Saturday, June 24, 2017

VFP eNews: Presente! Masahide Ota, Convention and Golden Rule!

Veterans For Peace
To  
If you'd like to view this email in a Web browser, please click here.

¡Presente! Masahide Ota

Masahide Ota, former VFP advisory board member and Okinawa governor passed away on June 12th. 

"Former Okinawa Gov. Masahide Ota, a noted historian and survivor of the Battle of Okinawa, died Monday of pneumonia and respiratory failure at a hospital in Naha, his office said. He had turned 92 the same day.

Ota, head of the Okinawa International Peace Research Institute, served as governor from 1990 to 1998.
Read the rest of the piece in The Japan Times

Members of recent VFP delegations to Okinawa also wrote the below letter:
To the People of Okinawa,

We've lost a true friend in peace, a gracious and humble leader much respected by the people of Okinawa, ​an inspiration to all of us who aspire to a world without war, without wasteful and destructive weapons of war.

Veterans For Peace: No More Troops in Afghanistan

The Trump Administration announced it has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to determine troops levels in Afghanistan. It is widely believed that Mattis favors sending several thousand more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Why? Perhaps to break the “stalemate” as described by the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Army General John Nicholson when describing the war to the Senate Armed Services Committee. In his June 13th testimony, Secretary Mattis told the same committee, “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now.”

Veterans For Peace calls for a different direction than more war. We call on Congress to stop funding war and demand a plan for a peaceful solution. We call on the President to immediately begin withdrawal of U.S. troops and take a new direction towards diplomacy and peace. And we call on the people of the U.S. to resist war and demand policies that foster peace and prosperity at home and in Afghanistan.

It should be clear after 16 years and the death of tens of thousands of people that no one is a winner in Afghanistan. There is no clear concept of what it means to win there. In fact, it is no longer clear why the U.S. continues to keep troops in Afghanistan and now is on the brink of increasing the number of men and women in harm's way.

1st Annual Power to Peace Festival

Friday, Aug 11,  2017
  • Doors at 6pm w/ revolutionary sounds from Chicago's own DJ Dapper
  • Performances begin at 7pm
  • 7 artists of diverse genres including the Jazz Songstress Maggie Brown
  • 1 Poetry circle
  • 1 Intermission w/ sounds from DJ Dapper
Pricing:

 Convention attendees - $25
 General Admission - $45
 VIP Admission - $125
 Unemployed Vets Admission: Free
*Just a reminder that the concert is NOT included in the price of registration.

Back to Top

Veterans For Peace 2017 Resolutions

Every summer members of VFP are given the opportunity to shape organization policy by submitting resolutions that are reviewed and voted on by the membership. Resolutions approved in previous years can be viewed at our Master Index.

For the yearly resolution process, this starts approximately 90 days before the start of the annual VFP Convention when resolutions start to be accepted and close 30 days prior to the start of the pre-Convention Board of Directors meeting. For 2017 the first day resolutions could be submitted was May 1st and the deadline for submission is July 9th.

Check out this helpful note of tips from Bob Krzewinski – VFP Resolutions Committee Chair

Jackson Browne Concert

Date:  Sunday, Aug 13, 2017, Chicago, Illinois

Time:  Doors: 6:30 PM
          Show: 7:30 PM

Price: ​$50-$100

The concert is scheduled for the final day of our 32nd Annual Convention. Accompanying Jackson Browne at the benefit concert is long time band mate and multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz. All net proceeds raised from the benefit concert will support Veterans For Peace.

"I want to add my voice to those of Veterans For Peace in calling for the dismantling our war for profit economy, and working to end all wars," says Jackson Browne. "I recommend reading their position statement in response to the Trump Military budget. We need to follow VFP's courageous and principled example in calling for an end to our country's insane and inhumane military expansion."

VFP In The News!

In This Issue:
Don't Miss the Next Issue of Peace In Our Times!

VFP Annual Convention in Chicago!

The VFP Annual Convention is titled "Education Not Militarization" and will be held in Chicago, Aug 9-13 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.

Workshops will be held on Thu/Fri (Aug 10-11th)
Wednesday:  President's Reception/Poetry Reading
Thursday:  Panel Discussion - Education Not Militarization
Friday: Power to Peace Festival at VIC Theatre - Doors open at 6pm
Saturday: Business meeting/banquet
Sunday: March thru Downtown Chicago
             Jackson Browne concert @ Copernicus Theatre

Registration is Now Open!  Please register for the conference

Visit the Award page to nominate an individual or chapter for a VFP award.  Awards will be presented at the Saturday banquet. 

Need help creating and/or editing your ad for the program book , email Becky @ becky.pdx@gmail.com

Thanks to all who submitted a workshop application.  Applications are in the review process.  All applicants will be notified by June 30, 2017.
Deadline to guarantee the special hotel rate is July 7, 2017

Calling all poets!  Sign up here to read your poetry on Wednesday, Aug 9th.  Questions regarding submissions should be directed to John Spitzberg.

Need assistance getting to the convention?
Post Cold War Veterans -  Sign up here.
All others - Sign up here.

Please Check Out the New Details on the Website!  New information is added weekly!

National office contact is Shelly Rockett

Back to Top

Don't Miss the Next Issue of Peace in Our Times!

Order now, because you won't want to miss these articles in the upcoming issue:
  • David Swanson on why war monuments are killing us
  • American fascism--from 1944 until now
  • The lie of American Exceptionalism
  • Bruce Gagnon on why the peace movement should support workers' rights in the arms industry
  • How Iraq Veterans Against the War is building the anti-militarism movement
  • Chuck Searcy on cleaning up unexploded Ordnance in Viet Nam
  • Who are Britain's real terror apologists
  • Ann Wright on Guantanamo and the U.S. role in the Middle East
  • Moral injury and bruised souls
  • Miko Peled on Israelis' special responsibility to resist the occupation

Plus poems by Jay Wenk and Doug Rawlings, and much more!

This issue is going to press next week, and late orders are only filled while supplies last, so don't miss out.

Updates From the Golden Rule!

The Golden Rule’s 2017 voyage to “BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS!” is off to an amazing start. After high winds and rough seas delayed her departure from Humboldt Bay, the Golden Rule caught up with her scheduled events. With educational and community events in each city, the Golden Rule is pursuing her mission in full force, bringing attention to the UN Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons and educating about the very real possibility of a nuclear war in today’s political environment.
From Fort Bragg to Bodega Bay, and then an exciting journey to San Francisco accompanied by whales, her expedition has been a huge success, largely due to Veterans For Peace chapter members and other great supporters.
Currently in San Francisco for Peace Action Camp she will reunite with the Phoenix of Hiroshima
on July 5-6 after almost 60 years apart. The Phoenix peace boat carried on the Golden Rule’s protest voyage to the Marshall Islands to interfere with atmospheric nuclear bomb testing. They both sank in 2010 and while the Golden Rule was rescued and restored the Phoenix was not so lucky. After their historic reunion in the Sacramento Delta, the Golden Rule will stop in over 10 cities to educate and inspire while making her way to her 2017 destination in San Diego.

D.C. Conference on Korea

About 100 people concerned with the current tension with N. Korea attended the one-day conference at George Washington University on 6/13.
Former Sec. of Defense William Perry delivered a keynote speech in which he emphasized that the best way forward on our relations with DPRK is to talk to them with the aim of freezing their nuclear and missile development. It is to be noted that the Trump administration is continuing the unrealistic demand of the previous administration that N. Korea should take steps to denuclearize first before talks can start.
Wage peace, not war in Korea!
Peace Treaty now to end the Korean War!

Save the Dates: Upcoming Events

Aug 6 and 9 - Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Aug 9-13 - VFP Annual Convention-"Education Not Militarization", Chicago, IL.  There will be a concert the evening of the 13th, so plan to stay the evening of the 13th!  More details to follow soon!
Sept 21 - International Day of Peace
Veterans For Peace, 1404 N. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102

Veterans For Peace appreciates your tax-exempt donations.
We also encourage you to join our ranks.


Footer
Posted by at No comments:

Bernie’s Revenge- With Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” In Mind

Bernie’s Revenge- With Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” In Mind  







By Seth Garth 

[Bernie, O., we will avoid his last name since he has recently retired from the force and we will let him enjoy his peace, after twenty-five of decent and honorable service. The “force” for those who are clueless any police department but here the Bay City Police Department a comfortable California seaside town as its name would indicate, although not as sleepy a town as the seaside designation would connote, That last phrase about Bernie, we can skip the “O” now that we can without rancor leave him to his peace was at one time up for grabs. Had been challenged back when he had been on the force maybe five years in the days before the war (World War II) when anything went in the fair city from gambling, dope, un-bonded booze and women, women who would take you around the world or around the block where a male confederate with a handy blackjack waited in earnest for any unsuspecting goof, not Kerouac’s unsuspecting holy saintly beaten down by the grind of modern society and left to rust along the empty roadside goof either but just some drunken wayward tourist who thought he still had that old sex appeal that his Martha used to brag to her friends about.

And that anything goes, the dope to girls action, especially that latter category since he had started out as a hustling jack-roller grabbing marks some whore he was working with was steering his way was strictly the bought and paid for territory of one Eddie Miles, Mister Edward Raymond Miles when they let him into the swanky Bay City Golf Club-or else- but plain run of the mill gangster Eddie now. We can use his last name since he is finishing up the last five years of a twenty-five year gaff at the Q for plenty of stuff-extortion, pandering, armed this and that,  everything except the one the jury couldn’t pin on him-murder one, murder for hire if you want the full kick. They had a raw assistant D.A. assigned to the case since everybody had the case down to a shoo-in for sure and the D.A. had his own set of problems having let a few Eddy non-murder crimes go under the sea (and “sponsoring” Eddie in that swanky club where he was ostracized after the rap sheet on Eddie became public- probably would have been worse except it is always good to have a D.A. sweating and forgetting stuff-criminal or country club).   

Bernie, Bernie O. when you think back about those days was the straightest rightest cop that ever put on shoe leather in Bay City. The problem back those twenty some years ago was that every other freaking cop on the force was “on the take” to Eddie, or knew guys on the take to Eddie which was the same thing. Somebody, without a shred of evidence had fingered Bernie as a bad cop in Eddie Miles hip pocket. Bought and paid for- a tough charge to defend against when everybody was on the take and wanted to cover their asses. Of course in those days a cop, a five year cop anyway, couldn’t pursuit a case on his own where he had been accused of corruption. Against Department policy. A great set-up for a set-up. So he clamped Phil Marlin, a guy who had been on the force with him, had gone through the academy with Bernie but had been fired for insubordination, fired good, when he wouldn’t tumble to looking the other way when one of Eddie’s boy took some underage girl into a backseat out on the back roads of the Pacific Coast Highway for a blow job and whatever else she was offering-or he was taking. Phil had turned private investigator, private dick, keyhole peeper to most cops. Took the case strictly as a favor to Bernie, no charge, you see, that was how tight they had been back when they had each other’s back in the days they were flat-footing beat cops down in the tough Five Points neighborhood.

Bernie had been in on the bust of Eddie Miles, after the Staties had taken over based on what Marlin had dug up from the sewer and they insisted that Bernie be in on the nab so he had some satisfaction that he was cleared by his own actions. The problem for Bernie and for Marlin came later when Marlin decided he wanted to tell the story to the general public-maybe as a cautionary tale, maybe to show how fragile a grip every human has on life, or maybe he just wanted his name up in lights in some fake private dick’s hall of fame. What Marlin did was get this writer, kind of well- known for writing racy pulp fiction crime detection novels, a guy named Raymond Chandler, to “ghost” the story for him. Between Marlin’s vivid imagination and Chandler’s excessive literary license they balled the whole story up, balled it up pretty bad. So Bernie with his own leisure time, his peace time, hired me to “ghost” his true version of the case-the Eddie Miles bust. The only thing that Bernie and Marlin, the late Phillip Marlin who had his check cashed down in sunny Mexico one back alley night when he was looking for a fugitive named Terry Manning, agreed on was that Bernie had handed him a private job for General Guy Sternwood. Yeah, Sternwood the guy who turned the La Brea tar pits into gold-for himself and his. He was having trouble with one of his wild daughters and needed a guy who could handle the fix he had been put in by her posing for raw, today they would say kinky, nude photographs and guys were looking for dough, serious dough for the negatives-or else. Here is how it really played out from that agreed point on.             

****
Marlin had shown up at the General’s mansion one sunny summer afternoon up in the hills of Bay City far from the humidity and dust and far from the sight of those still-producing oil pumps that got him the place on the hill. Before he could be invited into the General’s bedroom (the General would enumerate more health issues than seemed possible for a breathing human being and he had been under doctor’s to keep to his bed, his now bed-office) he was confronted by one of the wild daughters, the younger one Carol. She had asked him, once she had looked him up and down in a way usually reserved for guys and figured him for a tumbler, if once he had finished talking to her father he wanted a good time in her room. She also told him that she did not care what her father wanted she wanted those nude photos circulated, wanted to be a Hollywood starlet just like Eddie Miles had promised. Wanted all the boys to get big in the pants when they snuck a peak at her luscious body doing nasty little things (and it was luscious according to Marlin-Bernie rated her as a good afternoon fuck and then get the hell out of town).

Phil had told Bernie, and more importantly had told Chandler who retailed the story, that he never had gone into her room after speaking with the General with whom he had accepted the assignment to act as go-between to Eddie in order to get the freaking photos and negatives back to be burned. According to Norris, the trusty butler, a guy who had no ax to grind then, was the General’s eyes and ears in those days (and was stealing him blind since he had control of household checking accounts-like manna from heaven if a guy knew how to fudge the books just so and old Norris had the game down pat) told him that he had seen Marlin coming out of Carol’s room disheveled and glassy-eyed like she had taken him around the world.

That is the real reason Marlin never got anywhere trying to get those photographs back. He would always argue that the General was maybe hot to trot to get the pictures after all he could hardly face his social equals when his daughter was front and center in some low-rent “girlie” magazine (where in the end they would wind up courtesy of Carol sending an agent to one of those publications begging them to put them in the magazine). But the real reason he hired Marlin was he was looking to find out what had happened to his trusted confidante, Rex Randall, who had apparently run off with Eddie Miles’ girlfriend to parts unknown. (Phil had dismissed the run away and elope story as so much eyewash but Bernie knew, had reason to know that Eddie was carrying a big torch for the broad and who knows what he might have done with Rex). Rex a guy Phil knew from the days when Rex was managing a guy in Half Moon Bay dope operations and grapping all the ass he could from young things who were ready to do anything to get something for the head-anything. Bernie knew of him but even then knowing about Eddie’s big torch figured that Rex was sleeping out in the bay somewhere with a sack of rocks tied to him.                

So Phil went through the paces, went through the motions of trying to earn his big bonus-attached (not for the Rex part-for the fucking nude pics), and had met Laura the older daughter as he was leaving his sister’s room. He always claimed he never met her then but had been in the General’s bed-side office after having swigged a couple of high-shelf brandies to seal the deal and then left to pursue justice some such bullshit. Although she wasn’t as photograph pretty as her younger sister Carol she was just as wild, her lovely vices gambling and cases of scotched devoured. Needless to say the story gets jumbled up again when Marlin later denied that he tumbled to her bedroom eyes proposition but Norris once again put paid to that lie since early the next morning he had seen Marlin, disheveled, glassy-eyed and looking sexually-sated (how Norris knew that was the case in England where he had learned the butler trade he had had his fill of such meanderings from the nobility that he had been in service  to-said they had the morals of a great white shark-none). The worse part of that tryst with Laura was that he had spilled the beans about the General’s desire to see what had happened to Rex to Eddie Miles whom she was in hock to for gambling debts at his off-shore casino (and as it turned out had been trying to get out from under by fucking Eddie and a couple of his boys to death-yeah, the morals of a shark- a resourceful girl no question).

Marlin after having his fill of the Sternwood young women then “got to work,” hit the library to see about old rare books and their provences since he assumed that the photos of Carol would wind up in some high-end antique bookstore used as a front for select clientele to “borrow” such fare (some of them when the lists became public later friends of the General who must have gloated and a veritable who’s who at the Bay City Golf Club-yeah, the morals of a shark all the way around). (It was only later that Carol got that agent to hustle his photo-ass to the “girlies” once they had been used at Eddie’s trial since they “belonged” to her). Phil did a perfunctory search of all the old-timey bookstores in town, got nowhere and laid low for a few days before telling the General he was hot on the case and told him that he needed some walking around money to go to Eddies’ casino off-shore. Norris set him up with a cool thou-not bad for walking around money-then anyway. 

One night, the first night he ran into one Eddie Miles, he also ran into Laura losing a load at the tables but smiling about it as she gave him a come hither look that would snow (later when they were in closer proximity she offered to take him out to her car for a little off-hand tryst-which after he had finished up with Eddie he gladly took her up on funny how that time appeared on his bill when it came time to close up accounts with Norris. Services rendered. So another glassy-eyed night with a Sternwood sister. He had gotten nowhere asking Eddie Miles where his wife was and about the rumor that she had taken a powder with Rex-the General’s confidante.  Getting nowhere fast on this case. Getting nothing on Eddie either. 

Then the great break-through although it was really only Marlin falling into something after another guy, a guy he could have saved by all the evidence but he had gotten “cold feet” when the deal went down. It seems that one of the clerks, Iris, a comely female clerk that he had taken into the stockroom one rainy afternoon, at Ye Olde Bookstore had had a boyfriend who had been acting as an agent for Eddie Miles in trying to unload Carol’s sulky nude photos. Somehow he had had trouble moving the merchandise and Eddie dumped him-dumped him literally in the bay for some purpose-or np purpose. Oh, not Eddie personally-Edward Miles did not do his own dirty work but had his number one boy, The Camino Kid, a bad-ass no question throw a sack over the boyfriend’s head and put a few stones in the mix and let him sink and sleep with the fishes off the bow of  Eddie’s casino liner. Nice boy. The girlfriend after getting friendly with Phil that afternoon loosened up by a few drinks had spilled the beans about the boyfriend number one after she had got herself another beau. To even the score with Eddie though she was ready to tell Marlin where Eddie’s wife was-for a couple of hundred bucks to blow town with. Marlin agreed and was to meet the new beau, a square little guy who probably was too short for that ravishing clerk.        
                 
That boyfriend number two, Harry, wasn’t any luckier than number one since he was acting as go-between for Iris with Marlin (Iris a girl who had her charms apparently but who always left standing unlike her beaus). They were supposed to meet at Harry’s office but the Camino Kid got there first while Phil was hiding in an anteroom. The Kid’s chore that day to get Harry to clam up about Eddie’s wife’s whereabouts. The little guy held out though-Iris must have had something he had not noticed that afternoon in the stockroom. Yeah, paid with his life for protecting his honey while Marlin stood breathless in the next fucking room. Here is where the wheels turned though. The cops, Bernie and his partner, were tailing the Camino Kid since the Iris’ boyfriend number one washed up on shore tied up in a sack just the way the Camino Kid liked to finish up his handiwork. They were able to follow him to the backroads of Ocean City the next town over where he stopped at an old house set back from the road. Waiting at the door was Eddie Miles’ wife. No sign of Rex though.         

Earlier back at Harry’s office Marlin had gotten out of his deep freeze long enough to follow Bernie’s police vehicle to that lonely country road. That is why Marlin claimed he took the Camino Kid out. That the fire -power that did the Kid in when he resisted arrest and started ban-banging had come from his weapon. Claimed he “saved” Bernie’s partner who was a dead man if he hadn’t shot the Kid first. Since he was using a police special (he had never turned in his gun when he was fired from the cops figuring he would need a weapon as a private dick) who the hell would have known. Bernie knew for a fact that he had winged the Kid and then doubled-down on him. He had heard no additional shots. Chalk one bad guy gone up for Bernie if you are keeping score. That action is what got him in on the deal when the Staties went after Eddie Miles and his henchmen.


As for Rex, well, here is where things get weird, where what the rich or do not do gets sealed with seven seals. Carol, and Marlin should have seen this coming given his own experiences with the girls, had killed Rex one afternoon when he would not give her a tumble. Carol did not like not being obeyed when she had her wanting habits on. That is why Marlin got taken around the world that day he went into the General’s hire. Laura had covered up for her sister-also why he gotten taken around the world by her. They had him figured as a sex-addled guy and they knew their mark. Marlin out of respect for the old man and his troubles with those wild sisters let it ride. Let the old man fade into his endless sleep not knowing he had sired two monsters. Before he left that hillside mansion though he made sure he got his full rate and expenses. That’s the real “skinny” forget all that other self-serving stuff.          
Posted by at No comments:

A Ghost Of A Chance-Gene Tierney And Rex Harrison’s “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir” (1947)-A Film Review

A Ghost Of A Chance-Gene Tierney And Rex Harrison’s “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir” (1947)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, 1947

Excuse the jokey headline for this review but it rather concisely makes the point about what will happen in this film under review director Joseph Mankiewicz’s film adaptation of R.A Dick’s novel The Ghost And Mrs. Muir. After all if you want to have film about the relationship, a quasi-romantic relationship between a young widow and a long gone sea captain then you have to draw the conclusion that such a relationship cannot be consummated this side of the grave.    

Despite the obvious problems that one must overcome to suspend disbelieve in order cheer on a happy ending this is a quality film from the time when the lead actors Gene Tierney who plays Mrs. Muir (last seen in this space being hunted by a smitten detective played by Dana Andrews and a compulsive/obsessive older man played by Clifton Webb with murder and lust in his heart in the classic film Laura) and Rex Harrison who played the deceased Captain Gregg (last seen here chasing evil-doing Nazis for His Majesty in The Last Train To Munich) were emerging as major stars.     

As to the problems well Captain Gregg ran afoul of the pitfalls of being on land and not at the friendly sea and died in an accident. Mrs. Muir after years of being under the thumb of her late husband’s family decided to make a jailbreak from that scene. She wound up at the ocean-side town where the good Captain was killed and where he was currently in ghostly residence at his “haunted” house trying to keep the flux of turnover tenants from staying. He was rather easily able to scare the wits out of all previous dwellers but Mrs. Muir, along with her daughter, was made of sterner stuff. Therefore there will be a test of wills, an unequal test as it turned out, after they declared a truce (and after they were half in love with each other which you could see would be a problem given their respective conditions). And after the good Captain seeing that Mrs. Muir needed real life love lets her go and pursue love left the house for parts unknown.     


Obviously the lonely Mrs. Muir wanted and needed love, or thought she did but she ran in the wrong direction out once she had a real live gentleman caller, one Uncle Neddy. She was ready to go to the altar with him except for one little problem. She found out that this cad, played by George Sanders, was already married. Once burned she decided to leave the romance business alone. After that rude awakening the rest of the film details her growing older and more pensive alone. Growing older until her own end when the Captain returned and they were reunited that side of the grave. The woman friend I saw this one with called it a “chick flick” although I don’t think that term was used back in the 1940s. But it fits.       
Posted by at No comments:

When Lady Day Chased The Blues Away-“The Quintessential Billie Holiday (Volume 3-1936-37)

When Lady Day Chased The Blues Away-“The Quintessential Billie Holiday (Volume 3-1936-37) 




CD Review

By Music Critic Seth Garth

The Quintessential Billie Holiday, Volume 3, 1936-37

Everybody, at least the everybodies who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, had at least heard the sad life story and junkie death of the legendary blue singer Billie Holiday. Knew that information either from having read her biography, the liner notes on her records (vinyl for those who have not become hip to the beauties of that old-fashion way to produce recordings), newspaper obituaries, or from the 1970s film starring Diana Ross (lead singer of Motown’s Supremes). So everybody knew that Lady Day (I believe that the Prez, the great saxophonist Lester Young, who backed her on many recordings and in many a venue gave her that name and it fit her as did that eternal flower in her hair) had come up the hard way, had had a hard time with men in her life and had plenty of trouble with junk, with heroin.      

Yeah, that is the sad part, the life and times part. But if you listen to this CD under review, the third volume in the series you will also know why in the first part of the 21st century guys like me are still reviewing her work, still haunted by that voice, by that meaningful pause between notes that carried you to a different place, kept your own blues at bay. That last statement is really what I want to hone in on here since Billie Holiday is an acquired taste, and a taste which grows on you as you settle in to listen to whole albums rather than a single selection. Here is my god’s honest truth though. Many a blue night when I was young, hell, now too, I would play Billie for hours and my own silly blues would kind of evaporate. Nice right. Here is the not nice part. Once a few years ago I was talking to some young people about Billie and they, maybe under the influence of the film or from their disapproving parents, kind of wrote her off as just another junkie gone to seed. I shocked them, I think, when I said if I had had the opportunity I would have given Billie all the dope she wanted just for taking my own blues   away. That is why we still listen to that sultry, slinky, sexy voice today. 


Is everything in this CD or in her overall work the cat’s meow. No, toward the end in the 1950s you can tell her voice was hanging by a thread under the strain of all her troubles, legal and medical. But in the 1930s, the time of her time, covering Tin Pan Alley songs which seem to have almost been written just for her she had that certain “it” which cannot be defined but only accepted, accepted gratefully. Check out Pennies From Heaven and I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm and you will get an idea of what I am talking about.     
Posted by at No comments:

When Rock And Roll Rocked The Known World-John Lennon’s Rock And Roll-A CD Review

When Rock And Roll Rocked The Known World-John Lennon’s Rock And 
Roll-A CD Review





CD Review 

By Josh Breslin

Rock And Roll, John Lennon, 1974-5

I really wish my long departed old friend, Peter Paul Markin, met in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 could have reviewed this CD. He was just enough older than me at the time to have been able to appreciate the influence that the classic age of rock and roll, what he calculated as between 1955 and 1965, had on a poor street tough (just look at the cover and you will see what I mean) from the depths of Liverpool had on John Lennon. Made me appreciate this stuff that growing up in Podunk Maine I was not really that familiar with at the time. See Markin (everybody called him the Scribe when he was growing up poor on the tough streets of America but I knew him first under the moniker the Be-Bop Kid on that first long ago meeting) came to his blessed rock and roll music the same way. Let the beat seep into his brain just like Lennon.

While Markin had no particular musical skills he had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what rocked his kindred on those mean streets (and not just the denizens of the mean streets either). What Markin also knew was that along with the quintessential American black-centered blues that rock and roll was being revered and played in the back alleys of England long after those genre were being by-passed by what Markin called the musical counter-revolution that got sprung on the teenage world in the late 1960s and would not be broken through until guys like John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards crossed the Atlantic in the British invasion of the mid-1960s.       


So what you have with this production is John Lennon, post-Beatle John Lennon, going back to the roots. Going back to what kick started his young street tough brain. Are the individual songs performed here the best covers ever done on the classics from the 1950s. No. Does this production even in remastered form give uniformly quality values. No. Does this thing make you want to get up and dance even in your shadowed AARP-worthy life. You bet. Yeah, Markin would have given you why and what for on individual covers like Be-Bop-A-Lula, Stand Be Me, and Sweet Little Sixteen and told you to grab this thing with all your hands as a prime example of what it was like when people played rock and roll for keeps. I agree. 
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)