ending series of Bond films are run by a very
defined formula from the opening camera eye agent shooting at us scene through
the inevitable song reflecting the film title through the obligatory “Bond,
James Bond” tip of the hat and through the equally obligatory Cold War-tinged
thrilling action a minute involving improbable feats and almost equally
implausible high tech gadgetry. And of course the inevitable string of foxy
women ready to get down under the silky sheets with a Bond merely at the sight of
him. Although there has been a welcome trend, reflecting the reality of the
women’s movement in the Western world at least, away from that passive foxy
female role and a more active role, for good or evil, along with that downy
billows stuff (“downy billows” courtesy of the writer Tom Wolfe). So the real
comparison is between the attributes and demerits of the stable of Bond
players. As demonstrated in this his last film as Bond young Timothy Dalton did
not make the cut.
Here’s why. The bad guys
in this one are south of the border, meaning Hispanic, Latino drug dealers (the
Cold War tip being their working at least in transit via Cuba). Meaning they
are serious bad asses lead by psychotic sadist Sanchez in the world of high end
drug trade. A thorn in the side of DEA and maybe the CIA if not exactly MI6
material which is to knock out high tech blow up the world stuff by some evil
forces and save the West or at least Britain. Way out of mission statement
sluggard seriously understated and poker-faced Timothy Dalton’s starts off his
cinematic journey on the way to a wedding where he is to be best man or
something. WTF neither Connery or Brosnan would be caught dead within a hundred
miles of a wedding chapel except maybe to exercise some lordly feudal right of
first night with the bride, blushing or not.
Not so Timmy boy. See he
is buddy-buddy with the local CIA chief and his lovely bride. Shortly after the
wedding those bad ass drug traffickers throw the agent through the grinder, the
shark tank grinder to show how sadistic that crowd is and kill his bride for
kicks. So Timmy is on a mission not for Queen and country but personal revenge.
How the mighty have fallen. So despite being warned off by M, and later loaded
up with gizmos by Q also Bond series standard stuff Timmy is off to kill bad
guys- no prisoners here, after all he has a license to kill in case you have
not been paying attention to all this secret agent stuff of late.
He starts working his
way up the food chain and along the way while trying to see how the cartel
operates he comes across the head bad guy Sanchez’s mistress who is on a boat
used to transfer drugs for cash. Naturally a drop dead beauty, a hot-blooded
Spanish beauty whom he does not go under the sheets with right there and then.
Connery or Brosnan would have had her for lunch and had time for a nap
afterward. Maybe Timmy, is as they used to say in Sandy’s old neighborhood
before everybody got okay with having gay guys out of the closet, ‘light on his
feet” or something. They crossed paths a couple of times and no go. Something
is definitely wrong here.
As Timmy gets to the top
of the food chain, gets to the country (fake named but based on real drug route
Panama in the old days maybe now too) where the bad hombres are headquartered
he runs into a dish, a good looking young woman, Pam, played by Cary Lowell, who
also has abilities like being able to fly a plane (and later drive a heavy duty
truck). They hit the sheets quickly after a little repartee so that question
about Timmy sexual preferences gets answered seemingly he is just a shy boy or
something. Working together they start moving in on the bad guys, start taking
names and numbers and not asking questions until the big finale when after blowing
up the bad guys’ cocaine laboratory among other things the bad guys head on the
road to deliver their goods via oil trucks (through the marvels of modern chemistry
cocaine could be dissolved in oil for easy and safe delivery-nice ploy). The
final confrontation shows a lot of trucks being blown up and the bulk of the
bad guys including the head bad guy Sanchez burned-literally.
Work finished, revenge
taken, Timmy and Pam go to a party where the head bad guy’s now ex-girlfriend although
not dressed in mourning black courtesy of Timmy makes a play for him leaving
Pam blue, very blue. Except Timmy, and this will tell the tale as well as any
about why this James Bond is not up to snuff, rebuts the senorita and goes to
that very blue Pam. Yeah, true blue Timmy that kind of says it all about this
fake news Bond, James Bond. Fortunately Pierce will follow Timmy in the role
and all will be back to jump street again.
The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens-The “Queen” Of The Appalachia Hills And Saturday Night Red Barn Dance
By Sam Lowell
This is the fourth and final installment (the first dated January 13, 2018, the second dated January 19, 2018, and the third January 24, 2018) set as an introduction to the history of the American Left History blog. Initially I believed that this would be a several part series and now it looks like with this final section about the massive internal in-fighting and resultant shake-up that brought the original leader of all of these publications down, brought in a new regime with my help and whatever direction the new leadership is heading we are finally done with a task a lot harder than I thought it would be. For a final time as I have been at pains to mention before this task came to me because I am one of the few people, more importantly one of the few writers, who has taken part in almost all of the key junctures in this forty something year history including the latest flare-up which has brought about a new regime, again partially with my help, so I am well-placed to tell the tale.
As part of the “truce” arranged with current site manager Greg Green I will tell the story and will elicit comments from a couple of other Editorial Board members. The first installment dealt with the genesis of this blog with hard copy predecessors going back to the late 1960s when a number of the older writers still standing came on board, many through long friendships with the previous site manager going back to high school days, those including myself. The second dealt with the dog days of the hard copy version of this blog and the greying of its staff. The third dealt with the transfer to the on-line version and some preliminary observations about how the just completed internal struggle came to such a fiery conclusion and explain how I became a member of the opposition. This final section as I said will deal with the food fight of 2017.
All four parts of the now completed project will appear as one unit on February 10th.
*********
In a sense this last section is a bit anti-climactic since I have laid out the history leading up to the split, my part in it, and the result with the removal of the former site manager Alan Jackson in what I have described truly as a purge. (Some “fragile” types on both sides have backed off from that designation saying it is too rough but Allan knows, just as well as I do both of us veterans of many old-time political struggles in radical circles, that he had been purged.) That elevated Greg Green who had originally come over from the American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations to site manager. As part of the post-Allan regime Greg decided that he would create an Editorial Board to oversee everything and back up his decisions. For transparency reasons I should note that I sit on that board. I should also note that although it has only been in existence the past few months that there has been gripping about it being a rubber-stamp, a group of Greg toadies, and other derogatory remarks from young and older writers alike. Greg has also hired a couple of younger writers, really twenty something out of journalism schools and English majors. Brought on Josh Breslin’s former companion, Leslie Dumont, who many years ago worked here as a stringer but getting nowhere with Alan’s regime left and finally wound up with a big by-line at New York Monthly. Brought on my long-time companion Laura Perkins who also worked as a stringer and got nowhere with Alan and left for an academic and high tech career. Still no soap on getting any black writers, or more generically “writers of color.”
Those are the results thus far not without controversy and some hard feelings especially by the older writers who have been stripped of their titles, younger writers too who had worked for titles. Worse and which almost caused another explosion every writer now can be assigned any topic on any subject to as Greg says “broaden their horizons.” But enough of the current doings and back to the spring of 2017 and the genesis of the in-fighting that has brought these changes.
It almost seems like some twisted kiss of fate that Alex James, Zack’s oldest brother (who by the way is about ten years older than Zack showing a good example of the relative sense of “younger” writers Allan was bringing in. Certainly nobody as young as twenty something Kenny Jacobs), an old friend of ours from the old neighborhood, who went on to become a successful lawyer, went on a business trip to San Francisco last spring (2017). While there out of the blue Alex saw an advertisement on the side of a bus for something called The Summer of Love Experience, 1967 at the de Young Museum in famous Golden Gate Park. Sneaking (according to Alex) out one afternoon he saw the exhibition and was positively floored by the experience. See, he, we, under the “guidance” of the late Peter Paul Markin had been in the thick of the “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” mantra which all of that experience went under. When he got back to Boston Alex called or e-mailed everybody he knew from back in the days who was still standing and who had gone out there to see what was happening, to see as Markin had called it “the world turned upside down.” He gathered a number of us, including Zack who had gone to journalism school and was a veteran of various workshop programs, together in order to propose that in honor of our fallen brother Markin each write our “memoirs” of those times with Zack as editor and publisher. Those who agreed included old friend Allan Jackson who had also gone out there with us. The venture was a great success and various portions were posted last summer on the ALH blog as well as in booklet form.
That seemingly small exercise in 1960s nostalgia apparently snapped something in Allan’s head. I have already mentioned the drift of the blog on the part of the older writers who were allowed by Allan to pick whatever subject they wanted (with the left-overs to the younger writers). Last summer right after the memorial booklet was published and articles posted Allan decided to do a massive blanket coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love by assigning a million topics related to that time. If you couldn’t link the Summer of Love, or the 1960s “hippie” experience, into your article he would red-pencil what you had written. (Allan liked to use a red pencil to “edit” something about his radical red youth he said when asked why he didn’t use the usual blue pencil.) This was no joke on Allan’s part. I was doing a little piece on figure skating after reviewing a Sonja Henny 1930s film. Allan asked me why I didn’t bring up the ice skating rink at Fillmore and Pacific where “hippies” would go to skate during 1967 when we were out there. WTF.
All of this came to a head when young Alden Riley, a new hire for the film department to help Sandy Salmon out with the increased load of films that were projected by Greg on the site. He was “assigned” by Allan, over Sandy’s head, to do a review on a bio/pic about Janis Joplin, a key musical figure in the heady days of the Monterey Pops Festival. Reason? After Sandy had done a review of D. A Pennebaker’s documentary about the first Monterey Festival he mentioned Ms. Joplin’s name and Alan said he did not know who she was. Allan heard about that blunder and ordered the assignment as “punishment’ is what he told Si Lannon, another of our old friends. Things only got worse from there as Allan double-downed on the Summer of Love connection for each article.
I am not quite sure who called the first meeting of essentially the whole rank of younger writers (average age somebody figured out about forty-five years old) to see what they would do about Allan’s manic behavior and their dubious assignments which to a man they could give f - -k about to quote Zack. Maybe it was Zack since he Lance Lawrence and Bradley Fox were the three ringleaders of the uprising who in water cooler legend were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They decided to go to Allan and put their cards on the table. He rebuffed them out of hand. That is when I came in, came to one of their meetings being invited by Alden, to see if I could reason with Allan. I proposed to Allan that we get Greg Green from American Film Gazette to come in to do the day to day operations leaving Allan time to write some stuff on his own or think about future assignments. He bought my argument once I explained that we might lose the whole cohort if things didn’t change. They didn’t as Allan pressed Greg to hand out these never-ending freaking 1960s world assignments.
To make a long story short the “Young Turks” (and me) had another meeting, an ultimatum meeting with me as the emissary to Allan again. The proposal of the group was either Allan “retire” or they collectively would quit. The decision to be determined by a majority vote-for or against. For some reason even I don’t understand to this day Allan agreed. You know the rest including my “traitorous” vote with the “Young Turks.” My decisive vote since we won by one vote. What you may not know is that while the split was almost directly along generational lines there were several abstentions among the older writers from the tallies. Any one of them casting a vote for Allan would have shifted the totals the other way and I would have been the one “purged” and working in Kansas someplace. So some of the older guys had also doubts about the wisdom of going back to the past. Now that you have the whole story this episode should be at rest. (With the exception of any articles still in the pipeline before the truce with Greg was negotiated.)
Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.
Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).
On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.
Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.
What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.
Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.
Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.
So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.
[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos. They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Frederick Douglass.
February Is Black History Month Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Frankie
Riley’s Theory- With Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep” In Mind –Take Two
JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin'
down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere
around
Traced her footsteps down to the
shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to
say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless
sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we
fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into
the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to
say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless
sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to
me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to
say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to
keep
I saved my baby from an endless
sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
**********
I want the iPhone number and e-mail
address of the person who wrote this one, wrote these death-dealing lyrics
above. Of course I would not touch a hair on the head of well-side-burned
pretty boy Jody Reynolds since I may need to use his song sometime myself so I
will reserve my fury for Delores Nance for leading Jody astray on this one. As
far as getting her iPhone number and e-mail, well, okay since this song goes
back a way I will give some choices just to show I am not a guy hung on being
very, very up-to-date with the latest communications technology and don’t
realize that not everybody has made their mark on the information superhighway.
Hell I won’t be particular and will be old-fashioned enough to just request the
landline number and street address of Ms. Nance. She, in any case should be
made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be
real justice in this case made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the
morals of the youth of his time. Yeah, the more I think about the matter before
us that latter choice seems most fitting.
Why all the hubbub? Why am I
insisting on deep Socratic measures for some poor Tin Pan Alley denizen? Well
read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics printed above for your perusal on Endless
Sleep. Old Jesse Lee, let’s call him that, although as in most cases with
these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things
like Johnny Angel, teen angel, earth angel, be-bopper, him, her, she, he, they,
etc. like giving names to angry anguished teens in the red scare cold war night
was akin to aiding and abetting the Russkies or was some grave matter of kinky
national security concerns, and his honey have had a spat, of unnamed origin so
we never get to figure out who had justice on his or her side. Okay, so maybe
it was a bigger one than usual but in the whole wide-world historic meaning of
things still just a spat. Laura, high-strung Laura, again name made up although
not the angst to give some personality to this sketch since we revealed Lee’s
name and nothing much has happened to him as a result. Judging from her
reaction thought whatever irked her was a world-historic dispute, and she just
flat-out flipped out. Nothing new to that phenomenon as teenagers have been flipping
out since they invented teenagers about a century maybe more ago although they
have not always called what said teenagers did “flipping out.” And, as
teenagers often will do in a moment of overreaction to some slight, Laura had gone
down to the seaside to end it all. Throw her young body, whether it was shapely
or not we never find out either but figure with a name like Laura she is, well,
“hot,” high school hot or Jesse Lee and his big ass ’57 Chevy would have no
truck with her to begin with, into the sea. Lee in desperation, once he heard
from some inevitably unnamed third party, I say apparently unnamed although
maybe it was from some more reliable source like Susie Darling, Laura’s best
friend since elementary school, what Laura had done, frantically tried to find
her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the churning “sea”
is relentlessly, almost sexually cone hither calling out for him to join her.
Jesus what a scene.
And that last part, the part where
the sea, or Laura now acting as the ocean’s agent, practically begs for a joint
teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged
parents either, should, or should have, put his or her foot down and gone after
the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines
(although like I say not me, not me just in case that she I am eying right now
might have a crush on Jody, or actually like such deathly lyrics). Yeah, I know
old Jesse Lee saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have
this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers. Right?
Of course, from what I heard
third-hand from a friend of a friend who claims to have scoped out what really
happened, this quarrel that old Lee speaks of, and that Laura went ballistic
over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Lee’s guy friends
and their girls down at old Jack Slack’s bowling alleys or whatever the name of
the bowling alleys were in there town to roll a few strings Saturday or to the
drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. (I have used Jack Slack’s bowling
establishment here since that is where me and my corner boys hung out, hung out
one night discussing the meaning of all of the acts in this very song so Jack
Slack’s will do nicely to fill in a name for what ailed our beloved couple.) Jesse
Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid despite his corner boy reputation and some
things said about his style around town, reared up at that thought of going to
another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king. The king riding around in a
big old car, some pink Caddy, dressed in some gaudy Hawaiian shirt and white
beach pants attire, singing some lamo syrupy songs that in his Sun Records days
when he was young and hungry and talking about one night of sin and
jailbreak-out stuff he would have thrown out the studio door, having plenty of
dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to
help him spent that dough. Of such disputes the battle of the sexes abound, and
occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that
take on the dispute, which sounds reasonable to me, I think old Jesse Lee had
much the best of it. And, also off of that same take I am not altogether sure I
would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear,
sweet Laura. Just kidding.
Okay, okay I know what everybody is
going to say, or at least think now. What has this guy not at least given Laura
her say, her day in court to explain he dramatic behavior. This information was
harder to glean because I had to get it from a friend of Laura’s friend Susie
Darling. Susie sworn on a stack of seven bibles or something that she would not
reveal to anyone Laura’s motivation under penalty of death. Of course in the
ethos of the times and age that swearing unto death business just meant telling
only one other person, a girl person in this case, come Monday morning before
school girls’ “lav” talkfest. So according to this hearsay what Laura was
miffed about was that Jesse Lee had not been paying enough attention to her of
late, had been almost every night out with his corner boys doing wheelers with
his car or whatever guys do when their honeys are not on board. So the drive-in
movie idea was to get Jesse Lee to pay more serious attention to her was not
about the movie, not about Elvis although Laura, like every other girl in America
had her dreams about how she could tame Elvis in a flash if she could just get
close to him, but about “doing the do.” See Laura a few weeks before had let
Jesse Lee have his way with her but since then-no go. And she wanted to do it.
But here is the kicker the place where Laura went into the sea is exactly the
place where they had first made love. Jesus.
But that brings something up,
something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little
having grown up so near it that I could roll down a hill and take a splash.
Love the sea and its tranquility, of the effect that those waves, splashing
waves too, have on my temperament. But I also know about the power of the sea,
about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anyone, anything,
any object that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls
that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats
lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And
Laura should have too, should have known on that dark rainy night the power of
the sea. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should tempt
the fates, and Lee’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.
The whole scenario once I thought
about it reminded me, although I offer this observation in contrast, of the
time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great
American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve
Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, out
there near Point Magoo in California never having seen the ocean before, leaped
right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had,
all I knew or remembered about how to ride out a riptide to pull her out. To
save her from the briny deep. And that Angelica error was out of sheer
ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I
personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad
to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.
In January of each year, communists honor the Three L’s: Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. German Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated in January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps, acting at the behest of the Social Democratic Party, as part of the crushing of a workers uprising. Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin died in January 1924. Keeping with early communist tradition, in 1945 the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party published a special “Lenin Memorial Number” of its theoretical journal devoted to the supreme architect of the proletarian revolution.
At a time when the whole Socialist movement consisted of loose, sprawling, easy-going parties, with an accommodating attitude toward every perversion of the Marxist program; in the period when the whole of Social Democracy was beginning to fall victim to opportunism; when party work was designed primarily for the winning of electoral successes and conducting loyal oppositions in the various bourgeois parliaments and legislative assemblies, Lenin came forward and pioneered an entirely new type of revolutionary Marxist party, never before seen in history. Lenin’s party was tight-knit, compact, bound by an iron discipline, based upon unyielding adherence to Marxism—the science of the proletarian revolution. Lenin’s party was built for revolutionary combat. It was designed specifically to launch the revolutionary offensive against the citadel of capitalism. How eloquent are Zinoviev’s words in his speech on Lenin [30 August 1918] and how much they tell us of the real Lenin when he says: Lenin never permitted anybody to insult Marx. No! How could he? Lenin was no dabbler, no dilettante. Lenin was deadly serious about the proletarian revolution. How could he therefore tolerate any lightmindedness or playfulness toward the theory of scientific socialism?
Lenin was not the only left-winger in the Second International. The Socialist movement had many other great revolutionary leaders. Some like Rosa Luxemburg had a masterful understanding of Marxism and possessed superb talents. But they did not comprehend the indispensability of a Leninist-type party. Only Lenin fully understood, fully grasped what kind of party the proletariat needed in order to triumph. And he had the iron will to drive through despite all opposition and calumny and create that kind of a revolutionary party. Just as the Paris Commune revealed to the working class the form of its rule, the form under which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be exercised, so Lenin’s Bolshevik Party showed in practice the type of organization the proletariat must have in order to make the revolution and secure its victory.
The German proletariat paid dearly for this lack, for the absence of a Leninist party. In 1918, the revolution rose in Germany and the whole country was covered with a network of Soviets. But the revolutionary vanguard, the Spartacists, were unprepared. They had not yet forged a genuine revolutionary party, closely tied to the working class and capable of leading it in action. The revolution inevitably rolled over their heads and the Social Democratic traitors were able to deflect and abort the revolution. It was different in Russia. A year before in 1917, when revolutionary conditions ripened, Lenin was ready. The Bolsheviks under Lenin seized the favorable opportunity and led the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. Marxism found its highest historical expression and vindication in Bolshevism.
—“The Heritage of Lenin,” Fourth International, January 1945
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Beach
Blanket Bongo- With The Falcons' You're So Fine –Take Two In
Mind
The Falcons
You're So Fine
You're So Fine
The Falcons
You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you
I love you, I love you
I need you, I need you
I walk, and I talk, about you
There's nothing in the world as sweet as your kiss
so fine, so fine
Every time we meet, my heart skips a beat
You're my first cup of coffee
( my last cup of tea) Bass line
You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you
Sax solo You're so fine, you're so fine
You're mine, you're mine
I walk, and I talk, about you
*******
Sometimes it is funny how people will
get into certain jags, will become aficionados, no, more than that will become
single-minded fanatics if you don’t watch them very carefully and keep an
appropriate distance say the distance you would keep from a cobra. Some of us will go all out to be the best at
golf or some such sport (or game, I guess you would call golf a game rather
than sport because sport sounds too rough, sounds too in-your-face for such a
gentile pastime, for the active mashing of some innocent white ball, yeah,
let’s call it a game and move on) or will devout endless hours to the now
thirty-seven, at least, flavors of yoga now passing through a rage period (no,
I will not name all the variants, all the exotically-named mostly
Hindu-sounding names, except to say
that such devotion at least makes health sense strangling some poor misbegotten
caddie for not providing the right club for that perfect golf shot you had
lines up) and others will climb straight-faced (theirs and the mountain’s)
sheer rock precipices (no further comment needed except perhaps a sane citizen
might just suggest that gentile pastime of golf to those sheer rocks). So be
it.
Take me for example
although I am not up for rigors of golf (or the premediated first-degree murder
of some errant golf ball either), yoga (although thinking back the Kama Sutra
came out of that same tradition so it might be worthy of some thought) or
mountain-baiting (I like my rocks strictly in museums where they belong) recently
I have been on a tear in reviewing individual[CL1] CDs in an extensive generic commercial classic Rock ‘n’
Roll series (meaning now the 1950s and 1960s) entitled Rock and Roll Will Never Die. The impetus for reviewing that
particular CD series at first had been in order to hear the song Your So Fine by the Falcons after I had
been listening to The Dubs’ Could This Be
Magic on YouTube. That combination was driven by a memory flashback to
about 1959 when I used to pester (I am being kind here) every available girls
in my seventh grade class by being timid boy flirty and calling her, well, “so
fine.” Available girls by the way meaning not going “steady” with a boy,
especially a guy who might be on the football team and who might take umbrage
with another guy trying to cut his time. Although let’s say that if she was
going with a golf guy I might cut his time since they live by some strange
honor system, you know count exactly the number of strokes you took to complete
the hole, including those three, not two, you clunked into the pond. Available girl also meaning in seventh grade,
unlike in sixth or fifth grade where the distinctions did not matter because
they were all nuisances, girls who had gotten a shape and broken out of
“stick-dom.” Those are the ones who were worthy of Jeff Sterling, that’s me,
“so fine” designation. Such is the memory bank these days.
While that particular review was driven
by a song most of those reviews that I was crazy to listen to and speak about
had been driven by the intriguing artwork which graced the covers of each CD, pinpoint
artwork drawn in such a way to stir ancient memories of ancient loves, ancient
loves, too many to count, anguishes, ditto, alienations, you give a number,
angsts, infinite, and whatever else teen–age life could rain down on you just
when you were starting to get a handle on the world, starting to do battle to
find your place in the sun. Starting to feel too that this wicked old world
might be a place worthy of the fight to preserve it but such thoughts were only
flushed out later, much later after the dust of angst and alienation
settled.
Moreover these artwork covers reflected
that precise moment in time, time being a very conscious and fungible concept
then when we thought we would live forever and if we did not at least let us do
our jailbreak rock and roll rock with the time we had, the youth time of the
now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer
generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in
as the case may have been, to the themes of those artwork scenes. That fit in
or didn’t fit in as the example of that flirty “your so fine” mantra that I
would pin on any girl (remember any available girl not going steady and not
with some big brute just in case that big brute is still holding a grudge).
Some artwork in the series like those
that portrayed the terrors of Saturday night high school dance wallflower-dom,
hanging around the you-name-it drugstore soda fountain waiting for some dreamy
girl to drop her quarters in the juke-box and ask you, you of all people, what
she should play to chase her blues away after some guy left her for another girl and she needed
a sound to shed a tear by and you there with that empty shoulder to ease the
way, or how about a scene down at the seclude end of Adamsville Beach with a
guy and his gal sitting watching the surf and listening to the be-bop radio
before, well, let’s leave it at “before,” and picture this a few beauties
sunning themselves at the beach waiting for Johnny Angel to make an appearance
need almost no comment except good luck and we, we of that 1950s demographic,
all recognize those signposts of growing up in the red scare cold war night.
This cover that I am thinking of though
did not “speak” to me, a 1959 artwork cover from the time when the music
died (meaning Elvis turned “square,” Chuck got caught with Mister’s girls and
Jerry Lee failed to check the family tree).
On this cover, a summer scene (always a
nice touch since that was the time when we had least at the feel of our
generational breakout, listening all afternoon to the transistor radio, trying
to keep the sand from destroying your sandwich, getting all or red and pretty
for Saturday night in white), two blondish surfer guys, surf boards in tow,
were checking out the scene, the land scene for that minute they were not
trying to ride the perfect wave, or thinking about that possibility. That
checking out of course was to check out who was “hot” on the beach, who could
qualify to be a “surfer girl” for those lonely nighttime hours when either the
waves were flat or the guys had been in the water so long they had turned to prunes.
That scene although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform
you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, certainly
not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, and
longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains), can only mean
checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that
primitive time before we called them sisters, and women.
No question that this whole scene had
been nothing but a California come hinter scene. No way that it has the look of
my Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth. This is nothing but early days
California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed
bikini girls. But hold on, see as little as I know about West Coast 1950s
growing up surfer culture I was suddenly struck by this hard fact. These pretty
boys are, no question, “beach bums” no way that they are serious surfer guys,
certainly not Tom Wolfe’s Pump House La Jolla gang where those surfers lived
for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such activity
one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. In short
these guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough to draw the attention of
those shes they are checking out into the humid night I will leave to the
reader’s imagination.
As I noted before and commented on in
the review the music, the 1959 music, that backed up this scene told us we were
clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis,
Elvis, and Chuck Berry was fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as
“bubble gum” music. Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard on my old
transistor radio up in my lonely shared room or out on those surly, tepid
Eastern beaches mainly because that was all that was being presented to us.
Somehow the parents, the cops, the school administrators and, if you can
believe this, some of those very same bikini girls who you thought were cool
had flipped out and wanted to hear Fabian, Bobby Vee and Bobby Darin, got to
the record guys, got to Tin Pan Alley and ordered them to make the music like
some vanilla shake. So all of a sudden those “you’re so fine” beach blanket
blondes were sold on faux surfer guys, flip-floppers and well-combed guys and
had dumped the beat, the off-beat and the plainly loopy without a thought.
Leaving hard-boiled Harvard Square by night denizens like me homeless, and
girl-less more than less.
It was to be a while, a few years,
until the folk, folk rock, British invasion, and free expression rock engulfed
us. My times, times when I did not have to rely on some kids’ stuff flirty
“your so fine” line but could impress the young women of my acquaintance
(admittedly not the beach blanket bingo blondes of my youth but long straight
brunette-haired women with faraway eyes and hungry haunted expressions) with
eight million Child ballad, Village, traditional music, mountain music facts I
had accumulated during that red scare cold war trough before the break-out.
As the bulk of that CD’s contents
attested to though we were in 1959 in the great marking time. There were,
however, some stick-outs there that have withstood the test of time. They
include: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re
So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite
then at the local school dances by a local boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr.
Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway
that you hoped, hoped to distraction that they would play for the last dance),
The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated
singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for
a while).
Note: After a recent trip to the
Southern California coast I can inform you that those two surfer guys, who
actually did turn out to be landlubbers and were working the shoreline while
serious surfers with no time for beach blanket bingo blondes sought that
perfect wave stuff, are still out there and still checking out the scene.
Although that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect
wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. No artist would now, or
at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these
brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo
hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge out
those surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the
baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.
Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account Of Saigon’s Indecent End Told By The CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst In Vietnam, Frank Snepp, Random House, New York, 1977 Sometimes a picture is in fact better than one thousand words. In this case the famous, or infamous depending on one’s view, photograph of the last American “refugees” being evacuated from the American Embassy in Saigon (now, mercifully, Ho Chi Minh City) tells more about that episode of American imperial hubris that most books. Still, as is the case with this little gem of a book, ex- CIA man Frank Snepp’s insider account of that fall from the American side, it is nice to have some serious analytical companionship to that photo. Moreover, a book that gives numerous details about what happened to who in those last days in a little over five hundred pages and who the good guys and bad guys really were. Especially now, as two or three later generations only see Vietnam through the hoary eyes of old veterans (both military and radical anti-war) from that period like me to tell the tale.
Naturally, a longtime CIA man who in a fit of his own hubris decides, in effect, to blow the whistle on the American fiasco, has got his own axes to grind, and his own agenda for doing so. Bearing that in mind this is a fascinating look at that last period of American involvement in Vietnam from just after the 1973 cease-fire went into place until that last day of April in 1975 when the red flag flew over Saigon after a thirty plus year struggle for national liberation. For most Americans the period after the withdrawal of the last large contingents of U.S. troops from combat in 1972 kind of put paid to that failed experiment in “nation-building”-American-style.
For the rest of us who wished to see the national liberation struggle victorious we only had a slight glimmer that sometime was afoot until fairly late- say the beginning of 1975, although the rumor mill was running earlier. So Mr. Snepp’s book is invaluable to fill in the blanks for what the U.S., the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese were doing, or not doing.
Snepp’s lively account, naturally, centers on the American experience and within that experience the conduct of the last ambassador to Saigon, Graham Martin. Snepp spares no words to go after Martin’s perfidious and maniacal role, especially in the very, very last days when the North Vietnamese were sweeping almost unopposed into Saigon. But there is more, failures of intelligence, some expected, others just plain wrong, some missteps about intentions, some grand-standing and some pure-grade anti-communist that fueled much of the scene.
And, of course, no story of American military involvement anyplace is complete without plenty of material about, well the money. From Thieu’s military needs (and those of his extensive entourage) to the American military (and their insatiable need for military hardware), to various American administrations and their goals just follow the money trail and you won’t be far off the scent. And then that famous, or infamous, photograph of that helicopter exit from the roof of the American Embassy in just a nick of time makes much more sense. Nice work, Frank Snepp. The whistleblower’s art is not appreciated but always needed. Just ask Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.
