Woody Allen Potpourri

DVD REVIEWS

Over the past year I have been re-watching some and watching for the first time other of Woody Allen’s extensive accomplishments in film as an actor/writer and director. While Allen’s efforts have, on occasion, as with all culturati sometimes been mixed the overall effect is that of a master of film. Below is a potpourri of recently viewed material in no particular order.

Hollywood Ending, 1994

NYC-LA Culture Wars, Part II

As I noted last year in a review of Woody Allen’s classic Annie Hall, which is among other things a defense of New York City as the epicenter of American culture such as it is, this is matter that has preoccupied him from early in his career as a director/ writer/actor/comic. Allen is the quintessential New Yorker so one knows where his sledgehammer will fall. In the current movie under review Hollywood Ending that same premise underlies his story line as he, once again, portrays on screen the trials and tribulations of trying to maintain some kind of artistic integrity in the world of Hollywood commercial film making.

The plot line centers on Allen’s character, Val Waxman, an aging has-been director given another chance by, of all people, his ex-wife and her boyfriend studio owner. In the process Woody, seemingly without defying the laws of probability here, is paralyzed by the prospects to such an extent that he has become temporarily blind. Nevertheless in the interest of comedy and his career (and their careers, as well) Val and his friend’s con their way through the filming of the remake of a 1940’s film about New York City that is to be the key to his comeback.

Along the way Allen gets his licks in on Hollywood culture, commercial film making and the funny premise that commercial films are so dumb, for the most part, that a blind man is entirely capable of making a bad film just like most other directors. An interesting film and, as always, full of autobiographical references, Allen’s trademark cerebral humor and his extensive use of sight gags. Well worth a look see.

Alice, 1992

As mentioned above I having been retrospectively over the past year running through films Woody Allen directed, wrote, acted in or produced. Interestingly they run the gamut of his intellectual and cultural interests but I must admit that I did not realize how many of his films featured his old paramour Mia Farrow. She must be the number one actress featured in his various efforts. That is the case here with Allen’s whimsical modern day take on the Alice in Wonderland saga in good old New York City (naturally).

Here Farrow is the unfulfilled wife of a stockbroker who along the way has lost her moorings and her values and is desperately seeking a solution. In that effort she runs to the wisdom of the East exemplified by Doctor Yang, the acupuncturist. Going through a series of madcap false starts and pseudo-love affairs she finally is able to right her course, leave her husband and bring up her children out of harm’s way. Damn, I want the telephone (or more correctly these days, the cell phone number) of the good Doctor Yang, pronto. A piece of fluff. Woody has had better ideas for a film in his time but not a bad performance by Farrow here.


Small Time Crooks, 2000

Everyone I hope recognizes that, if one lives long enough, that one is bound to start recycling ideas. That is the definitely the case with Woody Allen’s partial revival of his early film classic Take the Money and Run, this time with a sharper class twist. Here Roy (Allen’s character) is just as dimwitted as old Virgil of Take the Money but as an older and wiser man he knows when to quit (for a while anyway). So when Roy and his associates’ attempted bank robbery is foiled by his bugling his wife’s successful cookie shop cover operation sees them through the rough spots, again for a while. After a trip through the wilds of bourgeois New York the couple, after some disasters- personal and financial, goes back to the old tricks of their former trade. I am not altogether sure what this says about class mobility in a democratic society but Roy please do not call me for your next caper. Funny, in Allen’s maniacal, acerbic and cerebral way, in spots but not his best in this genre.


Bullets Over Broadway, 1994

Apparently, as long as it involves a New York City scenario Woody Allen is more than happy to take a run at a plot that involves that locale in some way. Here it is the Great White Way- Broadway during its heyday in the Prohibition Era 1920’s that gets his attention (Broadway was also the subject of his classic Broadway Danny Rose). What really makes this plot line very, very funny and makes the film work however is the plot twist of interspersing semi-serious production of a play with nefarious (and deadly) gangster activity.

Here a struggling Greenwich Village writer (weren’t they all and presumably still are) has a thoughtful dramatic play in search of a backer and as the story progresses a gangster ‘ghostwriter’. Presto, up comes one backer-with a problem- his ‘doll’ wants in on the play and (on the side) he needs to stay one or two steps ahead of his gangster rivals. These antics drive the play nicely as does a brilliant performance by Diane Wiest doing a fantastic send up of Gloria Swanson as the has- been actress searching for a comeback in Billy Wilder’s classic Hollywood Boulevard. This one is definitely five stars, with no hype needed. See it.


Celebrity

The Chinese have their years named after various animals. Apparently this year for me is the Year of Woody Allen. For the better part of the year I have been watching, and in several cases re- watching films, that the comic has acted in, produced, directed or some combination of the three. Some have been disappointing. Some, like Annie Hall, have withstood the test of time and go into the pantheon. Others, reflecting the fact that if one lives long enough, as Allen has, then one is sure to repeat themes worked in the past, sometimes with uneven results. That is the case with Celebrity. There are some very funny individual scenes that rank with Allen classics but overall we have been here before. Allen’s look at the pranks and pitfalls of celebrity in New York City (his favorite locale, and correctly so) in the mid-1990’s is the updated version of his less than funny Zelig that looked at celebrity in the Jazz Age.

Moreover, the film has an overly manic quality, particularly on the part of the frustrated male writer (surprise, surprise) and his unfulfilled and bewildered schoolteacher wife soon to be separated so that said writer can ‘find’ himself. The mannerisms (to speak nothing of a certain vague similarity of appearance) of the pair reminded me of the good old days when Woody and Mia (oops, better not mention that) held forth. Except here on speed. If you love black and white film, if you love Woody Allen and most importantly if you are new to the Allen genre then get this film. Others, veterans, can take it or leave it.

Deconstructing Harry, written and directed by Woody Allen, 1997

Okay, I will admit that finally after almost a year of watching or re-watching films that the comedic legend Woody Allen wrote, directed, played in or produced I am Woody-ed out. Moreover, there is a reason for that beyond fatigue. As I have pointed out previously in this space if one lives long enough and produces enough work then one is bound to repeat oneself. And that is what has happened to brother Allen here.

Allen’s premise has been used before as he plays the part of Harry, a writer (what else?) down with a case of writer’s block who is also having romantic problems (again, what else?) because the young woman he truly, if belatedly, loves is getting married to a lesser writer. Sound familiar? There are many individually funny moments, mainly by Allen, alone the way even if not enough to sustain the film. Naturally, as is usually the case in an Allen feature in the end things are not qualitatively more resolved than at the beginning. Well that, after all, is life.

A nice cinematic touch used here is Harry’s (Allen’s) sequencing shots to show how autobiographical most novels and short stories really are. Changing the actors in the ‘real life’ story and in the ‘made up’ stories does this well. That part also gets nicely put together at the end. No so nice here, and a bit unusual for an Allen film, is the extensive use of profanity by Allen and the rest of the cast to show their frustrations with the various antics that Harry is up to and in their own lives. Every thing is moreover just a bit too frantic, partly to justify the profanity it would seem. That may tell the tale of why I had a problem with this film, as well. If you must see a Woody Allen film you must see Annie Hall or Manhattan, if you have an off hour and one half watch this.

The Christmas Truce of 1914--A Poem by Richard Greve

The Christmas Truce of 1914--A Poem by Richard Greve

It was early in the war and early in their lives,
but they already knew that their oh-so-brave leaders
had sent them to the slaughter, with cheering crowds, no less.
Blind and dumb a continent goes mad with lust-for-war disease.

In the muddy holes they dug,
lice crawling under caps, and coughing from cold,
they stopped the madness for a few days respite,
to celebrate the prince of peace that their royal
leaders gave lipservice to on Sunday morning.
They sang some songs.
drank a soothing drug they shared
to find a little peace.
They played some ball (they were so young)
and went back to muddy holes to sleep
a final silent night.

It could not last,
their leaders, in their cozy beds, would make sure of that.
For four more years the slaughter reigned
and holes were dug in rows for them,
for their eternal sunless beds,
in the lonely fields of France that don't remember
or redeem.

Read Richard Greve's Poem

Veterans For Peace-UK's Christmas Truce Song

VFPUK's Christmas Truce Song

A few years ago, VFP UK and Tom Morello’s new Firebrand Records release “Christmas Truce” a holiday single and video to promote the ideals behind that truce - soldier-led resistance against war and militarism.
Written by Firebrand Records co-founder, folk singer, and longtime anti-war activist Ryan Harvey, “Christmas Truce” is performed by Belgian-born, London-based singer Fenya, an active member of London’s Food Not Bombs. Accompanying the song is a video shot with members of Veterans For Peace UK, featuring former soldiers of conflicts stretching from the Second World War to the present interventions and occupations in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
Watch the amazing video!

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

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

Where Have The Girls Gone- When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964- With Ruby And The Romantics Our Day Will Come In Mind

Where Have The Girls Gone- When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964- With Ruby And The Romantics Our Day Will Come In Mind

A YouTube film clip of Ruby & The Romantics performing the classic, Our Day Will Come. 

Our day will come
And we'll have everything.
We'll share the joy
Falling in love can bring.

No one can tell me
That I'm too young to know (young to know)
I love you so (love you so)
And you love me.

Our day will come
If we just wait a while.
No tears for us -
Think love and wear a smile.

Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way
Our day will come.
(Our day will come; our day will come.)

[Break]

Our dreams have magic
Because we'll always stay
In love this way.
Our day will come.
Our day will come.

[Several years ago under the old regime headed by the now mercifully departed Allan Jackson, known here under his moniker Peter Paul Markin, there was an atmosphere of a privileged there is no other way to put the matter “good old boys club” that pervaded this space. Almost consciously I believe on Allan’s part in looking over the archives from the past several years to see what happened and to see if there was anything salvageable from those times. My proof-almost every writer was some old time friend of Allan’s or of Allan’s friends. All had come of age during the raucous 1960s and their work hinged, for better or worse, on a working nostalgia for those times. The clincher-these by-line writers were without exception men. The few women writers were stringers, free-lancers who wrote, and wrote many times well certainly better than some of the good old boys especially as the guys hit sixty.

The series that Josh Breslin, from Olde Saco, Maine but a good old boy nevertheless since he had met the real Peter Paul Markin out in California in the Summer of Love, 1967 and thereafter met Allan and the others, did on “girl groups” on be-bop doo-wop girl groups when doo-wop swept through the teenage scene in the late 1950s is a case in point. Josh apparently did about ten pieces, all pretty well done. But that rather begs the question. In reading those reviews where is the female voice heard  by any of the female artists who struggled to make beautiful music for the young or by women writers from the time who could give their perhaps very different take on what doo-wop meant and how young women reacted to this craze.

To make a small historical amends I have asked a stringer from that time, Leslie Dumont, who now has a by-line here to give her take on Josh’s series. She is qualified to do this in two ways. First she in her youth lived for this music and secondly at the time the series was written she was Josh Breslin’s companion. Which makes it even more obvious about the good old boy network since it is apparent that he didn’t even ask her opinion about the music. Ask to give a few experiences like he readily asked his good old boys. Or, and one would hope this were the case, Allan Jackson cut out any such references on the red pencil editing for his own reasons, mostly flimsy. I want to think the latter. Josh, who still works here, can come forward with an explanation if he dares. Greg Green]                      

By Leslie Dumont

When Greg Green handed me this great assignment since I hadn’t listen to most of this music to be reviewed for a while, probably since Josh Breslin who was then my companion did the original series , I searched around the dwindling number of North Beach record stores but couldn’t find the expanded series he worked through. What I did find and have previously done a short piece on was a two volume set found at Diamond Jack’s Record Shop in San Mateo which had some of the classic girl doo-wop on it. Subsequently I went on Amazon and was able to grab the whole six volume set. (Greg remind me to give you the bill for that purchase.)   

As I mentioned in that review of the two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl doo wop some of the songs which overlapped in the recently purchased six volume series, I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, and that was just fine, agreed), and that of my generation, the generation of ’68, a term the departed manager of this site Allan Jackson insisted everybody use when referring to the denizens of the 1960s. Naturally, and here I agree with the sentiments expressed by Josh at the time, one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton whose original version of Hound Dog put Elvis in the shade no matter that she never made much dough on her work, and Big Joe Turner whose Shake, Rattle and Roll, puts all the white boy versions from the likes of Bill Haley, Elvis and Jerry Lee to shame. And, of course, given the performers their just due the rockabilly influences from Elvis think Good Rockin’ Tonight, Carl Perkins think Blue Suede Shoes although Elvis made the money, Wanda Jackson think Let’s Have A Party, and Jerry Lee Lewis think High School Confidential which still gets my hormones jumping.

Josh had noted in his series that one of the reasons that he was doing it was a kind of evening up of the balance of what had turned him on as a kid. He said that he had spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love? (good question, right) but that he had not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great ‘girl’ groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I will not, don’t need to, expand on his male doo wop efforts but

I would expand his observation here to include girls’ voices generally. I make some amends for his omission here. Or really to give the female slant on female singers.

[Although as I said I will not dwell on the male doo wop stuff the mention of Frankie Lyman first seen on ancient now gone Dick Clark’s American Bandstand a Monday to Friday run home from school afternoon fixture. That was where you not only saw what group’s Mr. Clark thought were hot but to see what the latest dances moves were “in” so you could try them out with your girlfriends to avoid being embarrassed, embarrass yourself, on the dance floor when some dreamy guy came by and picked you out of the crowd (or more than one happily any guy just to avoid that deadly “wallflower” tag that boys and girls alike were furiously trying to avoid).  And of course to see what was the latest in teenage girl fashion to lure the boys in at the times when you had begun to see the male sex as not quite as nasty as a couple of years before and that maybe they had something interesting to say if you could corral them for a few minutes.

Why Do Fools Fall In Love had special meaning as well since that was the first time I either kissed a boy or a boy kissed me I kind of forget which way it was. I had been invited to Kay Kelly’s twelfth birthday party which was held in her family’s family room in the basement of their house on Ridge Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts across the street from where I grew up. This family room basement business was all the rage with kids having parties then because usually the space was darker and being downstairs it was away from snooping parent eyes. Perfect.

Kay had invited a bunch of boys which made me, her, all our girlfriends nervous although not nervous enough not to invite them. When the big day came, big evening if I recall, although early like maybe six or since no tweens in those days would be partying later than say nine except for the over-chaperoned weekly Saint Peter’s dances when parents would pick up their charges at eleven. But like I said that dance was chaperoned so really didn’t count against the exotic basement fling. As usual the boy (and did the girls when invited to a boy’s party) arrived en masse including Kevin Murphy who I talked to in class (and daydreamed about at other times). The boys hugged one couch area, the girls around Kay’s father’s build-in bar where the refreshments including Kay’s mother-made birthday cake sat on the counter (no liquor, no way, present although we could have all probably used a drink to shake the nervousness even at twelve)    

 
Then Kay put on a 45 on her record player, Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock and as usual a bunch of girls although not I started dancing in pairs together. Nobody solo danced in those days for fear of looking uncool and maybe mentally unstable certainly no guys paired up, not in our crowd, just like nobody went to the senior prom as a single which nowadays is no big deal according to what my granddaughters tell me. Then dreamy Kevin Murphy broke into the crowd of girls and started to dance with Lucy Lavin. Lucy Lavin nothing but a plain jane at best who was also recognized as the smartest girl, maybe smartest person but don’t quote me on that in the whole sixth grade class. I was crushed, crushed enough since if Kevin was dancing with a plain jane like Lucy Lavin then maybe he wasn’t so dreamy after all and so had better begin looking elsewhere. (Dreamy or not later during the 1960s Kevin would be the first young man from our neighborhood to be killed in Vietnam and his name is etched on a memorial stone in front of City Hall with the too many others who laid down their beautiful young heads in that godforsaken  war. Probably etched down in Washington black granite too but I have never been brave enough to go near that memorial as many times as I have in that city since high school.)      

Kevin, embers forgotten in a flash as befits the young and movable, I got up and danced with Brenda Sullivan the next dance which I thing was Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock when Larry Kiley cut in and started to dance with me. Goof, holy goof I would have called him later after reading Kerouac like we all did when we were getting antsy in the 1960s, Larry who I could barely stand and who was always saying something silly or pornographic around girls in class or in the lunchroom danced very well. Knew the stroll, the fug, stuff like that. So I let him talk to me for a while in between dances. Still a goof mostly but also mentioned how pretty I looked as against the other “homely” girls hanging out in that basement so maybe he wasn’t as bad as everybody thought.

Then it came slow dance time, time to put on Ruby and the Romantics doing Our Day Will Come. Most of the guys were too bashful to ask a girl to slow dance (as opposed to fast dance where you didn’t have to hold hands and could fake stuff as long as you moved fast enough) so things started slowly with the exception of Larry who asked me to dance right away and while I hesitated he had said I was pretty so that was something in his favor. On these slow dance things, at least in our neighborhood, that would be a very good time to put out the light, and see if anybody wanted to kiss anybody. As it turned out Larry did, or tried to. I was so excited about the prospect of being kissed, kissed even by a goof like Larry since I could chalk it up to experience, that when he tighten his grip around my waist and moved his head forward I moved my face quickly as well and I too this day don’t know if I kissed him first or he kissed me. All I know is that I liked it, liked Larry’s kiss, like it enough that we went “steady” the rest of the school year when we moved to the other side of town. And get this about not succumbing to teen bean peer pressure all my girlfriends still thought he was a goof, and not a holy one either. ]                  

Josh noted in his series and something I spoke to in that earlier review but bears repeating here one problem with the girl groups, and with these broader generic girl vocals for a guy like him, a serious rock guy like him was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs did not as he said “speak to me.” He explained after all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like him have for a girl who breaks a guy’s heart after leading him on just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken guy off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or, he continued, some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And finished up his examples asking about some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.

But see for girls, girls in my rat-pack, girls who endlessly called each other on the phone talking about all manner of things, who endlessly spent lunch time as well and obviously in the girl’s lavatory talking, talk mostly about boys and what to do about them-or not do about them these songs were coded messages of how to deal with guys from girls who we thought had been around, who knew stuff about guys that we were clueless about. So yes we would change boyfriends like changing socks (and made sure nobody in the group latched on to those “damaged” goods after we were done with them). Would meet a guy Monday and throw him over Tuesday for some met Tuesday guy. Would go head over heels for a guy for a while and then sent him packing if he made us wait by the midnight telephone and he didn’t call. Would have temper tantrum by the minute if a guy looked even skyward at another girl. All of this and more we “learned” from the girls whose lyrics told us we were not alone in the turbulent teenage hormonal night.

After reviewing the material in these volumes I got the same flash-back feeling I felt listening to the girl doo wop sounds. I won’t even go into such novelty silly songs as the title self-explanatory My Boy Lollipop by Barbie Gaye; the teen angst hidden behind the lyrics to Bobby's Girl by Marcie Blane; or, the dreamy, wistful blandness of A Thousand Stars by Kathy Young & The Innocents that would have set any self-respecting boy’s, or girl’s, teeth on edge. And prayed, prayed out loud and to heaven that the batteries in that transcendent transistor would burn to hell before having to continue sustained listening to such, well, such… and I will leave it at that. I will rather concentrate on serious stuff like the admittedly great harmonics on Our Day Will Come by Ruby & The Romantics that I actually, secretly, liked but I had no one to relate it to, no our to worry about that day, or any day until Larry came into my screen the night of Kay Kelly’s birthday party  or Tonight You Belong To Me by Patience & Prudence that I didn’t like secretly or openly but gave me that same teen angst feeling of having no one, no boy one, belonging to, me.

And while today it might be regarded as something of a pre-feminist feminist anthem for younger women, You Don't Own Me by Lesley Gore, was meaningful to me when a lot of time in high school I didn’t have a boy to own, or not own, to fret over his independent streak, or not. Moreover, since I was never, at least I never heard otherwise, that I was some damsel in distress’ pining away for the boy next store The Boy Next Door by The Secrets was wrapped with seven seals. And while I had many a silent, lonely, midnight waiting by the phone night when Cry Baby by The Bonnie Sisters, Lonely Blue Nights by Rosie & The Originals, and Lonely Nights by The Hearts gave me comfort when Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry hard-rockin’ the night away could not console me, and take away that blue heart I carried like a badge, a badge of almost monastic honor. Almost.

So you get the idea, this stuff did “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful girl had it right but should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded better this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now you know this stuff still sounds great.

And from girls even.

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance 

By Josh Breslin 

My yearly comment on behalf of the Holiday Appeal

I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) and more recently the courageous anti-fascist fighters who have been rounded up for protesting the alt-right, Nazi, KKK, white supremacist bastards.      

Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like the late Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, the Anti-fa anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Of course a couple of years ago  we lost Hugo Pinell, George Jackson’s comrade-in-arms from the San Quentin Six to a murderous vendetta. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. One year though, and it now bears repeating each year, after I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner the late Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and the late wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. 

The class-war prisoners must not stand alone. 

                                                                                                

PDC    

Box 99 Canal Street Station                        

New York, N.Y. 10013

Google Partisan Defense Committee for more information and updates 

Under The Sign Of The Jazz Age-With The 1970s Film Adaptation Of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" In Mind

Under The Sign Of The Jazz Age-With The 1970s Film Adaptation Of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" In Mind  

By Zack James

Josh Breslin was astonished by the fact that he still could be thrilled by either reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or viewing the 1970s film adaptation starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Usually it did not take much, maybe a trip to New York City via the Long Island Ferry onto Long Island itself , maybe some headline about a new kid on the block rich guy who was trying to bust into high society and was taken down a peg, maybe some crazy political fundraiser where the cream of the crop so-called gathered to donate tons of money, money gotten from who knows where, to some cause or candidate, or maybe it was just the need to read some outstanding descriptive language in a classic American novel or view the lavish and outlandish spectacle of the rich when they gather the tribe in. This time however Josh was driven by a bet, a bet made with his old-time friend Sam Lowell whom he had known since high school days in his growing up town of Riverdale some thirty or forty miles outside of Boston.          

Josh Breslin, for those not familiar with the name, had been after his stormy youth, a youth drive by the joys, sadness, and excesses of the countercultural 1960s as had Sam’s been a free-lance cultural critic, mostly music and film for a whole assortment of small publishing houses, small presses and small coffee table journals (which he forced his friends to subscript to under penalty of excommunication. Upon his recent retirement, or perhaps semi-retirement is a better way to put the matter, he had taken a few off-hand assignments for Ben Gold the editor of The Literary Gazette to write occasional reviews about whatever he wanted to write about on cultural matters. Given that free rein Josh had decided that he would write reviews of old-time books that he believed should still be in the American literary pantheon, still be read by millennials and whoever else appreciated great literature. His motivation for writing about what would be mostly “dead white male” authors was that unlike the irate authors, musicians and film directors who complained about his acidic reviews, complained that he did not know good books, music, film from a hat-rack nobody would give, to use an expression from his Acre working class neighborhood youth, a rat’s ass about his reviews of books already reviewed one hundred or so years ago. Moreover he decided that he would, now that he did not need to depend on his fees to cover his costs of living, would tweak a few noses, be a little provocative, a little edgy, edgy as some literary piece could even get, and challenge the orthodoxy.

Little did Josh know, not having been around the academy for a long time that academic types actually read the Gazette and are willing with mighty pen in hand (or better these days fingered word processor) to smite the Philistines or anybody who encroaches on their protected turf. Josh in his first article had merely postulated that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s early work This Side Of Paradise which made him both famous and sought after by book and magazine publishers alike should be bookended with The Great Gatsby as comparable classics by that master. The initial response had been tepidly understandable, mainly a few college English Lit major undergraduates who had been assigned the readings and had done some term papers on one or the other book defending Gatsby against the savage Visgoths. Kid’s stuff really, mostly a rehash of whatever their professors had directed them to think about the literary worthiness of either novel. He thought nothing more of it, weeks passed by while he was working on another piece, thought he was done with that small bit item and could move on. Then the deluge. No so fast since Professor Jacobs, the retired English Lit department head big wig at Harvard let the cudgels down and had through some connection actually got his response placed in the Letters To The Editors pages of the Gazette (Ben Gold claiming somewhat disingenuously Josh thought that he knew nothing about the matter since it was not his bailiwick at the publication).

The good professor’s point was that of course the earlier work Paradise which were simply the well-thought out meanderings, his term, of an Ivy League prodigy, nothing more and that anybody who placed the two in the same breathe was mentally deficient, or worse. Josh made a short sweet reply directly to the professor stating that he was merely tongue-in-cheek attempting to upgrade Paradise as an important novel depicting the Jazz Age. Done. Again not so fast. Professor Lord the well- known Fitzgerald scholar who had held the Fitzgerald chair at his old alma mater Princeton took on Professor Jacobs’ remarks in a subsequent letter to the editors also published in that section stating that Professor Jacobs was essentially clueless about how Fitzgerald had very early on with the spirit of the impending post World War I Jazz Age and that Gatsby merely brought the era into sharper focus once the period ran in full bloom. Cited in about twelve footnotes about six articles he had written on the subject which Jacobs had obviously been unaware of and thus contributed mightily to his own misunderstanding of Fitzgerald, the Jazz Age and most of the literature of the middle third of the 20^th century. That ignited the “firestorm” as the adherents of both sides armed themselves to the teeth with footnotes and addenda. Josh merely stepped aside and smiled to himself that he had done what he set out to. The two sides were probably even now sucking the air out of cyberspace trying to best the other.                                 

The bet had been triggered after Josh had told Sam one night at Terry James’ Grille in Riverdale where they occasionally met to rekindle old time stories from their growing up days about a “firestorm” that he had created. Josh had added that at the end of that review which had caused the battle royal that he “wondered aloud” whether Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises might be more evocative of the Jazz Age doing than Gatsby. Nobody in the melee had seen fit to note that blasphemous statement since they were all Fitzgerald specialists as far as he could tell he told Sam with a wicked grin on his face that a future article would present that case for dissection. Josh had casually mentioned to Sam that he would be willing to bet that bringing that battle of the Titians to the pages of the Gazette would create another set of fireworks in the academy.     

Suddenly Sam called out “Bet.” Josh retorted quickly and almost automatically “Bet”. The only question then was the size of the wager which turned out to be for one hundred dollars. See back in their school boy days Sam, Josh and the other guys who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor on lonesome, date-less Friday or Saturday nights would to wile the time away make bets on almost anything from sports to the size of some girl’s bra. Of course those bets were for quarters, maybe a dollar or two revealing the low dough nature of their existences in those days. The most famous “bet” of all just to give the reader a flavor of how deeply embedded in the night these issues were had been the night the late Peter Paul Markin had challenged Frankie Riley, the leader of the guys around Tonio’s, to bet on how high Tonio (or whoever was working that night) could make the pizza dough they were kneading go. Frankie “won” the bet that night because he had an arrangement with the guy doing the pizza dough that night who owed him some moola. Markin did not find out about the switch-up until much later. The important point was that when a guy called “Bet” to a guy on any proposition no matter how screwy the other guy was duty-bound to take the bet under penalty of becoming a social outcast. Therefore the speed in which Josh answered called to wager on whether there would be another flameless flare-up after Josh’s next article.  

As these propositions went, for a quarter or one hundred dollars, Josh always prided himself on taking pains to try to win. Sam had, perhaps being a lawyer even more naïve about the in incessant in-fighting in the academy than Josh had declared that he would bet that there would be no controversy surrounding Josh’s notion that Hemingway’s book was more evocative that Fitzgerald’s. The whole thing seemed childish, his term, and after the dust-up between Jacobs and  Lord had exposed all to charges of infantile behavior no one would dare to read even a cursory letter challenging Josh’s frayed little idea. Josh, truth be told, had not read Gatsby in a few years and due to the press of other commitments he did not intend, since he believed he could win the bet without doing so, to do another of his periodical re-readings of the book, one of his favorites. He figured that he could do an end around by viewing the 1970s film adaptation of the book, the one starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. So one night he along with his third wife, Millie, streamed the Netflix version of the two hour film.    

After viewing this film Josh began to panic a little at the prospect of, kiddingly or not, trying to defend Hemingway’s book as the definite literature on the mores of the Jazz Age. Afraid that his written claim that The Sun Also Rises was better at that seemed pretty threadbare. He was worried and as he tossed and turned that night he tried to see what in Gatsby, even the film version he would have to deal with in order to draw enough fire to flame up a controversy.

Although any book, any piece of literature, words, printed material   always were more important to Josh’s understanding of the world, understanding in this case of the period he had to admit that the feel of the film really did give a sense of what the Jazz Age was about from the scenes at Gatsby’s overt the top mansion where the party-goers danced, wined, ate the night and early mornings away. There was definitely as sense that those who had survived the World War had left their pre-war sense of order and proper manners behind and that “wine, women [men] and song” was a mantra that both sexes could buy into as working day to day premise. It was like the survivors, those who had slogged through France and those who were left behind to wait for the other shoe to drop had a veil lifted. That dramatic effect, that sense of abandoning the old life on a re-reading of the expatriate life in Hemingway’s novel didn’t strike Josh as decisive as in Gatsby.       

The real thread though that Josh thought would undo him was that striving for the main chance that drove Gatsby either to grab the dough or grab the love flame with a show of what he had achieved by his efforts to “prove” himself worthy of Daisy. The new money though couldn’t break through in the end because Gatsby forgot rule number one about the old monied rich, and about Daisy as a representative character, they may make the social messes but somebody else is left to clean up afterward. Funny because in a sense Gatsby really knew that when he was asked to explain what he heard in Daisy’s voice-the sound of money. That said it all.    

Although the film did not quote the whole paragraph from the last summing up page of the book Josh once he heard the talk by Nick about the Dutch sailors and the fresh breast of new land that they found when they came up Long Island Sound back in the 1500s he knew in the back of his brain that he would never have more than a weak argument in defending Hemingway’s book as the definitive Jazz Age take. How could he beat out the notion that the fresh breast of land which had caused those long ago sailors to set out in ragged ships heading into uncharted waters to find their own dreams, to refresh their sense of wonder which had taken a beating in the old country from which they had taken the chance to flee.  

[Sam not unexpectedly won the bet since the only response that Josh got from anybody about his article that time was why he didn’t view the updated 2000s version of Gatsby by some undergraduate student who had never heard of Mia Farrow. And so it goes.]

Honky-Tonk Man-The Times and Troubles of Hank Williams-I Saw The Light (2015)-A Film Review

Honky-Tonk Man-The Times and Troubles of Hank Williams-I Saw The Light (2015)-A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

I Saw The Light, starring Tom Hiddleston, 2015  

I remember one time several years ago in reviewing a Hank William Golden Classic CD that although I was Northern born boy I had actually been down in the South while I was in my mother’s womb. Now that would not be of any particular note except somehow country music long suppressed was in my genes, made up my DNA since I did not find out until much later that my own father played in a country music band, did covers of Hank Williams’ song so you can see where I have made a special exception when it comes to Hank. My late mother told me that my father would sing Cold, Cold Heart to me to quiet me down. So except for maybe an outlaw country minute in the early 1980s when country music was moving away from Nashville and the Grand Old Opry restraints Hank is the only I give a bye to. And off of a viewing of the film under review, I Saw The Light, I made no mistake in that decision.    

Probably everybody knows a Hank Williams song, or a cover of it because almost everybody from pop to folk to rock and roll has tipped his or her hat to the man, one example being the elusive Bob Dylan who even in his most folky heyday was sitting up in his hotel room in some far off land singing The Lost Highway. I have chosen that particular song because Hank’s whirlwind live aptly fits the lyrics to the song. The film deals in passing with his young life starting out being escorted everywhere by a very demanding mother who had some sense that her son was a notch above the hokey stuff that was passing for country music back in the mid to late 1940s when Hank made his mark. Deals with the usual musician’s dilemma of getting a hearing from some record company who will take a chance on the performer.

The heart of the film though deals with the other stuff besides the music. First off his stormy love-hate relationship with his first wife Audrey who drove him crazy (and he she) and which created the ups and downs of his life. Then there was the drinking and drugs (the drug part as usual with all performers then keep hidden by a wall sealed with seven seals). The physical medical problems too some of which contributed to his early death. And the other women, including wife number two, which gave him his reputation as a honky-tonk man as per the title of this entry. 

But in the end you really do have to go back the music, the incredible number of songs that he wrote and that we serious hits in that short six year span when he was the king-hell-king of the hill in country music. More than that though the effect of music can be summed up in the scene in the film where he was being interviewed by a reporter who asked him why he was so popular. Answer: his songs made the average listener forget about their woes. That was a heavy burden to carry, in the end too heavy. See this well-done film with great covers of Hanks’s songs done in his style and with his energy. 

An Encore- When You Are A Jet You Are A Jet All The Way- The Centennial Of Composer- Conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Birthday-When The Acre Corner Boys Went Down And Dirty-In Memory Of Corner Boy Sergeant John “Johnny Blade” Rizzo, (Born North Adamsville, Massachusetts, 1946, Died, Central Highlands, South Vietnam, 1967)

An Encore- When You Are A Jet You Are A Jet All The Way- The Centennial Of Composer- Conductor Leonard Bernstein’s Birthday-When The Acre Corner Boys Went Down And Dirty-In Memory Of Corner Boy Sergeant John “Johnny Blade” Rizzo, (Born North Adamsville, Massachusetts, 1946, Died, Central Highlands, South Vietnam, 1967)     

By Seth Garth

[I have already mentioned in an earlier comment (see below) that I knew very little about Leonard Bernstein beyond his classic West Side Story which resonated with me since I shared that sense of being out of the loop growing up (and a few other writers here who also grew up in the Acre section of North Adamsville and who had been corner boys as well). Recently I had a chance to listen to a Christopher Lydon Open Source program on NPR which featured plenty of scholarly banter about the creation of the production and other aspects of Bernstein’s life and work so here is a link to finish up the centennial year of his birth.

  http://radioopensource.org/lenny-at-100/

Recently in a quick acknowledgement of the centennial of American composer Leonard Bernstein’s birthday I mentioned that I don't know much about the man but I did know his breakthrough West Side Story and could relate to the turf warfare in the piece from my old corner boy days when we defended our turf just as fervently as any New York City kid.  Any Jet, any Shark.

The story has been told many times in this publication by me and others about growing up, particularly that high school coming of age corner boy scene that animated our lives, gave us a certain tribal identity, in the impoverished Acre section of working-class North Adamsville south of Boston but Josh Breslin has told me that the same fierce defenses applied in the Ocean View section of Olde Saco up in Maine, Ralph Morris the Tappan Street section of Troy in New York and Sam Eaton ditto down the Bog section of Carver also south of Boston. Mostly those youthful stories have been given a positive spin, or have been sweetened up for public consumption, but there was a dark side, a very dark side to much of what went on-and how we related to our poverty and other corner boy aggregates. 

Maybe the single best way to describe this dark side is to give the event that made the late Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, take this corner boy stuff, this from hunger stuff to heart. Before he met most of us, except I think Sam Lowell whom he had known since elementary school when they would hustle the younger kids out of their milk money, the Scribe used to hang around a spot familiar to all of us-mainly to stay away from-Harry’s Variety Store since Harry had a great pin-ball machine there and a very cool ice-filled container of all kind of soft drinks. Being a kid and if you saw Scribe then you would know he was no threat to anybody, in the physical sense, to the guys who hung around Harry’s, that corner’s corner boys and so he was something like a mascot to them. Would run errand for them, and in turn they would give him some of their free games which they inevitably won since they were wizards at the game, knew how to sway the thing just right, especially when some young girlfriend was tucked in between his arms.

The funny thing is that this group, these guys were nothing like what Scribe and others would do and put together when their corner boy time came up at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. These Harry’s guys were hoods, hoodlums, bad-ass motorcycle guys, guys who nobody, and according to Scribe nobody messed with. Their leader was one Harold, never called that under penalty of broken bones, “Red” Riley, a guy who lived near Scribe’s grandmother, another reason why he may have been taken on as a mascot, was the baddest of them all. Nobody challenged his authority, not and be able to tell anybody about it. The corners, the corners with corner boys, in the Acre in those days sprawled out to maybe half a dozen locations, all protected by their members. That was the rules and you lived or maybe died by them. One day Scribe saw what Red could do when somebody from another corner even came near Harry’s. This guy who Scribe swore did nothing except walk across the baseball field the other side of Harry’s. Somehow Red knew though that the guy was from another corner, a different turf. Without word one Red pulled out his whipsaw chain, went up to the guy and beat his mercilessly leaving him a lump on the ground. Somebody called the cops and they called an ambulance which took the guy away a bloody stump. Get this-the guy never finked on Red, hell, the cops who actually used Harry for his real purpose at the store to make book-to gamble on the horses-never even asked what happened. Asked if there were any witnesses. Nobody, not Scribe, nobody said word one with that bloody stump in their minds. So the Sharks and the Jets had nothing on the Irish bad boys around Harry’s.

Scribe, or really Frankie Riley who was the real leader of softer and younger Irish boys, mostly in high school where Frankie’s con artist, grifter ways were quickly recognized even by Scribe who couldn’t have organized his socks despite his brilliant plans and dreams, of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys once he told him the Red Riley story, always made sure to have a tough guy or two hanging around in case some assholes  wanted to rumble, to cut our turf. Enter one Johnny Blade, Johnny Rizzo really who was one of the few Italians allowed on the corner as a favor to Tonio who was Johnny’s uncle but really by his saving grace that his mother was Irish, a Doherty who had also grown up in the Acre. Johnny Blade, nobody ever said the Johnny without the blade even a couple of industrial arts teachers at school, the track they threw Johnny on, who heard about him early on. I hope I don’t need to explain how Johnny got the blade part but for those who might not be quite sure Acre boys at some point, maybe about puberty, sixth grade somewhere around there became fascinated with knives, jackknives at first which everybody had and the more dangerous ones, the kind Johnny carried around from early on-and used.

Johnny Blade maybe could have gone a different root, that Irish-Italian mix made an Acre girl’s dream and he could have if for no other reason that by force of will had whomever he wanted, some older girls too, college girls later so he had something. The thing is Johnny Blade loved his knife (knives really but only carried one at a time by law I think). Like I said Frankie, larcenous Frankie Riley, funny to say now, maybe, since he has been a very successful lawyer in Boston for many years, knew that Johnny Blade was just what we needed to defend our turf if trouble came. Naturally when a guy gets a tough guy reputation somebody is bound as if by osmosis to challenge him, test him. Usually the excuse would be looking at some girl, some “spoken for” girl the wrong way and the boyfriend had to assert his prerogative. This time, this time I speak of which shows not only Johnny’s usefulness but Frankie’s via Scribe’s wisdom to have a “hitman” on board, it was Mother Goose, a member of Red Riley’s corner boys, an older guy like Red and most of his boys, a twenty something although nobody said that then, who took umbrage ( I am being polite) that Cecilia Duggan had caught Johnny’s eye, or more probably she had glanced his way. Bad blood, bad blood no question. (By the way nobody knows why he was called Mother Goose except maybe he never had a mother because he was one tough and fierce looking guy who I would cross the street when I saw him approaching me.       

One dark, probably weekend night I forget now, Mother came strutting, or maybe lumbering is better, into our Tonio’s space not looking for pizza but Johnny. Called Johnny out, started talking the talk that tough guys talk and guys who want to be tough guys have to respond to. I think Johnny was in having pizza or listening to the already mentioned fabulous Tonio’s jukebox (placed there as we later learned by the local Mafia who controlled all that kind of action then, maybe now too for all I know) when he heard the clarion call. He went up to Mother said something like “let’s go out back” who knows but that sounds right. That back was the alleyway between building in the commercial section of the Acre, the area where Tonio’s was located, dark, dark as the dungeon. They went out back together, alone (frankly most of us, whether we admitted it or not, would have freaked out if we had to watch this hand to hand combat in person). Several minutes later Johnny Blade came out breathing heavily, sweating from his forehead and maybe a little peaked. All he said was “maybe somebody should call an ambulance.” Somebody, I think Tonio but don’t quote me on that, did call and the cops and ambulance came. Mother had been cut up badly, a few deep gashes although mostly arm and leg wounds, nothing life threatening. Mother, eyes looking right at Johnny Blade when asked by a cop who had done this horrible deed said he had not been able to identify his assailant. Followed the time-honored, time-worn code of not finking out, ratting out to the coppers. Funny the cops never asked anybody if they knew anything, saw anybody run since they also knew they would get the time-honored, time-worn didn’t see a fucking thing. Didn’t ask sweated Johnny Blade anything.

We expected some blow-back, serious blow-back when Red Riley found out what had happened to Mother and by whom, but he may have been in shock that anybody would waste one of his corner boys and that person must have been a mean mother, meaner than Mother indeed. Or maybe it was just “collateral damage,” another term not used then in the turf wars since Mother had chosen, wisely or not, to confront a corner boy on his own turf. A few years later Red Riley, motorcycle at the ready and motorcycle mama in tow, got wasted by some redneck cops down in some freaking White Hen store in North Carolina trying to rob the place.

Johnny Blade Postscript: After high school we went our various ways as usually happens, and Johnny Blade whether he finished high school or not I am not sure I know he had been kept back at least one year, went his way. The story goes around the old neighborhood that Johnny Blade almost killed a man, by knife of course, in Riverdale out west of Boston, got caught and was given “the choice.” The choice in those days given by a judge was a nickel in the state pen or go in the Army. Johnny Blade, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, took the latter course and laid down his head in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1967. He forever has his name etched on the Adamsville town memorial wall and down in that black granite-etched wall in Washington, D.C. Every time I go down there, I go to the wall and shed a tear for him (and Frank White). Thanks for defending your corner boys. RIP, Sergeant John Richard Rizzo, “Johnny Blade” (1946-1967)

When The Blues Was Dues- Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stone Tribute –“Shine A Light”

DVD Review

Shine A Light. starring The Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese, Paramount, 2008

… he, manic film director he, hell, famous film director, Martin Scorsese, all Hollywood –awarded, all blank check name your next project, all well known for capturing the mean rumble-stumble-tumble streets of Little Italy corner boy life in front of Mama’s Pizza Parlor, for New Jack City taxi cab saviors, or devils, for be-bop blues Muddy-Howlin’ Wolf- Ike (Tina-less)Turner-Willie Dixon- The Blinds(Blake-Jefferson-Johnson-McTell-Lewis) tributes (kindred to Stone-blessed early day Chess Record Mecca trips) and for a scad of other worthy projects lay heaven-bent in his hotel suite, sweating, sweating like he had just landed his first directing job and his whole career depended on getting the essence of his generation’s music, second wave (first wave Elvis, Chuck, Roy, Jerry Lee and progeny) stone-crazy rock and roll. So he fretted the night before the big theater performance (always a tough venue for camera perspective shots anyway) away thinking about what god crazy impulse made him think he could capture such energy, such performance level, such potential for everything to go off the wheels and wind up like so many rock docks looking like some stoned (weed stoned not depths cousin cocaine stoned) suburban kid’s homemade video. Like some kid in the audience. Jesus.

And they, they the reigning emperors of the known rock universe fought him every inch of the way, cut the lights, brighten the darks, keep those goddam cameras out of our faces, off of our stage, and away from our big- wig event audience. Hey, maybe you should film it from the last row of the balcony and deal with chasing away those kids that snuck in the theater through the back door. Wise guys, he thought, we knew how to deal with these limey river rats back in that Little Italy corner boy night, and no questions asks. And to top it off they didn’t even give him the play list (or rather he, Mick he, okay, it’s his play list and depends on his moods), the potential play list, hell, maybe they were going to do a night of Muddy Waters or Beatles covers for all he knew. He needed, desperately needed, to know whether they were going to burn the stage down opening up with Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Gimme Shelter, or Tumblin’ Dice and then pick up the wreckage or slow and easy rider their way in with As Tears Go By, Far Away Eyes, or Back Street Girl and then burn the place down. Jesus, he thought to himself, this one will age me about ten years.

He, his satanic majesty, he, Mick, Mick Jagger, laugh, Queen (no, not the rock group) benighted, oops, be-knighted on that same pre-show night sat on his hotel suite sofa fretting, fretting about whether he had done enough voice exercises, like his coach, that damn bastard coach had insisted to keep him from sounding like Bob Dylan’s brother, fretting whether that new lame shirt would hold up, fretting whether his slightly arthritic fingers could guitar hold the notes on Shine A Light night, and fretting whether his new diet of soy milk and rice puffs were enough to keep his fighting weight slim body in one piece. Yah and then he fretted, fretted simple stuff like what do you call an ex-president of the United States and the bag of glad-handers he was bringing with him. Fretted whether doing a Muddy tribute with Buddy Guy on Champagne and Reefer would just be taken as an autobiographical note. And fretted too whether Keith might use something, anything, as an excuse to go all crazy-up before the show. Start Me Up alright. Ronny and Charley too, for that matter.

And then he thought maybe he should ask around and get a little something for the head, a little something to put that edge on when he was coming out all black and black satanic on Sympathy For The Devil. And then he thought back, back to the youthful jails, the endless court appearances, the close escapes, the missing days (damn weeks when he was in high dudgeon stoned, sister morphine stoned, or love girl stoned ) and thought better of it. Christ he was probably just going to squeeze out the two hours straight as it was. And on top of that the pressure from Marty (and his maze of a crowd) to do this, do that, put this camera here, put that light there (burning up his bum or some other part of him in the sweaty night) AND he wanted to know the play list. Christ he himself didn’t know it, that was part of keeping the act fresh, of keeping the boys, Keith, Ronny, Charley, those boys, on their toes (to speak nothing of those wacko trumpet players, sexy sax players and that damn bass player)

Showtime. All doubts gone, or put aside for the siege, eyes front he, Mick he, forget Marty he until the film premier, Rasputin-like, Rasputin on speed maybe, drawing the audience in with his first juke moves, feet moving faster than the speed of light, hips playing ring-a-rosy, bounce shirt showing a little skin around the waist (eye-candy for the girls, girls six to sixty, and AARP papa moans about how can he keep so fit and jealous ),every hand moving like some stoned hitchhiker out on the great blue-pink American search night, gesturing about twelve different ways. Ready, set, go. Jumpin’ Jack Flash for the opening, They, Mick, have decided to burn the place down, take no prisoners, and see who is still standing at the end. Mick is on fire, Keith, like some William S Burroughs’ Naked Lunch junkie, like some poor mother’s (mothers’) worst nightmare daughter coming home with (what will the neighbors say), doing some ten thousand year old blues riff, mixed with every sound he has heard since about 1956 solid (solid smoking that cigarette , bans Keith-exempted, okay). Yah, for about the nine hundredth time he and Mick are in synch, check Ronnie, and check steady drum beat Charley, cool as a cucumber Charley. And just for that one moment (okay two hours) for those who went through it the first time back in the day, and for those who were spoon-fed it on their mother’s lap, the audience, knew what it was like when men (hell, women too) played rock and roll for keeps.

…and hence this film

Happy Birthday Keith Richards-On The (Ouch!) Anniversary Of The First Beatles Album-Yah, Yah, -Stones Or Beatles?

Happy Birthday Keith Richards-On The (Ouch!) Anniversary Of The First Beatles Album-Yah, Yah, -Stones Or Beatles?


Allan Jackson, Class Of 1964, comment:

The Stones or Beatles?

This entry was originally posted on oue class website in March 2008.

I have been posing some questions to my class, the Class of 1964, on this and the North Quincy Alumni site. The following question is one such example. However, it occurred to me that other classes might be able to answer it as well. After all we all bled Raider red, right? I will occasionally pose other questions of general interest.

******

I propose to use this Message Board space to pose certain questions to my fellow classmates to which I am interested in getting answers. Thus, I will be periodically throwing a question out and would appreciate an answer. No, I do not want to ask personal family questions. After forty years this space is hardly the place to air our 'dirty' little secrets. I do not want to talk religion. That is everyone's private affair. Nor I do not want to talk politics, although those who might remember me know that I am a "political junkie" from way back. In fact I mean to get my self into some twelve-step rehab program as soon as this current presidential campaign is over, if it ever is. What I want to do is ask questions like that posed below. Join me.

"Manchurian Candidate" McCain vs. The Huckster? Boring. Ms. Hillary vs. Obama "The Charma"? Ho, hum. Three dollar gas at the pump. Oh, well. (Remember this was originally written in March. AJ)? What has my blood boiling is a question that I am desperate, after forty years, to know about my classmates from 1964. In your callow youth, back in the mist of time, did you prefer The Rolling Stones or the Beatles? The question was posed in the canned Q&A section on my profile page (on the Classmates site) but I feel the issue warrants a full airing out.

I make no bones about my preference for The Rolling Stones and will motivate that below but here let me just set the parameters of the discussion. I am talking about the stuff they and the Beatles did when we were in high school. I do not mean the later material like the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper" or The Stones' "Gimme Shelter". And no, I do not want to hear about how you really swooned over Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. Answer the question asked, please.

I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably "Satisfaction". However, what really hooked me on them was when they covered the old Willie Dixon blues classic "Little Red Rooster". If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But beyond the sexual theme was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make.

That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although the blues, particularly the Chicago blues, also influenced the Beatles, it is The Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf's version but good. I have also thought about the Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth.

Compare some works like John Lennon's plaintive "Working Class Hero" and The Stones' agitated "Street Fighting Man" (yes, I know these are later works but they serve to make my point here) and I believe that something in the way The Stones from early on presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my sense of working class alienation. But enough. I will close with this. I have put my money where my mouth is with my preference. When the Stones toured Boston at Fenway Park in the summer of 2005 I spend many (too many) dollars to get down near the stage and watch old Mick and friends rock. Beat that.

Street Fighting Man Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Rolling Stones
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance
I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

"Working Class Hero" lyrics- John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.


The Red Rooster
Howling Wolf

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

Oh the dogs begin to bark,
and the hound begin to howl
Oh the dogs begin to bark, hound begin to howl
Ooh watch out strange kind people,
Cause little red rooster is on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard,
Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon