The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind 

 

 

 

 

Here is the drill. I started out life listening to singer like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (and his brother Bob), Miss Patti Page, Miss Rosemary Clooney, Miss Peggy Lee, the Andrew, McGuire, Dooley sisters, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s which my mother had always during the day to get her workaday daytime household world and on Saturday night when my father joined in. Joined in so they could listen to Bill Marlowe on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression and then when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or Pacific one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. I am not saying that they should not have had their memory music after all of that but frankly that stuff then (and now although less) made me grind my teeth. But I was a captive audience then and so to this day I can sing off Rum and Coca Cola and Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree from memory. But that was not my music, okay. 

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which I “dug” seriously dug to the point of dreaming my own jailbreak dreams about rock futures (and girls) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for me to be able unlike my older brother, Prescott, to call that the music that I came of age to. Although the echoes of that time still run through my mind and I can quote chapter and verse One Night With You, Sweet Little Sixteen, Let’s Have A Party, Be-Bop-a-Lula, Bo Diddley, Peggy Sue and a whole bunch more.   

The music that I can really call my own is the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with my coming of chronological, political and social age (that last in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside myself filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with). You know the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family, Buell Kazell, Jimmy Rodgers, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country), the blue grass music , and the protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. The latter songs being what drove a lot of my interest once I connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which I have written plenty about elsewhere on poverty nights, meaning many nights).

A lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that I kept hearing on my transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers and vapid young female-driven female singer stuff. Also to seek out roots music that I kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once I found a station (accidently) which featured such music and got intrigued by the sounds. Part of that search, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know Chicago, blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White and of course Mississippi John Hurt. But those guys basically stayed in the South and it took a younger generation like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, B.B. King, to move north, to follow the northern star to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis going up river) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they had made their own pacts with the devil. Praise be.               

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….            

The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914

by Béla Zombory-Moldován, Peter Zombory-Moldovan (Translation)

The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 3.8 of 5 stars 3.80  ·  rating details  ·  107 ratings  ·  35 reviews

Publishing during the 100th Anniversary of World War I

An NYRB Classics Original

The budding young Hungarian artist Béla Zombory-Moldován was abroad on holiday when World War I broke out in August 1914. Called up by the army, he soon found himself hundreds of miles away, advancing on Russian lines—or perhaps on his own lines—and facing relentless rifle and artillery fir Publishing during the 100th Anniversary of World War I

An NYRB Classics Original

The budding young Hungarian artist Béla Zombory-Moldován was abroad on holiday when World War I broke out in August 1914. Called up by the army, he soon found himself hundreds of miles away, advancing on Russian lines—or perhaps on his own lines—and facing relentless rifle and artillery fire. Badly wounded, he returned to normal life, which now struck him as unspeakably strange. He had witnessed, he realized, the end of a way of life, of a whole world.

Published here for the first time in any language, this extraordinary reminiscence is a deeply moving addition to the literature of the terrible war that defined the shape of the twentieth century. ...more

John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

 

Every time I pass the frieze of the Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston I almost automatically focus in on that old bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section but as I grow older I appreciate the old man soldier even more. I like to think that that old brother when he heard the call in Massachusetts or wherever he was, had maybe even got the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper or on the stump he picked up stakes and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered. But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and what was he a strong black man going to do about it. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.

Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by volunteer Colonel Shaw and he shut down his small shop, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think thought that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54^th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Brown and to an old man’s honor.             

Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth  

 
 

 
 

Some music you acquired naturally, you know like kids’ songs learned in school (The Farmer in the Dell, etc. in case you forgot) and embedded in the back of your mind even fifty years later. Some reflected the time period when you were growing up but were too young to call the music your own like the music that ran around the background of your growing up house on the mother housewife radio or evening record player which in my case was the music that got my parents through my father’s slogging and mother anxiously waiting World War II. You know, Frank, The Andrew Sisters, Peggy Lee, etc.   Other music, the music of my generation, classic rock and rock came more naturally since that is what I wanted to hear when I had my transistor radio to my ear up in my bedroom. Yeah, Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy, Jerry Lee, etc. again. The blues though, the rarified country and electric urban blues of the likes of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf was an acquired taste.       

Acquired through listening to folk music programs on that very same transistor radio in the early 1960s when they would take a break from down home mountain music, western swing ballads, and urban protest music to play some cuts of country or electric blues. See all the big folkies, Dylan, Tom Rush, Dave Van Ronk, people like that were wild to cover the blues in the search for serious roots music from the American songbook. So somebody, I don’t know who, figured if everybody who was anybody was covering the blues in that minute then it made sense to play the real stuff.

The real stuff having been around for while, having been produced by the likes of Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf going back to the 1940s big time black migration to the industrial plants of the Midwest during World War II when there were plenty of jobs just waiting. But also having been pushed to the background, way to the background with the rise of rock and roll. So it took that combination of folk minute and that well-hidden electric blues some time to filter through my brain. What did not take a long time once I got “religion” was going crazy over Howlin’ Wolf when I saw him perform. Once I saw him practically eat that harmonica he was playing on How Many More Years . Yes, that is an acquired taste and a lasting one.    

 

As The 12^th Anniversary Of The (Second, The 2003 One) Iraq War Is Upon Us-No New War In Iraq! Down With The War-Monger Obama 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

[No this writer is not lost in a time warp, nor  is he suffering from a senior moment in continuing to note the anniversary, the 12^th anniversary, of the ill-fated, ill-advised, ill, well, let’s just keep it as the previous two ills, of what seemed last year to be the end of the seemingly completed fiasco in Iraq. However although American troops have mainly been withdrawn many thousand American bought and paid for “contract” soldiers are still operating in that theater. Moreover the wreckage from the huge American footprint (bootprint, really) is still wreaking havoc on that benighted land from lack of electrical power to unexploded bombs to speak nothing of the current constant political turmoil between the myriad factions struggling for power. Then there is the question of those tens of thousands of soldiers who had been switched over within a heartbeat from benighted Iraq to benighted Afghanistan. The call for immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan of that last ten thousand troops if not drawing much support in these back- burner concern days is still a necessary call. Finally, if there is a modern example  of the follies of war, of a needless imperial adventure, of flat-out American imperial hubris to do something explosive (in more ways than one) then the ill-famed Iraq invasion started on March 19, 2003 should be etched in every leftist militant, hell, every thoughtful citizen’s brain. Yet President Obama seeks on his hands and knees if you can believe this new authorization to send the Iraq War into overtime with this alleged existential threat by ISIS or whatever initials those insane butcher terrorists are running to these days. Make no mistake we have no truck ISIS and whatever alphabet soup organizations spring from, are associated with, or are successor organizations to that one but to go along with the bloodied-handed imperialists who brought forth these demons who want to get more deeply involved in a sectarian conflict with no “good” sides is rich, very rich, indeed. No way. ]        

Here is part two of a little cautionary tale to commemorate this sad occasion (see this blog dated March 19 for part one): 

 

*******

After listening to the evening news that May 1st 2003 Tim Reid was deeply satisfied that he had stuck to his guns and defended President Bush’s decision in March to go into Iraq and get rid of that mad man and vicious killer Saddam Hussein before he unleashed holy hell on the United States and the world with those dreaded weapons of mass destruction that Tim was sure would be discovered very soon. That evil bastard had had plenty of time to hide them in some out of the way place not easily accessible especially with military operations proceeding apace. That evening President Bush had announced that major operations had been suspended against the porous melting Iraqi army and that the road to democratic nation-building in Iraq could now go forward, full- steam ahead. Some lives, sadly some American lives, had been lost, but not many not as against what might have happened had Saddam not been toppled. The military operation had been in the words of one correspondent who quoted an anonymous military source “a slam dunk.”       

Tim thought back to his younger days, days when he had opposed the President’s father, George H.W., in the first Iraq war back in 1991 and was able to draw a very big distinction between that opposition which to his mind was basically being drawn into a squabble between dictators and sheiks and not really any of our business and this. Times had changed (and he would take into the mix that he had changed too now being the father of two young ones and, as any father would do, trying to protect them from a dangerous world any way he could), 9/11 happened, happened right here in New York City , and happened to people he knew and cared about,  and no further reference was needed that there were bad guys in the world, bad guys aiming their arrows in our direction, and they needed to be stamped out like cockroaches. And Saddam was the numero uno state actor on that list especially with atomic bombs and biological bombs and other stuff the CIA and other national security agencies knew he had hidden somewhere. Now that the dust of battle had settled they would be able to go in and destroy all those damn things and while it might still be a dangerous world at least it was a smidgeon less so.      

Later that night, that May Day night, after the kids had gone to bed, and Sheila was doing something in the study, some homey thing like she did after the kid wars of the day were done he sat on the sofa, television now off, a book in hand to finish the night off, a snooze off probably, Tim flashed back for just a minute to those 1991 days. Days when he was ready to raise infinite amounts of hell to stop that first Iraq war, had even joined an ad hoc anti-imperialist committee here in the city made of old time progressives, pacifists, and socialists in order to combine with others in his fury against the big bad American military machine wreaking havoc on the world . He had that year, ironically, even marched in the small May Day parade down at Union Square, the place where today’s anti-war activists had launch their latter-day marches. How times had changed, how he had changed. And just for one second he wished he could still be that old Tim Reid. But just for a second…                

The Latest From The Rag Blog-A Voice Of The Old New Left   

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://www.theragblog.com/

Peter Paul Markin comment:

When we were young, meaning those of us who were militant leftist baby-boomers from the days that I now call the “Generation Of ‘68,” we would chuckle/gasp/shriek in horror when some Old Leftists tried to tell us a few of the ABCs of radical politics.(1968 being a watershed year for lots of things from Tet in Vietnam bringing home the reality of the lost war to the American bourgeois political upheavals that led to Chicago hell in the summer and the May events in Paris which showed the limits that a student-based vision of the "newer world" we sought.)

Those scorned old leftists, mainly old Stalinist Communist Party hangers-on who survived the 1950s red scare or moribund Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party members who survived the red scare and the Stalinists had come of political age in the 1930s and 1940s had nothing to tell us. Yes, we young stalwart in-your-face- rebels were going to re-invent the world we had not made and we needed no old fogies to put a damper on our efforts. See we were going to re-invent that world without the hurts and sorrows accumulated from millennia of previous struggles to push the rock up the hill of human progress.

Well, we fell significantly short of that aim, had that Promethean rock come speeding down over our heads the minute the American government felt the least bit threatened. (Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970 and for me personally May Day 1971 when we without anywhere near adequate forces or much of a strategy were going to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war stand as signposts to those failures.) Today I am still not sure whether in retrospect those scorned Old Leftists of old had anything going but all I know is we are now cast in somewhat the same light. We are now the Old New Leftists.
Problem is that unlike our 1960s generation, warts and all, there is no sizable younger crowd of young stalwart in-your-face-rebels to thumb their noses up at us. And there should be. That has not stopped many old radicals, many who have not succumbed to old age and hubris, from trying to be heard. And the place they have congregated, for better or worse, at least from what I can see is at this site.          

So I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. The remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time New Left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s young left-wing militants.

***************
A Frank Jackman comment (2014):

Recently I wrote a short piece in a left-wing political blog centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the active left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a few years back, the continuing failed efforts to stop the incessant American war machine, and the lack of serious and righteous response to the beating that the working classes and oppressed in this country (and internationally) have taken from the ruling class and their hangers-on a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I had run into in the various campsites and had talked to on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses.

I noted there, and the point is germane here as I try to place the remnant of old New Left represented by the contributors in The Rag Blog in perspective, that is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory which I mentioned in the article still holds true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working-class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

That said I have also made a note that some of theories from the old days, now being re-tread by some of the old New Left denizens of this blog as if nothing had changed since the 1960s,  made me think that making the revolution the old-fashioned Marxist working class way is the beginning of wisdom. In the interest of full disclosure though back in the day I was as likely as anybody to adhere to all kinds of new theories (mainly because the old theories being old must be irrelevant, a notion that was widespread then) but life, political life, itself has already made its judgments on the worth of those theories for pulling humankind ahead. The class struggle exists, although in a very one-sided manner right now, one-sided on their side not ours, and any theory, any plan worth its salt, worth the righteous oppressed rising up against it should reflect that and at its core the teachings of Marx and his progeny still make sense.   
A Markin disclaimer:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

One More Time Down 1950s Record Memory Lane

 

I have spilled plenty of cyber-ink in this space going back to the now classic age of rock and roll (Elvis, Bo, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Wanda, et. al for shorthand) that formed my musical tastes back in the 1950s when I came of age, musical age anyway. Came of teenage age and all that meant of angst and alienation. Lately though I have going back to various commercially-produced  compilations put out by demographically savvy media companies to cull out the better songs, some which I have had on the tip of my tongue almost continuously since then (the Dubs Could This Be Magic and the Teen Queens Eddie My Love are two examples that quickly come to mind). Others like Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love or The Crows Oh-Gee I needed some coaxing by the compilations to remember.

But I have now found a sure-fire method to aid in that coaxing. Just go back in memory’s mind and picture scenes from teenage days and figure the songs that went with such scenes (this is not confined to 1950s aficionados anybody can imagine their youth times and play). But even there I am cheating a little, harmlessly cheating but still cheating. When you look at the artwork on most of the better 1950s CD compilations you will find excellent artwork that highlights various institutions back then. You know the infamous drive-in movies where you gathered about six people (hopefully three couples but six anyway) and paid for two the other four either on the back seat floor or in the trunk. They always played music at intermission when we gathered at the refreshment stand to grab inedible hot dogs, stale popcorn, or fizzled out sods, although who cared, especially if that three couples thing was in play, and that scene is always associated in my mind with Frankie Lyman and the Teenager’s Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

So that is how the game is played. Two (or more) can play so I will just set the scenes and you can fill in your own musical selection. Here goes: the first stirrings of interest in the opposite sex at Doc’s Drugstore with his soda fountain AND jukebox; the drive-in restaurant with you and yours in the car, yours or father borrowed for an end of the night bout with cardboard hamburgers, ultra-greasy french fries and diluted soda; the Spring Frolic Dance (or name your seasonal dance) your hands all sweaty, trying to disappear into the wall, waiting, waiting to perdition for that last dance so that you could ask that he or she that you had been eyeing all evening to dance that slow one  all dreamy; down at the beach on day one of out of school for the summer checking out the scene between the two boat clubs where all the guys and gals who counted hung out; the night before Thanksgiving football rally where he or she said they would be, how about you; on poverty nights sitting up in your bedroom listening to edgy WMEX on your transistor radio away from prying adult eyes; another poverty night you and your boys, girls, boys and girls sitting in the family room spinning platters; that first sixth grade “petting” party (no more explanation needed right); cruising Main Street with your boys or girls looking for, well, you figure it out listening to the radio in that “boss” Chevy, hopefully; and, sitting in the balcony “watching” the double feature at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon when younger and at night when older. Okay, I have given enough cues. Fill in the dots, oops, songs and add scenes too.                      

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….  

 

 

 

The Riddle of the Sands

by Erskine Childers, Milton Bearden (Introduction)

The Riddle of the Sands 3.61 of 5 stars 3.61  ·  rating details  ·  2,515 ratings  ·  290 reviews

While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Written by Childers—who served in the Royal Navy during World War I—as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea defenses, The Riddle of the Sands accomplished that task and has been considered a classic of espionage litera While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Written by Childers—who served in the Royal Navy during World War I—as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea defenses, The Riddle of the Sands accomplished that task and has been considered a classic of espionage literature ever since, praised as much for its nautical action as for its suspenseful spycraft. ...more     

      

 

 

Will The Circle Be Unbroken-The Music OF The Carter Family (First Generation)

You know it took a long time for me to figure out why I was drawn, seemingly out of nowhere, to the mountain music most famously brought to public, Northern public, attention by the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, The Seegers and the Lomaxes. As a kid I could not abide it but later on I figured that was because I was so embroiled in the uprising jail-break music of my generation, rock and roll, that anything else faded, faded badly by comparison. Later in high and school after when I hung around Harvard Square I would let something like Gold Watch And Chain register a bit, registering a bit then meaning that I would find myself occasionally idly humming such a tune. But again more urban, more protest-oriented folk music was what caught my attention more when the folk minute was at high tide in the early 1960s.           

Then one day not all that many years ago as part of a final reconciliation with my family, going back to my own roots, making peace with my old growing up neighborhood, I started asking many questions about how things turned so sour back when I was young. More importantly asking questions that had stirred in my mind for a long time and formed part of the reason that I went for reconciliation. To find out what my roots were while somebody was around to explain the days before I could rightly remember the early day. And in that process I finally, finally figured out why the Carter Family and others began to “speak” to me.         

The thing was simplicity itself. See my father hailed from Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky long noted in song and legend as hard coal country. When World War II came along he left to join the Marines to get the hell out of there. During his tour of duty he was stationed for a short while at the Portsmouth Naval Base and during that stay attended a USO dance held in Portland where he met my mother. Needless to say he stayed in the North, for better or worse, working the mills in Olde Saco until they closed or headed south for cheaper labor and then worked at whatever jobs he could find. All during my childhood though along with that popular music that got many mothers and fathers through the war mountain music, although I would not have called it that then filtered in the background on the family living room record player. But here is the real “discovery,” a discovery that could only be disclosed by my parents. Early on in their marriage they had tried to go back to Hazard to see if they could make a go of it there. This was after my older brother Prescott was born and while my mother was carrying me. Apparently they stayed for several months before they left to go back to Olde Saco before I was born since I was born in Portland General Hospital. So see that damn mountain was in my DNA, was just harking to me when I got the bug. Funny, isn’t it.            

As The 12^th Anniversary Of The (Second, The 2003 One) Iraq War Is Upon Us-No New War In Iraq! Down With The War-Monger Obama 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

[No this writer is not lost in a time warp, nor  is he suffering from a senior moment in continuing to note the anniversary, the 12^th anniversary, of the ill-fated, ill-advised, ill, well, let’s just keep it as the previous two ills, of what seemed last year to be the end of the seemingly completed fiasco in Iraq. However although American troops have mainly been withdrawn many thousand American bought and paid for “contract” soldiers are still operating in that theater. Moreover the wreckage from the huge American footprint (bootprint, really) is still wreaking havoc on that benighted land from lack of electrical power to unexploded bombs to speak nothing of the current constant political turmoil between the myriad factions struggling for power. Then there is the question of those tens of thousands of soldiers who had been switched over within a heartbeat from benighted Iraq to benighted Afghanistan. The call for immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan of that last ten thousand troops if not drawing much support in these back- burner concern days is still a necessary call. Finally, if there is a modern example  of the follies of war, of a needless imperial adventure, of flat-out American imperial hubris to do something explosive (in more ways than one) then the ill-famed Iraq invasion started on March 19, 2003 should be etched in every leftist militant, hell, every thoughtful citizen’s brain. Yet President Obama seeks on his hands and knees if you can believe this new authorization to send the Iraq War into overtime with this alleged existential threat by ISIS or whatever initials those insane butcher terrorists are running to these days. Make no mistake we have no truck ISIS and whatever alphabet soup organizations spring from, are associated with, or are successor organizations to that one but to go along with the bloodied-handed imperialists who brought forth these demons who want to get more deeply involved in a sectarian conflict with no “good” sides is rich, very rich, indeed. No way. ]         

Here part one of a little cautionary tale to commemorate this sad occasion (see this blog for parts two and three dated March 20 and 21):   

 
 

 

Tim Reid was sure where he stood, stood on the impending war in Iraq, on that cold February 2003 New York City Saturday morning as he noted many, many people walking in the opposite direction headed toward Union Square or somewhere around there carrying signs and banners calling for No War In Iraq, Stop The War, and other more politically direct ones aimed at President Bush. Tim knew for sure was that he was not going to be among those who were heading in that opposite direction that day ready to clog up the streets of Manhattan to make their point. Not that he wished them ill, not that war was not a terrible way to deal with issues, not that he was unconcerned that American sons and daughters were going to be put in harm’s way again in bloody Iraq but 9/11 had changed a lot of things since he had been out front against the first Iraq war back in 1991.            

Yes the world had changed since then, had changed in ways not favorable to the interest of the United States, and so while he was against war like any reasonable man (or woman) he was backing President Bush on this one. At least until he saw what those weapons of mass destruction were that that bastard Saddam Hussein had brewing in those damn laboratories that he wouldn’t let inspectors see. Yes, in case anybody was asking, any of those peaceniks that were passing the other way, he had voted for George Bush in 2000 something he never thought he would do after his father dropped the ball in that first Iraq massacre. He had voted for Bill Clinton with both hands in 1992 against the old man. But like he said things had changed in the world since that dastardly deed on that sunny September morning. Stuff that no New Yorker alive should forgot, especially if like him, that citizen of this fair city had lost someone close to him or her. So it was personal too.       

Maybe too, and he would not discount it if pressed, Tim had changed too, older now, with kids, with responsibilities to take every effort to make sure those kids were secure in a dangerous world. Any father would. The thing that had tipped it for him though was when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave the green light, declared that mad man Hussein was doing nasty stuff against our interests over there in the desert. Some of Bush’s people, frankly, seemed kind of weird when they talked about war but General Powell was a solid, no nonsense guy and that made the difference. So damn yes, until somebody proved otherwise, he was sticking with the President and his people who knew lots of stuff maybe he and those protesters did not know. He hoped so…   

When LaVerne  Baker Snapped Her Fingers And Jim Dandy Came A Calling

Over the past several years as I have done what seems like an endless series of sketches on the music that I came age to (growing up chronological “came of age” not the political or social kind), the music now known as classic rock and roll (around mid-1950s to mid-1960s)I have noted that there was a serious dearth of female performers who could hold their own in that genre in those days unlike the later part of the 1960s when you had many like Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Rhonstadt and on and on who could belt out the lyrics with the likes of Mick and the other boys.       

I have noted, seriously noted, Wanda Jackson’s pivotal place in that earlier pantheon and, of course, no survey of the classic age could be complete without paying homage to Ms. LaVerne Baker. Would, well, just not be complete, no question. She, like Ruth Brown, came out of the rhythm and blues beat that would blend with other stuff like rockabilly guitar licks to make up rock and roll and her classic Jim Dandy will always be a testament to her contribution. In a sense she is the female counterpart to Big Joe Turner and his Shake, Rattle and Roll for putting an extra beat, an extra sexy beat, and an extra energy in R&B which drove us crazy. Was there any kid, any guy anyway I don’t remember whether gals did it, who did not click those thumbs to perdition when LaVerne held forth on that number and a bunch of other finger-popping tunes she ran through in the late 1950s.               

Here is a little comparison- Elvis (you know who I mean without the last name, right) did a great version of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night but I frankly like LaVerne’s jumpier and hell-raising version better. So yes Ms. Baker did pay her dues, paid those dues double-time as a female rocker and as a black artist who confronted those benighted Southern dance halls-whites on one side, blacks on the other with a rope, Jesus, a rope between them, under Mister James Crow while she held forth at a time when you could tell by the film clips you see of such times that every kid in the room what ready to bust out dancing with whoever wanted to jump. Hey I guess I haven’t lost a step after all since I am listening to Jim Dandy as I write this one hand is started to voluntary finger-pop. Lordie, Lordie. 

P.S. We caught LaVerne's act late one night in a jazz club in Cambridge after she had had some serious medical problems and thus was wheelchair bound. She still ripped the place up. Got it.