This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Tell Me Rosalie Sorrels Did You Seen Starlight On The Rails?-With The Album "Bordeline Heart" In Mind
By Josh Breslin
Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. Has found him or herself (mainly hims though out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed dreams of shelter against life’s storms.
But not everybody has the ability to sing to those heavens (or void) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where the late Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.
Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago (2002 actually). So listen up, okay.
In The Twilight Of The Folk Minute- Peter Seeger And Arlo Guthrie In Concert In The Late 1980s
By Johnny Blade
“Jesus, they charged me fourteen dollars each for these tickets to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Remember Laura about ten or fifteen years ago when we saw Pete for five bucks each at the Café Nana over in Harvard Square (and the price of an expresso coffee for two people and maybe a shared piece of carrot cake since they had been on a date, a cheap date when he didn’t have much cash and at a time when the guy was expected to pay, no “dutch treat,” no Laura dutch treat expected anyway especially on a heavy date, and that one had been when he was intrigued by her early on) and around that same time, that same Spring of 1973, Arlo gave a free concert out on Concord Common,” said Sam Lowell to his date Laura Peters and the couple they were standing in line with, Patrick Darling and Julia James, in front of Symphony Hall in Boston waiting for the doors to open for the concert that evening. This would be the first time Pete and Arlo had appeared together since Newport a number of years back and the first time this first two pairs had seen either of them in a good number of years since Pete had gone to upstate New York and had been spending more time making the rivers and forests up there green again than performing and Arlo was nursing something out in Stockbridge. “Maybe, Alice,” Patrick said and everybody laughed at that inside joke.
Sam continued along that line of his about “the back in the days” for a while, with the three who were also something of folk aficionados well after the heyday of that music in what Sam called the “1960s folk minute” nodding their heads in agreement saying “things sure were cheaper then and people, folkies for sure, did their gigs for the love of it as much as for the money, maybe more so. Did it, what did Dave Van Ronk call it then, oh yeah, for the “basket,” for from hunger walking around money to keep the wolves from the doors. For a room to play out whatever saga drove them to places like the Village, Harvard Square, North Beach and their itch to make a niche in the booming folk world where everything seemed possible and if you had any kind of voice to the left of Dylan’s and Van Ronk’s, could play three chords on a guitar (or a la Pete work a banjo, a mando, or some other stringed instrument), and write of love, sorrow, some dastardly death deed, or on some pressing issue of the day.”
After being silent for a moment Sam got a smile on his face and said “On that three chord playing thing I remember Geoff Muldaur from the Kweskin Jug Band, a guy who knew the American folk songbook as well as anybody then, worked at learning it too, as did Kweskin, learned even that Harry Smith anthology stuff which meant you had to be serious, saying that if you could play three chords you were sure to draw a crowd, a girl crowd around you, if you knew four or five that meant you were a serious folkie and you could even get a date from among that crowd, and if you knew ten or twelve you could have whatever you wanted. I don’t know if that is true since I never got beyond the three chord thing but no question that was a way to attract women, especially at parties.” Laura, never one to leave something unsaid when Sam left her an opening said in reply “I didn’t even have to play three chords on a guitar, couldn’t then and I can’t now, although as Sam knows I play a mean kazoo, but all I had to do was start singing some Joan Baez or Judie Collins cover and with my long black hair ironing board straight like Joan’s I had all the boy come around and I will leave it to your imaginations about the whatever I wanted part.” They all laughed although Sam’s face reddened a bit at the thought of her crowded with guys although he had not known her back then but only later in the early 1970s.
Those reference got Julia thinking back the early 1960s when she and Sam went “dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. (Sam and Julia were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other but folk music was their bond and despite persistent Julia BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time had never been lovers). She mentioned that to Sam as they waited to see if he remembered and while he thought he remembered he was not sure. He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.
Club Blue had been located in that same Harvard Square that Sam had mentioned earlier and along with the Café Nana, which was something of a hot spot once Dylan, Baez, Tom Rush and the members of the Kweskin band started hanging out there, and about five or six other coffeehouses all within a few blocks of each other (one down on Arrow Street was down in the sub-basement and Sam swore that Dylan must have written Subterranean Homesick Blues there). Coffeehouses then where you could, for a dollar or two, see Bob, Joan, Eric (Von Schmidt), Tom (Rush), Phil (Ochs) and lots of lean and hungry performers working for that “basket” Sam had mentioned earlier passed among the patrons and be glad, at least according to Van Ronk when she had asked him about the “take” during one intermission, to get twenty bucks for your efforts that night.
That was the night during that same intermission Dave also told her that while the folk breeze was driving things his way just then and people were hungry to hear anything that was not what he called “bubble gum” music like you heard on AM radio that had not been the case when he started out in the Village in the 1950s when he worked “sweeping out” clubs for a couple of dollars. That sweeping out was not with a broom, no way, Dave had said with that sardonic wit of his that such work was beneath the “dignity” of a professional musician but the way folk singers were used to empty the house between shows. In the “beat”1950s with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, and their comrades (Dave’s word reflecting his left-wing attachments) making everybody crazy for poetry, big be-bop poetry backed up by big be-bop jazz the coffeehouses played to that clientele and on weekends or in the summer people would be waiting in fairly long lines to get in. So what Dave (and Happy Traum and a couple of other singers that she could not remember) did was after the readings were done and people were still lingering over their expressos he would get up on the makeshift stage and begin singing some old sea chanty or some slavery day freedom song in that raspy, gravelly voice of his which would sent the customers out the door. And if they didn’t go then he was out the door. Tough times, tough times indeed.
Coffeehouses too where for the price of a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry, shared, you could wallow in the fluff of the folk minute that swept America, maybe the world, and hear the music that was the leading edge then toward that new breeze that everybody that Julie and Sam knew was bound to come what with all the things going on in the world. Black civil rights, mainly down in the police state South, nuclear disarmament, the Pill to open up sexual possibilities previously too dangerous or forbidden, and music too, not just the folk music that she had been addicted to but something coming from England paying tribute to old-time blues with a rock upbeat that was now a standard part of the folk scene ever since they “discovered” blues guys like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Bukka White, and Skip James. All the mix to turn the world upside down. All of which as well was grist to the mill for the budding folk troubadours to write songs about.
Julie made her companions laugh as they stood there starting to get a little impatient since the doors to the concert hall were supposed to open at seven and here it was almost seven fifteen (Sam had fumed, as he always did when he had to wait for anything, a relic of his Army days during the Vietnam War when everything had been “hurry up and wait”). She had mentioned that back then, back in those college days when guys like Sam did not have a lot of money, if worse came to worse and you had no money like happened one time with a guy, a budding folkie poet, Jack Dawson, she had a date with you could always go to the Hayes-Bickford in the Square (the other H-Bs in other locations around Boston were strictly “no-go” places where people actually just went to eat the steamed to death food and drink the weak-kneed coffee). As long as you were not rowdy like the whiskey drunks rambling on and on asking for cigarettes and getting testy if you did not have one for the simple reason that you did not smoke (almost everybody did then including Sam although usually not with her and definitely not in the dorm), winos who smelled like piss and vomit and not having bathed in a while, panhandlers (looking you dead in the eye defying you to not give them something, money or a cigarette but something) and hoboes (the quiet ones of that crowd who somebody had told her were royalty in the misfit, outcast world and thus would not ask for dough or smokes) who drifted through there you could watch the scene for free. On any given night, maybe around midnight, on weekends later when the bars closed later you could hear some next best thing guy in full flannel shirt, denim jeans, maybe some kind of vest for protection against the cold but with a hungry look on his face or a gal with the de riguer long-ironed hair, some peasant blouse belying her leafy suburban roots, some boots or sandals depending on the weathers singing low some tune they wrote or reciting to their own vocal beat some poem. As Julie finished her thought some guy who looked like an usher in some foreign castle opened the concert hall doors and the four aficionados scampered in to find their seats.
…As they walked down the step of Symphony Hall having watched Pete work his banjo magic, work the string of his own Woody-inspired songs like Golden Thread and of covers from the big sky American songbook and Arlo wowed with his City of New Orleans and some of his father’s stuff (no Alice’s Restaurant that night he was saving that for Thanksgiving he said) Sam told his companions, “that fourteen dollars each for tickets was a steal for such performances, especially in that acoustically fantastic hall” and told his three friends that he would stand for coffees at the Blue Parrot over in Harvard Square if they liked. “And maybe share some pastry too.”
Once Again- When The Capitalist World Was Young-With Dutch And Flemish Paintings In Mind
By Brad Fox, Jr.
They say that Allan Jackson, a guy who grew up in North Adamsville south of Boston and a guy who as the neighborhood guys he used to hang out with used to say was “from hunger” which seems self-explanatory, was kind of weird about stuff like politics and art. Stuff that seemed weird to me anyway when it got explained to me by my father, same name as me and hence junior, one night when he decided that I needed one, a drink or two, and, two, to be straightened out about Allan. Straightened out meaning that he would do his royal highness imperative thing with me which he has done with me since I was a kid when he thought I had something, sometimes anything wrong.
Dad’s authority for the straightening out was that he was one of the guys who knew Allan in those “from hunger” days back in the 1960s when the whole neighborhood, including the Fox family, was wedded to that same condition. He felt since he had already straightened me out ad infinitum on the Fox family “from hunger” story when I was about eight he could skip that and run Allan’s story. I have to tell you though that Bradley Fox, Senior pulled himself up from under by the bootstraps and went on to run a couple of small high tech specialty plants which were contracted to Raytheon to make materials for their various very lucrative defense contracts and while he sold off those businesses when he retired Raytheon is still working off the public teat with those lucrative, very lucrative defense contracts. I also have to tell you that except for a couple of months out in San Francisco in 1967 when the Summer of Love for his generation was in full bloom at a time when his whole crowd was guilt-tripped into going out West by a mad man guy they hung around with whom Dad always called Scribe he went straight-arrow from high school to college (two years), marriage, kids, a decent and “not from hunger” life passed on to his kids and then that fairly recent retirement.
That combination strong work ethic and straight arrow family man would characterize most of his hang-out youthful crowd with the big exception of Scribe. And Allan who followed him for a while anyway before Scribe got too weird, got catch up with a cocaine addiction and fell down, was helped falling down by two straight bullets in Mexico back in the 1970 in circumstances Dad would not talk about, won’t talk about even now since he says it hurts him too much to think about Scribe’s fate, a fate that except for a few happy turns might have befallen him. So the “Allan following Scribe” part consisted of essentially two things-a visceral hatred of current day capitalism partially derived through an old-fashioned now somewhat obsolete except for academics Marxism, you know, greedy capitalist (my father to a certain extent although he was not, is not, greedy) versus downtrodden workers AND a love of painting from the early days of capitalism-when it was beginning to come full bloom in places like London, Amsterdam and Antwerp-painters like Rembrandt, Hals, Ruebens.
Dad said it was hard to say when Scribe and therefore Allan got into radical politics since no way in high school when they all formed lasting bonds did those guys have such ideas. They would have been run out of town, would emphatically not have been hanging around Harry’s Variety Store with Dad and the other guys spouting “commie” rag stuff in those Cold War beat the Russians to a pulp days. What they all cared about, what they all talked about was cars, not having cars the fate of most of them during high school, girls, and either not having them of how to get into their pants, Dad’s expression not mine, booze, and how to get somebody old enough to “buy” for them, and endlessly rock and roll music, and how to use that hot rock and roll to get a girl into a car, get her softened up with booze and in the mood to do what he called “do the do” which I think is pretty self-explanatory as well. So maybe girls was all they really cared about in the end and the other stuff was just talk to talk. One way or another Scribe and his ardent follower, his “girl” some of the guys would say just to do a little “fag” baiting long before even guys like Dad got hip that being gay was okay, that they were not the devils incarnate, were as hyped to the chasing girls scene as all the others.
Dad figured that what probably happened to turn them around was their getting drafted and sent to Vietnam (neither events at the same time but close together) and when they returned they were very different in ways Dad couldn’t explain but different mainly because neither man wanted to talk about the stuff they saw, did, or saw others do in what they would always call “Nam. So they started hanging around with college guys and gals, maybe others too, all young and bright-eyed over in Cambridge the other side of Boston. Started going to things called study groups and such. The long and short of it was before long they were longed-haired, bearded hippie-looking guys just like a million other guys around Boston at the time Dad said. Getting arrested for this and that, stuff called civil disobedience not robberies or mayhem or anything like it. Kept talking about class struggle, kicking the bosses’ asses, decaying capitalism, imperialism all the stuff you read about in a Government class and then let drop like a lead balloon after an exam. That lasted like I said until Scribe fell down and Allan went back to school on the G.I. Bill.
The craving for Dutch and Flemish painting Dad said was easier to explain, at least he thought so. It seemed like this Allan was a holy goof, a wacko to me in our old neighborhood terms out in the leafy suburbs. Dad said, and this is the way Allan explained it to him so take it for what its worth since you know I think it is the uttering of a holy goof. According to this Marxist schematic even though now capitalism (now now or fifty years ago now it doesn’t matter since it is still around) has turned in on itself, has lost its energy, has become a brake on serious human progress that was not always the case. In the early days when it was giving feudalism the boot it was what they called “progressive,” meaning it was better than feudalism and so did things then that could be supported in historical terms by latter day radicals. Okay, Allan, whatever you say.
Here’s where I think it really gets weird, art, all the cultural expressions, get reflected in the emerging new system of organizing society so when Rembrandt say painted those prosperous dour-looking merchants, town burghers, and shop owners (and their wives, also dour, see above. usually in separate portraits showing that had enough real money to pay for two expensive paintings or else couldn’t stand being in the same room together for the long sittings) he was reflecting the bright light times of this new system that would wind up dominating the world. According to Dad Allan and another guy went, I think he said, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Allan where he flipped out over these odd-ball portrait or domestic scene paintings in the 16th and 17th century Dutch-Flemish section. Said, and Dad quoted this, that was when capitalism was young and fresh and you could feel it in almost every painting. Also said while the stuff wouldn’t pass art muster today it was like catnip back then. Like I said a holy goof. And if you don’t believe me go, if you are near a major museum which would have such art, and check it out for yourself because young or old, Rembrandt or not, this stuff is old hat as far as I am concerned.
“T” For Texas, “T” For Trouble, “T” For Well You Get The Idea, “T”-William Holden And Glenn Ford’s “Texas” (1941)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Lance Lawrence
Texas, starring William Holden, Glenn Ford, 1941
[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series Greg Green]
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Hold it I am not going to talk about red state Texas, nor about rising star in some quarters of Beto O’Rourke, nor even about the oil-rich Texas of the 1950s Giant which made James Dean’s short career resume blossom and solidified Rock Hudson as a matinee idol (his subsequent tragic fate, his coming out of the closet with his AIDS announcement does not take away from that 1950s status). No, today we are going back to post-Civil War Texas (which was rebel gray) and the big-time cattle drives that drove that state’s economy well before the oil came gushing out of the ground in the film Texas. We will look at the fortunes of a couple of defeated “Johnny Rebs” trying to make their young ways in the world after their lost cause had been defeated.
The story line hinges on the exploits of Todd, played by Glenn Ford last seen in this space trying to make time with B-movie queen Gloria Grahame very married to a bad ass guy whom she hates but will not give her up and Dan, played by William Holden last seen in this space face down in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool in the high numbers end of Sunset Boulevard in the film of the same name. No, that is not right on the Holden sighting, last seen snapping his provocative jazz beat fingers at provocative come hither Kim Novac in Picnic. They leave the war-weary South to try their luck in Wild West, wide open lawless, or rather make your own law with a gun Texas. Which at the start get them into a series of semi-comic escapades around a stage robbery and end with them on opposites sides in the cattle wars-Todd as the “good guy” herd driver to an insatiable market and Dan as the “bad guy” rustler.
Naturally something has to give, despite their comradeship, and in the end Dan had to go down, had to take the bullet from guys who wanted the whole cattle business to themselves leaving not only “Rustlin’ Dan” out of the picture but Todd as well. RIP Dan, RIP. Oh, wait a minute did I mention, silly me, the love angle. Dan and Todd both were smitten by the same woman, the oddly named “Mike,” hard-headed and independent daughter of a rancher. You know in the end only one guy can be left standing-and there was only one. Dan might have rued his exit, might have asked for a better ending that a few spare bullets to his body but that was the way it was in Wild West Texas. Short enough, Greg?
The 37th Or Something Like That Reincarnation Of Woody Allen’s Epic Los Angeles-New York City Battle-And A Little Romance Thrown In-Woody’s “Café Society” (2016)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Ronan Saint James
Café Society, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristin Stewart, written and directed by Woody Allen, 2016
[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series- Greg Green]
I will say this about Woody Allan, a guy can’t be too bad, can’t be too repetitious if he indulges his passions for old time bluesy, jazzy torch singers who are also into jazzing, 1920s and 1930s time frames, and be-bop Benny Goodman as an example big-time swing bands. Even if the story line of this latest production Café Society is a 37th reincarnation of stories he did much better when he was young and hungry when he wanted to make definite statements that New York City not La-La Land was the epicenter of American cultural expression in whatever condition it found itself. That said this retread still had its points.
Naturally poor Woody, oops, Bobby, was tired of New York for a minute decided to see the world and headed to Hollywood where a successful talent agent uncle might help him get a leg up in the movie business-maybe follow in “Unk’s” footsteps. Before he could get that leg up though he found his soulmate or who he thought would play that role-as naturally some gentile woman from the Midwest, here Nebraska but you name the vanilla state and can plug it in. So Woody certainly could never have been accused of not rushing headlong into the eternal film saver-boy meets girl trope that has kept many a film from the delete button of late.
That said here is the play once Bobby gets out from under the New York scene (I would not be telling any tales out of school to note that he would scurry back before too long with his tail between his legs-okay) and into the wilds of Hollywood he finds that true love, his uncle’s assistant, receptionist I don’t know what he put down on his tax returns but something to cover the fact that Von, dear Von, is his uncle’s mistress if anybody can use that term anymore with a strange glance. Uncle is ready to ditch wife and all except for a time he dithers and that will give our Bobby his opening. Except (always the Woody “excepts”) when push came to shove and it was mano a mano on who Von was going to marry she went with the uncle. Fast forward: a bunch of years later both Bobby and Von met at some social event in New York and while they did not get it on or anything like that they were both very wistful after departing. Like what might have been. After three divorces and a bunch of affairs that sentiment hit me square in the eye. Again. We are doing short film reviews these days under strict orders from the “boss,” his designation of himself so that is it.
When The Bad Guys Come You Want Sean Connery On The Case -Once Against The Bad Guys Fall Into The Abyss-Sean Connery’s “Presidio” (1988)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Presidio, starring Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, 1988
Every since he was 007 James Bond the one man spy ring to save the crumbling British Empire, worth saving or not, Sean Connery has seemingly never given a bad performance. That is the case here with Presidio. Maybe it is Sean’s ruggedly handsome no nonsense looks and his bravado manner but as long as he has played the avenging angel of John Milton’s poetry or some such classic of the Greek or English literary canon he can’t go wrong. In street language he puts the hurt, the big step off on the bad guys. No questions asked, no quarter given.
Of course now, in 2018, the Presidio which brought either terror to young Army recruits when it was a point of debarkation for the hellish war in Vietnam or delight to be on the Pacific West Coast, to be in sunny and thoughtful California if you drew an assignment there, the place is mainly shut up against the Golden Gate Bridge except the golf course which devotee Si Lannon of this publication says is a bear to play (and maybe why avid golfer Connery took the role, just a thought). Of course as well a military installation close by the city streets of San Francisco is going to have some jurisdiction problems if some crime spills out from the fort to those mean streets.
That is the underlying tension between Provost Marshall, the sheriff, chief of police, in military speak played by Connery and one wild boy ex-Army MP, played by Mark Harmon, who was then working for the SF Police Department. A murder, a vicious no hold barred murder if there is any other kind, occurred on the fort and the villains fled to the streets of Frisco town after a wild chase. The murder victim a female MP who was doing her job checking out some suspicious activity at the Officers’ Club. For that she got wasted and for that our man Sean will go to the ends of the earth to find the killers.
The big problem is why the killers were in the OC anyway, since apparently nothing was taken, nothing that seemed to be out of place. That will be the puzzle both Sean and Mark have to solve. Solved despite a serious disagreement about Mark’s budding affair with Sean’s wayward daughter who has had the angst of every military brat, civilian too come to think of it in trying to find her own identity against that titanic father force. That Mark had problems with the old man while he was an MP adds fuel to the fire.
In the end as expected the case will be solved. As it turned out the deal going down was not the drugs from Asia that I thought at first might be the reason the fort was being used as a transit point to bring the stuff into the country but diamonds, tons of them from the look of things. The cartel dragged down a few soldiers in its wake including a decorated sergeant who got caught in the middle for some problem he had over in Vietnam in the old days. Yeah, watch out bad guys when one Sean Connery comes on the screen your days are numbered.
Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To TheChapel Of Love In Mind
By Lance Lawrence
There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that fifteen minutes of fame, if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer, could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair, read that he was made for big events anything like that back then. No way although that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression for a while.
Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear. See his senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music that had passed for rock (and which the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes) was going to be buried under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to bring in the new dispensation. More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air he was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called the folk minute of the early 1960s (which when the tunes, not Dylan and Baez at first but guys like the Kingston Trio started playing on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner after school some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over). So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations. But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.
That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.
One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound. Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.
So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.” So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved on the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.
That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid. Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:
“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.).
Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.
And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat” except on silly television shows and “wise” social commentary who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).
Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word.)
Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."
And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:
“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Dawson taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester. And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."
Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Dawson were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when head South this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Dawson. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)
They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south on a chartered bus. But get this Pete turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Yes, we are still just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.
At 18, drafted into the Austrian Army After having spent time in London As an apprentice waiter, he would tell a Christmas story That I always thought was just him spinning a charming fairy tale. Only much later, did I learn That he was part of that 1914 Christmas Truce and was telling the truth
One Last Time On The 50th Anniversary Of The Beatle's "Sgt. Pepper" Album (2017)-The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles?
By Phil Larkin
[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]
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Today I choose not to go on and on about the recent internal disputes on this site which has led to the canny and “exile” of the former site administrator, Allan Jackman who used the moniker Peter Paul Markin when posting, etc., because I have bigger fish to fry as they used to say in the old days in my Irish Catholic growing up Acre section of North Adamsville south of Boston. (Allan in a retro piece written well before all the controversies has given his take on this dispute in a posting dated December 15, 2014.) Those “fish” meaning in this 50th anniversary year of the Beatle’s world record bestselling album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the world-historic dispute of that Acre growing up time about whether the Beatles or the Stones (Rolling Stones) were the band that fit our moods. “Spoke” to us although we would have torn each other’s hearts out, or did a huge amount of “fag” baiting (yeah, we were way behind the curve then on sexual identity issues even though one of our hang-around guys, the biggest “fag-baiter” ultimately to our collective shock “came out” a couple of years after the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City and for a while “shunned” him until we wised up a bit mainly through our own chances in politics and ways of looking at the world) if anybody had dared to use such an expression in the year of our Lord 1960 something.
I have gone round and round on this one and by overwhelming general consensus, excepting our leader Frankie Riley, who tough and smart as he was, couldn’t get us to buy into his view that the “boys for Liverpool,” meaning po’ boy working class guys like us were superior to the Stones. And here is the funny part some fifty plus years later those of us who are still around from that time and still speaking to each other, including that gay brother (a couple of guys are not for very long ago reasons but in the baby-boomer male psyche “forgive and forget” was, is, a tough dollar) having recently gathered together to listen to a ton of Beatles and Stones material still believe that our youthful opinions hold true. That truth despite most of us, having survived the “from hunger” neighborhood, wound up having decent and honorable careers. Even Frankie belatedly to be sure feels that the “angry young men” Stones still represent best our own anger at our situations in a world we did not make than the more wistful Beatles. Personal preferences, time, and whatever youthful angst and alienation obviously mixing up the pot when comparison time comes around but there you have my take on that still simmering controversy.
So the Stones “win” that battle but today I want give a “shout out” especially to those on the Beatles side about a program on NPR’s Terry Gross- hosted Fresh Air. One day she had, in an encore edition originally aired on June 1st, the son of George Martin, the guy who produced Sgt. Pepper who for the 50th anniversary remixed his father’s original album work. For an hour he spoke about many interesting things that occurred during the original production and the things that he had done to give the thing a 50th anniversary retooling.
Here’s the link but listen to Stones stuff before final judgment-okay:
On The 50th Anniversary Of Beatle's "Sgt Pepper" Album (2017) The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles? Allan Jackson (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin on this site) commentary
Working Class Hero
Street Fighting Man The following is a response to a canned Q&A section from a committee of my high school Class of 1964 (a few edits here to delete personal information). I share it with the aging lefties and rock and roll aficionados in the audience. Okay, so Markin has come in from the cold and reunited with the Class of 1964 after over forty years of ignoring that fact. Big deal, right? For those interested in my profile you can read my comments in the My Story section. But today, since I have joined this work and it is my dime, I feel I might as well use it for the purpose that I joined, to network with some of the old crowd. I propose to use my bulletin board space to pose certain questions to my fellow classmates to which I am interested in getting answers. Thus I will be periodically throwing a question out and would appreciate an answer. No, I do not want to ask personal family questions. After forty years this space is hardly the place to air our dirty little secrets. No, I do not want to talk religion. That is everyone private affair. No, I do not want to talk politics, although those who might remember me know that I am a ‘political junkie’ from way back. In fact I mean to get myself into some 12 step rehab program as soon as this current campaign is over, if ever. What I want to do is ask questions like that posed below. Join me….. “Manchurian Candidate” McCain vs. The Huckster”? Boring. Ms. Hillary vs. Obama ‘The Charma”? Ho, hum. Three dollar gas at the pump? Oh, well. No, what has my blood boiling is a question that I am, after forty years, desperate to know about my classmates from 1964. In your callow youth, back in the mist of time, did you prefer the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? The question was posed in the canned Q&A section above but I feel the issue warrants a full airing out. I make no bones about my preference for the Rolling Stones and will motivate that below but here let me just set the parameters. I am talking about when we were in high school. I do not mean the later material like the Beatles "Sergeant Pepper" or the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". And no, I do not want to hear about how you really swooned over Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. Answer the question asked, please. I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably “Satisfaction”. However, what really hooked me on them was when I hear them cover the old Willie Dixon blues classic “The Red Rooster”. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But, beyond that it was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make. That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although American blues also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf’s version but good. I have also thought about The Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (yes, I know these are later works) and I believe that you will find that something in the way The Stones’ presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my working class alienation. But enough. I will close with this. I have put my money where my mouth is with my preference. When the Stones’ toured Boston at Fenway Park in the summer of 2005 I spend many (too many) dollars to get down near the stage and watch old Mick and friends rock. Beat that.
The Old Days In Gay “Closeted, Hell, Entombed ” Hollywood-With a New Book About AIDS Victim Hollywood 1950s He-Man Icon Rock Hudson-Even His Name Dripped Masculinity In Some Quarters In Mind
By Seth Garth Here is a link to a Terry Gross Fresh Air show on NPR about a book about the life and times of 1950s movie icon Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin All That Heaven Allows which forms the backdrop to this commentary: https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/12/05/673714293/fresh-air-for-dec-5-2018-rock-hudsons-double-life
I suppose I am the one person of the old-time working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys who should do this commentary on 1950s and before “gay” Hollywood through a book reviewed on NPR about the life and times of masculine icon Rock Hudson who dramatic announcement in the 1980s that he had AIDS brought new light (and more research money) on the disease because of his standing in the Hollywood firmament. I don’t usually put much stock in coincidences although they certainly exist so but I find it ironic that at nearly the same time I was listening to this Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview that Allan Jackson was maybe three doors away from me writing his defense of himself against all kind of false accusations after he had been purged from his site manager’s job at this publication, including that he was the M.C. of a drag queen club out in San Francisco. As Allan subsequently detailed that false accusation, that slander and libel whether it was actionable in a court of law by some of the ”victors” in his ouster was purposefully put on as fact, really alternate fact, when he had wound up in San Francisco visiting his, our old friend and corner boy from highs school days Timmy Riley, now known far and wide in the world of “drag queens” as Miss Judy Garland and the proprietor of the so-called notorious KitKat Club which has since become a major tourist attraction in that city. What has come out only recently (although I and a couple of others who had put some money up knew what the situation was) is that Allan after Timmy had flee North Adamsville when he “came out” to his parents who would subsequently disown him and a few friends, a few corner boys remained in North Adamsville after high school scorned him to go to gay and drag queen friendlier San Francisco in the post-Stonewall period had loaned, had given Timmy the money to buy and refurbish the run-down KitKat Club in North Beach. (Although everybody in Frisco knows him as Miss Judy Garland we all still call him Timmy so let me stick with that name.) So, yes, Alan was staying with his old friend, and mine too, at one of Timmy’s apartments above the club which he also owned trying to jump start his life. So much for unverified “facts.” Allan mentioned in his introductory piece to a series on Jack Kerouac the 50th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2019 that when we were corner boys, when we were hanging around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in the early 1960s we would mercilessly gay-bait anybody who seemed the least bit, well, faggy, light on their feet, homo all the terms of approbation used at the time for gay-bashing. And here is what may startle the unwary reader Timmy Riley, football playing, rugged, pretty handsome and girl attractive was the leader of the pack. Moreover we did not, and I speak of this as both Allan and Timmy have with eternal shame, just talk the talk but would go down to Provincetown in high which we knew was “queer heaven” and not just gay-bash some poor unsuspecting guy but “lead” on to get somebody out in back of some bar and beat the shit out of the guy. And again Timmy would be in the lead. We were shocked, shocked to the core when we heard from Sonny Lewis that Timmy had “come out” had started painting his fingernails, and they had beaten him up one of the main reasons Timmy fled the town. What does all of this about an old gay and drag queen (they are not both the same, okay) corner boy from working class North Adamsville have to do with a famous movie star from our times like Rock Hudson. Well everything since, as the book and a documentary point out, Rock and a number of other he-man role male movie stars like Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, and famously Tab Hunter had to stay deep, deep in the closet to maintain their livelihoods. To keep up the illusion, the movie theater illusion that every female movie-goer (and who knows now when you think about the matter some male movie-goers) that they could grab the guy for a boyfriend. Such was, and is, the Hollywood dream factory. Despite the fact that like the revelations long known in Hollywood about the “casting couch” culture which, male or female, depending on the predilections of the man in power, helped get you up the food chain the “gay community,” who was gay, who was sitting out in Malibu with a bunch of men, good looking athletic men without women. I am not sure how much trouble Rock got into, or avoided in having his male companionship and his affairs, before his public announcement of his AIDS condition (in those days a sentence of death) and the how and when he knew that he preferred men to women but we saw Rock, maybe not as the coolest guy around, maybe guys like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were more our models of manliness, as a serious masculine figure especially when he was not doing that silly romantic comedy stuff that none of us could relate to. What I do know, do know from talking with both Timmy and Allan over the years that Timmy, and I assume Rock, paid a terrible psychic price for having to stay in the closet. Worse having to hide who they were, are against guys like the North Adamsville corner boys who were quick with fists and not understanding. So this does not do justice to the subject but RIP, Rock Hudson, RIP
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