Yeah, Talk To Me Of Mendocino-The Voices From Up North The Music Of The McGarrigle Sisters

Yeah, Talk To Me Of Mendocino-The Voices From Up North The Music Of The McGarrigle Sisters   

By Zack James

“Jesus, Seth did you hear that Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle Sisters had passed away,” lamented Jack Callahan to his old-time high school friend and fellow folk music aficionado Seth Garth. Seth replied that since he no longer wrote music reviews for anybody, hadn’t since The Eye the newspaper that he had written for had gone out of business that he did not always keep up with the back stories of those who were still left standing in the ever decreasing old-time folk performer world. Jack’s sad information though got Seth to thinking about the times back in the early 1970s when he and Jack had gone out to Saratoga Springs to visit a cousin of Sam Lowell, also an old time friend and part-time folk aficionado, who lived in nearby Ballston Spa and had invited them to go to the Caffe Lena to listen to a couple of young gals from Canada who would make the angels weep for their inadequate singing voices by comparison. In those days Seth was free-lancing for The Eye so he had called Oakland, California where the newspaper then had its offices to see if they would spring for a review, a paid review of the performance. They agreed although there was the usual haggling over money and whether they would actually use the sketch.            

That night after Lena’s introduction (Lena the legendary, now legendary owner and operator of the coffeehouse) the McGarrigle Sisters did two sparking sets, a few songs in French, since they were steeped in the increasing bilingual Quebec culture which was demanding French language equality in the heated nationalist period when many Frecnh-speakers were looking for independence. They also did a wonderful cover of their  Heart Like A Wheel, a song that Linda Rhonstadt had had a hit with. But the song that Seth found his hook on, the one that he would center on to insure that his piece was published (and paid for) was Talk To Me Of Mendocino, their homage to Lena who desired to go out and see the place along the rocky ledges of Northern California, land’s end. (Whether Lena ever went out there subsequently Seth was not sure but he rather thought not since she was totally committed to the club in those days, was something of a homebody and perhaps wanted the memory more than the actual experience.)    

Seth mentioned to Jack that night that the sisters had evoked just the right mournful tone in presenting the song, and recalled how majestic they had thought they place was when they and their wives (Seth’s first  wife, first of three, all failed, Martha, and Jack’s one and only Kathy) had gone from San Francisco up the Pacific Coast Highway and basically stumbled on the place with its sheer rock formations, fierce ocean waves beating against the rocks and the then quaint and unadorned town that sat just off the rocks then. So Seth was able to close his eyes and envision travelling from the overheated, over-crowded over-wrought East and pinpoint a map to head out West “where the rocks remain.” The rocks, the ocean, our mother and some solitude in world gone mad with having to run away from what it had built. Seth was sorry that he had not been back there in many years. Hoped that Lena did get to go out to the rocks and glad that Kate and Anna McGarrigle spoke of the place, made it immortal in song.    

What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak

And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

DVD Review

By Guest Writer Bartlett Webber

Picnic, starring Kim Novak, William Holden, Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg, from the play by William Inge, 1955

Maybe it was the first scene where Hal, played by William Holden, jumps off the hobo freight train that set me up to like this film under review, the film adaptation of William Inge’s play Picnic. Ever since my old time growing up days in North Adamsville whenever the trains came by and some dusty local hoboes, tramps or bum (and there are distinctions between them recognized by the whole wandering nation) or passers-through hopped the skids I have been entranced by this whole scene. Spent back in Summer of Love days when I (and an assortment of guys who I hung around with in high school) headed west to see what was up in San Francisco many a night myself on the rattlers (well-named when the hours passed and all you heard out in the prairie was that freaking rattling). So I saw Hal as a wild-eyed spirited forbear.     

I set the headline up the way I did, asking rhetorically what the matter of Kansas was, for a purpose. No, not today’s more political purpose when many are asking what happened to convert one of the reddest states in the nation back in the day (“red” then meaning socialist red) to today’ Republican conservative red but why is everybody in this film ready to heave-ho the old time prairie small town values to get the hell to somewhere else (even if only the next town or next state over).       

  

Here’s the play and you figure out why, okay? That first scene Hal, the muscular brawny hobo saint who shows plenty of 1950s “beefsteak” to an appreciative 1950s female audience), when he lands in this small Podunk town was no accident. He, long weary and without current prospects, expects an old rich father college buddy, Alan, to help him out, get him a fresh start. (Hal obviously had been on hard times since the days when he flunked out of college for lack of study even though he had had it made as the college football hero.) At first it looked his reconnection with that college buddy idea was going to get him back on his feet. But then he spied her. Spied Madge, played by a young and fetching Kim Novak. Moreover Madge spied him and then the dance of dances began. 

All of this taking peeks got its big workout at the town’s annual Labor Day picnic where Madge, know universally for her good looks and apparently not much else, was to under Alan’s guidance be crowned Queen of the May. Hal and Madge are still looking though as they all, Alan, Hal, Madge, Madge’s brainy younger sister Millie, played by a young Susan Strasberg, Madge’s mother and an older neighbor woman head to the picnic and the fun-filled activities that usually go along with such small town festivities, maybe a big town’s too. Then the night falls and the stars seem to be aligned. And for anybody who doesn’t get that idea then you have missed probably the closest thing a 1950s film gets to the act of intimate sexual attraction, of an explicit sexual scene except unlike now with clothes on, when to the strains of Moonglow they dance the dance most of us have all been through.

From there though as can be expected of a guy like Hal who was all fire and motion things go downhill. Alan, as expected, was in a rage that Hal stole his girl and put the rich father-friendly local cops on him for “stealing” his car. Hall gets into a beef with the coppers so we know why he will be on lam (to next state Tulsa). Millie who is eternally humiliated for being a “plain jane” compared to big sister Madge swears she is going to New York and become a great writer once she gets the dust of small town Kansas out of her system. In a side story an “old maid” schoolteacher, played by Rosalind Russell,   desperate to get married and flee her fate gets hitched and blows the burg. And Madge? Well Madge despite those golden prospects with Alan, despite her mother’s admonitions that she can do better than hobo Hal and with little sister’s blessing blows that small town as well (to next state Tulsa as well).           

See this film if only for that “dance” scene which will make you sit up and take notice even in today’s jaded explosive screen sex world. Oh yeah, if you are a guy start practicing those jazzy hip William Holden dance moves. If a gal check out Kim Novak’s “come hither” moves that had even an old guy like me thinking funny thoughts.    

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

[This is an on-going conversation between several aging males who back in the day were corner boys together growing up in the poor working class Acre section of Riverdale some miles outside of Boston. The theme of the remembrances is related to rock and roll and other musical influences and the exact date, place and scenario where certain seminal experiences occurred-Listen in- Z. J.]

“Jesus, now that you mentioned Mr. Lawrence, our seventh grade music teacher, I am starting to remember some other stuff about the guy, about what a creep he was trying to break us from our unbreakable bond with rock and roll,” Seth Garth said to Jack Callahan as they both hoisted their three, or was it fourth, double scotch with water chaser, an old habit for both of them since the chaser made the drink last longer in the old days when they were short of dough and were sipping their drinks to stretch out the evening. The gist of what Seth had told Jack was in response to Jack’s remembering the very first time that they had heard Woody Guthrie and what song they had learned first. That gist of talk was based on Seth, an old time folk music critic, mainly for The Eye out on the West Coast having recently seen in a folk magazine the announcement that the Smithsonian/Folkway operation was finally putting out a treasure trove in four CDs of some Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Moses Asch during World War II. Seth for the life of him could not remember what song he had heard and when of Guthrie’s and so he had called upon Jack to meet him at their favorite watering hole the Erie Grille in Riverdale where they both were now residing (and after varying absences had grown up in the town). Jack had answered that it had been in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class and the song had been the alternative national anthem-This Land Is Your Land. 

The method to Mr. Lawrence’s madness, to ween the kids off of rock and roll, had gone beyond trying to foist silly folk music off on them but to drown them in any other kind of music he could think to distract, or attempt to distract them with, especially during lunch when they played their transistor radios and drove him crazy with their rock and roll. A few times, if you could believe this he tried to get them interested in jazz, in swing music, what each and every one of them considered the music that their parents listen to and which had driven them to the transistors in the first place. Worse, worse of all he had tried to get his charges interested in the music of Benny Goodman, the so-called “king of swing.” That was all Seth needed to hear as he blurted out in front of the class “My mother and father dance to that pokey stuff on Saturday nights and they are barely moving when they dance. I am not going to listen to that here.” Needless to say Seth stayed after school a number of afternoons for his transgression. But he felt vindicated in what he had uttered and took the punishment like a soldier.

Still it did no good as Mr. Lawrence played something called Blue Skies which was his parents’ “their song.” Something else by a guy named Cole Porter that Benny Goodman made famous. It got no better when Mr. Lawrence played stuff with Peggy Lee because to his mother’s chagrin his father had “crush” on old Peggy and Seth had to secretly admit that she was kind of sexy looking at that.  

But that was then. A few nights after Seth and Jack were cutting up old touches, after drinking themselves to melancholia, Seth went to the library and picked up an old Benny Goodman CD with plenty of American Songbook stuff on it. Guess what old Seth, old rock and roll devotee Seth with an overhang of folk, blues, and a little mountain music started to pop his fingers to the beat, started laughing to himself that he know knew what they meant when they said “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.” And they were right. Just ask Benny,       

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

The following remarks were made at an ad hoc conference put together by some leftist organizations in the Northeast in order to try to draw for today’s labor militants and their allies the lessons of previous revolutionary struggles highlighted by the only successful working class revolution in history-the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The speaker urged his listeners to read Leon Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution to gain a very literate and fast-moving understanding of that revolution from a man who stood outside the Bolshevik organization in early 1917 but who nevertheless when he committed himself to that party defended it against friend and foe the rest of his life. For those who could not wade through the one thousand plus pages of Trotsky’s major work the speaker also commended his Lessons of October written as a polemic in the hard fought struggle to save the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik Party in 1923-24. The points made by Trotsky in that polemic are used here as the jumping off point for discussing the events of 1917. *****

Apparently after the events of the past couple of years in the Middle East and more recently in Europe we are once again broadly in the age of revolution. While this provides opportunities for revolutionaries after a very long dry spell it also means that many of those who wish to seek a revolutionary path, including those who look the revolutionary socialist left for guidance have very little actual working knowledge about how to bring one about. Moreover although we are witnessing revolutions right before our eyes we are not witnessing yet the kind of revolutions, socialist revolutions that, can lead humankind to create a more productive, co-operative and just world. Our bright shining example is still the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in 1917 and I will try today to highlight some of the lessons from that revolution that we, and other thoughtful labor militants throughout the world, should be thinking about as we ride the wave of the current class struggle upsurge in this wicked old bourgeois world. Originally when I thought about this presentation I had intended to give a rough draft of the main events of the Russian Revolution in 1917. But when I thought about it further I realized that I would wind up recreating Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution and there is just not enough time for that. So I decided to scale back and concentrate on the role of the party, the Bolshevik party. And that makes sense because in the final analysis, as Trotsky continually argued after he got “religion” on the organization question , that has been the decisive difference when the struggle for state power was up for grabs. We have seen the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international working class in the advanced capitalist age, the vanguard party question to state the proposition bluntly, confirmed many times, too many times, in the negative in such places and times as early 1920s Germany and Italy up until today in places like Tunisia, Egypt and Greece not to take a careful look at that experience. Even almost one hundred years later, and maybe just because of that time lapse there are great general points to be drawn from Russia in 1917.

The Bolsheviks got it right for their times and so while we understand that conditions today will be vastly different from the broken down monarchy sunk in the fourth year of a debilitating war, in a place where the land question cried out for solution, and where oppressed nations sought independence from the oppressive empire, we can learn how they worked their program into a successful conclusion against some very high odds against them. That combination of leadership, program and the objective conditions for revolution came together for the Bolsheviks to be able to be in a position to implement their socialist program. Probably the biggest political lesson from the Bolshevik experience is kind of a truism of all political work- don’t be afraid to be in the minority. While I have, along with Lenin and Trotsky, no truck with those who are happy to stay mired in the circle spirit in left-wing politics that we have too often found ourselves here in American sometimes an organization if it is true to itself has to stand “against the current” to use an old expression. Especially as the events of 1917 unfolded it was apparent that the Bolsheviks, and those revolutionaries in other organizations or individuals like Trotsky who were drawn in that party’s wake, were the only ones capable of taking advantage of the dual power situation and leading the struggle against imperialist war, for bread, and for land to the tiller. As Lenin and later Trotsky when he was hard-pressed to defend the legacy of the party noted, the Bolsheviks were not without their own internal problems as far as orientation toward the actual flow of events in 1917 particularly before Lenin arrived from abroad. I will speak in a moment about the decisive nature of the April Theses and the April Bolshevik conference where the new party orientation got its first work-out. But here I would only mention that some parties like the Bolsheviks that had essentially healthy revolutionary instincts were searching for a revolutionary path even if it was not always a linear path. The Bolsheviks had the experience of having formed early clandestine propaganda groups, fought out through polemics the extreme political differences on the nature of the struggle in Czarist Russia with other left-wing organizations, had done underground political work and above ground when possible, had worked in the Duma and the Soviets during and after the 1905 revolution, had been exiled, banished, and imprisoned, and a myriad of other experiences of mass struggle (as well as hard times like after 1905 and the first parts of WWI) that gave them some valuable experiences which they were able to apply in 1917.

Obviously not all organizations that had also gone through many of those same experiences drew the requisite conclusions, and here I would contrast the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, and more importantly, the POUM in Spain during the Spanish revolution in the 1930s. In the end the Mensheviks might have had some revolutionaries in their organization (most of the best, and some not of the best, went over to the Bolsheviks in various periods) but they were not a socialist revolutionary organization for 1917 times. They were caught up in the linear thinking of the traditions of the French Revolutions (1789 and 1848), bourgeois revolutions when the time for those types of revolution in Europe time had passed. (A key point that Trotsky drew for Russia after 1905 in formulating his theory of permanent revolution.) That last point is why I like to use the POUM (Party Of Marxist Unification in English) as a better example than the Mensheviks of what I mean. The Menshevik stood for the socialist revolution in the great by and by and their policies reflected that reformist impulse (if not just flat out counter-revolutionary impulses).The POUM, as their name says, formally stood for socialist revolution but their program, their strategy, and their whole line before and during the revolution make it clear that, at best, they were what we call a centrist party- revolutionary in talk, reformist in deed. They had no appetite to stand alone if necessary; they had no appetite to struggle with other leftist organizations to lead the revolution. It is unbelievable, although telling, that there are defenders (in hindsight which makes it worst) of the POUM today who saw basically nothing wrong in their work in the Spanish revolution. Jesus.

  *************
I mentioned above that we study the Bolshevik revolution because it is our one shining example of working class victory over the last one hundred and fifty years. We study that revolution just like Lenin, Trotsky and the rest studied the Paris Commune , the Revolutions of 1848 and the Great French Revolution in order to draw the lessons of previous precious revolutionary experience (as we should too). The important thing about the October Revolution that I want to discuss for a minute now is how the Bolsheviks were able to, for the most part, gauge the revolutionary temper of the masses. Their cadre down at the base was able to stir up in propaganda and agitation the main grievances of the masses- the famous three whales of Bolshevism -the simple yet profound fight for the eight hour day, worker control of factory production and peasant control of agricultural production and the fight for a democratic republic through the slogan of a constituent assembly. Out on the streets in 1917 the Bolshevik were able to narrow that down even further for mass consumption –peace, bread and land to the tiller. The other so-called revolutionary organizations due to faulty and untimely senses of where the masses were heading were catch flat-footed when the deal went down and they, one way or another, supported some form of bourgeois regime after the Czar abdicated. Trotsky made a big point in Lessons of October and elsewhere when explaining the tempo of the revolution that it is necessary for revolutionaries to KNOW when to strike and when to hold back. In contrast, the two examples I like to use from the early 1920s that are illustrative are Germany in 1921 when the young German Communist party got ahead of the masses for a number of reasons and more importantly 1923 when they were behind the masses. Sometimes as the Russian Social-Democratic soviet experience in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1905 demonstrates you are forced to go through some experiences whether the situation is ripe or not. The point though is to know when to move one way or the other. In 1917 the Bolsheviks as will be discussed below KNEW when to move, and when not to move.
**********
Modern capitalist, especially now in its rather long imperialist stage, has produced many defenses, political, social, economic, and in the final analysis its military and police apparatuses, to defend its rule. Before the Bolshevik revolution there was some wishful thinking, exemplified by the German Social-Democratic Party, that somehow socialism could grow organically out of capitalism without the fuss of revolution. We know, we know painfully, where that has led. That party as became clear when they had their opportunities in 1918 had not revolutionary strategy. But revolutionary struggle since 1917 dictates that revolutionary organizations have a strategic orientation. In that sense the Russian example is extremely important first because the Bolsheviks showed that without a revolutionary strategy we cannot win and secondly with a strategy and the ability to shift you can take advantage of weaknesses in the bourgeois power structure. There were three basic strategies at play in 1917 among Russian Social Democrats (other tendencies like the Social-Revolutionaries and Anarchists played off the main themes developed by the social democracy. The most prevalent one prior to 1905 was that Russia was headed for a liberal bourgeois republic and that working class organizations would play the role of loyal opposition to the bourgeois liberals. This is prime Menshevik strategy. The main Leninist theme until 1917 was essentially that this capitalist bourgeois republic would be governed by a worker-peasant coalition. While the Bolsheviks knew that the liberals has move historically to the right it still premises a capitalist state. Of course the third strategy, the one Lenin forced, in his own way, on the Bolsheviks kicking and screaming for the most part, was Trotsky’s famous theory of permanent revolution, where the workers “leaning” on the amorphous peasantry would create a workers republic through the soviets. Lenin’s timely understanding of Russian politics which lead him to revamp his strategy is prima facie evidence both of his revolutionary abilities and of the keen understanding of the role of strategy to drive the revolution forward. There was no room in Russia in 1917, as Alexander Kerensky learned to his dismay, for that middle strategy.

A look at most revolutionary periods will show that the question of war, including a bloody losing war, is a catalyst plays a great part in fomenting upheavals. Socialist thinkers from Marx onward had noted that war is the mother of revolution (in Marx’s own time the prime example being the Paris Commune) War, as Trotsky and others have noted, takes the civilian population out of its ordinary routine, places great stress on society and requires great sacrifices and/or personnel in order to be pursued. The Bolsheviks had already established themselves on the war issue before 1917 by their opposition to the war budgets (and had their Duma deputies exiled to Siberia), their role in the fledgling anti-war Zimmerwald movement and their slogans of the “main enemy is at home” and “turn the guns around.” When the Czar abdicated and a form of popular front government took its place many, including elements of the Bolshevik Party leadership in Russia, wanted to turn defensist under the new circumstances. The Bolsheviks majority in contrast called for continue opposition to the war and played their “peace card” by understanding that the peasant soldiers at the front were war-weary and wanted to be alive when the land was distributed. Very powerful incentives to walk away from the stalemated trenches

The April theses are probably the most graphic document we have about the Bolshevik party and its ability shift gears in the revolutionary process. In essence Lenin came over to Trotsky’s view of the nature of the revolution in front of him. Without that shift (and at the time before Trotsky got back to Russia), which did not go unopposed, October would not have happened .The question of the support of the Provisional Government was the key question of the pre-insurrection period. This is really an example the popular front as a substitute for revolutionary action. For those unaware of what a popular front is that is a mix of working- class parties and bourgeois parties (although not usually the main ones) that are thrown up in time of crisis (although not always a crisis as various French parliamentary examples in the recent past have shown). In Russia the main component for our purposes were the bourgeois liberal Cadets, various Social-Revolutionary tendencies representing various segments of the peasantry and the Mensheviks representing the reformist wing of the working class movement. The reality of the popular front is twofold-first the program is limited to what is acceptable to the bourgeois bloc partners and secondly- and more importantly for our concerns, it is a strategy put forth by reformist elements in the working class to frustrate revolution. The Mensheviks were the past master of this strategy stemming from their bourgeois liberal conception of the revolution. 

What set the Bolsheviks apart and was masterful on their part was the various tactics toward the popular front. Once Lenin got the Bolshevik Party to buy into the April Theses and to stop giving critical support to the Provisional Government a whole series of tactics came into play. So, for example, in June the Bolsheviks led demonstrations calling for the ouster of the ten capitalist ministers in the Provisional Government rather than a straight “down with the provisional government” a slogan that did not respond to the tempo of the revolution. In short the Bolsheviks called on the Mensheviks and various S-R factions to form a solely socialist ministry and the Bolsheviks promised, pretty please promised, they would not overthrow that government. Of course the reformists rejected this idea but exposed themselves before masses that were more and more looking to the soviets rather that the increasingly pro-war and anti-land seizure provisional government for political guidance. As the dual power situation (Provisional Government versus Soviets) continued and as the masses became disillusioned with the actions of the government in prolonging the war effort (and not resolving the land question, or much else for that matter) some segments of the Petrograd population (and key units in the army) wanted to overthrow the government in July. That again was premature as the Bolsheviks did not have the masses behind them. Rather than leave the ill-advised vanguard to suffer the results alone the Bolsheviks tried to lead an orderly retreat and in the short term took a serious beating (Lenin in hiding, Trotsky arrested, etc.) but one that showed that of all the tendencies the Bolsheviks stood with the demand of the masses.

As the Provisional Government’s grasp on power got shakier and was threatened from the right, essentially the remnants of the monarchical parties, the Bolsheviks organized, in the name of the soviets, the defense of Petrograd during the Kornilov scare. This flowed from the eminently practical position that when the right-wing in clawing at the door it is the duty of revolutionaries to defend even the most tepid democratic institutions a situation we still hold to today. In the Bolsheviks case the military defense of the provisional government by an organization which had been outlawed began the process of bringing the masses over to the soviets and though that organization the Bolsheviks (and incidentally began the serious process of the Mensheviks and S-Rs to liquidate the soviets). During the fall of 1917 the demand for elections for an authoritative Constituent Assembly were being pressed by various petty bourgeois parties and individuals including, as mentioned above, those whose power rested in the soviets. The Bolsheviks had various attitudes toward a couple of formations that were supposed to prepare for the Constituent Assembly-the Democratic Conference and the Pre-Parliament. They participated in the Democratic Conference and once it became clear that it was just a “talk shop” and not the road to the constituent assembly and Trotsky led the boycott of the other (much to Lenin’s praise). In the final analysis the role of the revolutionary party is to make the revolution and so the final point to be made about the importance of the Bolshevik experience, and what virtually all other movements since that time have faltered on, is the art of insurrection.

As I noted above, for example, the situation in the early 1920s in Germany showed a party, an immature, communist party to be sure, that tried to insurrect too early and without the masses and later, perhaps as a result of that first failure in part, failed to take advantage of an exceptional revolutionary opportunity. The Bolsheviks knew, as they had their cadre on the ground in the city, the barracks, and the soviets, the pulse of the masses, who among the masses and military units would follow them, and most importantly under what conditions they would follow. In this sense Trotsky’s organizing strategy of acting on the defensive (of soviet power) while going on the offense was brilliant. Moreover using the soviets as the organizing center rather than the narrower confines of the party worked to legitimize the seizure of power in important segments of the masses. This placed the seizure of power by them, although many bourgeois historians have argued to the contrary, well outside the notion of a party coup. Much ink has been spilled on the question of which organization; party, soviets or factory committees are the appropriate vehicle for the seizure of power. The answer: whatever organization (s) is ready to move when the time is ripe for revolution. Thank you

When Old Pete Ruled The House-With Banjo Man Pete Seeger In Mind

When Old Pete Ruled The House-With Banjo Man Pete Seeger In Mind  

CD Review

By Zack James

Pete Seeger: headlines, footnotes and-a collection of topical songs, Pete Seeger, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1999

“You know you are wrong Seth about that first time we heard folk music, Woody Guthrie folk music in Mr. Lawrence’s music class back in seventh grade at old Jeramiah Holton Junior High,” Phil Larkin told one Seth Garth former old time music critic for the now long gone The Eye. Paid music critic a not unimportant point back in the day when alternative newspapers like The Eye survived and flopped on the sweat of unpaid unrequited volunteer labor and today too when the social media are flooded with citizen critics by the barrelful and everybody claims some expertise. Paid or not though Seth had called up Phil to verify what his fellow folk aficionado Jack Callahan and more recently drinking partner at the Erie Grille had told him when he had called upon Jack to refresh his memory about the first time he/they had heard a Woody Guthrie song. Jack had told Seth about the time that Mr. Lawrence had tried to unsuccessfully ween the class away from their undying devotion to the jail-break rock and roll music that was sweeping up youth nation just then. Then being the late 1950s. Seth had accepted what Jack said because he was after all a fellow aficionado, even if Seth had had to shoehorn him into the genre at the beginning and because he knew that Jack would not spread word around that Seth was not totally on top of every bit of arcane folk music lore around.  

So it was a reputation thing Seth was worried about even these many years later. He had mentioned Jack and his conversation at the Eire to Phil in passing one afternoon and Phil had said he would think about any possible earlier listening. This was important since Seth had become very cautious about using any information not fully verified ever since early on in his journalistic career he had made the cardinal error of not checking out hearsay and rumor fully. He was berated by his tough editor for that mishap. Never again. So he was using his double check method on this question since he had been asked to write an unpaid article about the old folk days for the prestigious American Folk Song Review.    

Phil continued the conversation by telling Seth, “Tell that jackass Jack Callahan didn’t he remember that in fourth grade Miss (now Ms.) Winot had played This Land Is Your Land  on that old cranky record player of hers in order to teach us some kind of  civics lesson, taught us that we were part of a great continental experiment. Remember that she had played the Weavers’ cover of that song with Pete Seeger doing that big bass voice thing and some other guy whose name I don’t remember was booming out the baritone and Ronnie Gilbert who just passed away was doing a big time soprano thing.” Jesus, Seth thought to himself Phil was right, right as rain. The two spoke of a few other non-music issues and then they both hung up.           

That was not the end of it for Seth though, not for his article anyway. See Phil’s mentioning of the name Pete Seeger had sent a chill down his spine. Pete Seeger, and only Pete Seeger had been the reason that he had been ever cautious about sources. Back in 1965 he (and Jack and Jack’s then girlfriend now wife, Kathy, and he thought Mary Shea was his date) had attended the Newport Folk Festival that summer. That was the summer that Bob Dylan exploded the traditional folk universe by introducing the electric guitar into some of his songs. Did so on the stage the final night of the festival to boos and applause. Seth had been working his very first job as a free-lancer for the East Coast Other, another of the million small publications starting up and falling trying to find a niche in the print universe (free-lancer by the way since the usually cash-stripped publication had nobody else going to the concert so Seth got the assignment).   

Here is where Seth had gotten into trouble though. He had a friend, a sound man friend who worked at the Club 47 in Cambridge who was doing duty at that job for the festival. A couple of days later he had run into the guy in Harvard Square and had asked Seth if he knew what had happened on the stage the night Dylan went electric. The guy swore that Pete Seeger had at some point pulled the plug on Dylan in disgust at taking folk music out into the common trough of rock and roll. Seth could hardly believe his ears-this was the hook that he would run his story on. In the event he put this hearsay into his article. No big deal, right. Just something to spice up the piece. The article was published with that information in it. No problem for a while. About a month later he was called into Larry Jeffers office, the editor of the East Coast Other then and shown a personal letter to the publication from Pete Seeger disclaiming the whole story about pulling the plug on Dylan and was looking for a retraction. Seth immediately went to the Club 47 to check with the sound man. It turned out that the sound man had not actually seen Pete pull the plug but had heard about the story from one of Dylan’s sidemen. The newspaper issued a retraction and Seth had egg all over his face.          

The whole story of whether Pete Seeger pulled the plug or not on Dylan became part of the urban legend of the folk scene and still has devotees on both sides of the dispute long after Pete is dead and Dylan in out on another leg of his never-ending tour. But you can bet six two and even that one Seth Garth will be checking sources to see if Miss (now Ms.) Winot was the original proponent of Woody Guthrie’s music. Enough said.     

When Mister Beethoven Got Rolled Over-With The Music Of Mister Chuck Berry In Mind

When Mister Beethoven Got Rolled Over-With The Music Of Mister Chuck Berry In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection, Chuck Berry, Chess Records, 2006 

You never know when two or more old guys, two or more mature forget the old unless you seek peril gals too but this one is about guys, will gather down memory lane or what will trigger that big cloudburst. Seth Garth and Jack Callahan two old time friends from high school in Riverdale had an abiding interest in music successively rock and roll, the blues and folk music (never losing interest in any in the process just that one would wax and wane at any given time). Seth had eventually become as an early part of his journalistic career a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye, an alternative newspaper out in the Bay Area in the days when he, Jack and a few other guys like Phil Larkin headed out there to see what everything was all about in the intriguing Summer of Love, 1967.

Recently though Seth and Jack, and occasionally Phil would get together and talk music shop at the Erie Grille where they would down a few scotches to level out (their expression). One night they had been at Seth request discussing the first time they had heard the legendary Woody Guthrie sing his songs, or one of them anyway. As it turned out Seth had drawn a blank on when that might have occurred and he begged Jack to think the matter through since he was preparing an article, an unpaid article, for the American Folk Music Review and needed a frame of reference. Jack had come up with the answer-in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class when he put on Woody and a bunch of other stuff to try to ween them off rock and roll which the man hated (and which they loved, loved to perdition). Seth had accepted that answer (although later he contacted Phil again about the matter and Phil reminded him about the song This Land Is Your Land covered by the Weavers with Pete Seeger in Miss Winot’s fourth grade class on her cranky old record player and he would use that source in the article).     

All this talk of that fateful seventh grade music class, and Mr. Lawrence, is probably what solidified everybody in the class in their devotion to rock and roll. But that was a hard fought and paid for devotion. A few days after the night with Jack at the Erie Grille Seth woke up from a nap thinking about the time in Mister Lawrence’s class when he was being crazy about Beethoven, wanted the class to appreciate classical music.  Seth, Jack and Phil had had enough and started in one class singing Chuck Berry’s throwing down the gauntlet Roll Over Beethoven and the class cheered them on. Of course in this penalty-ridden world Mr. Lawrence took his revenge and the trio spent several afternoons after school since they refused to apologize for their outbursts. Seth smiled to himself-Yeah, rock and roll will never die. To prove that assumption just listen to Mister Chuck Berry’s gold star compilation here. And be prepared to do something rash.     

Once Again-The Summer Of Love,1967-Postcards From Lost Planet

Once Again-The Summer Of Love,1967-Postcards From  Lost Planet

By Jeffrey Thorne

The Scribe said it best one night, one cold San Francisco night, a summer night when the Japan currents went awry and reminded one of old Mark Twain’s witty sayings about the coldest winter he had ever spent-August in the city of sweet brethren Saint Francis, when he declared (so like that mad man to use the seventh person imperative for such small letter events), that the breeze coming through the land would shake society to its foundations. Would make nine to five a bore, make that long suburban tract complete with dishwasher and sanitary garbage disposal obsolete before the last mortgage payment hit the dirt, would make those three point two kids and that one dog a victim of old-fashioned thinking. Said, get this for a guy who became a non-believer, a non-believer in risen Christ if you can believe that very early in his teens (and went to church, side door church just to sit a few rows behind some lovely he was pining over just to watch her ass so yes a non-believer) that the new dispensation was at hand-if we could keep it, keep the bastards, and you know who the bastards were then-the night-takers and guys who conned you into nine to five dreams, suburban flats and, what was it three point two kids (we will pass on the not mandatory dog) from barking at the door.   

That was the rub, that little counter attack from out of the blue when we thought the world had stopped turning on itself

and had gone upside down that eventually would do in even the Scribe, would turn his mouth to ashes, would turn a sainted brethren (not many knew his given name was Francis in those days when everybody was “reinventing” themselves including clustering up new monikers to get washed clean (also a Scribe expression) down the gutter road, float him out to the Japan seas long before he ever heard the Duke blast that high white note. Yeah, blast the times, blast the whole fucking world for taking down a brethren as pure as snow.    

Once Again On History In The Conditional-Or In The Spy Thriller Conditional-The Film Adaptation Of Ken Follet’s “Eye Of The Needle” (1981) -A Film Review

Once Again On History In The Conditional-Or In The Spy Thriller Conditional-The Film Adaptation Of Ken Follet’s “Eye Of The Needle” (1981) -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Will Bradley

Eye Of The Needle, starring Donald Sutherland, Kate Nelligan, 1981

No question, although one might posit that we or they should move on, the whole Hitler saga from World War II has made many a writer, spy thriller writer, producers and directors plenty of gold, plenty of coin. Especially around the question of what would have been the response if, well, let’s say Hitler had known definitively that the Allied invasion to free Occupied Europe (occupied by Hitler and his minions) was to be at Normandy Beach rather than elsewhere come D-Day. That is no abstract question for the protagonists and their foes in the film under review the adaptation of Ken Follet’s Eye Of The Needle. Moreover not only are profession academic, men of learning and such, smitten with such speculations but your average thriller writer had taken up the cudgels big time. Of course history in the conditional is always tricky for the academic, for the professor with one big idea contingent on that vague conditional but apparently is the fount of wisdom for the thriller boys and girls.

Here is why for Follet devotees. Henry, I will follow Lance Lawrence’s’ recent trope of saying somebody, so Henry somebody in this case, played by pliable Donald Sutherland,   who the hell knows since he is a high-end, high-born German spy, placed in England even before World War II started that Auden September 1939 when he, Auden, blew town, the agent using a million aliases when it suited him was a key operative keeping tabs on what the freaking Brits were doing for war preparations. He would not let anything get in his way including nosey landladies and the trademark way of dealing with such trouble at the end of a stiletto, hence needle, the eye part you can figure out. He was able to operate free as a bird for most of the war until things got dark in Germany, better, took a turn for the worse on the Eastern Front where the Russians, who bore the brunt of the action against madman Hitler and his crowd, started their long journey to Berlin and the raising of the red flag over part of that city. What they wanted to know, what Hitler wanted to know, and this is good military policy mad men or not, was where General Patton was going to launch what even Hitler knew was a run to Berlin from the West. But where. That was Henry somebody’s task-to find out and to deliver the proof to the big boss himself in Berlin via a convenient U-boat off the Scottish coast.

Normally such an operation by a pro like Needle would be a piece of cake and in real life maybe that would settle things but this is spy thriller theater, so everything has to be a travail-and it is. Needle got the definitive proof on film and that was the start of his journey home. The problem was the Brits, Scotland Yard, were on to him, knew he has done some nasty things to get and keep Father Hitler in power- and information. The chase was on with the coppers about two, maybe seven steps behind the elusive Needle. Until he reached Storm Island, well-named having been shipwrecked with a stolen boat during a storm, a trawler, as that U-boat waited impatiently for his call. The Storm Island situation despite its isolation though would be Needle’s downfall once he encountered an embittered former Royal Air Force pilot who lost his legs in a civilian automobile accident of his own mistaken doing, his wife and child all who have left sweet home London for the boondocks and stormy weather.

Needle figured to be on easy street via this nice quiet hellish homestead as he waited for that U-boat. Problem though is grilled by that embittered pilot, and bedded if you can believe this, by that neglected wife, played by Kate Nelligan, who was just lonely because of hubby’s neglect as was Needle since he was a loner. Along the way said pilot got wise to our Needle but paid the price for that knowledge with a dip face-down in the cliff-drenched waters. Wifey, after a few rolls in the hay with Needle which she did not complain about, finally learned the truth when she discovered her husband’s body and subsequently Needle made what would be his fatal mistake by saying he had just seen her husband alive. Knowing he was nothing but a German agent she went mano a mano with him to protect herself and her son. In the end that is enough to seal Needle’s doom long before the coppers showed up. Still I wonder if Needle had gotten to the U-boat and gotten to see his master in Berlin whether Hitler knowing the route of the invasion would have changed things. Better ask a military historian. 

When Sylvia Sidney Battered Her Eyelashes-The Once And Future…Princess- Ms. Sidney and Cary Grant’s “Thirty-Day Princess” (1934)- Film Review

When Sylvia Sidney Battered Her Eyelashes-The Once And Future…Princess- Ms. Sidney and Cary Grant’s “Thirty-Day Princess” (1934)- Film Review

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Thirty Day Princess, starring Sylvia Sidney, Cary Grant, Edward Arnold, 1934

Lest one forget this country, this United States in a republic, yes, republic with a small “r,” despite what fragility that designation has come upon of late, of the past fifty or sixty years. Our forebears, oh you know this but let me get it off my chest, our winter soldiers when that meant something, drove the British, dear Mother England, into the deep blue sea, into the Atlantic and thereafter, what did Ben Franklin say, formed a republic-if we could keep it. But there has been a lot of backsliding on the question, on the question of giving a pass to every royal Tom, Dick and Harry. Of every Kate, Jane and Mary. Of worrying to a frazzle about what Princess somebody was wearing, or not wearing, of giving a pass to all kinds of stuff our forebears, rightly, would have blanched at while decayed royalty goes about its unsavory business. There I have it off my chest. What brought me to the froth was a look at the movie under review, The Thirty-Day Princess, where in the heart of the Great Depression, in 1934, in this country (and worldwide), fairy tale princesses had center stage. Which told me before I remembered about Henry James and his robber baron era novels which had plain, ordinary, rich Americans, male and female, pining away for some title, some sign if formal nobility to separate them from the hoi polloi, that this infatuation has a long pedigree.

I have left the reader in the lurch enough let’s get down to brass tacks. The off-kilter king of Taronia, Tiberia, something like that, some mythical European country does it really matter since it is mythical needed cash, big amounts of cash, to do the kingship business up right and to live in the splendor he was used to in the old days. Along comes Mr. American Moneybags, Mr. Plutocrat, does it really matter his name, played by perennial unlikable guy Edward Arnold, a guy who didn’t jump out the window in 1929 and had been working the chump bond market to get back on easy street offered to get the king 50 mil, 50 million just walking around money now that even pan-handlers would turn their nose up at now but big dough back then.

The problem: times were tough, and investors were wary of foreign market bonds after all kinds of floats had gone bust so they needed a hook, needed a front. The front turned out to be the king’s daughter Princess something does it really matter the name, royalty okay, played by battering eyes Sylvia Sidney who could tidy things up with a trip to America to hustle the bonds, put the king and commission crazy Moneybags back on jump street. She went but early on in New York she contracted mumps and would be out of action for, okay, thirty days if you read the title of the film before reading this screed. The deal was off, done, forget jump street. In that case though you would have underestimated commission crazy Moneybags. He came up with the bright idea of getting a substitute who looks like the princess. Guess what he finds- one who looks amazingly like the princess, Nancy something, does it really matter her name, played by a woman who really did look like Sylvia Sidney but who was a down at the heel actor living on cheap street between skimpy parts. She grabbed the role, the dough and maybe something for the resume after playing hard to get.

Enter Marshall, does it really matter the name as you can now guess, a muckraking newspaper publisher who has a bullseye on the back of crooked Mr. Moneybags, played by pretty Cary Grant in his early career, who was ready to move mountains to squash Moneybags’ operation. Until he met the “princess.” Then all caution was thrown to the winds and he acted like any other American who has forgotten that this country is a republic with a small “r.” He fell for her big-time and in an unseemly manner if you asked me. The “princess” fell for him hard too so what we have here is the two millionth variation on the old Hollywood tried and true “boy meets girl” trope that that glamor town made into a very profitable art form. Problem: princess turned actress was living a lie, was just a hireling once Marshall somebody gets on to the grift.       

Don’t worry though things smoothed out a little when Marshall ( I don’t have to say “somebody” at this late part of the piece, do I) realized that he loves that democratic down at the heels actress whose heart really was of gold and that was that. Needless to say although Taronia got its bonds money Mr. Moneybags got his comeuppance too. Only in America.