*****In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

*****In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

From The Pen Of Josh Breslin 

Listen above to a YouTube film clip of a classic Song-Catcher-type song from deep in the mountains, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. A song-catcher is an old devise, a mythological devise for taking the sound of nature, the wind coming down the mountains, the rustle of the tree, the crack a twig bent in the river, the river follow itself and making an elixir for the ears, simple stuff if you are brave enough to try your luck.  According to my sources Cecil Sharpe, a British musicologist looking for roots in the manner of Francis Child with his ballads in the 1850s, Charles Seeger, and maybe his son Peter too, in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Lomaxes, father and son, in the 1930s and 1940s)"discovered" the song in 1916 in the deep back hills and hollows of rural Kentucky. (I refuse to buy into that “hollas” business that folk-singers back in the early 1960s, guys and gals some of who went to Harvard and other elite schools and who would be hard-pressed to pin-point say legendary Harlan County down in Appalachia, down in the raw coal mining country of Eastern Kentucky far away from Derby dreams, mint juleps and ladies' broad-brimmed hats, of story and song insisted on pronouncing and writing the word hollows to show their one-ness with the roots, the root music of the desperately poor and uneducated. So hollows.)     

Of course my first connection to the song had nothing to do with the mountains, or mountain origins, certainly with not the wistful or sorrowful end of the love spectrum about false true lovers taking in the poor lass who now seeks revenge if only through the lament implied in the lyrics, although  even then I had been through that experience, more than once I am sorry to say. Or so I though at the time. I had heard the song the first time long ago in my ill-spent 1960s youth listening on my transistor radio up in my room in Olde Saco where I grew up to a late Sunday night folk radio show on WBZ from down in Boston that I could pick up at that hour hosted by Dick Summer (who is now featured on the Tom Rush documentary No Regrets about Tom’s life in the early 1960s Boston folk scene while at Harvard hustling around like mad trying to get a record produced to ride the folk minute wave just forming and who, by the way, was not a guy who said or wrote "hollas," okay ). That night I heard the gravelly-voiced late folksinger Dave Van Ronk singing his version of the old song like some latter-day Jehovah or Old Testament prophet something that I have mentioned elsewhere he probably secretly would have been proud to acknowledge. (Secretly since then he was some kind of high octane Marxist/Trotskyist/Socialist firebrand in his off-stage hours and hence a practicing atheist.) His version of the song quite a bit different from the Maybelle Carter effort here. I'll say.

All this as prelude to a question that had haunted me for a long time, the question of why I, a child of rock and roll, you know Bill Haley, La Verne Baker, Wanda Jackson, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and the like had been drawn to, and am still drawn to the music of the mountains, the music of the hills and hollows, mostly, of Appalachia. You know it took a long time for me to figure out why I was drawn, seemingly out of nowhere, to the mountain music most famously brought to public, Northern public, attention by the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, The Seegers and the Lomaxes back a couple of generations ago.

The Carter Family hard out of Clinch Mountain down in Virginia someplace famously arrived on the mountain stage via a record contract in Bristol, Tennessee in the days when fledgling radio and record companies were looking for music, authentic American music, to fill the air and their catalogs. Fill in what amounted to niche music since the radio’s range back then was mostly local and if you wanted to sell soap, perfume, laundry detergent, coffee, flour on the air then you had to play what the audience would listen to and then go out and buy the advertiser’s products once they, the great unwashed mass audience, were filled into how wonderful they smelled, tasted, or felt after consuming the sponsors' products. The Seegers and Lomaxes and a host of others, mainly agents of the record companies looking to bring in new talent, went out into the sweated dusty fields sweaty handkerchiefs in hand to talk to some guy who they had heard played the Saturday night juke joints, went out to the Saturday night red barn dance with that lonesome fiddle player bringing on the mist before dawn sweeping down from the hills, went out to the Sunday morning praise Jehovah gathered church brethren to seek out that brother who jammed so well at that juke joint or red barn dance now repentant if not sober, went out to the juke joint themselves if they could stand Willie Jack’s freshly brewed liquor, un-bonded of course since about 1789, went down to the mountain general store to check with Mister Miller and grab whatever, or whoever was available who could rub two bones together or make the rosin fly, maybe sitting right there in front of the store. Some of it pretty remarkable filled with fiddles, banjos and mandolins.

But back to the answer to my haunting question. The thing was simplicity itself. See my father, Prescott, hailed (nice word, right) from Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky, tucked down in the mountains near the Ohio River, long noted in song and legend as hard coal country. When World War II came along he left to join the Marines to get the hell out of there, get out of a short, nasty, brutish life as a coalminer, already having worked the coal from age thirteen, as had a few of his older brothers and his father and grandfather. During his tour of duty after having fought and bled a little in his share of the Pacific War against the Japanese before he was demobilized he had been stationed for a short while at the Portsmouth Naval Base. During that stay he attended like a lot of lonely soldiers, sailors and Marines who had been overseas a USO dance held in Portland where he met my mother who had grown up in deep French-Canadian Olde Saco. Needless to say he stayed in the North, for better or worse, working the mills in Olde Saco until they closed or headed south for cheaper labor in the late 1950s and then worked at whatever jobs he could find. (Ironically those moves south for cheaper labor were not that far from his growing up home although when asked by the bosses if he wanted move down there he gave them an emphatic “no,” and despite some very hard times later when there wasn't much work and hence much to eat he never regretted his decision at least in public to this wife and kids)

All during my childhood though along with that popular music, you know the big band sounds and the romantic and forlorn ballads that got many mothers and fathers through the war mountain music, although I would not have called it that then filtered in the background on the family living room record player and the mother’s helper kitchen radio. 

But here is the real “discovery,” a discovery that could only be disclosed by my parents. Early on in their marriage they had tried to go back to Hazard to see if they could make a go of it there. This was after my older brother Prescott, Junior was born and while my mother was carrying me. Apparently they stayed for several months before they left to go back to Olde Saco before I was born since I was born in Portland General Hospital. So see that damn mountain music and those sainted hills and hollows were in my DNA, was just harking to me when I got the bug. Funny, isn’t it.            

[Sometimes life floors you though, comes at you not straight like the book, the good book everybody keeps touting and fairness dictates but through a third party, through some messenger for good or ill, and you might not even be aware of how you got that sings-song in your head. Wondering how you got that sings-song in your head and why a certain song or set of songs “speaks” to you despite every fiber of your being clamoring for you to go the other way. Some things, some cloud puff things maybe going back to before you think you could remember like your awestruck father in way over his head with three small close together boys, no serious job prospects, little education, maybe, maybe not getting some advantage from the G.I. Bill that was supposed lift all veteran boats, all veterans of the bloody atolls and islands, hell, one time savagely fighting over a coral reef against the Japanese occupiers if you can believe that, who dutifully and honorably served the flag singing some misbegotten melody. A melody learned in his childhood down among the hills and hollows, down where the threads of the old country, old country being British Isles and places like that. The stuff collected in Child ballads back then in the 1850s that got bastardized by ten thousand local players who added their own touches and who no longer used the song for its original purpose red barn dance singers when guys like Buell or Hobart added their take on what they thought the words meant and passed that on to kindred and the gens. The norm of the oral tradition of the folk so don’t get nervous unless there had been some infringement of the copyright laws, not likely.  

Passed on too that sorrowful sense of life of people who stayed sedentary too long, too long on Clinch Mountain or Black Mountain or Missionary Mountain long after the land ran out and he, that benighted father of us all, in his turn sang it as a lullaby to his boys. And the boys’ ears perked up to that song, that song of mountain sadness about lost blue-eyed boys, about forsaken loves when the next best thing came along, about spurned brides resting fretfully under the great oak, about love that had no place to go because the parties were too proud to step back for a moment, about the hills of home, lost innocence, you name it, and although he/they could not name it that sadness stuck.

Stuck there not to bear fruit for decades and then one night somebody told one of the boys a story, told it true as far as he knew about that father’s song, about how his father had worked the Ohio River singing and cavorting with the women, how he bore the title of “the Sheik” in remembrance of those black locks and those fierce charcoal black eyes that pierced a woman’s heart. So, yes, Buell and Hobart, and the great god Jehovah come Sunday morning preaching time did their work, did it just fine and the sons finally knew that that long ago song had a deeper meaning than they could ever have imagined.]         

   

COME ALL YE FAIR AND TENDER LADIES
(A.P. Carter)

The Carter Family - 1932

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a bright star on a cloudy morning

They will first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

To make you think that they love you true

Straightway they'll go and court some other

Oh that's the love that they have for you

Do you remember our days of courting

When your head lay upon my breast

You could make me believe with the falling of your arm

That the sun rose in the West

I wish I were some little sparrow

And I had wings and I could fly

I would fly away to my false true lover

And while he'll talk I would sit and cry

But I am not some little sparrow

I have no wings nor can I fly

So I'll sit down here in grief and sorrow

And try to pass my troubles by

I wish I had known before I courted

That love had been so hard to gain

I'd of locked my heart in a box of golden

And fastened it down with a silver chain

Young men never cast your eye on beauty

For beauty is a thing that will decay

For the prettiest flowers that grow in the garden

How soon they'll wither, will wither and fade away

******

ALTERNATE VERSION:

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a star on summer morning

They first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

And make you think they love you so well

Then away they'll go and court some other

And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain

Where the ivy rocks are black as ink

I'd write a letter to my lost true lover

Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

For love is handsome, love is charming

And love is pretty while it's new

But love grows cold as love grows old

And fades away like the mornin' dew

And fades away like the mornin' dew

Bob Dylan- A Side View –“Slow Train Coming"- A Review

Bob Dylan- A Side View –“Slow Train Coming"- A Review

CD Review

Slow Train Coming, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1979


I have, in terms of the sheer number of musical reviews, probably done more on the work of the "king" of the 1960s folk revival, Bob Dylan, than any other performer. And rightly so, considering his place in the musical history of my generation, and of his place in the American musical pantheon. That said, not all of his work, as he himself has acknowledged, is worthy of a place in the American songbook. That is the fate in store for most of the work in this album, "Slow Train Coming", done in a period when he was coming to grips with some personal religious crisis, specifically, his bout with Christianity.

Now, many of us, have had our trials and tribulations over that doctrine- without trying to enhance a musical genre over it. This is one of those things that should have been left in the vaults for future folk/rock historians to "discover". But since Mr. Dylan decided that it was worthy of production and distribution in the here and now I will venture that the following songs might intrigue those future anthropologists-"Slow Train Coming", "I Believe In You", and, the best of the lot, "Got To Serve Somebody". But my reaction after listening to this one was to then get my old scratched up copy of "Desolation Row" out and listen to "real" Dylan.


Gotta Serve Somebody

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a construction worker working on a home
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Copyright © 1979 by Special Rider Music

n The Time Of The Time Of America’s Pastime-Robert Redford’s Film Adaptation Of Bernard Malamud’s ‘The Natural” (1984)

In The Time Of The Time Of America’s Pastime-Robert Redford’s Film Adaptation Of Bernard Malamud’s ‘The Natural” (1984)

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

The Natural, starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, directed by Barry Levinson, based on the novel of the saem name by Bernard Malamud, 1984  

In my growing up time in the 1950s the premier American sport of the time was baseball, baseball played from sandlot to professional. And in an easier time, a less rushed time when one had the hours to devote attention to the sport from neophyte player to avid sport’s fan that made sense. Although today football in all its glory and precision has taken its place I believe that one would be hard-pressed to write a book or produce a movie about the saga of any individual football player like Bernard Malamud and later Barry Levinson was able to do with the story line of the ballplayer under review, The Natural. Somehow the simplicity of picking up a ball and bat and running to some sandlot for a pick-up game evokes a lot more of the American spirit than the necessarily more organized, team-driven precision and expensive game of football. 

This is the way an American sports’ story, maybe the best baseball story ever written played out (with due apologies to Ring Lardner and his You Know Me, Al and its wonderful sociological insights series). A fair-haired All-American boy from out in the farmlands of the Midwest Roy Hobbs, played by fair-haired All-American boy actor Robert Redford (who else in the 1970s or 1980s would be able to play the role as well) dreams the big time dream of becoming a professional baseball player with all the trimmings. A dream which ironically would include not just professional status but to be known by the man or woman on the street, by young impressionable boys too, as the “greatest to ever tread the bases.” He had it all, all the talent, all the desire and best of all a devastating fast ball which would cower even the great sluggers of his day like the fabled Ruth, the Babe, and the machine-like Hack Wilson. That, however, would be his downfall once he got tagged by a woman, an unstable woman who wanted to take down somebody who was either the greatest at what he did or was as with Roy going to be the greatest. So in answer to her straight-forward question about his potential status in the baseball Hall of Fame firmament he got a few bullets, a few silver bullets for his efforts. She was no rookie at that game either having wasted a couple of other wannabes but this time she capped off her efforts with a big fall from a high hotel window, End of career before it started, end of story.

Well no wait a minute it would be a very short story, although hardly an unusual one, where a prospect in any sport came up short and went back down to the dunghill from whence he came. So Roy, no longer the boy wonder, no longer with any illusions, longer, much longer in the tooth than in those first scenes but still with a mountain of talent and determination showed up sixteen years later in New York, in the “bigs” with a shot, one last shot at glory before he has to hang up the cleats (while the young players have visions of eternity the reality of time and younger faster talent eventually catches up with even the best). Somehow out in the boondocks some professional scout for the lowly New York Knights saw something in Roy and signed him to a contract-past unknown.   

Those lowly Knights were something like the New York Mets of my youth-the gang who couldn’t hit, pitch, field straight and so were mired in the cellar of the league they were in much to the chagrin of the manager-owner of the club, Pops. But get this that Connie Mack kept Roy’s light hidden under a bushel for about as long as he could until one day he in desperation let Roy take batting practice. Naturally the Natural banged them out of the park like clockwork and after a weird accident to the troublesome “franchise” player he took over the right field in order to get that last chance to produce his credentials-and win that doubting manager a coveted pennant.       

Well it still would be a short uneventful story if there wasn’t some greed, sex, and redemption to round the drama out. The greed came in two parts-one, Pops had under financial duress made a deal with the devil selling part of his franchise, enough to lose control of the club-unless he won a pennant. The other was the Chicago Black Sox-like gambling gag that has always followed sports and which always will in the hands of some Abe Saperstein-type looking for whatever edge he could get when putting down those big pay-out dollars. The best way to do that was to have, let us say, the star player under his wing. Especially a guy like Roy who could turn it on and off like a faucet. But big time gamblers don’t get to be big time gamblers eating fancy steaks and living the high life depending on quirky unknowns so our Gus, the gambler, had two ways to try to squeeze the play. One, providing Roy with some high-end sex with Memo, played by Kim Basinger, and the other digging out the dirt on why a 35 year old guy with plenty of talent never came up on the radar before. The emissary for the dirty work was a flinty sports’ writer named Mercy, played by Robert Duvall, who dug deep and found out that whole sordid deal with that crazy woman who wasted Roy in that dreaded hotel room in his youth and her subsequent suicide out of the that same hotel room window. Judge Landis would not like that image of baseball splattered all over the back pages of the newspapers.   

The redemption. Well one day when Roy, living that high life with Memo, was in a deep slump from not taking care of baseball business in Chicago (in Wrigley Field until recently the graveyard of many Cubs fans dreams so why not Roy’s) a vision in white dress showed up in the stands and the slump was over. Turned out that the lady, Iris, played by Glenn Close was Roy’s back home sweetheart long abandoned after Roy headed out to seek fame and fortune. Turned out too that Iris has a son, a son say sixteen years old, not living with the boy’s father who was living in New York (yeah, I know a weak part of the plotline). Eventually with the pennant on the line (and ownership of the Knights slipping from Pop’s hands) and that gambler having taken extra insurance by having another player on the team in the bag Roy had one last chance to go for glory. It was a close thing though, his favorite bat exploded on him and Iris also had to pull out the old chestnut that her boy was Roy’s son. You know Roy popped one out of the stadium. Yeah, Roy the All-American Boy could hit that thing. Could make that boyhood dream come true even if only for a minute. Hell most of us don’t get one chance much less two. Great baseball movie.                       

Films To Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail

Films To Class Struggle By-"Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story"- Leonard Peltier Must Not Die In Jail

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Incident At Ogala: The Leonard Peltier Story, Leonard Peltier, various leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses and by-standers, directed by Michael Apted, 1991

Let’s start this review of this documentary of the incidents surrounding the case of Leonard Peltier at the end. Or at least the end of this documentary, 1991. Leonard Peltier, a well-known leader of the Native American movement, convicted of the 1975 murder, execution-style, of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota after he had been extradited from Canada in the wake of the acquittal of two other Pine Ridge residents. In an interview from federal prison in that period the then still relatively young Peltier related that after receiving his life sentences and being told by prison officials that that meant his release date would be in 2035 he stated that he hoped not, for he would then be an old, old man. Here is what should make everyone interested in the case, and everyone interested in the least sense of justice, even just bourgeois justice, blood boil, he is now an old sick man and he is still in jail for a crime that he did not commit, and certainly one that was not proven beyond that cherished “reasonable doubt”

This documentary, narrated by Robert Redford in his younger days as well, goes step by step through the case from the pre-murder period when Native Americans, catching the political consciousness crest begun in the 1960s by the black civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, started organizing, mainly through the American Indian Movement (AIM), on the Indian reservations of the West, some of the most impoverished areas in all the Americas. The focal point of this militant organizing effort came in the war zone-showdown, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973. The tension that hovered in the air in the aftermath of that war between the American government and its Indian agent supporters on one side, and the AIM-led “warrior nation” on the other is the setting for this incident at Ogala.

Through reenactment of the crime scene; eye witnesses, interested and disinterested, voluntary or coerced; defense strategies at both trials from self-defense to lack of physical evidence, and on appeal; the prosecution's case, its insufficient evidence, and it various maneuvers to inflame white juries against unpopular or misunderstood Native Americans in order to get someone convicted for the murders of one of their own; the devastating, but expected effect of the trials on the political organizing by AIM; and the stalwart and defiant demeanor of one Leonard Peltier all come though in this presentation. As a long time supporter of organizations that defend class-war prisoners, like Leonard Peltier, this film only makes that commitment even firmer. With that in mind- Free Leonard Peltier-He Must Not Die In Jail!

From The Archives- To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind

To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50^th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind

By Social Commentator Zack James 

[I was about a decade or so too young to have been washed, washed clean to hear guys like Peter Paul Markin, more on him below, tell the tale, by the huge counter-cultural explosion that burst upon the land (and by extension and a million youth culture ties internationally before the bubble burst) in the mid to late 1960s and maybe extending a few year into the 1970s depending on whose ebb tide event you adhere to. Over the next fifty years that explosion was inspected, selected, dissected, inflected and detected by every social science academic who had the stamina to hold up under the pressure and even by politicians, mostly to put the curse of “bad example” and “never again” on the outlier experimentation that went on in those days. Plenty has been written about the sea-change in mores among the young attributed to the  black civil rights struggles rights early in the decade and the huge anti-Vietnam War movement later and maybe even just as reaction like in many generations coming of age, just the tweaking of the older generations inured to change by the Cold War red scare psychosis they bought into. The event being celebrated or at least reflected on in this series under the headline “To Be Very Young-With The Summer of Love 1967 In Mind” now turned fifty was by many accounts a pivotal point in that explosion especially among the kids from out in the hinterlands, the kids who were caught up one way or another in the Vietnam War and were beginning, late beginning, to break hard from the well-established norms from whence they came.

This series came about because my oldest brother, Alex James, had recently taken a trip to San Francisco on business and notice on a passing bus that the famed deYoung Museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, a central location for the activities of the Summer of Love as it exploded on the scene in that town, was holding an exhibition about that whole experience. Alex and his “corner boys” back in the day from the old Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville, a suburb of Boston where we all came of age, had gotten their immersion into counter-cultural activities by going to San Francisco in the wake of that summer of 1967 to “see what it was all about.”

When Alex got back from his business trip he gathered the few “corner boys” still standing, Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Ralph Kelly, and Josh Breslin (not an actual North Adamsville corner boy but a corner boy nevertheless from Olde Sacco up in Maine whom the tribe “adopted” as one of their own) at Jimmy’s Grille in Riverdale, their still favorite drinking hole as they call it, to tell what he had seen and to reminisce. From that first “discussion” they decided to “commission” me as the writer for a small book of reflections by the group alongside a number of sketches I had done previously based on their experiences in the old neighborhood and the world. So I wrote or rather compiled the notes used in the sketches below but believe this task was mostly of my doing the physical writing and getting the hell out of the way. This slender book is dedicated to the memory of the guy who got them all on the road west-Peter Paul Markin whom I don’t have to mention more about here for he, his still present “ghost” will be amply discussed below. Zack James] 

CD Review

1967: Blowin’ Your Mind, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Byrds Filimore West-driven classic wa-wa song, So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star .

Phil Larkin, now road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty (and, occasionally, secret delight, secret delight of one Minnie Callahan, damn him, for one of some girl classmates), to full-fledged merry prankster now sits on a 1967 be-bop night San Francisco hill with his new flame Butterfly Swirl, and his old flame, Luscious Lois, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. (Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic as not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Yes, remind me.) A nameless hill, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland the sea out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois in case you forgot, or we not paying attention) are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters (small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay) who just yesterday hit ‘Frisco and have planted their de rigueur day-glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park after many months on the road west, and some time down south in La Jolla. After hearing the siren call they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless). Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town he lammed out from (according to his told story) just about a year ago.

Or has he? Well, sure Phil’s hair is quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight is way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escape, and fearful barely eaten four in the morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sits on that nameless hill with his “ladies” he no longer has the expectation of just trying LSD for the hell of it, having licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla, watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music fill the night air. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf), but moog, boog, foog-filled music.

Just that nameless hill minute though, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the Pacific night and that just maybe this scene will not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, keeps expecting any day now. Worst, now that he knows he can’t, no way, go back to some department clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what is to happen to him when Butterfly, Lilly Rose, and even Captain Crunch “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. Heavy, man, heavy.            

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-The First World War and the Struggle for Proletarian Power

The100^thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-The First World War and the Struggle for Proletarian Power    

Workers Vanguard No. 1106 24 February 2017 TROTSKY LENIN The First World War and the Struggle for Proletarian Power (Quote of the Week) Sparked by an International Women’s Day demonstration on 8 March 1917 (February 23 by the old Julian calendar), the February Revolution in Russia toppled the autocratic rule of Tsar Nicholas II amid the interimperialist First World War. But the Provisional Government that came to power—and was supported by the Mensheviks and petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries—was a bourgeois government that continued to prosecute the war. At the same time, Soviets (councils) of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies were formed, posing a situation of dual power—i.e., whether it would be the proletariat or the bourgeoisie that would ultimately rule. Writing before his return from exile in Switzerland, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin outlined a course to turn the imperialist war into a fight for working-class power. Lenin’s struggle for this strategy was vital for the victory of the Bolshevik-led proletarian socialist October Revolution. To achieve peace (and still more to achieve a really democratic, a really honourable peace), it is necessary that political power be in the hands of the workers and poorest peasants, not the landlords and capitalists. The latter represent an insignificant minority of the population, and the capitalists, as everybody knows, are making fantastic profits out of the war. The workers and poorest peasants are the vast majority of the population. They are not making profit out of the war; on the contrary, they are being reduced to ruin and starvation. They are bound neither by capital nor by the treaties between the predatory groups of capitalists; they can and sincerely want to end the war. If political power in Russia were in the hands of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, these Soviets, and the All-Russia Soviet elected by them, could, and no doubt would, agree to carry out the peace programme which our Party (the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) outlined as early as October 13, 1915, in No. 47 of its Central Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat (then published in Geneva because of the Draconic tsarist censorship). This programme would probably be the following: 1) The All-Russia Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies (or the St. Petersburg Soviet temporarily acting for it) would forthwith declare that it is not bound by any treaties concluded either by the tsarist monarchy or by the bourgeois governments. 2) It would forthwith publish all these treaties in order to hold up to public shame the predatory aims of the tsarist monarchy and of all the bourgeois governments without exception. 3) It would forthwith publicly call upon all the belligerent powers to conclude an immediate armistice. 4) It would immediately bring to the knowledge of all the people our, the workers’ and peasants’, peace terms: liberation of all colonies; liberation of all dependent, oppressed and unequal nations. 5) It would declare that it expects nothing good from the bourgeois governments and calls upon the workers of all countries to overthrow them and to transfer all political power to Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. 6) It would declare that the capitalist gentry themselves can repay the billions of debts contracted by the bourgeois governments to wage this criminal, predatory war, and that the workers and peasants refuse to recognise these debts.... For these peace terms the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies would, in my opinion, agree to wage war against any bourgeois government and against all the bourgeois governments of the world, because this would really be a just war, because all the workers and toilers in all countries would work for its success. —V.I. Lenin, “Letters from Afar, Fourth Letter: How to Achieve Peace” (March 1917)

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take Four

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2018 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?-Frank Jackman’s War-Take Four   

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

**************

After Frank Jackman was discharged from the Army in 1971 he, for a short time, had a certain notoriety in the local anti-war movement around Cambridge, In those heady day before May Day he had his pick of anti-war women who were interested in hanging around with an ex-soldier resister (well not pick but there was some serious interest) this is the story of the most serious relationship prior to May Day. This Joyell he spoke of below and he had hitchhiked to Washington, D.C that last weekend in April. She to stay only for the Saturday mass march since she was opposed to the actions to “shut down the government” planned for May Day Monday morning.      

As this story unfolds, Elizabeth Cotten’ s Freight Train, in an upbeat Peter, Paul and Mary-style version complete with Bleecker Street reference, is being covered just then near the well firewood- stocked, well-stoked fireplace of the great room in a hard winter, February version, snow-covered rural New Hampshire old time religious order assembly hall by some upstart urban folkie a long way from his home and a long way from that 1960s folk revival minute that then had had even jaded aficionados from the generation of ’68 clamoring for more.

Meanwhile, the front hall entrance adjacent to that great room where that old-time folkie and his old-time tune are being heard by a small early-bird arrival gathering crowd who never tire of the song, and who this night certainly do not tire of being close by the huge well stocked, well-stoked fireplace where the old brother, hell, let’s give him a name, Eric, Eric from Vermont, okay, is holding forth is starting to fill with more arrivals to be checked in and button-holed. The place, for the curious: the Shaker Farms Peace Pavilion (formerly just plain vanilla Shaker Farms Assembly Hall but the “trust fund babies” who bought and donated the site, ah, insisted in their, of course, anonymous way on the added signature) the scene of umpteen peace conferences, anti-war parlays, alternative world vision seminars, non-violent role-playing skits, and personal witness actions worked out. A handy hospice for worn-out ideas, ditto frustrations, and an off-hand small victory or two.

That very last part, that desperate victory last part, is what keeps the place afloat, afloat in this oddball of a hellish anti-war year 1971 when even hardened and steeled old-time peace activists against the Vietnam War are starting to believe they will be entitled to Social Security for their efforts before this bloody war is over. Hence the urgency behind this particular great room fireplace warm, complete with booked-in urban folkie singer, umpteenth anti-war conference. But onward brothers and sisters and let us listen in to the following conversation overheard in that now crowded front hall:

“Hi, Joyell, glad you could make it to the conference. Are you by yourself or did you bring Steve with you?” asked Jim Sweeney, one of the big honchos, one of the big organizational honchos and that is what matters these dog days when all hope appears to have been abandoned, these now fading days of the antiwar movement trying yet again to conference jump start the opposition to Nixon’s bloody escalations and stealthy tricky maneuvers.

“Good to see you too, Jim,” answered Joyell, who said it in such a singsong way that she and Jim Sweeney, obviously, had been in some mystic time, maybe some summer of love time before everything and everybody needed twelve coats of armor, emotional armor, just to move from point A to point B, more than fellows at one of those umpteen peace things. Joyell knew, knew from some serious reflection last summer, that she had put on a few more armor coats herself and, hell, she was just a self-confessed rank and filer. Their “thing” had just faded though for lack of energy, lack of high “ism” politics on Joyell’s part unlike frenetic Jim, and for the cold, hard fact that Jim at the time wanted to devote himself totally to the “movement” and could not “commit” to a personal relationship. The ensuing followed-

 “Who is that guy over in the corner, that green corner coach, the guy with the kind of wispy just starting to fill out brown beard, and those fierce piercing goy blue eyes, that I just passed? I’ve not seen him around before,” Joyell asked herself and then Marge Goodwin, expecting Marge the crackerjack organizer of everything from antiwar marches to save the, and you can fill in the blank, to know all the players. Moreover Marge and Joyell got along well enough for Joyell to ask such a question, “girl talk,” they called it between themselves although to the “men” this was a book sealed with seven seals since the “correct” thing was to put such girlish things back in prehistoric times, four or five years ago okay. Joyell also sensed that since Marge’s “thing” with Jim hadn’t worked out they had something in common, although nothing was ever said. Nor would it be.

“Oh, that’s Frank Jackman, the anti-war GI who just got out of the stockade over at Fort Shaw last week and he is ready to do some work with us,” volunteered Marge. Later that evening Joyell would hear from a reliable source that Marge had gotten, or had tried to get, very familiar with the ex-army soldier resister. Marge had a thing for “heroic” guys. Heroic guys being guys like Jim, Joan Baez’s hubby, David Harris, who had refused draft induction, the Berrigan Brothers who were getting ready to do time for draft board record destruction (although she, Marge, couldn’t get that damn Catholic trick part that drove their actions) and now this Frank Jackman who had done a year, a tough soldier non-soldier year, some of it in solidarity, in the stockade for refusing go to Vietnam (and refusing to wear the military uniform at one point). Joyell also heard from another source that evening that it was no dice between Marge and Frank.

This source thought it was that Marge, always getting what Marge wanted when it came to “movement men,” figured this guy would just cave in and take the ride. Not this guy, no way, not after taking on the “big boys” over at Fort Shaw. No dice, huh. That’s a point in his favor. But that was later fuel.

“Oh, that’s why his beard is so wispy and he is wearing those silly high top polished black boots and that size too big Army jacket with those bell-bottomed jeans. He certainly has the idea of what it takes to fit in here,” Joyell figured out, figured out loud. Marge just nodded, nodded kind of dismissively that she was right. And then left to do some organization business setting up the evening’s work.

And then suddenly, she, Joyell Davin (suitably Americanized, naturally, a couple of generations back), freshly-damaged in love’s unequal battles but apparently not ready to throw in the towel, got very quiet, very quiet like she always did when some guy caught her eye, well, more than her eye tonight, now that Steve was so much train smoke out in the cornfields somewhere. Maybe it was the New York City armor-coated brashness, hell Manhattan grow-up hard and necessary brashness required in a too many people universe, and learned from her very opinionated father, that her quietness tried to rein in at times like this so guys, guys like this Frank, wouldn’t be thrown off. But whatever it was that drove her quietness she was taking her peeks, her quiet half- peeks really, at this guy. With Steve, and a few other guys, it was mostly full steam ahead and let the devil take the hinter- post. This time her clock said take it easy, jesus, take it easy.

And as she found herself catching herself taking more and more of those telltale peeks she noticed, noticed almost by instinct, almost by some mystical sense that he was “checking” her out, although their dueling eyes had not met. Then, after Jim had finished giving the opening address about what the conferees were trying to do, this Frank Jackman stood up quickly without introduction and started talking, in a firm voice, about the need to up the ante, to create havoc in the streets, and in the army camps. And do it now, and with some sense of urgency. But he said it all in such way that everybody in the room, all forty or fifty of them, knew, or should have known, that this was not some ragtag wispy–bearded fly-by-night “days of rage” kid spirit, freshly bell-bottom pants minted, but some kind of revolutionary, some kind of radical anyway, who had thought about things a lot and wasn’t just a flame-thrower like she had seen too many of lately, including Steve, before he went to find himself.

When Frank was done he looked, half-looked really, quickly in her direction like he was seeking her, and just her, approval. And like he needed to know and know right this minute that she approved. She blushed, and hoped it did not show. And hoped that she had read his look in her direction correctly. But before that blush could subside she blushed again when out of nowhere this Frank gave her a another look, a serious checking out look if she knew her “movement” men, not a leer like some drunken barroom guy, or “come on, honey,” like a schoolboy but a let’s talk high “ism” talk later, and see what happens later, later. Maybe this umpteenth conference would work out after all.

So our Joyell was not surprised, not surprised at all, when during the break, the blessed break after two non-stop hours of waiting, Francis Alexander Jackman (that’s what he was called from when he was a kid and it kind of stuck but he preferred simply Frank) came up behind, tapped her gently on the shoulder to get her attention, introduced himself without fanfare or with any heroic poses, and thanked her for her work on his behalf.

“What do you mean, Frank?” she asked, bewildered by the question. “Oh, when your Peace Action committee came up to Fort Shaw and demonstrated for my freedom,” he replied in kind of a whisper voice, very different from his public voice, a voice that had known some tough times recently and maybe long ago too, but that soft whisper was what she needed, needed to hear from a righteous man, just now. The shrill of Steve’s voice, and a couple of others in her string of forgotten luck, still echoed in her brain.

“That was you? I didn’t make the connection. I didn’t know that was you, sorry, that was about a year ago and I have been going non-stop with this antiwar march and that women’s lib things. Were you in the stockade all that time?” she continued.

“Yah,” just a yah, not forlorn or anything like that but just a simple statement of fact, of the fact that he had needed to do what he did and that was that, next question, came that soft reply like this Frank and she were on some same wave-length. She was confused, confused more than a little that he had that strong effect on her after about five minutes of just general conversation.

Just then Marge, super-organizer but, as Joyell had already gathered intelligence on by then, not above having the last say in her little romances with the newest heroes of the movement, or trying to, called to Frank that Stanley Bloom, the big national anti-war organizer, wanted his input into something. But before he left soft -whispering still, calm still, unlike when he talked, talked peace action talk, he mentioned kind of kid-like, bashful kid-like, and maybe they could meet later. Joyell could barely contain herself, and although she usually acted bashfully at these times, kind of a studied bashfulness starting out, even with Steve and some of the movement guys, she just blurted out, “We’d better.” He replied, a little stronger of voice than that previous whisper, “I guess that is a command, right?” And they both laughed, laughed an adventure ahead laugh.

Later came, evening session complete, as they were sitting across from each other in the great room, the great fireplace room where Eric was going through his second rendition of Freight Train to get the room revved up for his big stuff. Frank came over and asked, back to whisper asked, if Joyell would like to go outside for a breath of fresh winter air. Or maybe somewhere else, another room inside perhaps if she didn’t like the cold or snow. No second request was necessary, and no coyness on her part either with this guy, as she quickly went to the coat rack and put on her coat, scarf, and boots. And so it went.

They talked, or rather she talked a blue streak, a soft-spoken blue streak like Frank’s manner was contagious, and maybe it was. Then he would ask a question, and ask it in such a way that he really wanted to know, know her for her answer and not just to ask, polite ask. As they walked, and walked, and as the snow got deeper as they moved away from the pavilion she kind of fell, kind of helpless on purpose fell. On purpose fell expecting that he might kiss her. But all he did was pick her up, gently but firmly, held her in his arms just a fraction of a second, but a fraction of a second enough to let her know, and let her feel, that they had not seen the last of each other. And just for that cold, snow-driven February night, as war raged on in some distance land, and as she gathered in her tangled emotions after many romantic stumbles and man disappointments, that thought was enough.

When Be-Bop Be-Bopped The 1950s Night- Jerry Lee Lewis Or Elvis?

When Be-Bop Be-Bopped The 1950s Night- Jerry Lee Lewis Or Elvis?

Phil Larkin, Class of 1964, comment:

Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis?

What is your choice? Here is mine.

DVD REVIEW

Last Man Standing, Jerry Lee Lewis in Concert, New York, 2006 
Elvis, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley. Yes those are the men who created Rock 'n' Roll, as we know it. However in that list do not forget one Jerry Lee Lewis. Fate dealt him an uneven hand due to the foibles of his personal life (the subject of a movie, Great Balls of Fire, with Dennis Quaid) but his form of rockabilly/boogie-woogie piano-driven music and madman presentation must be placed in the mix of influences that drove the best of early rock.

If for no other reason that that he is one of the few 'still standing' from that generation it was nice to see what "The Killer" could do in his 71st year in concert in New York City in 2006 with a host of guests some old, some young. Clearly off these performances he has lost a couple of steps. Hell the kind of energy that Jerry Lee produced in the 1950's definitely had a short shelf life. There are some nice clips from that period interspersed with the concert, by the way. Think about that opening scene in High School Confidential of 1958 where he is playing like a madman on the back of a flatbed truck as he heads toward the local high school. Whoa.

Despite the lost of energy here Jerry Lee can still give out on some tunes like in the old days. Take his duo with R&B master Solomon Burke on Who Will the Next Fool Be. How about Tom Jones on Green, Green Grass of Home. Or Norah Jones on Hank Williams' Your Cheating Heart. Or Jerry cover on Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven. Or his classic Crazy Arms. And on and on. In fact the covers of his old material and some Hank Williams material highlight this concert. If you have a couple of hours better take advantage of it. Then you will know what it was like when men (and women) played rock and roll for keeps.

CD REVIEW

Last Man Standing, Jerry Lee Lewis and other artists, Shangri-la Records, 2006
The last time we heard the name Jerry Lee Lewis in this space (see above) was in connection with a rave review of his star-studded concert in New York City in 2006 also entitled The Last Man Standing. I was not aware at the time I wrote that review that there was a CD connected with the DVD (silly me). This CD also gets a rave review from these quarters. The last paragraph details some of the highlights of this CD. However, I can tell you right now to save your old eyes- get this thing. It is not the fire-balling of Jerry Lee's youth but virtually from start to finish it is some very nice work. If you need to go back to the Fifties and hear his original work there are plenty of his greatest compilations elsewhere (or on YouTube). Here are a couple of words on this one:

Apparently in putting together this album every musical artist who has ever been anything, ever wanted to be anything or who will be in the various musical Halls of Fame signed on to play with "The Killer". Let's make this clear though- Jerry Lee is in charge here- the other artists are basking off of his reflected glory. Ya, he is an old man and he has lost a step, and maybe he has not learned all of life's lessons but he still rocks & rolls, does rockabilly and can country rock with the best of them.

Highlights here concerning some of life's lessons that old Jerry Lee has learned, as reflected in some of the lyrics, are his duo with Willie Nelson on Couple More Years, his duo with Keith Richards on That Kind of Fool (a take-off on his old classic- Who Will The Next Fool Be) and his duo with Eric Clapton on Trouble In Mind. To show that he can still rock-listen to the duo with Kid Rock (yes, that Kid Rock of rapper fame) on Honky Tonk Woman. If you need to hear rockabilly and boogie-woogie then the classic Hadacol Boogie with Buddy Guy will keep you moving. Enough said, except the production values on this CD are very good, as well.
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Here Are Some Lyrics For Jerry Lee and Elvis So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.

High School Confidental lyrics-Jerry Lee Lewis

You better open up honey it's your lover boy me that's a knockin'
You better listen to me sugar all the cats are at the High School rockin'
Honey get your boppin' shoes Before the juke box blows a fuse
Got everbody hoppin' everybody boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
I've rollin' at the High School Hop
I've been movin' at the High School Hop
Everybodys hoppin' Everybody's boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Come on little baby gonna rock a little bit tonight
Woooh I got get with you sugar gonna shake things up tonight
Check out the heart beatin' rhythm cause my feet are moving smooth and
Light
Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
Rollin' at the High School Hop
Movin' at the High School Hop
Everybodys hoppin' just a boppin' just a boppin'
Piano Solo!
Come on little baby let me give a piece good news good news good news
Jerry Lee is going to rock away all his blues
My hearts beatin' rhythm and my soul is singin' the blues
Oooooh Boppin' at the High School Hop
Shakin' at the High School Hop
Rollin' at the High School Hop
Gettin' it at the High School Hop
Everybodys hoppin' Everybody's boppin'
Boppin' at the High School Hop

Hound Dog lyrics-Elvis Presley

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
cryin' all the time.
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
cryin' all the time.
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
and you ain't no friend of mine.

When they said you was high classed,
well, that was just a lie.
When they said you was high classed,
well, that was just a lie.
You ain't never caught a rabbit
and you ain't no friend of mine.

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution- The Cindy Sheehan Blog

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution- The Cindy Sheehan Blog

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Frank Jackman comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And of late (2014) a fetish for running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. This year it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had million in the streets for a few minutes. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

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Additional note from Frank Jackman  

There are many ways in which people get “religion” about the issues of war and peace, about the struggle to oppose the imperial adventures of the American government.  Learn that it is our duty to oppose those decisions as people who are “in the heart of the beast” as the late revolutionary Che Guevara who knew about the imperial menace both in life and death declared long ago. My own personal “getting religion” and those who I have worked with in such organizations as Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and later Veterans For Peace (VFP) came from a direct confrontation with the American military establishment either during or after our service. Those were hard confrontations with the reality of the beast back in those days and it is no accident that those who confronted the beasts then are still active today. Remain active as a whole new threat to world peace emanates from Washington into the Middle East highlighted by the air wars in Syria and Iraq and the now new lease on life in Afghanistan.      

In a sense the military service confrontation form of “getting religion” on the issues of war and peace is easy to understand given the horrendous nature of modern warfare and its massive weapons overkill and disregard for “collateral damage.” Less easy to see is the radicalization of older women, mothers, mothers of soldiers like Cindy Sheehan in reaction to the senseless death of their loved ones. As pointed out above whatever political differences we have I will always hold Ms. Sheehan’s heroic actions in confronting on George W. Bush then President of the United States and the “yes man” for the war in Iraq started in 2003 (the various aspects of the Iraq saga have to be dated since otherwise confusion prevails) in high regard. She took him on down in red neck Texas asking a simple question-“if there were no weapons of mass destruction, not even close, why did my son die in vain?” Naturally no sufficient answer ever came from him to her. There she was a lonely symbol of the almost then non-existent anti-war movement. And then she started, as this blog of hers testifies to, to put the dots together, “got religion,” got to understand what Che meant long ago about that special duty radicals and revolutionaries have “in the heart of the beast.” And she too like those hoary military veterans I mentioned is still plugging away at the task.      

The Art Of The Defeated-“Inventur-Art In Germany-1943-1955 At The Harvard Art Museums-A Comment

The Art Of The Defeated-“Inventur-Art In Germany-1943-1955 At The Harvard Art Museums-A Comment

By Lenny Lynch

Of course I am way too young at thirty-five to have been affected by even the tremors of the post-World War II happenings in Western culture like a number of my older writer co-workers were in what in America was the “golden age” of lots of things. In talking to Sam Lowell, now a retired by still feisty former film editor here and Frank Jackman who still writes little sketches here as well about this art exhibit at the Harvard Art Museums which features the work of many German artists in various media they were quite surprised about how many of those artists dealt with struggling as a defeated nation. Strangely this included artists who were well-known anti-Nazi and anti-fascist who either had been in exile (those who could get out before the curtain came down and they were stuck), had been Jewish and yet had survived the camps somehow or had been stuck in Germany and worked their creative skills as best they could. Included too a catalogue of artists who showed up in the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibits of the late 1930s in Germany.

Two things stuck out that I carried with me from the exhibit. In the art world, the serious part, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. A defeated nation, heavily bombed by Allied warplanes, huge destruction of infrastructure, hobbling along on American rations and black markets nevertheless provided room for artists to come up with new ways of creating art from other than traditional material like oils and canvass. Shingles, scrape metal, house paints and the like let these folks create some new ways of making art. The other thing that stuff out was that even in defeat and isolation many of these artists were aware of, took part in, and expanded the new theories in art in their work from expressionism to abstraction and colorism. Minimalism in sculpture. Interesting exhibit if you are in Cambridge sometime soon.