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
In The Time Of The Pixies- Frank Capra’s Mister Deeds Goes To Town
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Mister Deeds Goes To Town, starring Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, directed by Frank Capra, 1936
Recently in a review of a film later than the one under review, Gary Cooper’s role in Meet John Doe where he plays a serious victim of the Great Depression raging in the 1930s as hobo down on his luck who is desperate in get out from under, I noted that Mister Cooper was the epitome of the old time values fair-haired Midwestern, “ah shucks,” boy that such roles required, that audiences, female audiences could relate to. Mister Cooper brings that same “gee whizz” vitality to the role of Brother Deeds in Mister Deeds Goes To Town although here he is spouting forth the old time Yankee virtues since he was plucked out of Vermont in this one. But I would contend that those old-time values are the same ones that had been high-lighted in the latter film as our intrepid crusader railed against the strangeness of big city life (the “goes to town,” New York City life railed against in the former movie as well, an easy moving target of biting social commentary then as now.
Here’s how it played out this time though. Brother Deeds sitting unknowingly in his bucolic little Vermont retreat playing tuba and doing other small town good deeds had his life turned around when he as the seemingly sole heir to a playboy killed in a car accident was uprooted to the evil empire, to New Jack City, by members of the scheming law firm that had handled the decease’s accounts. That was their first mistake, bringing him to the big city to be dazzled. The second was to underestimate a so-called “rube” when they tried to pull the wool over his eyes about how and what he should do with his new found fortune. The third was to, well, not protect him from the reporters, at least one reporter, Babe, played by Jean Arthur.
No question then, as now, a guy who grabbed the brass ring of twenty million dollars was hot news although now it would have to be abouttwenty billion to raise any interests. The law firm was able to keep the wolves of the fourth estate away except the wily Babe. She began to write stories about him on the sly while he was falling for her. Not good, not good when after he was told who she was and what she was doing, he sensed she was just for the main chance. Not good too when he decided to flee the big burg and head back to forlorn little Vermont.
That would have been that except a distraught farmer cornered him in his mansion before he fled and bewailed him for his high lifestyle. Hey, that was not our fair-haired boy, not in hard scrabble times 1930s when people were in serious trouble to provide themselves with three square a day. So our boy, our boy Longfellow Deeds, decided to use his monies to do a personal “redistribute the wealth” scheme by using his fortune to set farmers up on the land again (the old forty acres and a mule that had run through farms belts of the world since the first field was seeded.) Of course this action had the corrupt law firm (a bunch of Cedars and another guy okay but corrupt law firm sets the right tone) up in arms since Deeds’ account was being milked by them to cover their own malfeasance.
The corrupt law firms’ strategy: have this knucklehead declared mentally ill and throw away the key. But to do that they needed to take him before a competency court another mistake (rather than say having a “hit man” take him out). Despite every ploy Brother Deeds had their number, outfoxed them, and gave the big city lawyers the boot. Gave New York City the back of his back. Oh yeah and swooped up Babe too. Not Cooper or Capra’s best but okay, okay.
The
Wind Howled Like A Hammer-The Trials And Tribulations Of Sand-Bagger Johnson
“Jesus,
it is cold as a witch’s tit out here this morning, I can’t get my hands warm
for love nor money. I was surprised that after they called a “frost delay” yesterday
they didn’t this morning since it seems just as cold as it was then, ’’ frozen
Lucky Pierre told the collected gathering on the dreaded wind-swirled first tee
as the first foursome of the day went into its round of golf, nine holes as
usual in the early morning, at the fabled Pine Pond Golf Course. That gathering
included the lanky Casey, the wiry Zowey (formerly Zowy until he objected that
the moniker did not show him enough dignity, enough literary dignity if you can
believe that, and hence the added “e.” What price vanity.), and the fake-feeble
Sand-Bagger (whom we have agreed for non-literary reasons, for the ecologically
sound reason of saving cyber-ink to call Sandy after an initial introduction)
as they waited on Sandy to do the ancient rite of tossing the tee into the air
to determine the day’s teams.
Of course
Lucky Pierre with his little “cold weather frost delay” screed was merely
trying to cover up for the fact that he was dead-ass wrong about what the pro
and the greens-keeper would do this bitter Sunday. He had called in to inform the
pro that he would be late because he assumed that there would be a frost delay leaving
Casey and Sandy cooling their heels waiting on his lordship. On top of that
Zowey had pulled the same lamo excuse, or some variation on that theme claiming
he too was late for wrongly guessing about the “frost delay.” Justice, even a smidgen
of rough justice in this wicked old world, would have dictated that Casey and
Sandy be partners that day and give the late-bloomers a thrashing that they
would not soon forget. As luck would have it Sandy drew the injury-prone Zowey
and so needed to curb his tongue since the coin of the realm trumped [no pun intended]
any residue distress at the late start.
In a previous
screed Sandy had mentioned that sometime when he had time he would give the
reader “the skinny” on what was what about frost delays. Since this match was “in
the bag” this is the time to deal with this critical question. Of course the
average citizen, the average sane golfer for that matter doesn’t have one reason
in hell to care anything about the arcane subject of frost delays. But for the
hearty all-weather, all-season golfers such as our itinerate foursome the question
is a matter of life or death, well, maybe not that far but at least a question
of whether or not they would play a round of golf that day. There had always been
much speculation among the group, and by others as well, about why one cold day
there was a delay and another similar day as had occurred that weekend the play
went off on schedule. Casey speculated that it had to do with dew points and
clouds. Zowey started talking about winds, clouds and shadows, plus the placement
of the moon. Lucky Pierre the one scientist in the group started talking about
Zen. Sandy cut all that speculation short with the insightful suggestion that the
pro and greens-keeper probably “flipped a tee” to determine whether to call a
delay or not. Meaning in Sandy’s enfeebled cold-addled brain that one or the other,
or both, wanted an extra roll in the hay with his companion. Sandy insisted
that was as reasonable as any of the other wind-addled ideas.
But enough
of the mysteries of frost delays for we are now into consequences. There is no
need to dwell on the match, or at least the first match since as Sandy had perceptively
figured out the thing was a foregone conclusion once the pairings were
announced. It is almost a shame to speak of the beating that Casey and Pierre
took that morning-let the results speak for themselves rather than to dredge out
the painful past hole by hole. Sandy and Zowey beat them six ways to Sunday.
Beat them in six holes without working up a sweat. So enough of that.
Here is
the funny thing, funny to non-golfers (and those who could give a fig about the
subject) but no money exchanged hands that morning, no Abes moved around
wallets. (That hard fact will act as summary for Casey). That is where the “press”
mentioned in a previous screed comes in. Lucky Pierre called a “press” (seconded
by Casey) for the final three holes and wouldn’t you know it but Zowey and
Sandy booted the ball down the fairway on the ninth hole and the lucky stiff
Casey had his one good hole of the day and saved the day for the frozen pair.
Damn. Oh well Sandy said he would explain the intricacies of the press something
and it would have nothing to do with dew points, weather-forecasting, cloud
cover or Zen. Selah.
Some of us are planning up join up for this rally. If people want to carpool, call or email Doug Stuart at: 617.967.0751 & dstuart698@aol.com.
Douglas --
On April 18, peace activists from across New England will gather in front of Textron Industries headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, tocall on the company to stop selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia that it is using to kill civilians in Yemen!
Textron is the manufacturer of cluster bombs that are sold to Saudi Arabia for its war of aggression on the people of Yemen. A total of 118 countries have banned cluster munitions due to the threat they pose to nearby civilians at the time of attack and afterward. Even worse, Textron’s weapons fail to meet the standards for malfunction rates set in U.S. export law – according to Human Rights Watch – so their sale to Saudi Arabia is both illegal and will leave unexploded munitions scattered across Yemen, threatening civilians for years to come.
Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes in Yemen and has created a humanitarian crisis.Yet, Textron continues to provide its bombs for the war, even after more than 3,000 innocent Yemeni civilians have been killed. President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia next week and should press the Saudi government to permanently end the attacks against Yemen.
P.P.S.Show your support for demilitarization and bringing our war dollars home with a CODEPINK t-shirt!
Have your change make change!MyChange rounds up your credit and debit card purchases to the next dollar, and sends your spare change to CODEPINK! Click here to get started.
The Heirs Take The Airs-With
“Godfather” Dashiell Hammett In Mind
By Zack James
All through the years that they had
known each other Alex Slater would either meet Fred Sims at Dolly’s Diner or go
up to his office on the fifth floor of the Tappan Building in downtown
Riverdale and share Fred’s stashed whiskey bottle, Johnny Walker Red, and Fred
would regale him with stories, real stories about being a private detective.
That Dolly’s Diner habit had actually started when they both would take a coffee
break around the same time. Fred from his Fred Sims Detective Agency (although
all years that Alex had known Fred he had never seen any other operative
working out of the office so he was befuddled by the agency designation but in
order not to ruffle Fred’s feathers he never mentioned the question) and Alex
from his Superior Printing, a full service print shop on the first floor of
that building.
Alex had started the first
conversation by expressing his concerns about how Travis Realty, the company
that managed the historic Tappan Building (it had been until more recently when
the Skyler Building went up on the edge of town the tallest building in town at
eight stories), had let the place go to rot and ruin (not cleaning the lobby
frequently enough, restrooms either, faulty elevators, worse broken windows not
repaired and so on) unlike when the builder, Sam Stuart, ran the operation.
Fred had replied that at least Travis Realty had kept the rent the same for a
number of years, important to him when business the past several years had bene
slow. Fred said his office was mainly to get out of the house, get away from
some nagging girlfriend of the moment whom he living with and he didn’t give a
fig about the appearance of the place since he was either called out on a job
or if a new client came in his or her situation was desperate enough that the
surrounding didn’t mean a thing. Alex had replied that since he was on the
first floor and there was always foot traffic going through he needed to have a
little front.
That riff finished Alex offered to
buy Fred his coffee and crullers that day and Fred always a little low on dough
said “sure thing” (as Alex would find out a very worn from use expression of
Fred’s. And so that started what became a common meeting time and place
(although Fred when in the chips would spring for the refreshments). Very
occasionally they would have dinner there if they both were working late for
some reason since both loved Dolly’s meat loaf special complete with soup
appetizer and bread pudding for dessert.
The “up in Fred’s office” part came
later, and the bringing out of the Johnny Walker Red even later than that.
After a couple of months of meeting at Dolly’s Alex had expressed his love of
fictional private detective stories by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler,
Ellery Queen, Ross MacDonald, Jack Sommers, Sal Pollo, guys like that,
hard-boiled no nonsense detectives who operated out of their own personal code
of honor, didn’t mind tilting at windmills and liked a few skirts hanging on
their arms and bottles of whiskey in their snarly low left-hand desk drawer.
Fred laughed, laughed the knowing laugh of a real private dick, knowing that
all of that except the convenient whiskey bottle was bullshit (another common
Fred expression). So he invited Alex up for a shot (or two or more) and eventually
some real stories about his life as a detective, a career that when Alex and
Fred first met at Dolly’s had spanned twenty-one years, and counting.
Most of Fred’s stories, the good
ones, the ones Alex remembered were from the 1950s heyday of the “peeping Tom”
work he did for husbands or wives trying to get the “skinny” on who their
partner was screwing (since it usually was not them for one reason or another
Fred would say usually a good reason) in some off-the-wall hotel, motel,
no-tell. It was nasty but profitable work since he had connections with lots of
hotel dicks and motel owners (who would tell him who was residing on the premises
who did not look like they had tied the knot-for a price, a cut of his action).
But that business, that part of the business had dried up when the damn
no-fault divorce stuff came in and you could give any unverified reason
including some vacuous “mental cruelty” charge and wrap it up in a couple of
sessions before a judge. Damn “no fault.”
The repo jobs were boring as even Fred
admitted, as were the skip traces, trying to get guys and dames who didn’t want
to be found found for the client, usually a wife looking for dough for whatever
reason. Once in a while though doing a missing person’s case had some style
particularly if the deal involved finding a missing heir, somebody who was
supposed to come into dough when somebody passed on. The Galton Case was like
that, the style, or rather the off-the-wall way it turned out. Alex remembered
that Fred told that one with a certain relish although he didn’t make a dime on
the case in the end through his own fault.
Here’s the twist right away. Jack and
Sean Galton had come into the office asking Fred if he could find their
second-cousin Blaze Trumbo for them. At first they were cagey about what they
wanted and Fred was about to turn it down when they told him they would make it
worth his while to find that cousin since he was loaded, had made a ton of
money in Arabian oil. What they had figured, or though they had figured out,
was that since given the slim facts they had they were the only heirs, or
rather had the best claim to be the only heirs of cousin Blaze. Fred, against
his better judgment but seeing work in front of him after weeks of no work and
a ten percent “finder’s fee” agreed to look into the matter, for a short while,
very short while once they explained that they didn’t have much cash to pay him
upfront. A few days’ work led him to a couple of leads that would lead to a
couple more leads to Trumbo and so he was hooked. Saw money coming out of his
ears.
Working the leads Fred was able to
hone in on Trumbo at his upstate New York home. A place near Saratoga, up in
Mayfair swells summer racing country. He was able to get in to see Trumbo by
the guise of representing clients, Arab clients was the implication, who had
money that was supposed to go to him but they did not want to go through the
usual international banking connections because of some tax liability. Funny,
Trumbo as rich as he was, and something Fred noticed the few other times he was
involved with anything like real money, was all ears, was ready to move heaven
and earth to get more filthy lucre. That’s how the rich stay rich he figured,
be constantly greedy for the next dollar.
Once he got into the house though he
told Blaze the real people he represented. He was surprised how poorly Trumbo
looked, looked gaunt and not in good shape. Also how old he was considering
that the Galton brothers were maybe forty tops. Strangely laying out the
scenario for Blaze did not ruffle his feathers one bit. The old man said he
would be pleased to see his long lost cousins, assuming they were actually his
relatives.
Well the long and short of it was
that the brothers were able to establish their bone fides and Trumbo welcomed
them into his house with open arms. Here’s the beauty of the story, beauty even
though Fred never made a dollar on the case. The old man was busted, the house
he was living in he was doing so as a caretaker for an old crony. What had
happened that a few too wells went into the tank, went dry, that and the Arabs
deciding that they wanted the oil profits strictly for themselves and would
hire helpafter they took over Trumbo’s’
operations. Needless to say he never said word one about this until it came out
later when everything went hooey. What Blaze had done, had been doing all his
life really was con the brothers out of all of their dough. He used every dodge
in the book to get then to lend him what he called “temporary” funds since his
money was tied up in foreign lands just then, not to worry. Said he needed
dough to go on trips to get this or that deal finished up. They gave it without
question until the end. They had laid out something like one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars over about six months, maybe seven. Then word came that Blaze,
who really was as sick as Fred had suspected, had passed away in Istanbul.
They brothers were beside themselves
figuring that hundred thou or so would come back to them many times over. Then
as they didn’t hear from any lawyers for a while, didn’t hear about funeral
arrangements they brought Fred back into the case to find out what was what.
What was what was that Blaze was buried in a potter’s field in Istanbul.There was no will, no lawyer to contact,
nothing. And Fred had all of nothing too.
*****America, Where Are You Now...."- Steppenwolf’s The Monster-Take Four
A YouTube Film Clip Of Steppenwolf Performing Monster- Ah, Those Were The Days
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
Chorus Line From The Monster
Back in 2011 Frank Jackman’s friend from back in the old growing up hometown days in the late 1960s in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston toward the ocean, Sam Lowell, had written, under the influence of a rage he was feeling about the never-ending war in Afghanistan (still never-ending as of this 2015 writing as the announcement that five thousand American troops will hunker down in that benighted country until at least 2017), a review of an album of heavy-duty rock band they both loved to listen to back in the day, Steppenwolf. Sam’s impetus for writing that review had been a recent listening to the group’s song Monster on YouTube where he heard the words quoted above, the words that sent him reeling back to another never-ending war time in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. But here is the rub, back then Sam was probably the least political of the guys who hung out around Jimmy Jack’s Diner holding up the wall, checking the passing girls out, and occasionally putting a few quarters in the jukebox inside at the counter or in one the red vinyl-covered seats at a booth if they had eating money as well to hear what was what just then.
Those Steppenwolf lyrics about parents “abandoning” their kids leaving them alone and untutored in the ways of the harsh world to fight the monster machine that would devour them in a fit of consumer-culture death if not fought had hit home not because of the raging war but because of his own difficulties with his parents, his own having to go it alone to find his own path, a path that took many wrong turns. Frank a little more attuned to the swirl of the political maelstrom around him “got” the less personal aspect of fighting against the imperial government machine at all costs in the song and tried unsuccessfully to convey that understanding to Sam even though he too had had his own running battles mainly with his mother over what the hell he was to do in the world, about why he did not want to do the things his parents craved for him to do.
Frank got “religion” earlier than Sam in another way since shortly after the unsuccessful attempts to “hip” Sam to the need to fight the monsters who were devouring their humanity he got a letter in late 1968, a very official letter, from his friends and neighbors (that is how they put the greeting in any case) at the Carver draft board telling him his number was up, that assuming that he was physically fit enough, he was subject to being called up (when he later went up to Boston to take his physical at the Army Base down near the harbor he found that if a guy was still basically breathing and did not fall over to the touch he was fit despite the slew of medical excuses other guys had tried to fake the doctors out with so he was found fit ). He freaked that letter-opening day, freaked the day he took his physical knowing he had passed and knowing too that the way Charley (although he would not know the significance of that name until later) was chewing up the American Army despite the beating he took during his Tet offensive that he would be called, no question, and he freaked the day the very early one morning he headed to the Boston Army Base to be inducted. That despite Frank’s immense hesitations about going, although stuck down in Carver he was unaware as he would later become aware of that there were ways to fight his induction. But see every other thing in his blessed life went the other way, there was nothing to guide him in his hesitations. Certainly not the super-patriotism of his parents, Christ, they would wind supporting the war effort until the very end and even wrote a letter to their Congressman telling him to tell President Ford to send troops to Vietnam in 1975 as all hell was breaking around Saigon and the North Vietnamese were rolling to cut off that town. Of course by that time he was in one of his frequent periods of not talking to them for years at a time.
Nor did it help unlike in some places where middle class families fearful for their sons were at least listening to the options, that all the guys, all the guys he knew in old time working-class Carver, who had not jumped at the chance of enlisting but waited until they were given notice went, maybe kicking and screaming like Frank but went, and that while he had certain defined views about politics they were as he would figure out later pretty simple and not reason enough to go to jail or flee to Canada over, the choices that he had heard about but kind of dismissed out of hand.
So Frank went to Boston and took the oath, went in and while not being the best of soldiers he was not the worse and guys in his unit would wind up saying of him that when he arrived in Vietnam and he settled in he got them out a few messes that did not look like they would get out of alive or in one piece when Charley came a-calling. Later, say late 1971 after he was discharged, early 1972 talking to a Quaker girl he was interested in over in Cambridge where he found himself hanging out after the few days that he spent in Carver convinced him that he had to flee that town, about what had happened to him in Vietnam he realized just how much he hated the monster government for doing what it did to him, about the slaughter of the innocence and about how he had to wash himself clean to get back his humanity. And so he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and after that died down after a few years he joined that Quaker girl in her forthright efforts to bring a little peace in the world.
Sam, and here is the funny way paths divert, had had a serious injury when he was a kid, a serious injury to his left arm which despite many severe and long-drawn-out procedures was about ninety percent useless and so was declared early on 4-F, not fit for military service, by those same friends and neighbors who had left Frank to hang out and dry. Thus while Sam tepidly held some of the same opinions that his fellow students who were causing holy hell on the campus at Boston University where it seemed every other day they were protesting or striking against something, sometimes to do with the war, other times about some grievance local or societal, he was rather outside of all of that.
Even when Frank had fruitlessly argued with him about what their parents were leaving them to fight against he had fluffed it off. Later after Frank got back for Vietnam he was a bit more thoughtful for a while, tried to listen when Frank talked about stuff, about the bloody madness going on in his name but Sam was too busy trying to survive law school and start a practice in Carver to listen much. So of course they drifted apart something that if either of them had been asked let’s say as they graduated from high school in 1967 they would have scoffed at. Frank headed west, went to California after that thing with the Quaker girl had run out, after he had let his “wanting habits” addictions get the best of him and that thread of the story is still murky (mostly drug-related and some small felonies from what Sam had heard from somebody who had run into Frank in San Francisco at a peace event in the late 1980s). Sam went on to thrive in his small town law practice, eventually taking on a partner, having a family including two sons, and generally having a good life.
But then Sam got “religion,” got it not through anything he did, or did not do, but through the times, through another act of governmental hubris. After 9/11 (and like Pearl Harbor and a few other events in American history just saying the words stand by themselves, no explanation necessary) the bulk of the population in America was beside itself with unfocused rage, was out for some kind of vengeance, any target would do, convenient, distant, the bigger the better, but some kind of Moslem/ Arab payback was best. Like in a lot of time of emergency situations, military emergencies, some of the young get caught up in the crush of the action. Wanted to play the patriot game for keeps. The long and short of it was that Bradley Lowell, Sam’s older son, enlisted in Army, went to Officer Candidate School and came out a second lieutenant, came out just as all hell was breaking loose in Washington about Iraqi Saddem weapons of mass destruction and that the only way to make things right was to invade that benighted country, destroy it out of hand. Puff. Sam, beside himself when he heard that Bradley would be deployed, would be in the thick of it as an officer in an infantry unit, tried like hell to talk him out of going, talked to him about refusing to go, about going to jail, tried to talk to him about what had happened during war to guys like his old friend Frank Jackman. No soap, Brad Lowell was gung-ho. And as the fates would have it one Bradley Lowell was felled by an IED and laid his head down in Iraq on his second tour of duty in 2005.
For a while Sam was inconsolable, as was his wife, Laura, and it took a lot of thinking to figure out what he was to do to keep Brad’s memory alive. As the situation in Iraq got more unstable and as the American casualties kept piling up Sam decided to go to an anti-war rally in Boston at the Commons one spring afternoon in 2006. (Laura taking the loss of Bradley hard in that way refused to go in public to such an event.) The crowd of a few hundred was not big like in the times of his youth during Vietnam when one day the whole Commons had been filled (he had not attended that rally since he was studying for an exam but he had heard about it from his roommate who had attended and believed that the war would be over shortly-in the event it lasted almost five years more) but he was fine with the idea of just protesting as best he could. As fate would have it Frank Jackman, back a few months before from the West Coast to attend to his wife’s mother’s care for a while up in Lynnfield, also was in attendance that day. That day he was wearing his dark blue embossed with the white dove of peace Veterans for Peace tee-shirt, an organization that Frank had joined just before the Iraq invasion in 2002 after many years of ad hoc work with a myriad of peace and social justice groups, and Sam thinking back to Frank’s VVAW days sort of recognized his old school boy friend, as he approached him (both men both thicker than in their slender youths, showing lots less hair, now grey-white, and lots more wrinkles and Frank sporting a longish beard and thus not unlike about half the male section of their generation so neither man could be blamed if they did not immediately recognize each other). Once the light of recognition hit they gathered to each other like in old times. Sam told Frank about his son Bradley and they both shed a tear for Brad, for their lost youth, and for the endless wars that have plagued their world.
They agreed to meet at the Sunnyvale Grille in downtown Boston a few days later and go over how they were going to continue the anti-war struggle in the face of a great deal of indifference (not of the soldiers deaths, like Brad’s, but of the unchecked damn war policies of two consecutive governments) from the general public who opposed the war before it started but had gone along with it once the deal went down. That meeting was the first time that they both discussed the commonly remembered Steppenwolf song Monster which a few years later prompted Sam to write that album review, trying to sum up the hard fact that the now oldsters Frank Jackman and Sam Lowell had to lend the kids a helping hand, or pass the torch on to them. Here is what Sam had to say:
The heavy rock band Steppenwolf (maybe acid rock is better signifying that the band started in the American dream gone awry 1960s night when the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Byrds and groups like the transformed from muppet Beatles and Stones held forth, rather than in the ebb-tide 1970s when the harder sounds of groups like Aerosmith and Black Sabbath were needed to drown out the fact that we were in decisive retreat), one of many that was thrown up by the musical counter-culture of the mid to late 1960's was a cut above and apart from some of the others due to their scorching lyrics provided mainly, but not solely, by gravelly-voiced lead singer John Kay. That musical counter-culture not only put a premium on band-written materials, as against the old Tin Pan Alley somebody wrote the lyrics, somebody else sang the song division before Bob Dylan and the Beatles made singer-songwriters fashionable but also was a serious reaction to the vanilla-ization of rock and popular music in the earlier part of the decade that drove many of us from the AM radio dials and into “exotic” stuff like electric blues (country too, come to think of it) and the various strands of folk music.
Some bands played, consciously played, to the “drop out” notion popular at the times. “Drop out” of rat-race bourgeois society and its money imperative, its “white picket fence with little white house attached” visions. (Those my own visions which I pursued as it turned out.) That is the place where many of the young, the post-World War II baby-boomer young, now sadly older, had grown up and were in the process of repudiating for a grander vision of the world, the “world turned upside down” as an old time British folk tune had it. Drop out and create a niche somewhere (a commune maybe out away from the rat-race places some of which did spring up in the likes of Taos, Oregon, Big Sur and the hills of old Vermont which if you care to see what hellish thing happened to that old vision once the seers got older you can go to and witness first hand these days), so some physical somewhere perhaps but certainly some other mental somewhere and the music reflected that disenchantment.
That mental somewhere involved liberal use of drugs to induce, well, who knows what it induced but it felt like a new state of consciousness so make of that what you will. The drugs used, in retrospect, to make you less “uptight” not a bad thing then, or today. The whole underlying premise though whether well thought out or not was that music, the music of the shamans of the youth tribe, was the revolution. (An idea, as a man who abhorred politics then and am only a little more enamored of now but have a greater purpose to be out in the streets than then when it was a pose if I showed up at all, I held to lightly for a while) An idea that for a short while before all hell broke loose with the criminal antics of Lyndon Johnson and one Richard M. Nixon, all hell broke loose with Tet, with May 1968, with Chicago 1968, with the “days of rage,” with Altamont and with a hundred other lesser downers I subscribed to. Those events, a draft notice, some hard time in Vietnam, made my old time school boy friend Frank Jackman get “religion” on the need for “in-their-face” political struggle. Me, though it took longer, took a generation longer to lose my innocence about American war policy.
Musically much of that stuff was ephemeral, merely background music, and has not survived (except in lonely YouTube cyberspace). Yeah, Neal Young, the Airplane, the Doors, the Byrds still sound good but a lot of it is wha-wha music now you know Ten Years After, a lot of Rod Stewart, even the acid-etched albums by the Beatles and Stones, (it is no wonder that the latter do not have any tunes from Their Satanic Majesties on their playlists out on the concert tours these days). Others, flash pan “music is the revolution,” period exclamation point, end of conversation bands assumed a few pithy lyrics would carry the day and dirty old bourgeois society would run and hide in horror leaving the field open, open for, uh, us. That music too, except for gems like The Ballad Of Easy Rider, is safely ensconced in vast cyberspace.
Steppenwolf was different, was political from the get-go taking on the deadliness of bourgeois culture, worse the chewing up of their young in unwinnable wars with no apologies or second thoughts, the pusher man, the draft resister and lots of other subjects (and a few traditional songs too about the love that got away, things like that). Not all the lyrics worked, then or now. (See below for some that do). Not all the words are now some forty plus years later memorable. After all every song is written with some current audience in mind, and notions of immortality as the fate of most songs are displaced. Certainly some of the less political lyrics seem entirely forgettable. As does some of the heavy decibel rock sound that seems to wander at times like, as was the case more often than not, and more often that we, deep in some a then hermetic drug thrall, would have acknowledged, or worried about.
But know this- when you think today about trying to escape from the rat-race of daily living then you have an enduring anthem Born To Be Wild that still stirs the young (and not so young). If Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone was one musical pillar of the youth revolt of the 1960's then Born To Be Wild was the other.
And if you needed (or need) a quick history lesson about the nature of American society in the 1960's, what it was doing to its young, where it had been and where it was heading (and seemingly still is as we attempt to finish up the Afghan wars and the war signals for deep intervention into the Syria civil war or another war in Iraq get louder, or both are beating the war drums fiercely) then the trilogy under the title "The Monster" said it all.
Then there were songs like The Pusher Man a song that could be usefully used as an argument in favor of decriminalization of drugs today and get our people the hell out of jail and moving on with their lives and others then more topical songs like Draft Resister to fill out their playlist. The group did not have the staying power of others like The Rolling Stones but if you want to know, approximately, what it was like for rock groups to seriously put rock and roll and a hard political edge together give a listen to the group sometime. And listen to how right my old friend Frank Jackman had been about their political messages
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you nowWe can't fight alone against the monster
