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
JOIN Centro Presente in a vigil in solidarity with the immigrant community! IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ARE NOT "OPTIONAL"!!
WHEN: TOMORROW Saturday, September, 30th at 4:00 to 6 p.m.
WHERE: East Boston, Maverick Station.
The government of the United States through its ICE Paramilitary Force continues to criminalize our communities.
For years we have been informing our communities about our rights but now our struggle must escalate and be in resistance to such oppression. For more information call Centro Presente 857 256 2981
The Committee for International Labor Defense joins with the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the French Communist Party, and the European United Left / Nordic Green Left of the European Parliament, in calling on Israeli authorities to release field researcher and human rights defender Salah Hamouri, 32, who has received a six month administrative detention order.
Hamouri, a Palestinian-French dual citizen was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on his home last Wednesday, August 16, 2017, by the Israeli army.
The Israeli practice of arbitrary detention is a grave violation of international laws and human rights standards, particularly articles 78 and 72 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which state that an accused individual has the right to defend himself or herself. Hamouri’s administrative detention also violates article 66 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the basic standards of fair trial.
This case is not simply the arrest of an individual. It is part of a systematic policy of oppression and exploitation on the part of the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, and as such, it should not be tolerated by the working people of either country who are the basis of their societies and economies.
We join with organizations, activists, and parliamentarians across Europe and the Middle East who are mobilizing to demand Hamouri's freedom and to pressure the French government to take action on this case.
The Committee for International Labor Defense urges French president Emanuel Macron and European officials to act now to demand Hamouri’s release.
The Committee for International Labor Defense entrusts the safety and good health of Salah Hamouri, and the hundreds of other Palestinian political prisoners held at Al-Moskobyeh and other detention centers, in the hands of Israeli government.
Finally, we call on organized labor in Palestine, Israel and other countries to rise up and defend the human rights of those detained by the Israeli authorities, and especially Salah Hamouri and his comrades.
The U.S. began the "War on Terror" by attacking Afghanistan on October 6, 2001. Rather than ending terror, a War OF Terror was unleashed. It has cost thousands of US troops, tens of thousands of Afghan lives and 2.4 Trillion dollars!
President Trump is continuing the wars of the past decades and making unhinged threats towards Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and many other nations.
This has to stop!
What can you do?
Join us at a monthly vigil and rally on the most urgent issues of the endless wars.
Park St., Oct. 4, Nov. 8 and Dec. 6 from 5:15-6:15 pm.
Once Again Out In The
Summer Of Love, 1967- “Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings”
By Jeffrey Thorne
Beat down (not to be mistaken
for abuse, child abuse or anything like that against up against it mothers and
distant fathers but just poor, bedraggled poor, “wanting habit” as the Scribe
would have coming jointly out of their respective Acres). Beat around (check beat down except just
hanging around luckless, shoeless, waiting for somebody else’s shoe to drop). Beat
sound (hell easier to figure, listen to the swish of the sticks battling the pots
and pans, some out of Africa our mother riff culled into cool be-bop be-bop and
all that jazz away from big swing and into the big blast air). Beat to the
ground (luckless fellahins stashed away in back room closets, gambling, washing
endless dishes, what did some wit call it-diving for pearls, losing always losing,
losing worst when blood-lust bullies take the law into their own hands).
Fuck it, fuck explanation
since everybody will get it wrong just like the guys back in the Acre could
never figure what was bothering the guy, what made him jump. Fuck it Jack just
jumped into it, into its sea, into it misty sea, foghorn blasting some
jazz-like moan, from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful
skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of
some friend’s one and only, that is pure speculation though. But really and
truly Jack man, Jean-bon in old times jumped from some river of life, mill town
life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys
after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that
will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take
solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of
others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration.
Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some
drunken grave under a pile of suffering dirt (the Buddha in him cried out as it
did for that guy down in Sonora before they found him in some hideous back alley
unnamed and unloved, maybe un-nameable if there is such a word) Why couldn’t he
have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, maybe
sixteen set up in a too big older brother 1940s zoot suit, a wisp of beard
which could not be shaven so wisp, eyes glazed on dope , on love on the high,
on the low, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note
that was in his DNA, provided by grandma, mother left for parts unknown, father
shiva blew town with some chick who had a stash and gave her gash, to like
everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. That
was when the music was over, when it no longer made sense. At the beginning hell
no said Jack.
The world wasn’t big
enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting
habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha
didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical
balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the
beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and
never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before
our Lady of the River when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea
sticks ran out and all of beat solace ran to catholic rivers, yeah I know capital
C but those were the breaks, the end knotted up in some rat hole, some mother-forgotten
rat hole and no more joy, stick either). Took it on the lam, went west east
south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to
the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack, some Jacques, crossed
to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking
for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat
to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad secular monk with
crazed mom and sweet word poet father, not father William Blake but worldly
father, who spouted stuff about negro streets (and angel-headed hipsters like
we didn’t know he hung around Time Square Joe and Nemo’s midnight coffees looking
for queers, con artists and hustlers, always hustlers, crazies (in and out of the
asylums of the mind) and Moloch devouring the land (make no mistake ancient and
evil dressed in grey flannel suits and quoting stock prices into those same
China seas as that benny-suckled kid blowing that high white Frisco note), the
land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret love in more ways
than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in
his pants -and that was that-for a time). No, not then that street wise New
Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’
pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for
quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that.
For a time no question
since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze,
booze, bennies and grand simon jimson ladies. Took his hat off and let the
world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation
angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done
like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more
likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing,
singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic
nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river
gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post
Street in his nightshirt.
Then fame got in his
way, somebody bought into his million word notebook thoughts wanderings this is
poor boy long time waiting wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in
case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell
if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road(and
it was such a road breaking from deep incense and Adam and Eve free falls so
much for free will, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when
he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Funny no more
Harvard hipsters and Columbia ranters and raspers or Denver Adonis. Now fools
and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk
look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that
street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and
ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.
How was he to know, how
was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children
would abandon their flea-etched sins only a short time later, hang out their own
signs, reach for their own suns, reach with thumbs furled, and follow the pied
piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense
announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t
hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Defying
that man in the grey suit (defying mother and father got to dust and never figured
out). Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last
until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little
mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into
utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to
lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus
Notes From The “Tin Cup”
Underground- The Marquee Match-Up-The Battle Of The Titans
By Si Lannon
[I have mentioned on
more than one occasion that although sports, sports media, sports mania are a
large representation of the American historical experience and therefore worthy
of some note that generally we have tried to shy away from that subject on this
site. Shied away understanding that there is no dearth of material on the
subject elsewhere and certainly in the mass media. Occasionally we have
reviewed the work of literary sportswriters, or literary figures who have
written about sports like Damon Runyon (horse-racing) and Ring Lardner
(baseball, especially the classic American summer pastime You Know Me, Al series)
but that had much more to do with character development, mood and backdrop. The
one serious attempt several years ago to have the well-known college game
handicapper Shelly Newman cover a few college football seasons were sort of
preempted once the NCAAA gurus finally adopted a semi-playoff format and took
some of the fun, according to Shelly, out of weekly picking what he thought
were the top 25 college football teams (and with it the all-important betting
point spread). Given the formulas for inclusion in the Final Four selected at
the end of the season the whole thing was weighted toward leagues with
play-offs and many good teams like the SEC and Big Ten a lot of the suspense
evaporated. (The SEC’s Alabama who have had a virtual lock on the mystical
national title the past several years also dampened Shelly’s ardor for meeting
those weekly deadlines inherent in covering such a diffuse cluster of games-and
point spreads.)
Earlier this year Si
Lannon, who otherwise is a pretty solid citizen and good reviewer of books and
films here and at the American Film
Gazette, proposed to do a few pieces on golf. It turned out beneath that
solid exterior and calm demeanor was a maniac for playing this arcane and
time-consuming game with its fistful of rules which don’t make sense to the
average layperson, at least to me when I tried to get a handle on why Si would
get up at five in the morning to play at six on weekends when the rest of the
world was either just going to bed or had a few hours left before hitting the
skids. So yes Si is an avid fan and devotee of hitting small dimpled white
balls with funny logos who never did anybody any harm into lakes, ponds, trees,
sand traps and other devilish locations as far as I know. Each calumny with its
own set of penalties and procedures for getting the ball back in play and down
to the goal-to the green-in order to put that little white ball into a man-made
hole, the old tin cup he called it, in finely trimmed and contoured grass that
also never hurt anybody.
Now Si is a guy who does
not ask many favors and so against my better judgement I let him do a short
piece on the subject. His choice was not some big time tournament like the U.S.
Open which I might have appreciated some coverage on. Just to get a feel for
who plays this game at the highest level these days when even I know that the
well-advertised Tiger Woods no longer is the king of the hill of the sport. No,
his choice a local, local to him, amateur golf tournament at his golf club,
Frog Pond Golf Course, where he wanted to cover something called the club net
four-ball club championship. Si can explain exactly what that format is for the
clueless which included me until he told me about what that meant in the golf
world vocabulary which apparently hasn’t changed since about the time of golf
fanatic Charles I in England. Before he lost his head. (Not over golf but
weightier matters like the “divine right of kings” idea he was working under
and for which he paid with his life).
It seems some of his regular
six in the morning golf partners (so immediately suspect in my book since this
reeked of some sort of sect or cult like Druids or Maypole denizens which I
made clear to him) were involved in the tournament and so he had a rooting
interest in the play. He moreover had predicted that the two two-person teams
(therefore four-ball since each participant flails his own ball) which he
friends had partnered in had reached the finals of the championship and would
be slated to go head to head on in that final. Si begged, well, asked if he
could a follow up on that first article to finish up in style. I was skeptical
but told him to cover the “event” and write something up and if I liked it I
would make sure it was posted. I did and here it is but I hope this satisfies
Si’s golf craziness and he gets back to writing real film and book stuff about
the American saga-Pete Markin]
****
A Note From Si Lannon
[As my editor Pete
Markin mentioned in his introduction to this piece, an introduction that may
turn out to have been as long as this piece itself, I will explain, roughly
explain, what the format for this net four-ball tournament is about which even
he, a non-believer, could understand under constant repetition. Mercifully,
mercifully to me as well as the average reader who knows of my film and book
reviews, I will not except in spots discuss the arcane rules that govern
seemingly every conceivable situation in golf here but just the outlines for
the clueless and curious. Most readers may know about the high end of the
sport, the pros, the PGA, or have seen major tournaments like the Masters or
U.S. Open on television almost all of which are four day affairs in which the
golfer with the lowest score for the four days wins (and these days wins a ton
of money). But that is the elite, the top. The top players in an average golf
club who in any case are far below that elite level are not plentiful enough to
have such a tournament based on straight up stroke play. The spread between
abilities is too great to make such competition fair so other formats have been
created for those who want to compete against other golfers at the club level.
Hence the annual club net team four-ball championship which I am covering in
this piece.
This way this type of
tournament plays out is that as many interested two-person teams who enter play
a qualifying round in order to reduce the field to sixteen teams. That
qualifying round is based on the sixteen lowest team scores of best-ball golf.
Best ball is based on handicaps. (This is where I lost Pete Markin and was the source
of much repetition as he was incredulous about the whole system.) For example
if both team members get a five on a hole which is a par four then then would
be one over par on their gross score. But if one (or either) player has a
handicap stroke on that hole then they would have a net score of four-par. That
is the score that counts and so on through the eighteen holes of golf which
constitute a round. Handicaps are based on the premise that two people with
different abilities could play each other on a relatively equal playing field
if the better golfer gave the other golfer some strokes to give that person a
fighting chance of winning. Handicaps are based on a complicated formula of the
average of several recent rounds of golf and I need not go further than that
for an explanation.
The sixteen qualifying teams
then play elimination rounds to get a champion. In the first round (what in
NCAA basketball championships would be the “sweet sixteen”) the top eight
ranked teams play the lower eight teams in reverse order. For example the
lowest qualifying team number one plays the highest qualifying team number
sixteen and so on. The surviving eight then play a second round (the NCAA elite
eight), the surviving four (the NCAA Final Four)a third round and the last two
teams standing play a fourth round for the championship. This is where the
vagaries of the format came into play when I predicted my friends the teams of
Frenchie Robert and Caz Casey and Sand-Bagger Jackson and Kenny Lou would as
they actually did do meet in the finals. The former team had been the top seed
and the latter team number ten. If the Jackson-Lou team had been seeded eighth
or less then no way could the two teams meet in the finals since they would
play each other in an earlier round. As it turned out each pair fairly easily
went through their earlier rounds so the final would provide bragging rights
and side bet cash for the winning team for the rest of the season-and maybe
beyond.
The final as it turned
out was held on a granite gray late September morning and the two pairs, Frenchie
and Caz, Sand-Bagger and Kenny seemed to be primed to do battle, to do the
clash of titans as advertised in the headline.
To give a little color to the proceedings I should mention that
Frenchie, the redoubtable Frenchman a generation out of Quebec is the best
golfer of the four and intensely competitive ( best meaning he has the lowest
handicap which means that he got no stokes to help him against the other guys).
Caz is a wily Irishman who has now safely gotten his brood of kids past the
college albatross around his neck had only taken up the game the previous
couple of years and so had the highest handicap (meaning he gets more strokes
on certain holes than the others which could help his teammate considerable if
he played well-which he did). This team was considered by the assorted touts
hanging in the clubhouse bar the “young upstarts” since they had only been
playing as a team for a couple of years and had not won a major championship. Sand-Bagger
as his designation indicates is an old geezer, older than me, who has been
playing in these events seemingly forever and is always grousing about how he
should have more strokes (as he takes our money at the end of the golf round
more often than not). Kenny is a diminutive Chinese who can be the best player in
the world one day and a rank amateur the next. When this pair is on though it
is like a perfect storm. Around the clubhouse bar, among those gadflys and barflies
who populate every club not a few who have fallen under the wheel to this
tandem, they are the “veterans” as their names on various plaques testify to.
So this one set up as a David and Goliath affair.
This is the way Jack
Jones, the Frog Pond gadfly and barfly-in-chief put it tongue in cheek in a
memo tacked onto the message board in the club’s men’s locker room:
“The Moon is in the
Seventh House. The usually sleepy hamlet of Huron Village will be inundated
with a motley crew of people and vehicles early tomorrow morning after
procuring the hottest ticket in town for the improbable match-up of the upstart
newcomers the redoubtable, whatever that means, Frenchie Roberts the brash
transport from up Quebec way and his erstwhile partner the mysteriously named
Caz Casey against the rags to riches bloodied and hardscrabble veterans
Sand-Bagger Jackson and his wily long-time partner Kenny Lou for the coveted
Frog Pond Four-Ball Net Championship.
“Upon hearing of the
pairing after Frenchie and Caz had vanquished their third round opponents while
travelling back to his hometown to pick up his recalcitrant high school son, recalcitrant
since despite constant pleading the young man has taken up the much more
civilized sport of tennis, the mercurial Mr. Lou when the AP caught to him
simply stated “We will take no prisoners.”
“The more sagacious
Sand-Bagger has been quoted by Reuters as saying-“We are just happy to be in
the tournament after last year’s failure to qualify and look forward to facing
this unknown pair of upstarts for the biggest prize of all. We are pleased to be
able to be pitted against a couple of young up and coming players who will give
us all we can handle although the fate sisters would seem to favor that long
hitting pair. It will take everything we know to have a chance against these
stroke-strewn opponents. We will just play one hole at a time and see what
happens”
“More to the point
Sand-Bagger was quoted as saying that he and Mr. Lou had won many championships
and much prize money but that the really important thing was to win that side
bet of one hundred dollars per man for bragging rights the rest of the
season.”
And it was as advertised
a battle royal as both teams brought “game” to the vaunted showdown. I won’t
bore regular readers with the play by play, hole by hole details except to say
from personal experience tensions ran high on the first tee box even against long-time
buddies, maybe especially against longtime buddies, and continued throughout
the match as emotions ran up and down depending on the results of each hole
until the end somewhere on the course hopefully not before the regulation
eighteenth hole. Frenchie and Caz came out strong based on Caz playing out of
his shoes that day. They were soon two holes up meaning they had won two more
than their opponent (although that two up lead would be their highest lead of
the day as Sand-Bagger and Kenny battled back to “stop the bleeding,” allow the
young upstarts to get no further up on them). But the day belonged to the
veterans on Kenny playing way out of his shoes although they did not seal the
deal until the eighteenth hole when Kenny sank a ten foot birdie putt to end
the game. Based on the level of play that day Sand-Bagger and Kenny had had
their second lowest collective score ever. And Frenchie and Caz were only one
stroke more. So yeah, as Sand-Bagger said in jest as they were waiting to tee off
on the first tee this was a “friendly game to the death.” Enough said.
[In the interest of full
disclosure the reason I was able to cover this event was that my teammate, Rags
Johnson, and I failed to qualify-did not make the cut a subject we will hear no
end of from this year’s finalists. We had actually won this same tournament last
year which also shows the vagaries of golf-Si Lannon]
In Boston-Resist DACA Deportations-And Every Other Trump "Cold Civil War" Action
Resist Deportations!
Defend DACA! Extend TPS! Jail Joe Arpaio! No Ban! No Wall! Defend Transgender Rights! Resist Fascism!
Mobilize Saturday, September 16
1:00 PM Park Street T
followed by a March to the JFK Federal Building
The government in Washington has stepped up attacks on migrants to levels not seen in years. Trump's attacks on Muslim migrants were only the beginning. Deportations are accelerating. Trump is terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and has pardoned the racist ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio. He also threatens to shut down the government if a Mexican border wall is not built. He threatens the Temporary Protected Status program. This comes on top of his recent bigoted executive order against transgender troops in the US armed forces and his defense of Fascists in Charlottesville, NC. Millions of youth and decent hard working people are under attack! Trump and his cheerleaders in the U.S. Congress are leading a generalized assault on our lives, rights, and living conditions. The leading edge of this assault today is the stepped up attacks against migrants. An injury to one is an injury to all! Mobilize September 16!
In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Once Again-Out In The Be-Bop Night-The School Dance- A CD Review
CD Review The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life, 1990 I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also inevitable last dance. That event was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. Below is a an excerpt from a commentary that I did in reviewing the film American Graffiti that captures, I think, what this compilation is also reaching for: “Part of the charm of the American Graffiti segment on the local high school dance is, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors it could have been anyplace U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet anytime U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance, could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place to the ever-present gym bleachers to the chaperones to the platform the local band (a band that if it did not hit it big would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other important occasion) covering the top hits of the day performed on it was a perfect replica. Also perfect replica were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, it's much too early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow! Of course, perfect replica were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. Mercy. And I cannot finish up this part without saying perfect replica hes looking at certain shes (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) and also perfect replica wallflowers, as well. Not filmed in American Graffiti, although a solo slow one highlighted the tensions between Steve and Laurie) Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) but ever present and certainly the subject of some comment in this space was that end of the night dance. I’ll just repeat what I have repeated elsewhere. This last dance was always one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you? And after the dance? Well, I am the soul of discretion, and you should be too. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes I got home earlier than the Ma agreed time, but sometimes, not enough now that I think about it, I saw huge red suns rising up over the blue waters. Either way, my friends, worth every blessed minute of anguish, right?” That said, the sticks outs here include: the legendary Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, ouch); the late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy); and, The Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow). How is that for dee-jaying even-handedness?
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie
Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night
A YouTube film clip of the Dubs
performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this
piece.
By Josh Breslin
Frankie Riley, the old corner boy
leader of the crowd, our crowd of the class of 1964 guys who made it and
graduated, not all did, a couple wound up serving time in various state pens
but that is not the story I want to tell today except that those fallen brothers
also imbibed Frankie’s wisdom (else why would they listen to him for they were
tougher if not smarter than he was) about what was what in rock and roll music
in the days when we had our feet firmly planted in front of Tonio’s Pizza
Parlor in North Adamsville, had almost a sixth sense about what songs would and
would not make it in the early 1960s night. Knew like the late Billy Bradley,
my corner boy when my family lived on the other side of town back then, did in
the 1950s elementary school night what would stir the girls enough to get them
“going.” And if you don’t understand what “going” meant or what “going and rock
and roll together in the same sentence meant then perhaps you should move
along. Why else would we listen to Frankie, including those penal tough guys,
if it wasn’t to get into some girl’s pants. Otherwise guys like Johnny Blade
(and you don’t need much imagination to know what kind of guy and what kind of
weapon that moniker meant) and Hacksaw Jackson would have cut of his “fucking head’
(their exact expression and that is a direct quote so don’t censor me or give
me the “what for”).
But that was then and this is now and
old, now old genie Frankie had given up the swami business long ago for the
allure of the law profession which he is even now as I write starting to turn
over to his younger partners who are begging just like he did in his turn to
show their stuff, to herald the new breeze that the austere law offices of one
Francis Xavier Riley and Associates desperately needs to keep their clients
happy. In that long meantime I have been the man who has kept the flame of the
classic days of rock and roll burning. Especially over the past few years when
I have through the miracles of the Internet been able between Amazon and YouTube to find a ton of the music, classics and one-shot wonders
of our collective youths and comment on it from the distance of fifty or so
years.
I have presented some reviews of that
material, mostly the commercially compiled stuff that some astute record companies
or their successors have put together to feed the nostalgia frenzy of the cash
rich (relatively especially if they are not reduced to throwing their money at
doctors and medicines which is cutting into a lot of what I am able to do), on
the Rock and Roll Will Never Die blog
that a guy named Wolfman Joe had put together trying to reassemble the “youth
nation” of the 1960s who lived and died for the music that was then a fresh
breeze compared to the deathtrap World War II-drenched music our parents were
trying to foist on us.
That work, those short sketch
commentaries, became the subject for conversation between Frankie and me when
he started to let go of the law practice (now he is “of counsel” whatever that
means except he get a nice cut of all the action that goes through the office
without the frenzied work for the dollars) and we would meet every few weeks
over at Jack’s in Cambridge where he now lives since the divorce from his third
wife, Minnie. So below are some thoughts from the resurrection, Frankie’s term,
for his putting his spin on “what was what” fifty or so years ago when even
Johnny Blade and Hacksaw Jackson had sense enough to listen to his words if
they wanted to get into some frill’s pants.
“Okay, you know the routine by now, or
at least the drift of these classic rock reviews. [This is the sixth in the
series that I had originally commented on but which Frankie feels he has to put
his imprimatur on just like in the old days- JB] The part that starts out with
a “tip of the hat” to the hard fact that each generation, each teenage
generation that is makes its own tribal customs, mores and language. Then the
part that is befuddled by today’s teenage-hood. And then I go scampering back
to my teenage-hood, the teenage coming of age of the generation of ‘68 that
came of age in the early 1960s and start on some cultural “nugget” from that
seemingly pre-historic period. Well this review is no different, except, today
we decipher the drive-in restaurant, although really it is the car hops
(waitresses) that drive this one.
See, this series of reviews is driven,
almost subconsciously driven, by the Edward Hopper Nighthawk-like
illustrations on the The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era CDs of this mammoth set of
compilations (fifteen, count them, fifteen like there were fifteen times twenty
or so songs on each compilation or over three hundred classic worth listening
to today. Hell, even Frankie would balk at that possibility).
In this case it is the drive-in
restaurant of blessed teenage memory. For the younger set, or those oldsters
who “forgot” that was a restaurant idea driven by car culture, especially the
car culture from the golden era of teenage car-dom, the 1950s. Put together
cars, cars all flash-painted and fully-chromed, “boss” cars we called them in
my working class neighborhood, young restless males, food, and a little
off-hand sex, or rather the promise or mist of a promise of it, and you have
the real backdrop to the drive-in restaurant. If you really thought about it
why else would somebody, anybody who was assumed to be functioning, sit in
their cars eating food, and at best ugly food at that, off a tray while seated
in their cherry, “boss" 1959 Chevy.
And beside the food, of course, there
was the off-hand girl watching (in the other cars with trays hanging off their
doors), and the car hop ogling (and propositioning, if you had the nerve, and
if your intelligence was good and there was not some 250 pound fullback
back-breaker waiting to take her home after work a few cars over with some
snarl on his face and daggers in his heart or maybe that poundage pounding you)
there was the steady sound of music, rock music, natch, coming from those
boomerang speakers in those, need I say it, “boss” automobiles. And that is
where all of this gets mixed in.
Of course, just like another time when
I was reviewing one of the CDs in this series, and discussing teenage soda
fountain life, the mere mention, no, the mere thought of the term “car hop”
makes me think of a Frankie story. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie from
the old hell-fire shipbuilding sunk and gone and it-ain’t-coming-back-again
seen better days working class neighborhood where we grew up, or tried to.
Frankie who I have already told you I have a thousand stories about, or hope I do.
Frankie the most treacherous little bastard that you could ever meet on one
day, and the kindest man (better man/child), and not just cheap jack, dime
store kindness either, alive the next day. Yeah, that Frankie, my best middle
school and high school friend Frankie.
Did I tell you about Joanne, Frankie’s
“divine” (his term, without quotation marks) Joanne because she enters, she
always in the end enters into these things? Yes, I see that I did back when I
was telling you about her little Roy “The Boy” Orbison trick. The one where she
kept playing Running Scared endlessly to get Frankie’s dander up. But
see while Frankie has really no serious other eyes for the dames except his
“divine” Joanne (I insist on putting that divine in quotation marks when telling
of Joanne, at least for the first few times I mention her name, even now.
Needless to say I questioned, and questioned hard, that designation on more
than one occasion to no avail) he is nothing but a high blood-pressured,
high-strung shirt-chaser, first class. And the girls liked him, although not
for his looks although they were kind of Steve McQueen okay. What they went for
him for was his line of patter, first class. Patter, arcane, obscure patter
that made me, most of the time, think of fingernails scratching on a blackboard
(except when I was hot on his trail trying to imitate him) and his faux “beat”
pose (midnight sunglasses, flannel shirt, black chinos, and funky work boots
(ditto on the imitation here as well). And not just “beat’ girls liked him,
either as you will find out. Certainly Joanne the rose of Tralee was not beat
sister (although she was his first wife).
Well, the long and short of it was that
Frankie, late 1963 Frankie, and the...(oh, forget it) Joanne had had their
207th (really that number, or close, since 8th grade) break-up and Frankie was
a "free” man. To celebrate this freedom Frankie, Frankie, who was almost
as poor as I was but who has a father with a car that he was not too cheap or
crazy about to not let Frankie use on occasion, had wheels. Okay, Studebaker
wheels but wheels anyway. And he was going to treat me to a drive-in meal as we
went cruising the night, the Saturday night, the Saturday be-bop night looking
for some frails (read: girls, Frankie had about seven thousand names for them)
Tired (or bored) from cruising the
Saturday be-bop night away (meaning girl-less) we hit the local drive-in hot
spot, Arnie’s Adventure Car Hop for one last, desperate attempt at happiness (yeah,
things were put, Frank and me put anyway, just that melodramatically for every
little thing). What I didn’t know was that Frankie, king hell skirt-chaser had
his off-hand eye on one of the car hops, Sandy, and as it turned out she was
one of those girls who was enamored of his patter (or so I heard later). So he
pulled into her station and started to chat her up as we ordered the haute
cuisine, And here was the funny thing, now that I saw her up close I could
see that she was nothing but a fox (read: “hot” girl).
The not so funny thing was that she was
so enamored of Frankie’s patter that he was going to take her home after work.
No problem you say. No way, big problem. I was to be left there to catch a ride
home while they set sail into that good night. Thanks, Frankie.
Well, I was pretty burned up about it
for a while but as always with “charma” Frankie we hooked up again a few days
later. And here is where I get a little sweet revenge (although don’t tell him
that).
Frankie sat me down at the old town
pizza parlor [Tonio’s Pizza Parlor of blessed memory-JB] and told me the whole
story and even now, as I recount it, I can’t believe it.
Sandy was a fox, no question, but a
married fox, a very married fox, who said she when he first met her that she
was about twenty-two and had a kid. Her husband was in the service and she was
“lonely” and succumbed to Frankie’s charms. Fair enough, it is a lonely world
at times. But wait a minute, I bet you thought that Frankie’s getting mixed up
with a married honey with a probably killer husband was the big deal. No way,
no way at all. You know, or you can figure out, old Frankie spent the night
with Sandy. Again, it's a lonely world sometimes.
The real problem, the real Frankie problem, was once they
started to compare biographies and who they knew around town, and didn’t know,
it turned out that Sandy, old fox, old married fox with brute husband, old Arnie’s
car hop Sandy was some kind of cousin to Joanne, second cousin maybe. And she
was no cradle-robber twenty-two (as if you could rob the cradle according to Frankie)
but nineteen, almost twenty and was just embarrassed about having a baby in
high school and having to go to her "aunt's" to have the child.
Moreover, somewhere along the line she and cousin Joanne had had a parting of
the ways, a nasty parting of the ways. So sweet as a honey bun Arnie's car hop
Sandy, sweet teen-age mother Sandy, was looking for a way to take revenge and
Frankie, old king of the night Frankie, was the meat. She had him sized up
pretty well, as he admitted to me. And he was sweating this one out like crazy,
and swearing everyone within a hundred miles to secrecy. So I’m telling you
this is strictest confidence even now fifty years later and long after his
divorce from her. Just don’t tell Joanne. Ever.
As The Burns-Novick Vietnam War Documentary Airs-Iris Dement's "There Is A Wall In Washington"
Frank Jackman comment: Sometimes, and this is one of those times, a song can say as much about a war as a ten-part eighteen hour series in just a few minutes. Not the only poignant song about the effects of the Vietnam War down at the base, down where people who fought, died, or died a thousand dies live-and still do but a good one, a very good one.
