Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Five

Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night-The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Five

From The Pen Of Guest Music Critic  Josh Breslin 

A YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night

If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of the today’s bourgeois-driven push, you know grab goods, grab the dough, grab some shelter from the storm, the storm that these days comes down like a hard rain falling, to get ahead in this wicked old world have to step back and take stock, maybe listen to some words of wisdom, or words that help explain how you got into that mess then you have come to the right address. Okay, okay on that bourgeois-driven today thing  maybe going back further to Calvinist Puritan avenging angels times with John Winthrop and the Mayflower boys but you best ask Max Weber about that since he tried to hook the boys to the wheel of the capitalist profit, profit for you at the expense of me, system with the new dispensation coming out like hellfire from Geneva and points east and west. But you get the point.

If all that to-ing and fro-ing (nice touch, right) leaves you wondering where you fell off the edge, that edge city (edge city where you danced around with all the conventions of the days, danced around the get ahead world with blinkers on) where big cloud outrageous youthful dreams were dreamt and you took risks, damn did you take risks, thought nothing of that fact either, landed on your ass more than a few time but just picked yourself up and dusted your knees off and done stick around and listen up. Yeah, so if you are wondering,  have been pushed off your saintly wheels, yeah, pushed you off your sainted wheels, and gotten yourself  into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off that angel-driven dream of your youth, now faded, tattered, and half- forgotten(but only half, only half, the wisp of the dream, the eternal peace dream, the figuring out how to contain that fire, that wanting habits fire in your belly dream sisters and brothers), and need some solace (need some way to stop the fret counting the coffee cups that while away your life), need to reach back to roots (reach back to roots that the 1950s golden age of America kicked the ass out of to make us crave oneness, to forget about those old immigrant customs, made us forget that simple country blues, mountain breeze songs, cowboy ballads, Tex-Mex, Cajun Saturday night that make the people feel good times), reach back to the primeval forest maybe, put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay) and remember what it was like when men and women sang just to sing the truth of what they saw and heard.

If the norms of don’t rock the boat (not in these uncertain times like any times in human existence were certain, damn, there was always something coming up from the first man-eating beast to the human race-eating nuclear bombs), the norms of keep your head down (that’s right brother, that’s right sister keep looking down, no left or rights for your placid world), keeping your head down being an art form now with appropriate ritual (that ritual looking more and more like the firing squad that took old Juan Romero’s life when he did bad those days out in Utah country), and excuses, because, well, because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them,” usually dark, very dark like some deathless, starless night disturbing your sleep, begging, I swear, begging you to put that gun in full view on the table,   speaking some unknown language, maybe A-rab, maybe gibberish for all you know, moving furtively and stealthily against your good night) drive you crazy and you need, desperately need, to listen to those ancient drum beats, those primeval forest leave droppings maybe, that old time embedded DNA coda long lost to, oh yes, civilization, to some civilizing mission (think of that Mayflower gang or ask Max Weber), that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams, half-forgotten but only half remember, ruled your days. Turn up the volume up another notch or two on that Tom Waits selection, maybe Jersey Girl or Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (can you?), Hold On, or Gunn Street Girl.

If you need to hear things, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, recapture the time when you did no fear, you and everybody else’s sisters and brothers, that thing you build and from which you now should run, recapture that child-like wonder that made you come alive, made you think about from whence you came and how a turn, a slight turn this way or that, could have landed you on the wrong side. And I have the list of brothers and sisters who took that wrong road, when he wound up face down in some dusty back road arroyo down Sonora way when the deal went bust or when she, maybe a little kinky for all I know, decided that she would try a needle and a spoon, I swear, or she swore just for kicks and she wound up in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse working that bed to perdition, hey, sweet dreams baby I tried to tell you when you play with fire, watch out.

So if you need to sort things out about boozers (and about titanic booze-crazed struggles in barrooms, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time down some crazed midnight, hell, four in the morning, penniless, cab fare-less night), losers (those who have lost their way, gotten it taken away from them like some maiden virginity), those who never had anything but lost, not those who never had a way to be lost, dopesters inhaling, in solitary hotel rooms among junkie brethren, gathering a needle and spoon in some subterranean dank cellar, down in dark alleys jack-rolling some poor drunk stiff out of his room rent for kicks (how uncool to drink low-shelf whiskeys or rotgut wines hell the guy deserved to be rolled, should feel lucky he got away with just a flipped wallet), out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust, mainly blotter, maybe peyote (the sweet dreams of ten million years of ghost warriors working the canyon walls flickering against the campfire flames) if that earth angel connection comes through (Aunt Sally, always, some Aunt Sally coming up the stairs to ease the pain, to make one feel, no, not feel, better than any AMA doctor without a prescription pad), creating visions of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,” connected in the campfire shadow night, hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion, hustling, always hustle, maybe pimping some street urchin, maybe cracking some guy’s head to create a “new world order” of the malignant, always moving), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen in some mad dash night, merciful sister feed me, feed me good), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, wrenches, jacks, an occasional gem, some cheap jewelry in wrong neighborhoods, some paintings or whatever is not saleable left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough, and Mister three card Monte long gone too ), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town, name your town, name your poison and the great big blue seas washing you clean out into the Japans ), the drift-less (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside, afraid of the “them” too, afraid to be washed clean, angel clean), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.

If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren once told to me by a forlorn grand master hobo, a guy down on his luck moving downward to bum), out in the railroad jungles in some Los Angeles ravine, some Gallup, New Mexico Southern Pacific  trestle (the old SP the only way to travel out west if you want to get west), some Hoboken broken down pier (ha, shades of the last page of Jack Kerouac’s classic), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, some gringa for a change of pace, maybe your girl but watch out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books, big academic books with great pedigrees could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely but not worthy of study, academic study anyway), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society, the whole fellahin world, then Tom Waits is your stop.

Tom Waits is, frankly, an acquired taste, one listen will not do, one song will not do, but listen to a whole record (CD okay) and you won’t want to turn the thing off, high praise in anyone’s book, so a taste well worth acquiring as he storms heaven in words, in thought-out words, in cribbed, cramped, crumbled words, to express the pain, angst and anguish of modern living, yes, modern living, looking for busted black-hearted angels (who left him short one night in some unnamed, maybe nameless, gin mill), for girls with Monroe hips (swaying wickedly in the dead air night, and flaming desire, hell lust, getting kicked out of proper small town hells (by descendants of those aforementioned Mayflower boys promising the world for one forbidden night), get real, and left for dead with cigar wrapping rings, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. 

Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the kind of characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). The, frankly, white trash Dove Linkhorns of the world, genetically broken before they begin, broken before they hit these shores (their forbears thrown out of Europe for venal crimes and lusts, damn them, the master-less men and women, ask old Max about them too), having been chased out, cast out of Europe, or some such place. In short, the people who do not make revolutions, those revolutions we keep hearing and reading about, the wretched of the earth and their kin, far from it, but those who surely, and desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial grizzled gravelly voice to attune your ear and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.

*

Songs To While Away The Resistance By-Back When We Tried To Turn The World Upside Down-From The Doors

Songs To While Away The Resistance By-Back When We Tried To Turn The World Upside Down-From The Doors

Frank Jackman comment September 2017:

A while back, maybe a half a decade ago now, I started a series in this space that I presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs, you know, The Internationale, Which Side Are You On?, Viva La Quince Brigada, Solidarity Forever and others like Deportee, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Blowin’ In The Wind, This Land Is Your Land  while not as directly political had their hearts in the right place, that I thought would help get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Those “dog days” in America anyway, depending on what leftist political perspective drove your imagination could have gone back as far as the late 1960s and early 1970s when all things were possible and the smell of revolution could be whiffed in the air for a while before we were defeated, or maybe later when all abandoned hope for the least bit of social justice in the lean, vicious, downtrodden Reagan years of unblessed memory or later still around the time of the great world- historic defeats of the international working class in East Europe and the former Soviet Union which left us with an unmatched arrogant unipolar imperialist world. That one pole being the United States, the “heart of the beast” from which we work. Whatever your personal benchmark they were nevertheless if you had the least bit of political savvy clearly dog days.        

I began posting these songs at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of massive uprising against the economic royalists (later chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations in what is now called the Great Recession of 2008. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the Arab Spring which got its start in Tunisia and Egypt and enflamed most of the Middle East one way or another, here in America the defensive uprising of the public workers in Wisconsin and later the quick-moving although ephemeral Occupy movement, and the uprising in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe in response to the “belt-tightening demanded by international financial institutions to name a few, the response from the American and world working classes has for lots of reasons if anything further entrenched those interests.

So as the “dog days” continue now under the extreme retro Trump administration I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; 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 kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects it will suffice for our purposes here. I like to invite others to make additional comments on certain pivotal songs, groups and artists and here is one by my old friend Josh Breslin, whom I met out in California during the heyday of the summer of love 1967, that reflects those many possibilities to “turn the world upside down” back in the 1960s and early 1970s before the “night of the long knives” set in:

WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the Summer of Love, 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point then of answering, or rather arguing which tells a lot about the kind of guy he was when he got his political hind legs up with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music is the revolution.”  Strangely when I first met him in San Francisco that summer you would have been hard-pressed to tell him that was not the case but after a few hit on the head by the coppers, a tour of duty in the military at the height of the Vietnam War, and what was happening to other political types trying to change the world for the better like the Black Panthers he got “religion,” or at least he got that music as the agency of social change idea out of his head.  Me, well, I was (and am not) as political as Markin was so that I neither got drowned in the counter-culture where music was a central cementing act, nor did I  have anything that happened subsequently that would have given me Markin’s epiphany.

I would listen half-attentively (a condition aided by being “stoned” a lot of the time) when such conversations erupted and Markin drilled his position. That position meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame, some dropping out, some going back to academia, some left by the wayside and who are maybe still wandering) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsarian  Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down the way the word has always trickled down to the sticks once the next new thing gets a workout, Olde Saco Park, in the town up in Maine where I grew up would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the quite nameable enemies of good, kindness starting with one Lyndon Johnson and one Richard M. Nixon and working down to the go-fers and hangers-on, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too “into the moment,” too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and too into finding some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music, or any mere cultural expression standing alone, would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden (I won’t use that “pre-lapsarian’ again to avoid showing my, and Markin’s, high Roman Catholic up-bringing and muddy what I want to say which is quite secular). I guess that I would err on the side of the “angels” and at least wish that we could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day. (Although I had a draft deferment due to a serious physical condition, not helped by the “street” dope I was consuming by the way, I supported, and something vehemently and with some sense of organization, a lot of the political stuff Markin was knee deep into, especially Panther defense when we lived in Oakland and all hell was raining down on the brothers and sisters.)                  

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising up to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth (if one could be jaded in Podunk Olde Saco, although more than one parent and more than one teacher called me “beatnik” back then whatever that meant to them) I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it was some off-shoot DNA thing since my people on my mother’s side (nee LeBlanc) were French-Canadian which had a deep folk heritage both up north and here although such music was not played in the house, a house like a lot of other ethnics where in the 1950s everybody wanted to be vanilla American (Markin mentioned that same thing about his Irish-etched parents). So it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy where my father first went to Europe under some very trying conditions or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst along with the DNA stuff I already mentioned, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia. (Again such music except every once in a while Hank Williams who I didn’t know about at the time was not played in the house either. Too “square” I guess.) 

The origin of my immersion into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House(and that raspy, boozy country voice on Death Letter Blues), Skip James ( I went nuts over that voice first heard after he had been “discovered” at the Newport Folk Festival I think in 1963 when he sang I’d Rather Be The Devil Than Be That Woman’s Man on the radio after I had just broken up with some devil woman, read girl), Mississippi John Hurt (that clear guitar, simple lyrics on Creole Belle), Muddy Waters (yes, Mannish-Boy ), Howlin’ Wolf ( I again went nuts when I heard his righteous Little Red Rooster  although I had heard the Stones version first, a version originally banned in Boston) and Elmore James ( his Dust My Broom version of the old Robert Johnson tune I used to argue was the “beginning” of rock and roll to anybody who would listen). Then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis (stuff like One Night With You, Jailhouse Rock and the like before he died in about 1958 or whatever happened to him when he started making stupid movies that mocked his great talent making him look foolish and which various girlfriends of the time forced me to go see at the old Majestic Theater in downtown Olde Saco), Jerry Lee (his High School Confidential, the film song, with him flailing away at the piano in the back of a flat-bed truck blew me away  although the film was a bust, as was the girl I saw it with), Chuck (yeah, when he declared to a candid  world that while we all gave due homage to classical music in school Mister Beethoven better move on over with Roll Over Beethoven), Roy (Roy the boy with that big falsetto voice crooning out Running Scared, whoa), Big Joe (and that Shake, Rattle and Roll which I at one point also argued was the “beginning” of rock and roll, okay, I liked to argue those fine points)   and Ike Turner (who I ultimately settled on with his Rocket 88 as that mythical beginning of rock and roll) Then later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, the folk music minute before the British invasion took a lot of the air out of that kind of music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan (even a so-so political guy like me, maybe less than so-so then before all hell broke loose and we had to choose sides loved Blowin’ in the Wind), Dave Von Ronk (and that raspy old voice, although was that old then sing Fair And Tender Ladies  one of the first folk songs I remember hearing) Joan Baez (and that long ironed-hair singing that big soprano on those Child ballads), etc.

I am, and have always been after that Podunk growing up experience a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bones) and so on.

All those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads he fretfully argued against when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase with The End and When The Music’s Over epitomized roots music. That hurt me to the quick, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic The Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll, played the people’s music, played to respond to a deep-seeded need of the people before them, for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Some icon that Markin could have latched onto.  Jim was part of the trinity, the “J” trinity for the superstitious – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) – “Drugs, sex, and rock and roll.” And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments (you figure out what that “higher,” means since you are bright people) felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by our generation and there were many, many made by the generation that came of political and cultural age in the early 1960s, the generation I call the generation of ’68 to signify its important and decisive year internationally, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by outlaw big cowboy President Lyndon B. Johnson and one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, and their minions like J. Edgar Hoover, Mayor Richard Daley and Hubert Humphrey spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by their protégés, hangers-on and now their descendants in Trump land has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely have endorsed this sentiment. Enough. 

In Honor Of Those Who Cannot Boil Water-In The Midst Of The Things Culinary Craze-Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth -“Love’s Kitchen” (2011)-A Film Review

In Honor Of Those Who Cannot Boil Water-In The Midst Of The Things Culinary Craze-Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth -“Love’s Kitchen” (2011)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Love’s Kitchen, starring Claire Forlani, Dougray Scott, 2011 

Sometimes a film reviewer like me knows exactly why he or she gets an assignment. And I can tell you exactly why since under site editor Greg Green we have been encouraged to give a little “inside scoop” stuff about the workings of the on-line publishing business. My tale is simple. I happened to mention in response to I think fellow critic Sarah Lemoyne who was talking about the incredible increase in all things culinary both on-line and in the theaters that in all things culinary I could not boil water. Somehow Greg found out about my withered statement and called me in to tell me that I was the primo candidate to do the British film under review. Love’s Kitchen. Although Greg himself thought along with many of the British critics who panned the film this was a “turkey,” pun intended, he wanted to ride the culinary interest wave and have the film reviewed, reviewed by a guy who “kitchen sink” eats prepared foods a lot.  

Sarah, her mentor Seth Garth and I sat through this thing and were scratching our heads to make sense of it other than to cash in on the cheap in the culinary craze bonanza. See what this film is really about is not food, Jesus, not English food like Welsh rarebit which even I draw the line at, but the twelve millionth reincarnation of the “boy-meets-girl trope that Hollywood and now the whole cinematic world has latched onto when you have a turkey that leaves people scratching their heads. That interplay has saved more than one film although not this one.

Here is why. Rising chef in the British culinary world Rob Haley, you have probably if you have been to London lately since one of his gastropubs that are seemingly popping up in every corner of the kingdom, played by Dougray Scott, lost his wife to a fatal automobile accident. That event crushed him (and his coming of age daughter) and he wound up working in some dung heap serving kippers and other such swill to the unknowing clientele. Not in obscurity though since his efforts were panned by a well-known American food critic Kate Templeton, you have probably read her searing and truculent reviews yourself or seen her as the beautiful winsome judge on some Food Channel production, before you got snagged into this lemon. Eventually our boy Rob snapped out of his morass and began a reclamation project on an old pub that he purchased out in the English boondocks. For those who thought this would be a place to learn how to cook or get a tip on spices from a real pro forget it since fixing up the pub to be ready for the carriage trade is the high point of the culinary intrusion.

Back to the plot. At first things don’t go well since Rob refuses to let any critic within a mile of the place. Enter Kate Templeton, Rob’s arch-enemy from that thumbs down review who immediately forms a pole of attraction to the lonely Rob. Here is what I didn’t know about Kate though she was the daughter not only of an American mother but of Sir Max Templeton, yes, that Max Templeton who before knighthood, before OBE time was ransacking taking no prisoners every home in America who had any young women within. Maxie had met his soon to be wife in the American wild 1960s be-bop night of “drugs, sex and rock and roll” of which he was a master of all three. For those who don’t remember Maxie or are too young go on YouTube to see what it was like when men and women played rock roll for keeps. Google Little Red Rooster the Chicago blues tune written by Willie Dixon and charted by Howlin’ Wolf which Maxie and the boys covered and made the first of several big hits on. That was then though now Maxie, Sir Maxie, is a cranky, creepy, crusty, cruller of a man who wants nothing but calm and contentment. Certainly not the crowd that would gather at a top-notch restaurant out in the English country side. He will make trouble for Rob through a willing confederate smitten by Kate but mainly act as a side-show of remorse for abandoning Kate as a child.

Pretty far removed from recipes for crepes or casseroles, right. It only gets worse as Kate beguiles Rob’s daughter and then on cue beguiles her father. Funny, what gets her home, what gets her under her silk sheets with the man he had to show her the proper way to dice carrots that one would think even an American college professor of culinary studies would know how to do before entering the lists as a critic is her shining light review of his menu. So be it. Once the satin sheets are messed as also on cue there is a moment’s misunderstanding when Kate unbeknownst to her has to take the heart for her father’ s hatchet-handed attempts to shut the joint down. Not to worry remorseful Maxie drops the complaints, his agent is gone to ground and Rob hurries off to the arms of the gallant Kate. If you were looking to see what it was like when men and women keep kitchen for keeps look elsewhere.        

On The 60th Anniversary- When The King Was “The King”-Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” (1957)-A Film Review

On The 60^th Anniversary- When The King Was “The King”-Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock” (1957)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, Judy Tyler, 1957

As I have mentioned before sometimes as an associate film critic, meaning a junior member of the staff, you receive the tail-end assignments, not the good stuff which is left to Sandy Salmon (and in the old days Sam Lowell). Sometimes you get an assignment that is something of a so-called “learning experience” like the time I mentioned to Sandy that I did not know who Janis Joplin was when he asked me what I thought of her as part of his Summer of Love, 1967 seemingly endless nostalgia trip and he assigned me to review the D.A. Pennebaker documentary on the first Monterey Pops Festival in that same year where Janis blew the house down. That was not the case with the film under review Elvis’ (do I need to print his last name for the three people in the world who do not know who I am talking about solely by using his first name) Jailhouse Rock from 1957 which played off of his huge record hit of the previous year. I practically begged Sandy for the assignment especially after Sam Lowell decided that he wanted to concentrate on finishing his also seemingly never-ending series on early 1950s B-film noirs put out by the English Hammer Production Company. Sandy demurred suggesting that like with the Janis Joplin episode I could learn something about the days when men and women (think Wanda Jackson) played rock and roll like their lives depended on it- and it and they did.               

Now everybody knows, or should know since I am an associate critic and thus much younger that those reprobate rockers Sandy and Sam who were as Sam put it one time “present at the creation,” that I am at least a decade if not more removed from having been, as Sam Lowell would also put it, washed clean by the rock and roll wave that swept American youth in the mid-1950s. But that fact does not mean that unlike the Janis Joplin episode that I am unfamiliar with the work of “the King” when he was in the king in the 1950s dawning light. The link? I grew up in a rather tepid household in New Jersey anchored by staid and respectable parents, my father a civil engineer and my mother, Mildred eternally called Milly, nothing but a great and resourceful housewife as befit a professional man’s wife in those days if not now. Except that Milly was wild for Elvis back in her teenage maiden days. The days when Elvis made all the women sweat. So against staid respectable housewifely type-cast all day long on some days especially when Pa was away she would play whatever Elvis tunes hit her fancy just then. And dance to some of them to my embarrassment when I was younger since it seemed kind of provocative to me although I didn’t know what that word meant then. The long and short of it though is that love of Elvis must have been in my DNA since I have always been a fan of his early music if not the horrible films that he got talked into after Jailhouse Rock or the muted musical life of a stuffed animal Vegas head-liner. Yeah, the classic age of Good Rockin’ Tonight, It’s Alright Mama, One Night With You (better the version that has One Night of Sin to the same melody-what he might have been if he followed down that path a bit), Heartbreak Hotel,  and of course the progenitor of the film under review Jailhouse Rock.  The songs that when you look at YouTube versions makes you understand why he made women like my mother sweat and scream their frustrations away in their teenage fantasies.       

I am sure that I had seen the film Jailhouse Rock sometime in my youth since I am sure my mother had it on some revival retro television station or we saw it at the retro-movies downtown but I was foggy about the details enough tin this watching that I soon realized that I didn’t recall much of the plotline. After viewing I had come away really wishing that Elvis had not done another movie because none compares with the snarly, sullen, youth he portrays speaking for a whole lost post-World War II generation who had been too young for that war but had immersed in the frightening Cold War night that froze the American landscape and which even I caught the tail-end of myself.

From scene one in some drunken back alley barroom when sullen, sulky construction worker Vince Everett (Elvis’ role) gets into a fight with some irate customer and winds killing him drawing two hard years in the state pen Elvis lights the screen up. Sure there were a million sullen youth out in places like La Jolla sucking up the surfboard seas, hot rodding down midnight Thunder Roads in Mill Valley, motorcycle helling with angels like Marlon Brando’s Johnny Too Bad tearing up the holy landscape with nothing going but Elvis spoke to them. Spoke to guys like Sam Lowell and Pete Markin in Podunk North Adamsville and a ton of places like that. And he would have stayed sullen and snarly forever, would have measured his sappy life by prison stretches except that jailbreak-in bought him in contact with a guy like Hunk, his bunkmate, a lifer-type jailbird who happened to have been a small something in the music industry before the inevitable woman got him thinking crazy about whiskey and blowjobs and got him a long stretch from a stinking two bit robbery.          

Yeah, old Hunk was always looking for the angle, for the next best thing, saw in the kid something, saw a meal ticket and so he made Vince sign a pact with the devil, take a chance to break out of that “from hunger” world that guys like Sam, Pete, and even Sandy talk about in their poor boy working class days when they too might have taken one wrong turn too many. I know Sam has told me a million times it was a close thing with him (a couple of his brothers didn’t make it-wound up inside the pen more than outside). So sullen, surly too after a deuce in stir Vince takes the air on the outside thinking maybe he can make it as an entertainer not small potatoes like Hunk but big, with that big red convertible of his dreams.     

But a million guys back then had that like a million other guys sound borrowed from Hank Williams or Big Joe Turner or Frank Sinatra, hell, guys were even borrowing styles and form from hokey Mickey Alba who knocked the women for a loop-for a minute and then they went back to sleep. No soap, no soap for Vince except maybe cadging drinks for a tune or coffee and. That is until he met record hustling insider Peggy who sets him up on the road to dough although never giving him a tumble. Never buying into that from hunger need Vince exuded since as bright as she was she was strictly suburban middle class and sullen and snarly in that milieu only played in sociology classes or in the magazines.   

Vince and Peggy wash out until two things happen, happen in the small company world of records in the days before big operations like RCA and Columbia sucked all the air out of Mom and Pop operations. First Vince got told via a tape-recording that he sounded like a lonesome cowboy singing to and for himself. No feeling, no jump until Peggy blasted him. Made him jump feel the song. Second Vince figured that he still had a shot at the bigs by producing and hustling his own records and it worked. Once a Peggy-friend DJ spun his platter the girls went crazy, went Milly and fantasies crazy. The rest was history.

Well almost history since our boy Vince had a thing for Peggy but couldn’t express it, couldn’t figure a way to get to her and Hunk came out of stir looking for his cut. He got it alright and in the end Vince got Peggy too but that was a close thing. Here’s the real play though since every Hollywood production, or most anyway, have some boy meets girl conflict that must be resolves by the end or else just like here. What you want to watch this movie for and if you can’t get it go to YouTube to watch is that Elvis scene when he is doing Jailhouse Rock for a television show. Watch (forget the lip synched song) Elvis go through his paces, watch him make the moves that later guys would imitate although they couldn’t surpass. Watch what made all the young things sweat, hell, all the grown women too. Watch why my mother in her sainted sanitary home kept her girlish fantasies alive listening to the king when he was the king do his stuff. Yeah, watch when men (and women too) played rock and roll for keeps.        

Caught In A Cold War Moment-Sean Connery’s 007-“From Russia With Love” (1963)-A Film Review

Caught In A Cold War Moment-Sean Connery’s 007-“From Russia With Love” (1963)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Guest Film Critic Si Lannon

From Russia With Love, starring Sean Connery, Lotte Lenya, based on the character by spy thriller novelist Ian Fleming, 1963 

Okay, okay I won’t bore the reader with yet another mea culpa about how I have gotten myself ensnared in what my old high school friend Sam Lowell called a “run.”  That is going through some subject, here a frontal attack on the first series of spy thriller novelist Ian Fleming’s’ British secret agent James Bond, 007, played by Sean Connery (covering other later players of the role in the now seemingly endless series I will hold judgement on-for now), and finding a common thread to hang my hat on. This film, the third now (although in sequence the second after the initial Doctor No offering), From Russia, With Love has given me pause as to the why of my grabbing on to this particular series other that the obvious fact that these early Bond films meshed with Connery’s portrayal still hold up as well-done spy thrillers that one can come away thinking positively about.             

Naturally, naturally for those of us elders who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s the underlying subject of these films, beyond the patented Hollywood script of getting the bad guys, was a tip of the hat to the Cold War red scare exemplified by the Chinese in Doctor No (the then sleeping giant to worry about now turned behemoth) and here with the real villain of the times-the Russians who were uppermost on the average Western citizen’s mind when thinking about existential threats. Add in a nefarious shadowy SPECTRE organization of international criminals to off-set the political threats and you had the making of some serious subconscious associations to draw you to the themes of the films.      

That subconscious political stuff is okay, makes for a nice “think piece” atmosphere, to think through now some fifty plus years later but that is really all hogwash. All hogwash for the real reason that a bunch of kids, a bunch of working class kids, guys, were enthralled

by the Bond character or at least showing up to see the film came from elsewhere.  I have already mentioned in that very first review and paid a mention in the second to the place where we saw these vaunted shows-the North Adamsville Drive-In Theater in the heyday of that now most forgotten way to view films. I have gone chapter and verse over the scam we pulled on the unwary ticket-seller in the entrance booth by showing three guys and hiding three on backseat floors and in trunks in the days before the theater owners got wise and started charging by the carload rather than individual admission. I have also mentioned more than once that the reason for this scam was to get to the area in back of the refreshment stand where all the high school kids hung out away from those infernal eternal families with young kids (the single date lovers had their own section way up back and no one not in that category it was understood was to approach that area under severe penalty). And “connect” with the carloads of girls, young women, who also for the most part also had pulled the scam. So while we were as spoon-feed worried about the red menace and such we were hedging our bets against some grim future by “hooking” up with a stray damsel or too to while away the time.            

For any given film seen at that revered drive-in theater it was an open question whether a person had actually seen the production depending on whether you got “lucky” that night and wound up fogging up some windshields or not. I clearly remember the plot line of Doctor No but after re-watching this film I don’t really remember the details so I probably got lucky that night. For those who were similarly situation back then or for the too young to have been there I give a few highlights. Our man Bond having already won his spurs knocking off Doctor No’s SPECTRE-funded operation down in the Caribbean was called up by his superiors to squelch this latest attempt by that nefarious operation to steal a Russian cryptograph-apparently then the top shelf tech instrument of its kind and thus valuable to both British intelligence and the Russians who were to be dealt in by being ready to buy back the damn thing.      

The whole treacherous SPECTRE plan revolves around getting Bond to steal the item and then kill him off as revenge for the Doctor No caper. The lynchpin of the plan is put in place by a ruthless female Soviet counter-intelligence office who has defected to SPECTRE played by the legendary German movie star Lotte Lenya (think Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Three Penny Opera, etc.). The plan is to entice Bond with, what else, a beautiful Russian woman from the Soviet Embassy in Turkey. And dear James bites to a degree, beds her, and then the caper takes off. From the consulate to the Orient Express to a gypsy camp and finally to Venice all along the way there is plenty of duplicity and plenty of bodies of failed agents, some Bond allies, some sworn enemies, working for every side and for every reason. In the end Bond gets to keep the instrument and hand it over to his paymasters-and have a nice little tryst with that comely Russian woman who decided in the end to change sides and in the process saved his bacon from that relentlessly determined Soviet intelligence defector. Yeah, not as clever a plot as Doctor No, and filled with more up to date then improbable techno-gizmos, but a good tongue-in-cheek look at fantasy spy-craft which is what has always been attractive about this whole series. Maybe that is the ultimate reason that I am on a “run” on this Sean Connery-driven James Bond part of the series.   

Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

Once Again-For the Umpteenth Time There Really Is No Honor Among Thieves -Just Ask Robert Mitchum A Guy Who Should Know-Jane Greer And Robert Mitchum’s “The Big Steal” (1949)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Big Steal, starring Jane Greer, Robetr Micthum, William Bendix, 1949

This film review of The Big Steal, an encore performance by Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum who lighted the screen on fire in their dance of death in the film adaptation of Out Of The Past (along with a young Kirk Douglas as the fall guy, or at least the guy who fell-first) was supposed to go to Seth Garth who did the original review of the latter film and was to compare the energies of the two filmed performances. After we, Seth is something like my mentor even though I have my by-line now after taking down old-time film reviewer Sam Lowell a peg or two, and site manager Greg Green watched this film one evening Seth told us that perhaps I was better able to write this one since he would be in mourning for his lost youth when this pair were as likely to kill each other as to go under what he called “the silky sheets” and what I called having sex. Seth said he knew that Jane and Robert had gone soft after their last set-to and while he liked this film, he had some psychological energy committed to their being star-crossed lovers for eternity.     

I could see what he meant if I didn’t fully understand why since he has written tons of reviews of films where things got switched up in the sequels or another film. But I liked the film, liked the fast-paced energy that seems to be missing in many of today’s action-adventure pseudo-noir productions. Before I go on though Seth insists that I explain quickly what he couldn’t face doing the review. Simply put in that Old Of The Past  which also passed through sunny Mexico as here Jane and Robert became lovers, lovers who should have gotten the hell out of Dodge when old Kirk came looking for them, came wondering a little why he was the fall guy, why he big-time mobster was made to look like a chump when they fled without him getting what he wanted from Robert whom he hired to track Jane down and bring her back to Reno. But the biggest problem was that Seth couldn’t get over Jane’s outstanding performance there as a gun-simple femme fatale who shot first and asked questions later.

The reader does not have worry about Jane here as sedate and street smart Joan shooting every guy in sight since while she starts out not trusting Duke, yeah, Duke Halliday, you may have seen the headline where he got robbed of an Army payroll and looked to be the patsy to take the fall. He will get well by recovering the dough and meting out a little rough plebian justice while doing so. See the Army, the Army in the person of an officer named Bill Bendix who had spent a career cleaning up the Army’s messes, thought that Duke, beautiful broad-shouldered and barren-chested Duke with the jutted jaw that drove my mother crazy when she used to go to the Saturday matinees to see Robert Mitchum what she called strut his stuff, had been part of the scam, had been involved in the payroll robbery.  

That premise sets everything else in motion down sunny Mexico way where Duke to save his hide has gone looking for the bad guys who did him wrong. Mainly a guy named Jim Fiske who from one report was from one of the branches of the 19^th century robber baron Fiske family and so an armed robbery or two didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. This Fiske though was a slippery character and led Duke a merry chase. Had led dear Joan up a tree as well with some scam he ran on her to get some dough for whatever reason con artists use to grab dough. So that sets up the paring of Duke and Joan looking to get a little rough justice in the world on their own. Set them off across Mexico in pursuit of Fiske in the meantime and dodging and being followed by Bill Bendix. See Fiske is looking to get well by unloading his cash on a fence out in some isolated desert who will give him a percentage of the value no questions asked and that would be that.

Here is where the “no honor among thieves comes in.” Duke was slated to be the fall guy, the guy to take the big step-off if necessary, since Bill Bendix was in cahoots with Fiske. Nice right. Nicer still is that the two confederates didn’t trust each other and rightfully so since hard-pressed Bill facing some cheapjack pension and nothing more wanted the whole bundle for himself. As if Brother Fiske. No go, Joe. After he blasted Fiske Duke and he tussled, and he lost. And Duke and milady Joan walk off into the sunset holding hands. That has to be better than Robert taking two or three quick gun-simple slugs from an irate Jane when she realized that Robert has called copper on her in Out Of The Past. Still a good film although looking at a photograph from that film Seth showed me after I took this assignment when he wanted to show why he didn’t want of Ms. Greer looking very sexily provocative makes me see his point a little better.

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren  

PLEASE CIRCULATE Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and The Leftist Marching Band for Armistice / Veterans ! ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019 Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace. We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song

PLEASE CIRCULATE Attention Veterans & Peace Activists – Please join Veterans For Peace and  The Leftist Marching Band for    Armistice / Veterans
!  ! Day for Peace November 11, 2019
 
Armistice / Veterans Day Parade for Peace & Faneuil Hall Peace Event Veterans for Peace will proudly walk behind the first parade on Armistice / Veterans Day in Boston. We honor and celebrate the original intention for Armistice Day – a Day of Peace.  We will gather between 12:00 pm (noon) and 12:30 pm  on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets. 1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow the same route  then we will continue to Faneuil Hall for our  Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Event Veterans from different eras will recite original works of Poetry, Prose and Song

Once Again The Legend-Slayer Cometh-This Time In Old Mexico-A Retort To Si Lannon’s Film Review Of “The Mark Of Zorro-A Commentary

Once Again The Legend-Slayer Cometh-This Time In Old Mexico-A Retort To Si Lannon’s Film Review Of “The Mark Of Zorro-A Commentary  

By Will Bradley

If this legend-slaying that I have been asked to perform ever since I debunked the modern legend of one Sherlock Holmes, real name Lawrence Livermore, in battle with old time film reviewer Seth Garth who while as wary of the “fake news” legend of Mr. Livermore as I was, nevertheless got caught up in some semi-homophobic weirdo scene trying to debunk the legend via his and Doc Watson, assumed real name although the name Nigel Bruce has been bandied about of late, membership in the Homintern and their being the masterminds behind all the troubles in Merry Olde England running guns and everything else out of Baker Street and at the Black Swan Tavern on the docks. Thus I got this assignment almost by default since site manager Greg Green now is very aware that anytime some stumblebum legend comes across his desk in film or book form I am the go-to person to utterly destroy whatever nonsense is afoot. (I will also take a shot at art but feel less confident there since the poor buggers who work that trade really believe these legends and spent a ton of time putting paint or chalk to canvas)  

My credentials for today’s debunking of poor deluded Si Lannon’s review of his childhood hero, a guy, a Spanish guy but not from Spain but out in the wilds of California back in the 1800s named Zorro are starting to pile up. The occasion this time a paean to one Zorro, no known last name portrayed in the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro and played by either Anthony Hopkins whom I thought had died years ago from withered old age and hubris or Antonio Banderas, take your pick since it is the legend I am smashing not the actors or plot-line of the greedy producers. We live in a funny age, an age where on the one hand a lot of people will believe anything that comes on the television spewed by any dingbat with time on his or her hands and on the other everything has to be dissected by some authority, some college deadbeat who just happened to specialize in whatever the flavor of the month subject was afloat.

Therefore I am duty-bound to present my credentials since at this publication we have since lovely Greg Green arrived to head the day to day operations bent toward that latter practice mentioned above. I have already mentioned my documented (and wearisome having to wade through twelve or was fourteen Holmes films) debunking of the British parlor pink amateur private detective formerly known as Sherlock Holmes and now fully exposed as a guy named Livermore, then recently escaped from Darthmoor Prison. In a way that was kids’ stuff since I was dueling Seth Garth who had I admit had some insights into the psycho world of Holmes and his crowd. On my own though I was able to sniff out the rancorous fake legend of one Johnny Cielo who supposedly was a nearly legendary aviator when that profession meant danger and short lives. Turned out this half-baked junkie was making his stuff up as he went along and some desperate newspaperman down in Miami was gullible enough to believe he had screen siren Rita Hayworth in one arm and guns for Fidel Castro out in the hills of Cuba in the other. (That Rita tag not a hard thing to see guys would lie about since she really was a looker as they used to say even to a twenties something guy.)        

A couple of major coups were ripping the mask off of Robin Hood and his so-called band of Merry Men, really nothing but highway robbers and drunken sots who had the “rep” of robbing the rich and giving to the poor. Bullshit and as hard as it was since the documentation I needed was from church and estate files going back to the 12^th century I proved the guy was among the greediest guys in the English realm especially when his sponsor Richard the Lion-Hearted got back from the crusades and gave him whatever he wanted. Smashed like a ripe pumpkin. The other major one and I will stop there since I am started to get heated up about this clown Zorro was the so-called king of love then and leave them, another Spanish dude except this guy actually in Spain, for a while anyway until they deported him or he put himself in exile after disgracing himself before a lot of young virginal convent girls who were suffering from enclosure hysteria and hormonal imbalance and made the whole thing up and created a hell of a lot of work for the Inquisition before some Maria something confessed that she was in heat, something like that.

Look, if you read Si Lannon’s review you could hardly keep a dry eye when he explained that his own precious mother was not the Italian of the neighborhood acceptable ethnic group (if just barely in the Irish Town Acre) but Spanish, Mexican and was keeping that “on the low.” Nobody, no reasonable person could fault him for a certain adult pride in his heritage. He will get no argument from me on that score but what brings me to the boiling point and fast is his cringing fawning of this dead-beat bracero with no last name, and as far as I could discover no address, in California or Mexico. In the early 1800s after Mexico righteously kicked dear mother, madre Spain out of its lands there was still plenty of work to be done. The poor landless peasants were land hungry (hell they still are today to no avail with the decimations of globalization and bum treaties like that old NAFTA rape) and were getting nothing but dust and arroyos. Anybody could have come along and gone with that eternal gag- steal from the rich give to the poor and found a receptive audience. Robin Hood got away with it for centuries before I exposed the bloody bastard for the fake he was.

This Zorro business was of the same cloth, tattered cloth. This guy, this Senor Rios, or whatever moniker he was using depending on what part of California he was working started wearing black, all black and talking tough to the coppers when those land hungry peasants were around. Started calling himself Zorro, the chosen one. Here is his gag though, or part of it. He worked these peasants into a lather, told them he would get land grants and whatever else they were clamoring for but he needed money to raise an army to fight the greedy Dons who did own everything including those braceros. They forked up, forked up plenty and off he went. Friends, one of the great things about breaking up the more modern legends is that there is a paper trail, especially among the Spanish churchman (remember they were the cadre for the Inquisition in an earlier time). A paper trail not easily findable in the Robin Hood and Don Juan cases. After exhaustive study and research I can report that those poor benighted peasants were once again gulled by a passing grifter- a guy named Zorro who never even existed. That Senor Rios on the other hand became one of the wealthiest landowners in California before the Republic. I will put my knife back in my sheath for any day now that I have done what I needed to do.            

After Charlottesville- Greensboro Massacre: We Will Not Forget! - A Guest Commentary

After Charlottesville- Greensboro Massacre: We Will Not Forget! - A Guest Commentary

Click on the title to link to YouTube's film clip of footage from the Greensboro massacre.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV07Z5C2kHg

25 Years After

Greensboro Massacre: We Will Not Forget!

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 835, 29 October 2004.

On 3 November 1979, in broad daylight, nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, where an anti-Klan rally was gathering. With cool deliberation, the killers took out their weapons, aimed, fired and drove off. Five union officials and organizers and civil rights activists—supporters of the Communist Workers Party—lay dying in pools of blood. Ten others were wounded or maimed for life. The Greensboro Massacre was the bloodiest fascist attack in the U.S. in decades.

Greensboro was a conspiracy of the fascists and their capitalist state patrons. From the outset, the fascists were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassinations, to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. When the two-minute fusillade ended, the cops moved in to arrest the survivors for "rioting."

Signe Waller, widow of Greensboro martyr Jim Waller, recounted, "The FBI had men going around the textile mills and showing people pictures, asking for their identification. Many of the pictures were of people who were later killed in the Greensboro Massacre, and one of them was Jim's" (The Carolinian Online, 18 October). Two successive all-white juries acquitted the killers of all charges, affirming once again the meaning of "justice" in this racist capitalist country.

Carried out during the Democratic Carter administration, the Greensboro Massacre was the opening shot of what would be the Reagan years' war on labor and blacks. When the Klan announced it would "celebrate" this massacre on November 10 in Detroit, the Spartacist League initiated a labor/black mobilization that drew over 500, many of them black auto workers, who made sure that the Klan did not ride in the Motor City. In organizing the protest we had to overcome opposition from the union and black misleaders and face down a ban on anti-Klan marches ordered by black Democratic mayor Coleman Young. In city after city over the following years, when KKK and fascist provocations have been threatened, we have repeatedly brought out core battalions of black and labor militants who understand we can't ignore the fascists and Klan—we must stop them.

In recent years, efforts to commemorate the Greensboro Massacre have been directed toward establishing a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," which was empanelled in June, and on November 13 a march "for Justice, Democracy and Reconciliation" will be held in Greensboro. The commission is modeled on the South African commission, which has served to whitewash the crimes of apartheid-era butchers and to assure a peaceful transition to neo-apartheid rule under the ANC (African National Congress), which continues the superexploitation and oppression of the black and other non-white masses.

The Greensboro Massacre was racist murder. The truth is that no justice can come from the same capitalist state whose forces helped to orchestrate the killings in the first place. "Reconciliation" with the forces of racist reaction and with the capitalist rulers who keep the fascist bands in reserve to unleash against the working class in times of social crisis can only serve to politically disarm and demobilize workers and the oppressed in the face of fascist terror.

We honor the Greensboro martyrs—Cesar Cauce, Michael Nathan, Bill Sampson, Sandi Smith and James Waller—as well as the many others who were wounded that November day. They take their place among a proud roster of fighters for the working people and oppressed before them, whose memory must be seared into the consciousness of the working class.

Citing the executions of the Haymarket martyrs in 1887 and of Joe Hill in 1915 and the brutal 1919 attack and subsequent frame-ups of Industrial Workers of the World members in Centralia, Washington on the one hand and the greatest victory for the international working class, the Russian Revolution of 7 November 1917, on the other, James Cannon, then secretary of the International Labor Defense and later founder of American Trotskyism, wrote in "The Red Month of November" (Labor Defender, November 1927):

"A red stream runs through the month of November, marking in its course many struggles of the working class of this country, here with defeat there with victory, always with inspiring record of working class courage, exemplary in its noble devotion to the cause of the oppressed, magnificent incidents of solidarity and self-sacrifice, instructive milestones along the difficult road to liberation. It is a record to sharpen the hatred of labor to jailors and assassins, to increase the respect and pride we have for our fighters."

We remember and honor the Greensboro martyrs by fighting for the freedom of imprisoned victims of capitalist state repression, like death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. We honor them by fighting to build a revolutionary workers party that will fight to put the working class in power through a socialist revolution that will make sure there will be no more Greensboros

Once Again, The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Bette Davis’ The Golden Arrow” (1936)-A Film Review

Once Again, The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Bette Davis’ The Golden Arrow” (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon 

The Golden Arrow, starring Bette Davis, George Brent, 1936

Of course when I mention as in the title above Bette Davis’ eyes I am not considering the song made famous by Kim Carnes Bette Davis Eyes but the real Bette Davis and she is the girl with those dewy eyes I am referring to. Here is something funny, actually something of a confession for a film critic who has in his long career reviewed many films like the one under review here The Golden Arrow, I had never seen or certainly I do not remember from childhood a Bette Davis movie before I hear folk-singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row in 1965 where he sang as part of the lyrics “and puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis-style” and that got me intrigued about her old time black and white movies appeal (although whether she ever really put her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis-style is still an open question). That interest got me doing as my old friend and colleague endlessly reminds when I follow his lead a “run” on her films most notably All About Eve. It also got me interested in her biography enough to find out that she was born in Lowell, Ma about fifty miles from where Sam Lowell grew up the same town where Jack Kerouac came of age (and fled) before making his big dent on his (and my) generations with the timeless On The Road which Sam, book critic Zack James and I have spent the last few month commemorating the 60^th anniversary of with various appreciations. Must be something about that mill-town Merrimack River cascading down the rushes.            

But enough of biography and old-time lyrical references except to mention that looking back in my files (both old-time hard copy and work processor saved which tells the tale of how long I have been writing this stuff for a living) I did a number of reviews, six, of Bette Davis movies back in 1965-1966 when I was doing that “run” and have not done anymore since then until now. The “now” a result of Sam Lowell in his role of film critic emeritus (he hypes it up to film editor but I will let that pass out of our old-time friendship) deciding that he didn’t want to review the assigned by Pete Markin The Golden Arrow to concentrate on finishing up his “run” on a series of B-film noir movies produced in the 1950s by the English Hammer Production Company and foisted the assignment on me. I am not complaining or only a little but I have a feeling that I will also be on a “run” with Ms. Davis’ long list of screen credits.    

Mention of a long and illustrious career brings the inevitable question of what was good and what was not in that career. I have long ago under Sam Lowell’s guidance I will admit given up on understanding why perfectly good actors, and Ms. Davis is one with two Oscars and ten nominations up her sleeve, succumb to less worthy film scripts. Not that The Golden Arrow is horrible quite the contrary it is a nice slim little romantic comedy but it hardly let’s Ms. Davis show her stuff, show those Bette Davis eyes to good effect.

I might as well give you, as Sam Lowell made a long career out of saying, “the skinny” on this slender piece and you decide. Daisy, the role played by Ms. Davis, is a high-end society heiress who is whiling away the hours until the next best thing comes along avoiding newspaper reporters like the plague, like seven plagues. Along comes “penny a word” down at the heels reporter Johnny Jones, played by George Brent last seen in this space when my associate Alden Riley reviewed In This Our Life when the affable Brent was given the heave-ho no go engagement by Ms. Davis so that she could run off with her sister’s husband, to try for an interview under mistaken circumstances.

Despite Johnny’s horrible but honorable profession and his personal ethics (he will not publish the results of their conversation) Daisy likes him. Likes him enough that she proposes a deal-they get married so she can avoid the paparazzi and gold-diggers after her so-called fortune and he can write that great American novel he had in him and which is thwarted by his struggle for daily bread working the newspaper gag. He buys in. Except he doesn’t buy into Daisy’s board of directors who want to control his actions. Rebellion takes the form of dating another high society dame to fend off the feelings he has for Daisy. Daisy who seemed indifferent suddenly realizes that she loves the poor bugger penniless reporter. What to do. Well what to do was using her feminine wiles to get him jealous. And in the end when Johnny finds out that his Miss Daisy is not rich but just employed an advertising ploy to sell soap they unite and head off into the sunset. If you only watch one Bette Davis film this is not the one. After re-watching that All About Eve that I had reviewed many years ago watch that. If you have time on your hands then watch this one.                

***From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-We Will Not Forget Greensboro Martyrs

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Greenboro Martyrs.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.


Workers Vanguard No. 947
20 November 2009

30 Years Later

We Will Not Forget Greensboro Martyrs

On 3 November 1979, in broad daylight, nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, where an anti-Klan rally was gathering. With cool deliberation, the killers took out their weapons, aimed, fired and drove off. Five supporters of the Communist Workers Party—union officials, union organizers and civil rights activists—lay dying in pools of blood. Ten others were wounded or maimed for life.

The Greensboro Massacre was the bloodiest fascist attack in the U.S. in decades. It was a conspiracy of fascists and their capitalist state patrons. From the outset, the fascists were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassinations, to the “former” FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. When the two-minute fusillade ended, the cops moved in to arrest the survivors for “rioting.” Two successive all-white juries acquitted the killers of all charges, affirming once again the meaning of “justice” in this racist capitalist country.

Carried out during the Democratic Carter administration, the Greensboro Massacre was the opening shot of what would become the Reagan years’ war on labor and blacks. When the Klan announced it would “celebrate” this massacre on 10 November 1979 in Detroit, the Spartacist League initiated a labor/black mobilization that drew over 500, many of them black auto workers, who made sure that the Klan did not ride in the Motor City. In city after city over the following years, when KKK and fascists threatened to mobilize, we brought out core battalions of black and labor militants who understood that the fascists and the Klan can’t be ignored—they must be stopped.

Annual commemorations of the Greensboro Massacre repeatedly focused on the call for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was founded in 2005 and modeled on the South African commission. The South African commission served to whitewash the crimes of apartheid-era butchers and to assure a peaceful transition to neo-apartheid rule under the African National Congress-led government, which continues the superexploitation and oppression of the black and other non-white masses. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre, a four-day “Truth, Justice and Healing Conference” was held in Greensboro, with the keynote speaker being James Joseph, U.S. ambassador to South Africa under the Clinton administration and former board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front.

The Greensboro Massacre was racist murder. The truth is that no justice can come from the same capitalist state whose forces helped to orchestrate the killings in the first place. “Reconciliation” with the forces of racist reaction and with the capitalist rulers, who keep the fascist bands in reserve to unleash against the working class in times of social crisis, can only serve to politically disarm and demobilize workers and the oppressed in the face of fascist terror.

We honor the Greensboro martyrs—Cesar Cauce, Michael Nathan, Bill Sampson, Sandi Smith and James Waller—as well as the many others who were wounded that November day. They take their place on a proud roster of fighters for the working people and oppressed, whose memory must be seared into the consciousness of the working class. We honor them by fighting to build a revolutionary workers party that will fight to put the working class in power through a socialist revolution that will make sure there will be no more Greensboros.