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
Saturday, May 02, 2015
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First
Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some
Remembrances-Artists’ 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 hide-bound Academy filled with its
rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity
of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness
of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short,
nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted 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 laying 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 they 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 his high tea. Jesus what a
blasted night that Great War time was.
And as 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, artists, beautiful artists like
Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art
because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by
the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes,
prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all
bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he
had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer
Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in
decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum
and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s
land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves,
dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav
Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with
lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night,
Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes,
circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep
space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like
poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz
puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real
dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated
military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells,
like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence
and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like,
Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to
the tether too.
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 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 ….
Making The Comeback On The Weary Comeback Trail-Michael Keaton’s The Birdman
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, 2014
Some people get plenty of fame (or infamy), enough to last a lifetime, and some as the Pop artists extraordinaire Andy Warhol noted get fifteen minutes of fame. But what about a guy, a guy who got plenty of fame back in the day as an cinematic comic book-type action hero, well, as Birdman, complete with sequels, and who kind of fell beneath the radar once he stopped doing that role, and had been searching for something would give him his big comeback, and enhance his status as a creative artist and not just a comic book cut-out. Well then you have the premise, or one of the premises, behind the Michael Keaton comeback film, The Birdman.
Here is the beauty of this storyline. Everybody with any artistic temperament has written off Hollywood as mere tinsel town all glitter, gimmicks and no substance, written off the whole thing as a safe place for airheads. So Riggan Thomson (played by Michael Keaton), washed up in the film business, decides after a long hiatus to go to New York City, to Broadway and the “real” theater to make his comeback in a play he had written, would direct and act in. A play based on a small idea put out a couple sentences by the very real great short story writer, Raymond Carver. Of course a washed up actor trying to make a comeback is going to have about eight million problems making the transition, especially since virtually nobody thinks the thing will float. And in the end it doesn’t, or doesn’t solve Riggan’s nagging problem of taking himself seriously, or having people like the bitchy Times “make or break” theater critic take him seriously, of having his ex-wife taking him seriously, of having his “recovering” daughter theater assistant taking him seriously, of having his current not pregnant actress girlfriend taking him seriously, of Mike Shiner (played by Edward Norton), a serious Broadway actor taking him seriously, hell, of his alter ego ghost of Birdman taking him seriously. So throw in a little “magical realism” (Riggan taking flight in New York City and not being shot down by half the scrambled U.S. Air Force) and “super-realism” (his actually shooting himself at the end of the play in the nose in a fit of hubris) and a welcome comeback performance by the much missed Keaton and you have a very nice dark, dark comedy. Even Raymond Carver would chuckle at this one.
John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.
Every time I pass the frieze honoring the heroic Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment which fought with valor in the American Civil War which we have just finished commemorating the 150th anniversary of its formal ending across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston I almost automatically focus in on that old hard-bitten grizzled erect bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the regiment. I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section (I am sure that specific information can be found although it iis not necessary to this sketch) but as I grow older I appreciate that old man soldier even more, as old man are supposed to leave the arduous duty of fighting for just causes, arms in hand, to the young.
I like to think that that old brother when he heard the call from Massachusetts wherever he was, maybe had read about the plea in some abolitionist newspaper, had maybe even gotten the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper, The North Star, or on the stump once Lincoln unleashed him to recruit his black brothers for whatever reason although depleting ranks was at least one cause, he picked up stakes leaving some small farm or trade and family behind 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, something about white farm boys from the heartland of the Midwest, sullen Irish and other ethnic immigrants, hell, even high-blown Harvard boys were being armed to defend the union. And more frequently as the days and months passed 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 Harvard boy urged on by his high abolitionist parents Colonel Shaw and he shut down his small shop or farm, 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 54th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Captain Brown and to an old grizzled bearded man’s honor.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was seen today by
his wife and his condition has worsened. He, is gravely ill. We are asking
everyone to call the prison. Right now. It may be late, but call
whenever you get this.
Mumia needs 24 hour care and
supervision. He can not be in this condition in general population. In this
state he may not be able ask for help, he may lose consciousness. He is too
weak. (He was released from the infirmary two days ago). His condtiion: He is
extremely swollen in his neck, chest, legs, and his skin is worse than ever,
with open sores. He was not in a wheelchair, but can only take baby steps. He is
very weak. He was nodding off during the visit. He was not able to eat- he was
fed with a spoon. These
are symptoms that could be associated with hyper glucose levels, diabetic shock,
diabetic coma, and with kidney stress and
failure.
Please call these numbers, and any other
numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor.
Demand thatMumia Abu-Jamal
see a doctor ASAP. Right Now! Demand that the prison
officials call his wife Wadiya Jamal and his lawyer Bret Grote
immediately. Demand
that he be seen immediately, and the not be left to go into a
diabetic coma.
John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy:
570-773-2158
x8102 |
570-783-2008 Fax | 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932
Tom Wolf, PA Gvrnr: 717-787-2500
| governor@PA.gov | 508 Main
Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120
John Wetzel, PA DOC: 717-728-4109 | 717-728-4178 Fax | ra-contactdoc@poc.gov |
1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050
Susan McNaughton, DOC Press secretary
717-728-4025. PA Doc smcnaughton@pa.gov
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When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind
Wait until the war is over And we're both a little older The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read Television children fed Unborn living, living, dead Bullet strikes the helmet's head And it's all over For the unknown soldier It's all over For the unknown soldier Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Hut, hut, hut ho hee up Comp'nee, halt Present, arms Make a grave for the unknown soldier Nestled in your hollow shoulder The unknown soldier Breakfast where the news is read Television children fed Bullet strikes the helmet's head And, it's all over The war is over It's all over War is over
Well, all over, baby All over, baby Oh, over, yeah All over, baby
Ooh, ha, ha, all over All over, baby Oh, woah, yeah, all over All over, heh Add song meaning Songwriters Robbie Krieger;John Densmore;Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek From The Pen of Frank Jackman
There was no seamless thread that wrapped the counter-cultural dominated 1960s up tightly, a decade or so that is beginning to look like a watershed time not just for the first wave immediate post-World War II baby-boomers who came of social and political age then washed clean by the new dispensation but for the country as a whole. More so since we of the generation of ’68 who are still up for a fight are continuing to fight a rearguard action to keep what little is left of accomplishments and the spirit of those time alive. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, something new in the social, economic, political or cultural forest popping up out of nowhere in many cases, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhoods. The Cold War time when what did we know except to keep our obedient heads down under our desks or face down on the floor when the periodic air-raid shelter tests were performed at school to see if we were ready to face the bleak future if we survived some ill-meant commie atomic blast. (Personally I remember telling somebody then that I would, having seen newsreel footage of the bomb tests at Bikini, just as soon take my chances above desk, thank you, for all the good the other maneuver would do us.)
For a while anyway we were able to beat back that Cold War mentality, that cold-hearted angst, and calculated playing with our world, our world even if we had no say, zero, in creating what went on. Not so strangely, although maybe that is why people drifted away in droves once the old bourgeois order reasserted itself and pulled down the hammer, none of us who were caught up in the whirl thought it would on be for only a while or at least fade so fast just as we thought, young and healthy as we were, that we would live forever. But if you took a step back you could trace things a little, could make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.
Start in with the mid-1950s if you like, which is where I like to start dating my own sense of the new breeze coming through although being a pre-teenager then I would not have had sense enough to call it that, with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down South with the fight for voter rights and the famous desegregation of buses in Montgomery and the painful desegregation of the schools in Little Rock (and some sense of greater equality up North too as organizations like the NAACP and Urban League pushed an agenda for better education and housing). Also at that same time, and in gathering anecdotal evidence I have found that these are a common lynchpin, the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly music all mixed up and all stirred up), and the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by sullen movie star sullen James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. (And throw in surly “wild one” movie star Marlon Brando and a brooding Montgomery Cliff.)
That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the death penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of social life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of our generation. A river of ideas, and a river of tears, have been, and can be, shed over that damn war, what it did to young people, those who fought, maybe especially those who fought, and those who refused to, that lingers on behind the scenes even today.
There were more things, things like the “pill” that opened up a whole can of worms about what everyone was incessantly curious about and hormonally interested in doing something about, a newer sensibility in music with the arrival of the protest folk songs for a new generation which pushed the struggle and the organizing forward. Cultural things like the experimenting with about seven different kinds of dope previously the hidden preserve of “cool cat” blacks and white hipsters, the outbreak of name changes with everybody seemingly trying to reinvent themselves in name, fashion, and affectation. More social experiments gathering in the “nation” through rock concerts, now acid-etched, new living arrangements with the arrival of the urban and rural communes (including sleeping on more than one floor in more than one church or mission). They all, if not all widespread, and not all successful as new lifestyles all got a fair workout during this period as well.
Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously. (My ebb tide, as I have described elsewhere, was the events around May Day 1971 when we seriously tried, or thought we were seriously trying, to shut down the government in DC if it would no shut down the war and got nothing but billy-clubs, tear gas, beatings and mass arrests for our efforts. After those days I, and others, figured out the other side was more serious about preserving the old order than we were about creating the new and that we had better rethink how to slay the monster we were up against and act accordingly.)
Then we have the photograph (see above) that graces this short screed, and which pictorially encapsulates a lot of what went then, a lot about which side were you on when the deal went down. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth anti-war, anti-establishment, pro-newer world mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to granny dresses to bare legs, bare legs, Jesus, that alone would have shocked their girdled, silk stocking mothers, especially if those bare legs included wearing a mini-skirt.
They are also uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war, no outraged is a better way to put the matter, that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends, guys they knew in college or on the street who were facing heavy decisions about the draft, Canada exile, prison or succumbing to the worst choice, military induction, at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times, Greek times anyway, when one group of women like their stay-at-home-waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop World War II mothers demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat. Others, the ones that count here, refusing their potential soldier boys any favors if they went off to war, providing a distant echo, a foundation to make their request stand on some authority, for these three women pictured here. I wonder how many guys would confess to the lure of that enticement if they had refused induction. I did not but then I did not have any girlfriends who made that demand, mine early on anyway were as likely to want me to come back on a shield as those ancient Greek women. Too bad. More, much more of the latter, please as we continue in the nightmare world of endless war.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website-
James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.
Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website. http://www.partisandefense.org/ Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014. Markin comment: I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).
Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time). That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point. That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind. And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.
*Free The Last of the Ohio Seven-They Must Not Die In Jail
COMMENTARY
ONE OF THE OHIO SEVEN -RICHARD WILLIAMS- RECENTLY DIED IN PRISON (2006). THAT LEAVES JAAN LAAMAN AND TOM MANNING STILL IN PRISON. IT IS AN URGENT DUTY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR MOVEMENT AND OTHERS TO RAISE THE CALL FOR THEIR FREEDOM. FREE ALL CLASS WAR PRISONERS.
Free the last of the Seven. Below is a commentary written in 2006 arguing for their freedom.
The Ohio Seven, like many other subjective revolutionaries, coming out of the turbulent anti-Vietnam War and anti-imperialist movements, were committed to social change. The different is that this organization included mainly working class militants, some of whose political consciousness was formed by participation as soldiers in the Vietnam War itself. Various members were convicted for carrying out robberies, apparently to raise money for their struggles, and bombings of imperialist targets. Without going into their particular personal and political biographies I note that these were the kind of subjective revolutionaries that must be recruited to a working class vanguard party if there ever is to be a chance of bringing off a socialist revolution. In the absence of a viable revolutionary labor party in the 1970’s and 1980’s the politics of the Ohio Seven, like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, were borne of despair at the immensity of the task and also by desperation to do something concrete in aid of the Vietnamese Revolution and other Third World struggles . Their actions in trying to open up a second front militarily in the United States in aid of Third World struggles without a mass base proved to be mistaken but, as the Partisan Defense Committee which I support has noted, their actions were no crime in the eyes of the international working class.
The lack of a revolutionary vanguard to attract such working class elements away from adventurism is rendered even more tragic in the case of the Ohio Seven. Leon Trotsky, a leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution of 1917, noted in a political obituary for his fallen comrade and fellow Left Oppositionist Kote Tsintadze that the West has not produced such fighters as Kote. Kote, who went through all the phases of struggle for the Russian Revolution, including imprisonment and exile under both the Czar and Stalin benefited from solidarity in a mass revolutionary vanguard party to sustain him through the hard times. What a revolutionary party could have done with the evident capacity and continuing commitment of subjective revolutionaries like the Ohio Seven poses that question point blank. This is the central problem and task of cadre development in the West in resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
Finally, I would like to note that except for the Partisan Defense Committee and their own defense organizations – the Ohio 7 Defense Committee and the Jaan Laaman Defense Fund- the Ohio Seven have long ago been abandoned by those New Left elements and others, who as noted, at one time had very similar politics. At least part of this can be attributed to the rightward drift to liberal pacifist politics by many of them, but some must be attributed to class. Although the Ohio Seven were not our people- they are our people. All honor to them. As James P Cannon, a founding leader of the International Labor Defense, forerunner of the Partisan Defense Committee, pointed out long ago –Solidarity with class war prisoners is not charity- it is a duty. Their fight is our fight! LET US DO OUR DUTY HERE. RAISE THE CALL FOR THE FREEDOM OF LAAMAN AND MANNING. MAKE MOTIONS OF SOLIDARITY IN YOUR POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, SCHOOL OR UNION.
YOU CAN GOOGLE THE ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED ABOVE- THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE- THE OHIO 7 DEFENSE COMMITTEE- THE JAAN LAAMAN DEFENSE FUND.
Friday, May 01, 2015
Lucy Parsons on the Origins of May Day
by Lucy Parsons
01 May 2014
The following article is by Lucy Parsons. She was a comrade of Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons. The article first appeared in the Labor Defender in November 1926. The Labor Defender was a newspaper of the International Labor Defense, a working class defense organization tied to the early American Communist Party.
Lucy Parsons on the Origins of May Day
“The Haymarket Martyrs”
1926 Article from Labor Defender
Does this rising generation know that those who inaugurated the eight-hour day were put to death at the command of capital?
Until forty years ago men, women, and children toiled ten and often twelve hours a day in factories for a mere pittance and children from eight to nine years of age had to work to help to keep up the family.
The Knights of Labor, a powerful organization, claiming 500,000 members, had never agitated for a reduction of the hours of labor. Then who were the pioneers of the eight-hour movement?
Those martyrs who were strung from the gallows in Chicago on November 11, 1887, the much lied about and abused Anarchists.
I will verify this statement. Until 1885 there had never been a concerted action for the reduction of the hours of labor. If eight hours was mentioned in some of our meetings (they were never really mentioned), why, that was only a dream to be indulged in by fools; the bosses would never tolerate such a thing, was the reply.
In 1885 a convention was held in Chicago, composed largely of delegates from Canada. They passed a resolution calling upon the workers of this country and Canada to unite in a demand for a reduction of the hours of daily toil to eight a day on the first of May, 1886, and to strike wherever it was refused. Albert R. Parsons brought the matter up before the Trade and Labor Assembly of Chicago, the first central body ever organized in this city, a body which he himself organized and of which he was elected president three consecutive times. The matter was hotly debated and finally rejected on the ground that the bosses would never tolerate it.
The Central Labor Union, composed of German mechanics, took the matter up and endorsed it. At the same time they passed a resolution requesting August Spies, editor of the Chicago Arbeiterzeitung, the daily German paper, and Albert R. Parsons, editor of the Alarm, to support it in their papers and speeches; they were both splendid orators.
Thus it was that the eight-hour movement got under way. Many other cities agitated for it, but Chicago was the storm center of the movement owing to the zeal and courage of the men and women of this city who worked day and night for it. The result was that when May 1, 1886, arrived, it found Chicago well organized and demanding the eight-hour day, striking by the thousands where the demand was refused. It was a veritable holiday for the workers.
The bosses were taken completely by surprise. Some were frightened and threatening; some were signing up; others were abusing those “scoundrels” who had brought all this trouble upon “our” city and declaring that they would be made examples of, that they ought to be hung and the like.
Bradstreet [a financial publication of the time] declared (see Bradstreet of that date) that stocks had slumped on the New York market owing to the strike situation in Chicago.
The police were unspeakably brutal, clubbing and shooting; factory whistles blew, but few responded.
I was chairman of the Women’s Organization Committee and know personally how that great strike spread. I have never seen such solidarity. I only wish I could describe it in detail, those stirring times. It would make the blood course swiftly through the veins of the rebels of today, but lack of space forbids.
In the afternoon of May 3, the McCormick Reaper Works employees were holding a meeting at the noon hour, discussing the strike and declaring for the eight-hour day—they were then working twelve hours—when wagon loads of police dashed down upon them and began clubbing and shooting without a word of warning. An afternoon paper stated there were five killed and many injured at this meeting.
August Spies who was addressing the meeting, returned to the Arbeiterzeitung office and issued the circular calling the Haymarket meeting for the next evening, May 4. I will allow Mayor Harrison, who was the first witness for the defense, to describe that meeting:
“I went to the meeting for the purpose of dispersing it in case I should feel it necessary to do so for the safety of the city...there was no suggestion made by either of the speakers looking toward calling for immediate use of force or violence. I saw no weapons at all upon any person. In listening to the speeches I concluded that it was not an organization to destroy property...”
For holding that peaceable protest meeting, five of as fine young men as ever lived, all labor organizers, were condemned and judicially murdered on November 11, 1887, in Chicago, Illinois.
There was a riot at the Haymarket meeting, it is true, but it was a police riot. Mayor Harrison further testified that, when the meeting was about to adjourn, he went to the police station, half a block distant, and ordered Captain Bondfield to send the reserves to the other stations, as the meeting was about to adjourn and was quiet. Instead of Bondfield obeying the orders of the Mayor, as soon as the Mayor started home, Bondfield rushed a company of police at double quick, with drawn clubs, upon the meeting of peaceably assembled men, women and children. At the onrush of these violators of the people’s constitutional rights someone hurled a bomb. Who threw that bomb has never become known. Neither the police nor the capitalists wanted to know; what they wanted was to get hold of the labor organizers and make “examples” of them as they said openly they would do.
The trial, so-called, lasted sixty-one days. The jury reached their verdict in less than three hours, condemning seven men to the gallows and one to prison for fourteen years. I herewith give a few, just a few, samples of the rulings of the judge who presided at the trial in selecting the jury.
James H. Walker said he had formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendants, which opinion he still held. Now the judge takes him in hand.
“Do you believe that you can listen to the testimony and the charge of the court and decide upon that alone, uninfluenced and unbiased by the opinion that you now have?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That is what I asked you.”
“I said I would be handicapped.”
“Do you believe that you can fairly and impartially render a verdict in accordance with the law and the evidence in this case?”
“I shall try to do it, sir.”
“But do you believe that you can sit here and fairly and impartially make up your mind from the evidence whether that evidence proves that they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or not?”
“I think I could but I would feel that I was a little handicapped in my judgment. I am prejudiced, sir.”
“Well, that is a sufficient qualification for a juror in this case. Of course, the more a man feels that he is handicapped the more he will guard against it.”
W.B. Allen, another juror. The judge asked:
“I will ask you whether what you have formed from what you have read and heard is a slight impression or an opinion, or a conviction?”
“It is a decided conviction.”
“Have you made up your mind as to whether these men are guilty or innocent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would it be difficult to change that conviction or impression perhaps?”
“It would be hard to change my conviction.”
Seven years later Governor John P. Altgeld reviewed the whole case. He, having been a judge before he was elected governor, was amply competent to review the case in a legal manner. He took the testimony and proved from it that our comrades were absolutely innocent. In his masterly State Paper, Altgeld’s “Reasons” (I can only take a few extracts from it here, the document is printed in the Life of Albert R. Parsons in full) Governor Altgeld says:
“The state has never discovered who threw the bomb which killed the policemen and the evidence does not show any connection between the defendants and the man who did throw it...and again it is shown here that the bomb was, in all probability, thrown by someone seeking revenge, that is, a course had been pursued by the authorities which would naturally cause this; that for a number of years prior to the Haymarket affair there had been labor troubles, and in several cases a number of laboring people, guilty of no offense had been shot down in cold blood by the Pinkerton’s men, and none of the murderers were brought to justice...
“All facts tend to show the improbability of the theory of the prosecution that the bomb was thrown as the result of a conspiracy on the part of the defendants to commit murder; if the theory of the prosecution were correct, there would have been many more bombs thrown and the fact that only one was thrown shows that it was an act of personal revenge... The record of the case shows that the judge conducted the trial with malicious ferocity and forced eight men to be tried together who should have been tried separately.”
Albert R. Parsons was not arrested immediately after the Haymarket meeting. He left Chicago and stayed with his friend, D.W. Hoan, father of the present mayor of Milwaukee, at Waukesha, Wisconsin. The day the trial began he came into court and surrendered, stating that he was innocent of bomb-throwing and only wanted a chance to prove his innocence. But he too was murdered along with the other four.
Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer and Engel. Although all that is mortal of you is laid beneath that beautiful monument in Waldheim Cemetery, you are not dead. You are just beginning to live in the hearts of all true lovers of liberty. For now, after forty years that you are gone, thousands who were then unborn are eager to learn of your lives and heroic martyrdom, and as the years lengthen the brighter will shine your names, and the more you will come to be appreciated and loved.
Those who so foully murdered you, under the forms of law—lynch law—in a court of supposed justice, are forgotten.
Rest, comrades, rest. All the tomorrows are yours!
Satin-Voiced Ben E. King Of Stand By Me Last Chance Last Dance Fame Passes On At 76-The Dance Hall 1960s Night Sits A Little Dimmer
This piece was not written fro Ben E. King but it could have been...
Funny how memory draws you in, draws
you in tight and hard once you focus in just a little. Take this combination.
Recently I have been involved in writing some little sketches for my North
Adamsville High School reunion Class of 1964 website. You know never before
revealed stuff (and maybe should not be revealed now except I believe the
statute of limitations has run out on most offenses) about what went on in the
class rooms when some ill-advised teacher turned his or her on the class; the
inevitable tales of triumph and heartbreak as told in the boys’ or girls’
Monday morning before school talkfest about what did, or did not, go on over
the weekend with Susie or Billy; the heart-rending saga of being dateless for
the senior prom; the heroics and devastating defeats of various sports teams
especially the goliaths of the gridiron every leaf-turning autumn; the
mysteries of learning about sex (I thought this might get your attention,
innocent exploration or not) in the chaste day time down at the summer-side
beach, or late at night after not watching the double feature at the outdoor
drive-in movies (look it up on the Internet that there was such a way to watch
them); date night devouring some hardened hamburgers complete with fries and
Coke at the local all-know drive-in restaurant (ditto look up that too); older
and car-addled taking the victory spoils after some after midnight “chicken
run”; spending “quality time” watching breathlessly the “submarine races” (ask
somebody from North Adamsville about that); and, just hanging out with your
corner boys at Doc’s Drugstore throwing dimes and quarters in the jukebox to
while the night away. Yeah, strictly 1960s memory stuff.
Put those memory flashes together with
my, seemingly, endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing a
commercial classic rock and roll series that goes under the general title Rock
‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. I noted in one review and it bears repeating here
while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still
seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail
break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to
tune into music. Those two memory-inducing events coming together got me
thinking even further back than high school, back to elementary school down at
Adamsville South where music and sex (innocent, chaste variety) came together
at the record hop (alternatively called the sock hop if in your locale the
young girls wore bobby sox rather than nylons to these things. Nylons being one
of the sure signs that you were a young women and not merely some stick girl so
the distinction was not unimportant).
See we, we small-time punk in the
old-fashioned sense of that word meaning not knowledgeable, not the malicious
sense, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we
were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off to the
radio or when we scurried home right after school to watch American Bandstand when that program came on in late afternoon. And
we hungry to be “hip” (although not knowing that word, not knowing that out in
the adult world guys, guys mostly, guys in places like North Beach in Frisco
town or the Village in New Jack City were creating the ethos of hipness which
we would half-inherit later as latent late term “beats”) wanted to emulate
those swaying, be-bopping television boys and girls if not on the beauties of
that medium then with some Friday or Saturday night hop in the school gym or in
some church basement complete with some cranky record player playing our songs,
our generation-dividing songs (dividing us for the prison of our parents music
heard endlessly, too endlessly if there is such a concept).
Those were strange times indeed in that
be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a
friend of mine, not Billy who I will talk about some other time, who claimed,
with a straight face, to the girls that he was Elvis’ long lost son. My
friend’s twelve to Elvis’s maybe twenty. Did the girls do the math on that one?
Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that
it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out
night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike
tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could
put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to
music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered
“refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to
that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys
to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and
The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings (not Bing, not the
Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway). And the local hop put
paid to that notion, taking the private music of our bedroom dreams and placing
us, for good or evil, out on the dance floor to be wall-flower or “hip”
(remember we did not know that term then, okay.)
But can you blame me, or us, for our
jail-break visions and our clandestine subterranean life-transistor radio
dreams of lots of girls (or boys as the case may be), lots of cars, and lots of
money if we could just get out from under that parental noise. Now getting back
to that rock and roll series I told you that I had been reviewing. The series
had many yearly compilations but as if to prove my point beyond discussion the
year 1956 has two, do you hear me, two CDs to deal with that proposition that I
mentioned above. And neither one includes Elvis, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley or some
other stuff that I might have included so you know we are in the golden age
when there is that much good non- Hall of Fame stuff around.
Needless to say Larry Larkin, my old
corner boy from North Adamsville home town day Phil Larkin’s cousin, remained a
step ahead of everybody around Ashmont Street in the Dorchester section of
Boston during those days, those days when that seismic change occurred in our
youthful listening habits. (And Larry would transfer whatever cultural
knowledge he had picked up on those Dorchester mean streets, mostly useful
except more often than not wrong on the do’s and don’ts of sex, to Phil, known
as “Foul-Mouth” Phil among the corner boy brethren who would pass it on to us).
Everybody, everything had to change, had to take notice of the break-out, if
only to cut off the jailbreak at the pass. And that is where Larry Larkin’s
step ahead of everybody else came into play, everybody else who counted then,
and that was mainly the junior corner boys who hung around in front of Kelly’s
Variety Store on Adams Street where generations, at least two by that time and
more since, of elementary school boys learned the corner life, for good or
evil, mostly evil as a roster of those who wound up in the various county and
state prisons would testify to.
And not just any elementary school corner
boys but parochial school boys. That is what was significant about my bringing
attention to the environs of the Dorchester section of Boston, a section loaded
down with every kind of ethnic Catholic, recent immigrant or life-time denizen
of the triple decker night, and where it seemed there was a Catholic church on
every corner (and there almost was, and to prove the point Dorchester boys,
girls too lately, identified themselves after being from “Dot” identified
themselves by what parish they belonged to, say Saint Brendan’s on Main Street,
Saint Gregory on Dorchester Avenue, Saint Anne’s on Neponset Avenue and so on,
a phenomenon you would not notice in say Revere or Chelsea).
If there seemed to be a church on every
corner there was sure to be a bevy, if that is the way they are gathered, of
parish priests ready to guide the youth in the ways of the church, including at
Saint Brendan’s one Lawrence Joseph Larkin. And one of the things that had
upset that 1950s era bevy of priests at that parish (and at other parishes and had
caused concern in other religious groupings as well) was the effect that the
new music, rock and roll, in corrupting the morals of the youth. Was making
them zombies listening on those transistor radios that seemed to be attached to
their ears to the exclusion of all else. Was making them do lewd, yes, lewd,
moves while they were dancing (and not even dancing arm and arm with some girl
but kind of free-form about three feet away from each other as if the space
between was some sacred land to be worshiped but not defiled, blasphemy, pure
blasphemy) at what they called record hops, or sock hops, or some such thing on
Friday nights at the public school Eliot School over on Ashmont Street. Was
making them a little snarly when dealing with adults a snarl they learned from
the television or movies with guys named Elvis or James leading them on,
begging them to follow them in the great break-out. Worse, worse of all was the danger of dangers,
sex, which bad as the fast dancing was when they did an occasion slow dance was
very improper, the guys hands drifting down to the girl’s ass and she not even
swatting it away. So yes there was something like a panic about to erupt.
And formerly pious altar boy Larry Larkin
was leading the charge, was the first to wear those damn longer sideburns like
he was some Civil War general. To constantly rake his hair with that always
back pocket comb to look like Elvis’ pompadour style (strangely Larry was a
dead-eye blue-eyed blonde kid, so go figure). He had introduced the new flaky
dance moves like the Watushi learned from eternal afternoon rush home from
school American Bandstand, fromhis older brothers or from “Foul-Mouth” Phil’s latest
intelligence from his older brothers , that had priests and parents alike on
fire, had been the villain who had introduced the move of the boy putting his
hand almost to a girl’s ass when slow dancing (the girls learned to not swat
them away on their own so don’t blame Larry for that one), and a mass of other
sins, mortal and venial. All learned, according to the priests, at that damn
(although they did not use that word publicly) secular school over on Ashmont
Street. The priests and a few like-minded parents were determined after a
collective meeting of the minds among themselves to put a stop to this once and
for all.
Their strategy was simplicity itself,
with few moving parts to complicate things-“if you can’t fight them, join them.”
So come the first Friday night in November of the year of our Lord 1957 Saint
Brendan’s Parish used its adjacent auditorium for its first sock hop. Worse,
worse for Larry, hell, worse for everybody who learned anything at all from
him, and liked it, boy or girl, the priests had ordered from their Sunday
pulpits that every parent with teenagers
was to send their charges to the hop under penalty, of I don’t know what, but
under penalty. And thus the long chagrin death march faces come that first hop
night.
Obviously there were to be certain, ah,
restrictions, enforced by the chaperones inevitable at such gatherings of the
young, those chaperones being the younger priests of the parish who were allegedly
closer to the kids, had a clue to what was going on, or else dour older boys
and girls, probably headed to the seminaries and convents themselves, or those who
were sucking up to the priests for sin brownie point. Banned: no lipstick or
short dresses (short being anything above the ankle practically in those days)
on girls and ties and jackets for boys and no slick stuff on their hair. Worse,
worst of all no grabbing ass on the slow dances (not put that way but the
reader will get the picture). Yes, boring made more so by the selection of
records that were something out of their parents’ vault with nothing faster
than some Patti Page number yakking about old Cape Cod or Marty Robbins
crooning about white carnations cranking out on the old record player that had
been donated by Smiling Jack’s Record Store over on the Boulevard. (Jack
O’Malley, proprietor of the shop, a notorious drunk and skirt-chaser in his off
hours obviously in desperate need of indulgences, no question).
Enter Larry Larkin who had been dragged
to the front door of the auditorium by his parents and who were duly recognized
by Father Joyce, the young priest put in charge of the operation by Monsignor
Lally (although Larry had not been too hard dragged since Maggie Kelly was to
be there, yes, he had it bad for her). Now everybody knew that Phil had a
“boss” record collection either bought from his earnings as a caddie over at
the golf course on weekends and in the summer or “clipped” from Smiling Jack’s
(and if the reader needs to know what “clipped” meant well we will just leave
it at Larry did not pay for them). They also knew he has a pretty good record
player with an amplifier that his parents had bought for him the Christmas
before last. None of that stuff some of which had used by Loopy Lenny the DJ
over at the Eliot School sock hops would be used this evening and some of the
kids commented on the fact that Larry came record empty-handed. Yes all the
signs where there for a boring evening.
But here is where fate took a turn on a
dime, or maybe not fate so much as the fact that the new breeze coming through
the teenage land was gathering some fierce strength in aid of the jail-break
many like Larry knew was coming, had to come. About half way through the first
part of the dance when more kids were milling around than dancing, talking in
boy-girl segregated corners, when even the wallflowers were getting restless
and threatening to dance, and they never danced but just hung to their
collective walls, definitely before the intermission, all of a sudden from
“heaven” it seemed came blaring out Danny and the Juniors At The Hop and the formerly downbeat scene started jumping with
kids dancing up a storm (including a few former wallflowers who too must have
sensed a portent in the air). The priests bewildered by where the music was
coming from tried to investigate while Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock came on with the kids dancing fast like crazy
(including some off-hand grabbing ass usually reserved for slow dances). Irate
and failing to find the source of the “devil’s music” Father Joyce, red-faced
(whether because he knew that the closed dance doomed him among the kids or
because he was going to on the carpet with the Monsignor and probably consigned
to do the 6:00 AM weekday masses) declared the dance over. Done. And that was
the last time Saint Brendan’s Parish sponsored a sock hop for their tender
youth charges.
Oh, yes, how does Larry Larkin last
seen among the milling around crowd on the dance floor fit into this whole mix.
Simple, he had hired Jimmy Jenkin, a non-Catholic ace tech guy older friend of
his brother, Jack, and therefore not subject to the fire and brimstone of hell
for his heathen actions, to jerry-rig Larry’s sound system in a room with an
electric outlet near up near the rafters of the auditorium, a place that the
good priests were probably totally unaware of. Money well spent and a kudo to
Jimmy. And Larry, well, if you want to see Larry (and “Foul-Mouth” Phil, now a
regular weekly visitor at his cousin’s, ready to bring the new dispensation
across the river to Adamsville) then show up some Friday night at the Eliot
School where he will be dancing to the latest tunes with Maggie Kelly in tow.
Enough said.
Hey, here are some stick-outs records from
Larry’s collection used by Loopy Lenny at the Eliot School that every decent
hopping, be-bopping record hop (or sock hop, okay) spun out of pure gold:
Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins (Elvis covered it and made millions but old
Carl had a better old rockabilly back beat on his version); In The Still Of
The Night, The Five Satins (a doo wop classic that I am humming right this
minute, sha dot do be doo, sha dot do be doo or something like that spelling,
okay); Eddie, My Love, The Teen Queens (incredible harmony, doo wop
back-up, and, and “oh Eddie, please don’t make me wait too long” as part of the
lyrics, Whoa!); Roll Over Beethoven, Chuck Berry ( a deservedly early
break-out rock anthem. Hell I thought it was a big deal just to trash my
parents’ Patti Page old Chuck went after the big boys like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.);
Be-Bop-a-Lula, Gene Vincent (the guy was kind of a one hit wonder but
Christ what a one hit, "yah, she’s my baby now"); Blueberry Hill,
Fats Domino (that old smooth piano riffing away); Rip It Up, Little
Richard (he/she wild man Richard rips it up); Young Love, Sonny James (
dreamy stuff that those giggling girls at school loved, and so you
"loved" too); Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Frankie Lymon and
the Teenagers (for a minute the king be-bop, doo wop teenage angel boy.
Everybody wanted to be the doo wop king or queen, including my friend Billy); See
You Later, Alligator, Bill Haley and The Comets (yah, these “old guys”
could rock, especially that sax man. Think about the expressionpeople still use “see you later alligator”);
and Since I Met You Baby, Ivory Joe Hunter (every dance pray, every last
dance pray, oh my god, let them play Ivory Joe at the end so I can dance close
with that certain she I have been eyeing all night).
Note: I have mentioned previously the excellent album cover art
that accompanied each classic rock series compilation. Not only do they almost
automatically evoke long ago memories of red hot youth, and those dreams, those
steamy dance night dreams too, but has supplied this writer with more than one
idea for a commentary. One of the 1956 compilation album covers is in that same
vein. The cover shows what looks like a local cover band from the 1950s getting
ready to perform at the local high school dance, not a record hop but if they
are worth anything at all they will play the songs us po’ boys were listening
to on the transistor radio or via that cranky record player lent by somebody
for the occasion at the hop. Although the guys, especially the lead vocalist,
look a little skittish they know they have to make a good showing because this
is their small-time chance at the big time. Besides there are about six
thousand other guys hanging around in their fathers’ garages ready and willing
to step up if the Danny and the Bluenotes fall flat. If they don’t make that
big splash hit like Danny and the Juniors did with At The Hop, the first song that got me jumping, jack they are done
for.
This live band idea was actually
something of a treat because, from what I personally recall, many times these
school dance things survived on loud record playing dee-jay chatter, thus the
term “record hop.” From the look of it the school auditorium is the locale
(although ours were inevitably held in the school gym), complete with the
obligatory crepe, other temporary school-spirit related ornaments and a
mesmerized girl band groupie to give the joint a festive appearance.
More importantly, as I said before, at
least for the band, as they are warming up for the night’s work, is that they
have to make their mark here (and at other such venues) and start to get a
following if they want to avoid another dreaded fate of rock life. Yes, the
dreaded fate of most bands that don’t break out of the old neighborhood, the
fate of having to some years down the road play at some of the students they
are performing for that night children’s birthday parties, bar mitzvahs,
weddings and the like. That thought should be enough to keep these guys working
until late in the night, jamming the night away, disturbing some old fogy Frank
Sinatra fans in the neighborhood, perfecting those covers of Roll Over
Beethoven, Rip It Up, Rock Around The Clock and Jailhouse Rock. Go to it boys, buy the ticket and
ride the furies.
