This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
ALL DIAMONDS ARE BLOOD DIAMONDS! Africa's Resources in African Hands! Saturday February 23rd, 3-5pm @ First Church in Jamaica Plain 6 Eliot St, Jamaica Plain MA Wheelchair Accessible Free
This event is a call to action for white people to return diamonds and other stolen resources back to African people as a form of reparations. All Diamonds are Blood Diamonds is a national speaking tour by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
Long revered as rare, benign gems symbolizing the ideals of beauty and everlasting love, diamonds are the desired gift for engagements, anniversaries, graduations, or simply as an expression of love. Diamonds are thought to be the makings of heirlooms, something to pass down from generation to generation with ever appreciating value.
These myths about the diamond trade, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a look into the reality of diamonds and the real price of this seemingly innocent stone for millions of African people and others who live on the other end of the equation.
SPEAKERS Keynote: Yejide Orunmila, President of the African National Women's Organization of the African People's Socialist Party Featured: Halley Murray, North Regional Coordinator of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement; Chair of USM Boston
Hosted by the Boston chapter of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, white people in solidarity with Black Power. USM is an organization of white people created by the African People's Socialist Party. We organize in the white community for reparations to African people.
The Coppers Are Always With Us-When City Hall Went
Amok And Made The Trains Late-Liam Neeson’s “The Commuter” (2018)-A Short Film
Review
DVD Review
By Bart Webber
The Commuter, starring Liam Neeson, 2018
[The constant reader may have noticed a rather long absence
of my name from the lists here at Growing
Up Absurd In The 1950s. That same reader also knows, or should know, that I
was one of the founder members of the sister publication, American Left History, back in the mid-1970s when it was a hard
copy publication created at least in part to “save” the late Pete Markin. Pete
a guy who got a lot of us into writing, to appreciate the written word, back in
the old neighborhood, the Acre neighborhood in growing up in the 1950s North
Adamsville south of Boston. Pete the guy who projected the crazy idea, and other
ideas that we though were crazy at the time when all we cared about was girls,
cars, girls and how to get into their pants, that a new breeze was coming through
the land. A time when we would turn the world upside down and in the process
give working class, damn, poor ass guys like us a shot at something. He made
good on that promise for a while dragging us in his huge wake getting us out
for varying periods of time to the Summer of Love, 1967 out in Frisco and all
that happened afterward.
That was just a little dream for Pete though because not
so much later the Vietnam dragon lady called him, as it did for me and a bunch
of those same poor ass working class guys from the Acre who couldn’t figure out
a way to get of the draft. Vietnam turned Pete’s dreams into nightmares and his
crazy ideas got the better of him when the high tide ebbed and he finally
figured that rather than a newer world we were going to get the same fucking over
that our parents and grandparents and before even when most of them came out of
starving hungry looking for bread Ireland on the “famine ships.” Pete fell down,
fell down hard and despite whatever money you would want to have bet then was the
first to go under the good green earth.
Maybe strangely since the mid-1970s the core of the
old neighborhood boys, the corner boys we called ourselves, kept themselves intact,
didn’t fall down maybe seeing what happened to Pete and have lived to fight another
day. Now it looks like I will be joining beloved bastard Pete if what the
doctors say is true. I have a few rare and spreading cancers which will do me
in eventually. The last year or so I have mainly been in one chemo therapy or another,
so I have not really been in the mood or condition to do much. But of late the
desire to write, the desire that Pete drilled into our brains to flow with words
has been upon me. I will write as long as I can and as hard as I can. Thanks
Pete.]
*******
Somebody once said the cops will always be with us
meaning that despite the changes in regimes, hell even changes in forms of
government somebody always has to guard the loot, keep those in charge from the
clawing hands of the unruly masses. (An old wag from the Acre whose family was
filled with overweight coppers would add guard the donut shop coffee and
crullers as well.) True or not doing that task may actually lead to learning
some useful skills if you are ever conned by some come hither dame into playing
“hit man” on a fast-moving Metro heading out of New York City. That the case
with one Matt Murphy, retired copper and subsequently retired insurance sales
man who needed all that copper muscle memory allowed in the film under review The Commuter starring versatile action
actor Liam Neeson (now in some bad odor for racially-charged remarks from many
years ago about killing a black man in revenge for a rape of a friend who
strangely in this film had a serious knock down drag out fight leading to death
of a black man who was a paid hit-man-by vocation not by guile with Liam’s character
Matt.)
In the old neighborhood, an Irish Catholic
neighborhood filled with the working poor, the indigent and the riffraff, the
bottom-feeders who locate there for the easy if sparse pickings those corner boys
mentioned in the bracketed introduction above loathed the cops who made our
lives hell and who would harass us, take us down to the station for what they
called “general principles.” That despite an overload of coppers in all our
families-the routine being among Irish family sons a breakdown something like this-
one son a priest, with the vocation my grandmother called it with glee, one a
gangster doing time in stir on at least one occasion and one a copper getting
fat on those guarded coffee and crullers and whatever other graft they could
hustle (among the girls one for the nunnery, one with the vocation distaff side
also filling my grandmother with glee). That attitude never changed and while
most of us have had a long term “truce” with the coppers except maybe for political
offenses that is still true. (I haven’t talked to my older brother Larry in
about twenty years once I found out he was the guy on the North Adamsville
Police Department who was in charge of keeping young black boys from stopping at
Adamsville Beach for “general principles”.)
Still whatever they learn at the Police Academy and on
duty must have some value as it did for Matt when he wound up being the “savior”
while commuting busting up a bad guy City Hall cabal in the process. The usual
corrupt City Hall operation depends on everybody keeping quiet whether they are
in on the deal or not. If not then they have to fall down as was the case here.
That is where the coppers, not all the coppers but the bad apples as the police
press agent flak-catcher would have it, have to keep the unruly mob at bay-or
dead. In this case dead. Except there was a slip-up, or rather two. A girl relative
of the guy who had to fall down was present when the coppers tried to see if he
could fly and she had grabbed the hard-drive proof that guys up to and including
people in the Mayor’s office were skimming every dime they could skim for their
“retirement.” Including a bad apple cop who was Matt’s old partner when they
were working the Dunkin’ Donut beat. Set Matt up knowing he was cash poor and
knowing that he had just been let go from his crumb-bum insurance agency for
not selling enough life insurance to keep them happy. Couldn’t close the deal
anymore, the kiss of death in selling anything from insurance to vacuum cleaners.
Where does the commuter part come in? Well that is
easy once Matt started making serious dough after leaving the cops he and his
lovely two point three child family moved to the leafy suburbs, moved outside the
crime-ridden, noisy scary city, moved to Tarrytown and the endless commute to
earn that daily bread downtown. That is why Matt was “picked” for the job,
picked to be the “hit man” ex-cop who could figure out how to ferret out the
witness who saw her cousin fall down and who had the hard drive which would
have sent everybody to prison. Did I mention that they sealed the deal with a
kiss-the kiss of death to his wife and two pint three kids if he fumbled, if he
fell down.
But of course Matt wouldn’t once he had his down
payment and the prospect of a hundred grand for light work. Matt had lost his
edge though because he made about six mistaken identifications before he got
the right person-got the witness from hell. Those off-hand deaths just the price,
the overhead to make sure his family was okay. After getting that witness and promising
her safety all hell broke loose once the City Hall guys knew where he was. They
made him an APB psycho holding some fellow commuters hostage complete with SWAT
teams and half the cops in Westchester County. Matt came through though and at
least one bad guy, gal actually fell down. The lesson to be learned here though
in stay a million miles away from the trains, maybe two million. Ride a bike or
take Uber or Lyft. And remember despite this Matt’s actions stay away from the
coppers, far away.
The Coppers Are Always With Us-When City Hall Went Amok And Made The Trains Late-Liam Neeson’s “The Commuter” (2018)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Bart Webber
The Commuter, starring Liam Neeson, 2018
[The constant reader may have noticed a rather long absence of my name from the lists here at Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s. That same reader also knows, or should know, that I was one of the founder members of the sister publication, American Left History, back in the mid-1970s when it was a hard copy publication created at least in part to “save” the late Pete Markin. Pete a guy who got a lot of us into writing, to appreciate the written word, back in the old neighborhood, the Acre neighborhood in growing up in the 1950s North Adamsville south of Boston. Pete the guy who projected the crazy idea, and other ideas that we though were crazy at the time when all we cared about was girls, cars, girls and how to get into their pants, that a new breeze was coming through the land. A time when we would turn the world upside down and in the process give working class, damn, poor ass guys like us a shot at something. He made good on that promise for a while dragging us in his huge wake getting us out for varying periods of time to the Summer of Love, 1967 out in Frisco and all that happened afterward.
That was just a little dream for Pete though because not so much later the Vietnam dragon lady called him, as it did for me and a bunch of those same poor ass working class guys from the Acre who couldn’t figure out a way to get of the draft. Vietnam turned Pete’s dreams into nightmares and his crazy ideas got the better of him when the high tide ebbed and he finally figured that rather than a newer world we were going to get the same fucking over that our parents and grandparents and before even when most of them came out of starving hungry looking for bread Ireland on the “famine ships.” Pete fell down, fell down hard and despite whatever money you would want to have bet then was the first to go under the good green earth.
Maybe strangely since the mid-1970s the core of the old neighborhood boys, the corner boys we called ourselves, kept themselves intact, didn’t fall down maybe seeing what happened to Pete and have lived to fight another day. Now it looks like I will be joining beloved bastard Pete if what the doctors say is true. I have a few rare and spreading cancers which will do me in eventually. The last year or so I have mainly been in one chemo therapy or another, so I have not really been in the mood or condition to do much. But of late the desire to write, the desire that Pete drilled into our brains to flow with words has been upon me. I will write as long as I can and as hard as I can. Thanks Pete.]
*******
Somebody once said the cops will always be with us meaning that despite the changes in regimes, hell even changes in forms of government somebody always has to guard the loot, keep those in charge from the clawing hands of the unruly masses. (An old wag from the Acre whose family was filled with overweight coppers would add guard the donut shop coffee and crullers as well.) True or not doing that task may actually lead to learning some useful skills if you are ever conned by some come hither dame into playing “hit man” on a fast-moving Metro heading out of New York City. That the case with one Matt Murphy, retired copper and subsequently retired insurance sales man who needed all that copper muscle memory allowed in the film under review The Commuter starring versatile action actor Liam Neeson (now in some bad odor for racially-charged remarks from many years ago about killing a black man in revenge for a rape of a friend who strangely in this film had a serious knock down drag out fight leading to death of a black man who was a paid hit-man-by vocation not by guile with Liam’s character Matt.)
In the old neighborhood, an Irish Catholic neighborhood filled with the working poor, the indigent and the riffraff, the bottom-feeders who locate there for the easy if sparse pickings those corner boys mentioned in the bracketed introduction above loathed the cops who made our lives hell and who would harass us, take us down to the station for what they called “general principles.” That despite an overload of coppers in all our families-the routine being among Irish family sons a breakdown something like this- one son a priest, with the vocation my grandmother called it with glee, one a gangster doing time in stir on at least one occasion and one a copper getting fat on those guarded coffee and crullers and whatever other graft they could hustle (among the girls one for the nunnery, one with the vocation distaff side also filling my grandmother with glee). That attitude never changed and while most of us have had a long term “truce” with the coppers except maybe for political offenses that is still true. (I haven’t talked to my older brother Larry in about twenty years once I found out he was the guy on the North Adamsville Police Department who was in charge of keeping young black boys from stopping at Adamsville Beach for “general principles”.)
Still whatever they learn at the Police Academy and on duty must have some value as it did for Matt when he wound up being the “savior” while commuting busting up a bad guy City Hall cabal in the process. The usual corrupt City Hall operation depends on everybody keeping quiet whether they are in on the deal or not. If not then they have to fall down as was the case here. That is where the coppers, not all the coppers but the bad apples as the police press agent flak-catcher would have it, have to keep the unruly mob at bay-or dead. In this case dead. Except there was a slip-up, or rather two. A girl relative of the guy who had to fall down was present when the coppers tried to see if he could fly and she had grabbed the hard-drive proof that guys up to and including people in the Mayor’s office were skimming every dime they could skim for their “retirement.” Including a bad apple cop who was Matt’s old partner when they were working the Dunkin’ Donut beat. Set Matt up knowing he was cash poor and knowing that he had just been let go from his crumb-bum insurance agency for not selling enough life insurance to keep them happy. Couldn’t close the deal anymore, the kiss of death in selling anything from insurance to vacuum cleaners.
Where does the commuter part come in? Well that is easy once Matt started making serious dough after leaving the cops he and his lovely two point three child family moved to the leafy suburbs, moved outside the crime-ridden, noisy scary city, moved to Tarrytown and the endless commute to earn that daily bread downtown. That is why Matt was “picked” for the job, picked to be the “hit man” ex-cop who could figure out how to ferret out the witness who saw her cousin fall down and who had the hard drive which would have sent everybody to prison. Did I mention that they sealed the deal with a kiss-the kiss of death to his wife and two pint three kids if he fumbled, if he fell down.
But of course Matt wouldn’t once he had his down payment and the prospect of a hundred grand for light work. Matt had lost his edge though because he made about six mistaken identifications before he got the right person-got the witness from hell. Those off-hand deaths just the price, the overhead to make sure his family was okay. After getting that witness and promising her safety all hell broke loose once the City Hall guys knew where he was. They made him an APB psycho holding some fellow commuters hostage complete with SWAT teams and half the cops in Westchester County. Matt came through though and at least one bad guy, gal actually fell down. The lesson to be learned here though in stay a million miles away from the trains, maybe two million. Ride a bike or take Uber or Lyft. And remember despite this Matt’s actions stay away from the coppers, far away.
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Loudon Wainwright III Doing "Homeless".
CD Review
Last Man On Earth, Loudon Wainwright III, Red House Records, 2001
Okay, I have written plenty of prose stuff about the trials and tribulations, political or otherwise, of my generation, the now aging children of the "Generation Of '68. But who will chronicle in song or verse the "not going gently into that good night", as Dylan Thomas would have it, of that generation? Well, I have at least a contender for that position in the songwriting division, Loudon Wainwright III. For those who are unfamiliar with the name Brother Wainwright was something of well known, if secondary, figure on the 1960's folk revival circuit. If that is not enough information then he was once married to Kate McGarrigle, one of the accomplished folk- singing McGarrigle sisters. If that is still not enough then he played, in several episodes at least, the guitar- strumming GI in the television series "MASH". For the younger set, Loudon is Rufus Wainwright's father. There, I think I have touched all the bases.
Why is Brother Wainwright my candidate for the oracle of the swan song of our generation (it appears that he is an almost exact contemporary of mine)? Well, just take a listen to this CD(or read the lyrics)," Last Man On Earth", and you will know. Sure, it is a little light on the need to continue the political struggle that we started in our youth but on the questions of losing parents, reconciling with the lost of parents, reflecting on that fact that some issues between the generations never got resolved (and now never will) and dealing with the inevitable, if sometimes humorous, medical questions, of our own aging process he is right on.
That list of issues further includes the whys and wherefores of a lifetime of frustration about artistic endeavors (or whatever road we traveled), the little question of immortality and the now really big question of how to get through to the next day. It is all there. I want to say that this is a man's CD, and as to subject matter and "feel" it is, but I think Brother Wainwright has captured many a dilemma that we can all, male and female, relate to. Hell, Rufus can sing to the kids, Loudon is ours. That is the "skinny" here from one "last man on earth" to another.
Last Man On Earth Lyrics
In the year 2000
my age was 53
born in the first half
of the last century
I always was post-modern
but that's ancient history
Now I'm the last man on Earth
that's what the matter is with me
I guess I'm old fashioned
Retro to a degree
you could say I'm a throw-back
anachronistically
air conditioning is here to stay
and that makes me unhappy
cause I'm the last man on Earth
that's what the matter is with me
I don't have a portfolio
I gotta pleed guilty
the best things are the worthless now
that's just because they're free
and if your not a millionaire yet
boy, you better be
Now, I'm the last man on Earth
that's what the matter is with me
I should be optimistic
and go buy some bonds and stocks
They'll find a cure for Cancer soon
we may get trigger-locks
existence is no picnic
as statistics all have shown
we learn to live together
and then we die alone
everybody's got a website
but that's all Greek to me
I don't own a computer
I hate that letter "e"
I don't pack a cell phone
or drive an SUV
Yes, I'm the last man on Earth
that's what the matter is with me
I'm the last man standing
save the last dance for me
I've taken the last train to Clarksville
I'm the fifth monkey
nice guys always finish last
no one's nicer than me
Yeah, I'm the last man on Earth
That's what the matter is with me
Kid's used to say their prayers at night
before they went to bed
St. John told us that God is love
Nietzsche said he was dead
this thing we call existence
who knows what it all means?
Time and Life and People
are just glossy magazines
I sat and watched those guys
debate each other on TV
politicians, wrestlers
they're all the same to me
hey, I don't give a damn
which idiot runs this country
Since I'm the last man on Earth
It don't matter to me
In the year 2000
my age was 53
I know that I'm grumpy
middle-aged crazy
but if you are a woman
you might have to sleep with me
Since I'm the last man on Earth
and I can guarantee
I'm the last man on Earth
and there ain't nothing wrong with me
White Winos Lyrics
Mother liked her white wine
She'd have a glass or two
Almost every single night
After her day was through
San se chardonnay chaiblie
Pinot gris jiot
Just to take the edge of
Just to get the glow
You've got to take the edge off
If you wanna get the...
Mother liked her white wines
She'd have a glass or three
We'd sat out on the screen porch
White winos mam and me
We'd talk about her childhood
Recap my career
When we got to my father
That was when I'd switch to beer
We got to the old man
And I'd always switched to
Mother liked her white wine
CHORUS:
I go to the graveyard where we all must go
Among the dead & the buried there just so I will know
What it's like beneath those trees listening to that wind
I go to the graveyard & I'll be back again
I played in the graveyard when I was just a boy
I'd run among the headstones myself I would enjoy
But I was young & hardly knew what would happen then
I played in the graveyard & I'll be back again
I walk through the graveyard I read the headstones
So many dead & buried there, each one all alone
An old man and an infant & a little child of ten
I walk through the graveyard & I'll be back again
My father's in the graveyard, my dear mother too
I viit them with flowers what else can I do
I go to the graveyard to remember them
I'm an orphan in the graveyard & I'll be back again
Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Out In The 1960s Folk Revival Minute- The Music Of Eric Andersen- A CD Review Click on the headline to link ot a YouTube film clip pf Eric Andersen performing one of his songs
Eric Andersen’s Greatest Hits, Eric Andersen, 1971
In the great swirl that was the folk music revival movement of the early 1960’s a number of new voices were heard that created their own folk expression and were not as dependent on the traditional works of collective political struggle or social commentary associated with the likes of Te Weavers, Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie. Although Eric Andersen was a product of the intense Cambridge folk scene and knew and played with many of the stars of that scene he had a distinctive niche in that he performed mainly his own his music and his subject matter tended toward the very personal. It was only political in the most general sense that he, like the others, was breaking away from Tin Pan Alley to express his sentiments.
That said, this greatest hits compilation is almost exclusively made up of songs that he wrote in the 1960’s- the most productive period of his career. I have seen some of his more recent performances and listened to his later work and nothing compares with the work of this period. Such tunes of personal sorrow and anger as Florentine and Sheila and well as the classic Violets of Dawn and Leaving You come from this period. In short, one has to listen to (and read) the lyrics of this singer/ song writer from this time to get a real feel for his work. But if you want to take a trip back to a time when a serious argument could, and was made, that the personal was political and that folk music was, above all, about expressing the seemingly eternal notions of the complexities of love and loss then this is a part of the archives.
For radical democrats, socialists and communists Abraham Lincoln, the President who led the decisive struggle against slavery, warts and all, is a hero. That warts and all part, concerning his personal racial attitudes has been center stage recently in the academic history journals and related material. Here is the 'skinny' though. Lincoln finished the job John Brown started at Harper's Ferry in 1859. That, my friends, places him among those who looked to the "better angels" of their nature. By the way Eric Foner knows this period and is a main source for this kind of material. Read on.
*********** THE FIERY TRIAL: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
By Eric Foner Norton, 426 pp., illustrated, $29.95
In one of the most enduring speeches in American history, Abraham Lincoln spoke of a “new birth of freedom’’ and asserted that the United States had been “conceived in liberty’’ and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’’
Today these words from the Gettysburg Address may seem like patriotic boilerplate on parchment. But in 1863 their meaning was new, stunning — and unmistakably clear. Lincoln was saying that the new birth of freedom belonged to enslaved Americans. He was arguing that national policy was set by the Declaration of Independence, which preceded the Constitution by more than a decade. He was contending that equality for all was a traditional American idea, not a new one forged in the 19th century. And he made clear that the Civil War was being fought for freedom.
For decades historians and commentators have plucked quotes from Lincoln’s speeches, informal remarks, and letters for their own purposes, some to show his ambivalence toward slavery, others to display his opposition to slavery, some to underline his skepticism of the natural abilities of blacks, others to highlight his contention that blacks deserved the rights of all.
Now Eric Foner, perhaps the preeminent historian of the Civil War era, has produced a masterwork that examines Lincoln’s passage to Gettysburg and beyond, and his movement as a historical figure to the status of symbol if not secular saint.
“The Gettysburg Address offered a powerful definition of the reborn nation that was left to emerge from the Civil War as a land of both liberty and equality,’’ Foner writes in “The Fiery Trial.’’ “Left unanswered was the question of how fully blacks would share in that promise in a nation where they had never known it, and whether they would finally be recognized as part of ‘the people’ on whom, Lincoln’s concluding words declared, the government rested.’’
Some of this territory — what Lincoln thought, when he thought it, how contradictory it was, how it fit into Lincoln’s world view, and how that world view changed — has been covered before, but never so comprehensively as Foner does, never with the historical sweep that Foner sets out, never with the historiographical finality that Foner will very likely be judged to have achieved.
There have always been many Lincolns. Foner portrays one Lincoln, but one who changed and evolved from a man who reflected the prejudices and assumptions of his time to one who reflected the better angels and new assumptions of an American future that even now has not been fully achieved.
For much of his political life he had an abiding set of views, evident in his eulogy of his hero Henry Clay almost nine years before the Civil War began: the convictions, as Foner deftly summarizes them, that “blacks were entitled to the basic human rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence, [that] slavery should be ended gradually and with the consent of slaveholders, and [that] abolition should be accompanied by colonization.’’
Lincoln remained intrigued by colonization almost to the very end, but by the time the Civil War was underway he understood that the conflict itself would resolve the slave issue.
Many factors contributed to Lincoln’s views about blacks and slaves: His outlook was formed without substantial contact with blacks and certainly without contact with accomplished blacks. One of his wife’s uncles had bought and sold slaves. As a House member, he repeatedly voted for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. But Foner argues that Lincoln viewed blacks “as a people who had been violently and unnaturally removed from their homeland, not as part of American society.’’
Plus there were the contradictions that, like the Bible, allow people to find in Lincoln what they want. He could be quoted saying slavery was a “monstrous injustice’’ or a “vast moral evil.’’ Then again he could be quoted saying that “there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.’’ He may have used the N-word but he will be remembered for the E-word (emancipation).
Any examination of Lincoln and race must begin with an examination of ourselves and race — and here Foner offers us a lesson we should apply to the way we examine this president and the purposes of the war he prosecuted. “Efforts to assess Lincoln’s own racial outlook run the danger of exaggerating the importance of race in his thinking,’’ Foner says. “Race is our obsession, not Lincoln’s.’’
Even so, we are left with this question: How to understand all the complexities and contradictions in Lincoln’s views?
Perhaps by considering Lincoln a man of vision and values, but preeminently as a man of politics. Before the war, he was wary of upending the sectional balance. During the war, he was wary of alienating the border states. He practiced politics as the art of the possible — until he bent history by expanding the definition of what was possible.
David M. Shribman, for a decade the Globe’s Washington bureau chief, is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He can be reached at dshribman@post-gazette.com.
Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-
“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line edition.
[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing. That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017 in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in general about what had happened and I will get to that in a minute before dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.
What you need to know first, if you don’t know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and, about the subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair is fair.
What I need to mention, alluded to above, is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail on noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.” Kick when somebody is down their main interest in life.
I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City (presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal “hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for bottles with deposits. Christ.
Needless to say, how does one actually answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my sack time with her and this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.
I will, must deal with two big lies which also center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City. The first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from Utah (now successful ready to take office in January) to “get well.” The premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the peace in that extended family situation. The unbelievable part is that those Mormon folk, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks, indeed.
The biggest lie though is the one that had me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate, some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other that one of our old corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco. He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the publication.
But enough of this tiresome business because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in 1969
******
All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid going “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the beat musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off, at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model” beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs standing in for all be-bop-dom.
So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe, that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive. Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a different sort novel On The Road.
Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River. The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad daylight if you can believe that.
Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and “find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.
That is when one night, this is when we were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a “newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us, join him in the Summer of Love experience. Maybe the whole thing with Jack Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary Gazette when he was down in Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the “hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom, of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan Jackson
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Ballad Of The Skeletons Lyrics (written by: Allen Ginsberg)
Said the Presidential Skeleton I won't sign the bill Said the Speaker skeleton Yes you will
Said the Representative Skeleton I object Said the Supreme Court skeleton Whaddya expect
Said the Miltary skeleton Buy Star Bombs Said the Upperclass Skeleton Starve unmarried moms
Said the Yahoo Skeleton Stop dirty art Said the Right Wing skeleton Forget about yr heart
Said the Gnostic Skeleton The Human Form's divine Said the Moral Majority skeleton No it's not it's mine
Said the Buddha Skeleton Compassion is wealth Said the Corporate skeleton It's bad for your health
Said the Old Christ skeleton Care for the Poor Said the Son of God skeleton AIDS needs cure
Said the Homophobe skeleton Gay folk suck Said the Heritage Policy skeleton Blacks're outa luck
Said the Macho skeleton Women in their place Said the Fundamentalist skeleton Increase human race
Said the Right-to-Life skeleton Foetus has a soul Said Pro Choice skeleton Shove it up your hole
Said the Downsized skeleton Robots got my job Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton Tear gas the mob
Said the Governor skeleton Cut school lunch Said the Mayor skeleton Eat the budget crunch
Said the Neo Conservative skeleton Homeless off the street! Said the Free Market skeleton Use 'em up for meat
Said the Think Tank skeleton Free Market's the way Said the Saving & Loan skeleton Make the State pay
Said the Chrysler skeleton Pay for you & me Said the Nuke Power skeleton & me & me & me
Said the Ecologic skeleton Keep Skies blue Said the Multinational skeleton What's it worth to you?
Said the NAFTA skeleton Get rich, Free Trade, Said the Maquiladora skeleton Sweat shops, low paid
Said the rich GATT skeleton One world, high tech Said the Underclass skeleton Get it in the neck
Said the World Bank skeleton Cut down your trees Said the I.M.F. skeleton Buy American cheese
Said the Underdeveloped skeleton We want rice Said Developed Nations' skeleton Sell your bones for dice
Said the Ayatollah skeleton Die writer die Said Joe Stalin's skeleton That's no lie
Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton We swallowed Tibet Said the Dalai Lama skeleton Indigestion's whatcha get
Said the World Chorus skeleton That's their fate Said the U.S.A. skeleton Gotta save Kuwait
Said the Petrochemical skeleton Roar Bombers roar! Said the Psychedelic skeleton Smoke a dinosaur
Said Nancy's skeleton Just say No Said the Rasta skeleton Blow Nancy Blow
Said Demagogue skeleton Don't smoke Pot Said Alcoholic skeleton Let your liver rot
Said the Junkie skeleton Can't we get a fix? Said the Big Brother skeleton Jail the dirty pricks
Said the Mirror skeleton Hey good looking Said the Electric Chair skeleton Hey what's cooking?
Said the Talkshow skeleton Fuck you in the face Said the Family Values skeleton My family values mace
Said the NY Times skeleton That's not fit to print Said the CIA skeleton Cantcha take a hint?
Said the Network skeleton Believe my lies Said the Advertising skeleton Don't get wise!
Said the Media skeleton Believe you me Said the Couch-potato skeleton What me worry?
Said the TV skeleton Eat sound bites Said the Newscast skeleton That's all Goodnight
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass-
A New Biography
Click on link to hear a
serious biographer of Frederick Douglass the revolutionary abolitionist who broke
with the William Lloyd Garrison-wing of the movement when the times called for remorseless
military fighting against the entrenched slave-holders and their allies. This from
Christopher Lydon’s Open Source program
on NPR.
This is what you need to
know about Frederick Douglass and the anti-slavery, the revolutionary abolitionist
fight. He was the man, the shining q star black man who led the fight for black
men to join the Union Army and not just either be treated as freaking contraband
or worse, as projected in early in the war by the Lincoln administration the return
of fugitive slaves to “loyal” slave-owners. Led the fight to not only seek an
emancipation proclamation as part of the struggle but a remorseless and probably
long struggle to crush slavery and slaver-owners and their hanger-on militarily.
Had been ticketed at a desperate moment in 1864 to recreate a John Brown scenario
if they logjam between North and South in Virginia had not been broken. Yes, a
bright shining northern star black man.
Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the song "John Brown's Body".
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin comment: The Union armies as they headed South, especially the Massachusetts regiments, used this as their marching song. So a man who a little more than a year earlier was the subject of widespread scorn, North and South, except among hardened abolitionists and their supporters "led" the great climatic struggle against American slavery after all. John Brown's Body Information Lyrics The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe. John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave His soul goes marching on Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! His soul is marching on He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew His soul is marching on Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! His soul is marching on John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, John Brown died that the slave might be free, But his soul is marching on! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! His soul is marching on The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down On the grave of old John Brown Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! Glory, Glory! Hallelujah! His soul is marching on Information and lyrics from Best Loved Songs of the American People See Bibliography for full information.
