The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-“You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”-With The Chiffons Performing Their Classic Sweet Talkin’ Guy In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-“You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”-With The Chiffons Performing Their Classic Sweet Talkin’ Guy In Mind

By Allan Jackson

[A lot of this rock and roll series of which I am what Greg Green calls giving modern introductions to although the series only got completed six or seven years ago got a big push as I, we, entered some 50^th anniversary milestones, particularly upcoming high school class reunions. Something about the 50^th anniversary of anything in human experience draws us like lemmings to the sea to reflection which let us say the 100^th anniversary which most of us would not be around to commemorate does not. At least fifty has something to commend itself for those who have survived the long march, have not fallen as a look at any high school class yearbook will disclose that a number, maybe ten to fifteen per cent, did not make and wonder about what happened to this or that person who you swore eternal allegiance to and then let disappear off your map the day you graduated.

Things like that and things like in my, our case how the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys whom everybody expected to spent serious time in some forlorn prison didn’t do so badly in the aggregate (a few did fall down the prison rat hole and a few fell down in Vietnam and wound up etched in a black granite wall down in Washington and beloved Scribe was wasted early by his own hubris and those damn wanting habits that burned away at his heart, our hearts, still do). So we wanted to “show the colors,” stick a finger up and you can guess which one at the sullen jocks, social whirl butterflies who would not give us the time of day and assorted other clichés who made a big turn whenever they saw us coming. In the end all of that was not as important maybe as I found the hard way in 2017 as what Scribe inspired us to do later, to break out of some predetermined mold and breathe our own airs.          

All of this to say one simple thing, or one simple thing that drove me to distraction while I was nursing the series along, about rock and roll music getting us through the rough parts, about every good and bad thing of our youth cutting across the hard fact that rock and roll was our salvation music, was our very own gospel music. And if I mention the ill-fated beloved Scribe too much for a guy who fell under the wagon early and whose actual influence lasted only a few years then it because all that he taught us, all we learned via that mad monk came tied with a ow called rock and roll which we would have never appreciated so much without his driving cadence to see us through some rough spots as much as we bitched and moaned about the stuff he tried to fill our heads with at the time. Amen Allan Jackson]   

Sweet talking guy, talking sweet kinda lies
Don't you believe in him, if you do he'll make you cry
He'll send you flowers
And paint the town with another guy

He's a sweet talkin' guy
(Sweet talkin' guy)
But he's my kind of guy
(Sweet talkin' guy)

Sweeter than sugar, kisses like wine
(Oh, he's so fine)
Don't let him under your skin, 'cause you'll never win
(No, you'll never win)

Don't give him love today, tomorrow he's on his way
He's a sweet talkin' guy
(Sweet talkin' guy)
But he's my kind of guy
(Sweet talkin' guy)

Why do I love him like I do

He's a sweet talkin', sweet talkin'
(Sweet talkin', sweet talkin')
Guy

Stay away from him, stay away from him
Don't believe his lyin'
No you'll never win, no you'll never win
Loser's in for cryin'

Don't give him love today, tomorrow he's on his way
He's a sweet talkin', sweet talkin'
(Sweet talkin', sweet talkin')
Sweet talkin', sweet talkin'
(Sweet talkin')

(Sweet talkin')
Guy

Stay away from him
(Sweet, sweet, sweet talkin' guy)
No, no, no you'll never win
(Sweet, sweet, sweet talkin' guy)

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MORRIS, DOUG/GREENBERG, ELIOT/BAER, BARBARA J / SCHWARTZ, ROBERT MICHAEL

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Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, HOMEFIELD MUSIC, SPIRIT MUSIC GROUP

********

A while back, a couple years ago now I guess, Sam Lowell the recently semi-retired Boston lawyer from our high school class looking for some things to fill up his spare time and to respond to the nostalgic feelings that he had been having once he reconnected with a couple of his old corner boys from our North Adamsville High days in the early 1960s, Frankie Riley and Josh Breslin, started writing little sketches about “what was what” back in the day. That “what was what” could have been anything from the local meaning of “submarine races” (that is simple, this was just an expression to denote what those who, boyfriends and girlfriends, were doing who went by midnight automobile down to Adamsville Beach and eventually came up for air and you can figure out what they were doing that required such a motion without any further comment); the grooming habits of working-class guys like Sam before the big school dance (plenty of Listerine, plenty of Old Spice, plenty of Right Guard, plenty of Wild Root hair oil, and new shirt and pants from the “Bargie,” a local pre-Wal-Mart institution for the chronically poor to look good for one night); the midnight “chicken run” down the back roads of Adamsville (self-explanatory for any brethren who craved a fast “boss” car, the ’57 Chevy being the prize of prizes or had seen Rebel Without A Cause which enflamed the hunger), or the nefarious way to get six to eight males and females into the local drive-in for the price of two (easy, a snap, just load up that big old trunk and have said occupants stop breathing at the admissions booth, yeah real easy and then you could spent the collective “savings” on the cardboard hot dogs, the over-salted, over-buttered popcorn not quite popped to perfection, the leathery hamburgers in wanted of a barrelful of ketchup and a big pickle to get through, and the heavy-ice flat soda, then in New England called “tonic”).

Sam made a few people laugh beside Frankie and Josh when they placed his stuff on their Facebook pages and got a response from several of our old high school classmates asking for some more sketches (and other “friends,” you know the way that social network explodes once you take the ticket,take the ride and click on, who came of age in the early 1960s and had similar stories to tell and get a chuckle over as well). Sam felt “compelled” to reply.           

A lot of what helped Sam remember various events from those days was going to the local library, the main Cambridge Public Library, and check out materials from their extensive holding of classic (ouch!) rock and roll compilations. One commercial series which covered the time period from about 1955 to 1968 in many volumes also had time-appropriate artwork designs on the cover of each CD. Those covers brought to Sam’s mind the phenomenon that he wanted to write about. In this case, this 1966 case, the cover art detailed the then almost ubiquitous merry prankster-edged converted yellow brick road school bus, complete with assorted vagabond minstrel/ road warrior/ah, hippies, that “ruled” the mid-1960s highway and by-ways in search of the great American freedom night. The “merry prankster” expression taken from the king hell king “hippie” philosopher-king of the time author Ken Kesey and his comrades who Tom Wolfe immortalized in his “new journalism” book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. That cover triggered memories of his own merry prankster moments with another corner boy from high school that he went west with in that year, Phil Larkin, and what happened to Phil when he “got on the bus” looking, well, “looking for the garden,” the Garden of Eden is what they called the adventure between themselves then. Sam said wistfully after he had finished the sketch that “We never found it in the end, but the search was worth it then, and still worth it now.” That is about right brother, just about right. But let Sam explain why he said that.

*****

A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally “good for you” locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. Two yawns because the teachers were trying to piece you off with some cheapjack sawdust hot dog with a Wonder Bread air-holes bun, some grizzled hamburger, ditto on the bun, maybe a little potato salad from Kennedy’s Deli for filler, and tonic (a New England localism meaning soda) not your own individual bottle but served from gallons jugs into dinky Dixie cups. [Sam not knowing until much later that the teachers had pitched in to buy the provisions from their own pockets, so belated thanks.] And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s come flame or flash-out.

Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma” ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as "the search for the great blue-pink American Western night." [Sam an inveterate blogger since the first days he found out about that medium.]

Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that “primer” the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but numbers of trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo hotpinkorangelemonlime splashes and zodiacally meaningful symbols. Mushroomy exploding flowers, medieval crosses, sphinxlike animals, ancient Pharaoh’s pyramids, never-ending geometric figures, new religion splashes whatever came into a “connected” head.  

And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded to who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware, nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffle bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean.

Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food is what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop night take a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you can find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and work out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high-grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically, although just now, as a goof, it has to be a goof, right, one can hear Nancy Sinatra, christ, Frank’s daughter, how square is that, churning out These Boots Are Made For Walkin.’

And the driver. No, not mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she is driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west). No way, but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one notices those bumps (or else is so stoned, drug or music stoned, that those things pass like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Harverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And just now over that jerry-rigged big boom sound system, again as if to mock the newer world abrewin’ The Vogues’ Five O’ Clock World.

And the passengers. Well, no one is exactly sure, as the bus approaches the outskirts of Denver, because this is strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Nebraska, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town pokey. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music, especially when you are ready to scratch a blackboard over the selections like the one on now, James and Bobby Purify’s I’m Your Puppet, is not for everyone.

We do know for sure that Casey is driving, and still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake have not hit yet, or maybe he really is superman. And, well, that the “leader” here is Captain Crunch since it is “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, (real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia, Class of 1958, who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of "taking the ride"), Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), his girlfriend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice , not his, and he is not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” have monikers like Silver City Slim, Luscious Lois (and she really is), Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he tells it), Denver Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also have real names that indicate that they are from somewhere that has nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. And they are also, or almost all are, twenty-somethings that have some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not). And they are all either searching or, like the Captain, at a stage where they are just hooked into taking the ride.

One young man, however, sticks out, well, not sticks out, since he is dressed in de rigeur bell-bottomed blue jeans, olive green World War II surplus army jacket (against the mountain colds, smart boy), Chuck Taylor sneakers, long, flowing hair and beard (well, wisp of a beard) and on his head a rakish tam just to be a little different, “Far Out” Phil (real name Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964). And why Far Out sticks out is not only that he has no college year after his name, for one thing, but more importantly, that he is nothing but a old-time working-class neighborhood corner boy from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor back in North Adamsville, a close-by suburb of Boston.

Of course back then in town Far Out Phil was known, and rightly so as any girl, self-respecting or not, could tell you as “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the world champion swearer of the 1960s North Adamsville (and Adamsville Beach) be-bop night. And right now Far Out, having just ingested a capsule of some illegal substance (not LSD, probably mescaline) is talking to Luscious Lois, talking up a storm without one swear word in use, and she is listening, gleam in her eye listening, as ironically, perhaps, The Chiffons Sweet Talkin’ Guy is beaming forth out of his little battery-powered transistor radio (look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t know about primitive musical technology) that he has carried with him since junior high school. The winds of change do shift, do shift indeed.

[Sam and Phil were on that hell-broth road about a year, maybe a little more, until Phil faced an ugly draft notice from his “friends and neighbors” in Adamsville and figuring no other course, no jail, no Canada, no conscientious objector application came on the horizon to move this son of the working class from his fateful decision to accept his draft induction. Sam, another son of the working-class with a congenial heart problem (which his then drug intake could not have helped but we were young then and expected to live forever) and therefore 4-F decided to apply for law school and spent the next three years tied down to law books, court decisions, memoranda, and how to survive the bar exam.]       

Scene One, Take Twenty-Two-Audrey Hepburn and William Holden’s “Paris When It Sizzles” (1952)-A Film Review

Scene One, Take Twenty-Two-Audrey Hepburn and William Holden’s “Paris When It Sizzles” (1952)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Zack James

[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 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 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]

Paris When It Sizzles, starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Noel Coward, 1952   

[Maybe there is something to this change of leadership on this site. I will not go through the details of the change-over from the now disappeared Allan Jackson, who went by the moniker Peter Paul Markin, to Greg Green since Josh Breslin in his introduction to a film review on the original version of The Front Page (dated December 15, 2017) went over that in detail including the how and why of that moniker choose by Mr. Jackson.  What I will say in the interest of transparency was that I was among the leaders of what became around the office known as the “Young Turks” who were in varying degrees fed up with Markin/Jackson’s concentration over the last year or so on the turbulent 1960s, the time of his coming of age and that of a number of the older writers dubbed “the old-timers” in the dispute rather than the wider look at politics, culture, society, history which was the original intention when this operation got up and running on-line some fifteen years ago.

What I will also say and leave it at that for now is that I am happy that I have been able to finally do a film review rather than being pigeon-holed solely doing book reviews. Markin/Jackson, strangely given his coming of age at a time when among certain elements, especially the young, increasing thwarted any attempts by any writers, young or old, to write outside their specialties and within those specialties to create ranks for example when I started here several years ago I was designated associate book critic and Frank Jackman had the senior position (everybody else then was a stringer, a free-lancer) and when he moved over to Senior Political Commentator I moved into his spot and Brad Fox and Lance Lawrence became associates. Greg has, after a short unsuccessful experiment designating everybody including himself as “writer,” changed to just using everybody’s name alone in their byline identification spot. Maybe when Jackson was younger he would have bought into that idea but not recently so early on I have tip my hat to Greg on this one. Zack]     

*********

I read somewhere or maybe some English literature professor in college mentioned it but when you break down every story it fits into one of about ten major themes, at least in Western literature. That same observation can be used to cover Hollywood films which after all are in their basic frameworks based on words, on written scripts except the few, very few directors who ad lib their efforts. Hollywood may follow that pattern but when it comes taking a look at itself as a cultural transmission belt it has had a love-hate relationship with films which deal with the film industry. The film under review Paris When It Sizzles (frankly an odd title although the action does take place in Paris although it could have been set anywhere the important thing being that it lampoons every Hollywood trope along the way and so maybe Hollywood where the long knives would be at the ready probably rightly should have been passed over.   

Follow me if you can. Boozy, lazy, out of ideas or having too many ideas screen-writer Richard Benson with a ton of films under his belt, played by William Holden. Holden last seen in this space as a screenwriter turned “kept pet, kept man, floating face down in silent screen seen better days mentally ill Norma Desmond’s high number Sunset Boulevard mansion swimming pool after she put the rooty-toot-toot to him when he tried to leave her is under the gun from his producer played by noted playwright Noel Coward to get on with a script he has been procrastinating about until almost the end of his contract. (That film where Holden was last seen Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard not a paean to the industry that nurtured him either was an example of the hate part of the equation.) Enter Gaby, played by dewy-eyed, magic eyed fetching Audrey Hepburn who even younger guys like me have a crush on the minute they see her on screen and hope against hope of finding their own Ms. Hepburn lookalike, as a American ex-pat typist who is to do that duty while Benson rattles out the story-line before that two days ahead deadline.            

This is the beautiful part of the film (beyond some very funny and a few not so funny sent-ups of writers and the film industry) is that Benson with an assist or two by Gaby goes through every possible film genre once he/they establish the initial idea of having two young people meet in a production he has working- titled The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. They try the standard boy meets girl thing, suspense, intrigue, thriller, spy, horror, gangster, hell, even an old fashioned stand-by the barroom brawl before they are done. Here is the other beautiful part. This is really a story within a story, a boy meets girl story within a story since along the way, surprise, surprise one beat-up screen-writer and one typist fall head over heels in love. So maybe that thing I read or some English literature college professor was wrong, maybe there is only one major theme in Western literature and Hollywood-boy meets girl (and the modern same sex and transgender variation of late).              

(Thanks Greg for letting me spread my wings and I hope you assign me more film reviews. This is fun. Zack)

             

As We Pass The 1st Anniversary Of The “Cold” Civil War In America-A Tale Of Two Boston Resistance Events –Join The Resistance Now!

As We Pass The 1^st Anniversary Of The “Cold” Civil War In America-A Tale Of Two Boston Resistance Events –Join The Resistance Now!

By Si Lannon

The headline to this piece is something of a misnomer as the “cold” civil war in America as I have been calling the great expanding divide between left and right, the oppressed and the oppressor (and its hangers-on including, unfortunately, a not insignificant segment of the oppressed), the haves and have nots and any other way to express the vast gulf, getting wider, between those siding with white rich man’s power and the rest of us, since this cold civil war has been building for a couple of decades at least. The Age of Trump which started officially one year ago though is a pretty good milestone to measure both how far we of the left, of the oppressed, have come and to measure the responses by the oppressed (the ones not hanging on to the white rich men) a year out in Year I of the Age of Trump Resistance.

Two local signposts, let me call them, stick out this weekend of January 20^th. One, the Women’s Rally on Cambridge Common on the 20^th organized to commemorate the anniversary of the historic Women’s mega-rally and march in Washington and it’s gigantic satellite event on Boston Common, The other a cultural/political event organized by Black Lives Matter and its allies held in the historic Arlington Street Universalist-Unitarian Church in Boston on the 21^st.

Those two events which I attended in person in my capacity as a member Veterans Peace Action (VPA, an organization which my old friend Sam Lowell who will take the spotlight below got me involved in as fellow Vietnam War veterans) while they share some obvious over-lapping political perspectives to my mind represented two distinct poles of the resistance as it has evolved over the past several years.

No one, including I assume the organizers of the Women’s Rally, expected anything like the turnout for the 2017 Inaugural weekend event on the Boston Common or else they would have had the event on the Common so I did not expect a tremendous turnout. That event could not be duplicated and moreover over the year some of the anger over the Trump victory, etc. and maybe just plain horror and discouragement would have sapped some energies. However the several thousand who showed up represented a good turnout to my mind.

What I didn’t expect was the rather celebratory feeling that I got from the crowds as the poured into Cambridge Common from the nearby Harvard MBTA subway stop. I was positioned along with a number of my fellow VPAers as volunteers to insure the safety of the crowds and any threaten action by the Alt-Right who were said to be “organizing” a counter-rally at the Common as well. (In the event that small clot of people were isolated and protected by the Cambridge police without incident. We kept our side cool as well.)

That celebratory spirit, rather unwarranted given the defeats on our side over the previous year from Supreme Court justice to DACA to TPS to a million other injustices, flowed into the main thrust of the rally. Get Democrats, get women Democrats, elected to public office and “scare” the bejesus out of Donald J. Trump and his hangers-on. In other words the same old, same old strategy that the oppressed have been beaten down by for eons. Like things were dramatically better for those down at the base of society, down where everybody is “from hunger” with Democrats. Worse though than that pitch for the same old, same old was as the younger radicals say “who was not in the room, who had not been invited.” Who didn’t show up for the “lovefest” if it came to that. The representation on the speaker platform, always a key indicator of whose agenda and whose buttons are being pushed, looked like the old-time white middle-class feminist      cabal that has been herding these women-oriented political events for years to the exclusion on the many shades (and outlooks) of people of color. Not a good sign, not a good sign at all a year out when we are asking people in earnest to put their heads on the line for some serious social change.

Fast forward to the very next day at Arlington Street U-U Church in Boston where a Black Lives Matter event, co-sponsored by Veterans Peace Action, was held to a infinitely smaller crowd around black cultural expression and serious political perspectives. The cultural events were very fine, rap, music, poetry slam put on by skilled artists in those milieus. Interspersed in between those performances was very serious talk, egged on by the moderator, about future political perspectives, about the revolution, however anybody wanted to define that term, In short a far cry from what was being presented and “force-fed” in Cambridge the previous day.             

Now it has been a very long time since, except in closed circle socialist groups, that I have heard about the necessity of revolution (again whatever that might mean to the speaker), so it was like a breath of fresh air to hear such talk in Arlington Street Church, a place where legendary revolutionary abolitionist John Brown spoke, to drum up support for his Kansas expeditions and the later Harpers Ferry fights against slavery. Listening to the responses, as Sam Lowell who attended with me noted later, the missing links to the 1960s generation, to our generation, the last time a lot of people seriously used the word revolution, have left the younger activists in various states of confusion. That will be worked out in the struggle as long as people keep the perspective in mind. What bothered Sam, and me as well although I could not articulate it like him, were two points that seemed to have been given short shrift by the various talkers.

I was going to enumerate them but why don’t I let my recollection of what Sam said (edited by him before posting so very close to what he actually meant) to the gathering after listening to some things that as Fritz Taylor from the South, another VPAer and Vietnam vet used to say- “got stuck in his craw.” Sam had not intended to speak since he, we, thought the event was to be totally a cultural one so he kept it short but also to the point, to our collective agreement point:

“Hi, I am Sam Lowell for Veterans Peace Action (VPA), a co-sponsor of this great event. I didn’t expect to speak since I thought this would be solely a cultural event. But some comments here have got me thinking. First a quick bio point or two-like one of the sisters who performed I grew up in “the projects,” a totally white one, although still “the projects” with all the pathologies that entails and I have remained very close to those roots my whole life whatever successes I have had in breaking out of those beginnings. Early on, don’t ask me how or why, I came to admire John Brown, the white righteous avenging angel revolutionary abolitionist who fought slavery tooth and nail out in Kansas and later, more famously, at Harpers Ferry slave insurrection. He was, is, my hero, my muse if you can use such a term for avenging angels.      

A couple of points. One speaker mentioned a litany of oppressions which had to be eliminated by us, by society, by us as the most conscious of things like patriarchy, racism, classism, gender-sexual preference phobia for lack of a better term, a term that I could use anyway, capitalism and so on. What I have noticed though as people here have tried to struggle with all of that and come up with some kind of strategy is what Lenin, and others, have called imperialism, our American imperialism, which means against all the oppressed of the world we are “privileged” Americans privileged no matter what oppressions we face in this society.   

On this point I will bring back from the dead two important quotes from the legendary revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara-“it is the duty of revolutionaries to make the revolution.” We cannot spent our precious lives “purifying” ourselves of all the oppressions and all the ways we, in turn act as oppressors, so we are “worthy” of the revolution while the world outside this room suffers from our wrong-headed sense of liberation struggle. Second “we who are in the heart of the beast,” who are in America have a special obligation to bring the monster down. To fight the fight now and to be there when the masses rise up in righteous indignation.    

Second and last point. One speaker a few minutes ago mentioned that it seemed impossible that we could win against, 

I assume she meant the American ruling class, through the route of violent revolution so she projected by non-violent alternative which seemed to my ears rather utopian. She mentioned that the other side, the ruling class, had the heavy military advantage and so that route was precluded. That statement showed a lack of “imagination” which is the theme of this event. No question right now an armed uprising would be ruthlessly crushed. But when the masses rise and are determined a funny thing happens at least if you read history. The military splits along officer and soldier lines, the fighters of the war, the grunts, either go over to the people or go home. The cops go into hiding. 

 I would use the example of the Vietnam War which a lot of Veterans Peace Action members are very familiar with. At some point around 1968, 1969 the troops, the grunts on the ground in Vietnam, hell, here at home too began to essentially “mutiny” against the war in fairly big numbers. That army became unreliable, was in many ways broken both by the futility of fighting a determined enemy and vocal opposition at home. And that was not even close to a revolutionary situation but will give you an idea what that situation would look like as the masses rise. If it ever happened where will you be? Thank you.        

An Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane

An Encore -In The Time Of Elvis' Time-One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane

 

Sam Lowell, considered himself a corner boy from the time in the early 1960s when in the working-class neighborhoods of America were filled to the brim with such guys hanging out on the corners, in his case North Adamsville not far from urban Boston. Here is the progression not too atypical of corner boys with too little money and too much time on their hands which underscored the corner boy 1960s night plight (and which still plagues corner boys even though they no longer for the most part hang on corners but malls and other places where there are not any “No trespassing, police take notice” signs to harass young men still with not enough dough and too much time on their hands). If you grew up in the Acre, Sam’s growing up section of town you progressed from one place in elementary school, another in junior high school when corners and who was on what corner started to get sorted out in earnest, and high school where the corners were doled out hard as steel in high school.

Places like South Boston (an all Irish enclave then where even those who like Sam’s maternal grandparents had moved out of the enclave to an Irish neighborhood in North Adamsville were considered suspect, were looked at with jaundiced eye even by the relatives left behind), Main Street in Nashua (at the time a dying city what with the mills heading south to cheaper labor and eventually overseas and so a tough place to dream in), New Hampshire, 125^th Street in high Harlem< New York City  (with all the excitement of jazz and be-bop but with all the high segregation of the South except for the formality of Mister James Crow’s laws),  any of a million spots on Six Mile Road in Detroit (never a place of dreams but of steady work in the golden age of the American automobile for those from Delta Mister James Crow black refugees to the Okie/Arkie white rabble coming out of the hills and dustbowls), the same on Division Street in Chi town (the beat street divide of many of Nelson Algren’s tales of drugs, urban lost-ness, and sullen back streets disappointments), the lower end of North Beach beyond where the “beats” of a few years before did their beat thing (the places where the longshoremen and waterfront workers did their heavy drinking after work and where the sailors off their Pacific ocean ships fought all- comers from the Artic to the Japan seas).

Jack Slack’s was the last port of call for the Acre crowd, for that motley collection of corner boys picked up and discarded along the way although the core of Frankie , Jack, Jimmy, Allan, Markin and Five-Fingers held throughout which had started at Doc’s Drugstore complete with sofa fountain and shiny glass penny candy-case to draw selections from after  school to energize up for the real world activities of kid-dom in elementary school, Miller’s Diner for the jukebox in junior high when they were just becoming aware of girls, maybe having to dance with them, and maybe trying to figure out, the eternal trying to figure out how to approach them without them giggling back and Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in early high school before the new owners decided that unlike Tonio, the previous owner who sold out to go back to Italy from when he came as a boy they did not want colorful rough-necked boys standing one knee against the wall in front of their family friendly establishment scaring the bejesus out of the important Friday and Saturday give Mom a break family trade.

That time, those early 1960s times for some reason known only to them, was time that you had best have had corner boy comrades when you hung out on date-less, girl-less, dough-less Friday and Saturday nights to have your back if trouble brewed (that “comrade” not a word to be used then in the tail end of the height of the red scare Cold War night not if you wanted knuckle sandwiches from the unthinking patriotic guys but that does convey the sense of “having your back” critical to your place in those woe begotten streets).

That corner boy business extended through the 1960s after high school for a couple of years when in addition to being a corner boy Sam became a “flower child” along with his long mourned and lamented friend the late Peter Paul Markin heading out west on the hitchhike roads when the world turned upside down later in the decade. (Markin who met a horrible end down in sunny Mexico after the fresh breeze of the 1960s turned in on itself and he got flat-footed by the backlash ebb tide riptide and could no longer hold back his “from hunger” wanting habits held in check through summers of love and a tight tour of Vietnam and made the fatal, very fatal, mistake of trying to broker an independent drug deal and got two slugs to the back of his head for the attempt.) Sam, now a sedate grandfatherly semi-retired lawyer filled with respectability and memories had to laugh about how much he of late had been thinking about the 1950s, about not just those corner boy days but about the music that drove every corner boy, including Markin, make that perhaps most of all Markin, to distraction as they tried to eke out a sound that they could call their own. A jailbreak sound that was not something their parents would approve of at a time when titanic generational battles were foaming at the mouth.

Thinking about the 1950s the times when he came of age, came of musical age, an age very mixed up with that corner boy comradery, that hanging at Doc’s and Miller’s Diner when he started noticing girls and their charms (amid the first blush of giggles which he soon figured out was their rational response to whatever was going on inside their bodies just like guys like Sam were going through in their bodies). Those first noticings started his life-long journey of trying to figure out what made them tick, what they wanted, wanted of him, from a girl-less family making everything that much harder. Noticing that they too hung around Miller’s in order to play that fantastic jukebox which had all the latest tunes and plenty of oldies too (oldies being let’s say we are talking about 1958 then maybe 1955 hits like Eddie, My Love, Rock Around The Clock, and Bo Diddley showing that teen time, youth time anyway is measured differently from old man lawyerly time, measured in days, weeks, months at the most-years were beyond the pale) drawing away from the music on his parents’ family living room radio and their cranky old record player music.

Music in the teen households emphatically not on Miller’s jukebox or there would have been a civil war no question, a civil war avoided in his own home after his parents had bought, to insure domestic peace and tranquility if he remembered correctly, his first transistor radio down at the now long gone Radio Shack store and he could sit up in his room and dream of whatever coming of age boys dreamed about, mainly how those last year’s bothersome girls became this year’s interesting objects of discussion (by the way in that small crowded upstairs bedroom, shared with his two brothers, he found out he could discover the beauty of the “hold up to your ear”  transistor radio and drown out the world of brotherly scuffings). 

More than that though, more than just thinking about the old days like every old guy probably does, even guys who had not been lawyers as a professional career, guys who you see sitting on park benches, a little disheveled, maybe some crumbs in their unkempt beards, feeding the birds and half-muttering to themselves about how when FDR was around everybody stood tall, every country bent it knees in homage to America, or else, or old bag ladies rummaging through trash barrels looking for long lost lovers or their faded beauty Sam had been purchasing compilations of what are commercially called “oldies but goodies” CDs. Doing so via the user-friendly confines of the Internet, at Amazon if you need a name like today anybody, except maybe three people up in heathen Alaska or the Artic,  doesn’t know that is the site to get such material these days instead of traipsing over half the East Coast trying to cadge a few examples from the dwindling oldies and used records emporia, and  purchasing several record compilations of the “best of” that period from a commercial distributor (and also keeping up to date on various versions of the songs on YouTube) and through his friend and old corner boy Frankie Riley been spilling plenty of cyber-ink on Frankie’s blog, In The Be-Bop ‘50s Night, going back to the now classic age of rock and roll.

Sam had to laugh about that situation back in the day as well since he had been well known back on the corner, back holding up the wall in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, on many of those date-less, date-less because although he might have been an all “hail fellow, well met” hard-assed corner boy full of bluster and blah he was sister-less and hence baffled by girls and their ways and very shy around the question of asking for dates although he was quite willing to tell each and every girl who would listen to him about ten thousand fact on any of sixteen subjects, not excluding science, philosophy, and the poor fate of the Red Sox then. Although those ten thousand facts would come in handy when he got to college a couple of years later and he had girls hanging off the walls in debate class waiting for him to ask them out then those precious facts did not add up to a date by osmosis but rather incomprehension even by girls like Patty Lewis and Mary Shea who liked him and would have be glad if he asked them for a date without the ten thousand facts, thank you.

Here though is something about the mores of the time that young people today might not comprehend girls just waited for guys to make a move, or moved on to the next guy who would, especially if he had a boss ’55 Chevy, like Patty and Mary did. Also girl-less (already explained but here the question is having a serious girl and the just mentioned facts will hold here as well), and dough-less (self-explanatory in working-class North Adamsville, the sorry fate of the working poor, the marginally employed like his father, no money when the rent was due and Ma had not money for the damn rent collector much less discretionary money for dates with girls) on Friday and Saturday nights when he  proclaimed to all who would listen (mainly Frankie, Markin, Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Kenny Hogan and Johnny “Thunder” Thornton and an occasional girl who all wondered what he was talking about) that “rock and roll will never die.”

Mainly, through the archival marvels of modern technology, pay-per-song, look on YouTube, check out Amazon Sam had been right, rock and roll had not died although it clearly no longer provided the same fuel for later generations more into hip-hop-ish, techno music, or edge city rock. But Sam always though it funny when kids, his grandkids, for example, heard (and saw) Elvis, all steamy, smoldering and swiveling in some film clip to make the older almost teenage girls among them almost react like the girls in his time did when they saw him on the Ed Sullivan Show and had half-formed girlish dreams about personally erasing that snarl from his face. Especially that flip clip of the prison number in Jailhouse Rock. Bo Diddley proclaiming to the whole wide world that he in fact had put the rock in rock and roll and who could dispute that claim when he went bonkers in some Afro-Carib number with that rectangular guitar. Say too Chuck Berry telling a candid world, a candid teenage world which after all was all that counted then, now too from what Sam had heard from his grandchildren, that Mister Beethoven from the old fogy music museum had better take himself and his cronies and move over because a new be-bop daddy, a new high sheriff was in town, was taking the reins, making the kids jump on jump street. Ditto curl-in-hair Buddy Holly pining away for his Peggy Sue.

Better, mad monk swamp rat Jerry Lee Lewis sitting, maybe standing for all Sam knew telling that same candid world that Chuck was putting on fire everybody had to do the high school hop bop, confidentially. And how about Wanda Jackson proclaiming that it was party time and an endless host of one hit wonders and wanna-bes they went crazy over. Yeah, those kids, those for example grandkids jumping around just like the young Sam who could not believe his ears when he had come of age and, yeah, jumping around for those same guys who formed his musical tastes back in the 1950s when he had come of age, musical age anyway. Jesus, Jesus too when he came of teenage age and all that meant of angst and alienation something no generation seems to be able to escape since the world had no less dangerous, no less incomprehensible today.

Sam had thought recently about going back to those various commercially-produced compilations put out by demographically savvy media companies that he had purchased on Amazon to cull out the better songs, some which he had on the tip of his tongue almost continuously since the 1950s (the Dubs Could This Be Magic the great last chance dance song that bailed him out of being shut out of more than one dance night although his partner’s feet borne the brunt of the battle, and the Teen Queens Eddie My Love, where Eddie took advantage of the girl and she was wondering, maybe still is, when he is coming back, a great love ‘em and leave ‘em song and the answer is still he’s never coming back, are two examples that quickly came to his mind). Others like Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love or The Crows Oh-Gee though needed some coaxing by listening to the compilations to be remembered.

But Sam, old lawyerly Sam, had finally found a sure-fire method to aid in that memory coaxing. Just go back in memory’s mind and picture scenes from teenage days and figure the songs that went with such scenes (this is not confined to 1950s aficionados anybody can imagine their youth times and play). But even using that method Sam believed that he was cheating a little, harmlessly cheating but still cheating. When he (or anybody familiar with the times) looked at the artwork on most of the better 1950s CD compilations one could not help but notice the excellent artwork that highlights various institutions illustrated back then. The infamous drive-in movies where you gathered about six people (hopefully three couples but six anyway) and paid for two the other four either on the back seat floor or in the trunk. They always played music at intermission when that “youth nation” cohort gathered at the refreshment stand to grab inedible hot dogs, stale popcorn, or fizzled out sodas, although who cared, especially if that three couples thing was in play, and that scene had always been associated in Sam’s mind with Frankie Lyman and the Teenager’s Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

That is how Sam played the game. Two (or more) can play so he said he would just set the scenes and others could fill in their own musical selections. Here goes: the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex at Doc’s Drugstore with his soda fountain AND jukebox; the drive-in restaurant with you and yours in the car, yours’ or father-borrowed for an end of the night bout with cardboard hamburgers, ultra-greasy french fries and diluted soda; the Spring Frolic Dance (or name your seasonal dance) your hands all sweaty, trying to disappear into the wall, waiting, waiting to perdition for that last dance so that you could ask that he or she that you had been eyeing all evening to dance that slow one  all dreamy; down at the beach on day one of out of school for the summer checking out the scene between the two boat clubs where all the guys and gals who counted hung out; the night before Thanksgiving football rally where he or she said they would be there, how about you; on poverty nights sitting up in your bedroom listening to edgy WMEX on your transistor radio away from prying adult eyes; another poverty night you and your boys, girls, boys and girls sitting in the family room spinning platters; that first sixth grade “petting” party (no more explanation needed, right); cruising Main Street with your boys or girls looking for, well, you figure it out listening to the radio in that “boss” Chevy, hopefully; and, sitting in the balcony “watching” the double feature at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon when you were younger and at night when older. Okay, Sam has given enough cues. Fill in the dots, oops, songs and add scenes too.                      

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Words From “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Words From “You Are Not Alone” In Mind   

By Fritz Taylor 

Sam Lowell was a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him with the fact, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when it met later that week. 

He would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so , at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put out the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of the environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of having a not ever active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.