Happy, Happy Birthday Karl Marx, On The 200th Anniversary Of His Birth-Some Thoughts

Happy, Happy Birthday Karl Marx, On The 200^th Anniversary Of His Birth-Some Thoughts  

A link to NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s Open Source  2018 program on the meaning of Karl Marx in the 21^st century on the 200^th anniversary of his birth:

http://radioopensource.org/marx-at-200/

By Seth Garth

Normally Frank Jackman would be the natural person to do his take on the name, the role, the legacy of one German revolutionary exiled to London after the revolutions of 1848 faded away, Karl Marx on the 200^th anniversary of his birth in 2018. And Frank at first fought me a little on this and mentioned it to site manager Greg Green. Greg had both of us come in to his office to discuss the issue. My frame of reference and what amounted to the winning argument was that I had been Peter Paul Markin’s closest friend in high school, forever known as Scribe for obvious reasons, and so I knew the details of how Frank, Frankie Riley, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon and maybe a couple of others first heard about the name and ideas of one Karl Marx and later would act on them a little. (Some of the other guys who hung around with Scribe and the rest of us like Ricky Rizzo and Dave Whiting, both who would lay their heads down in hellhole Vietnam and wound up on the town monument and Washington black granite, Red Riley and even Frank Jackman almost lynched him when he started talking favorably about Karl Marx and the idea of red revolution in those dead ass red scare Cold War nights. All they wanted to hear about was whatever intelligence Scribe had on some girl they were interested in of which he had been plenty or what his next plan was for the “midnight creep” which I assume needs no further explanation except he planned the capers but no way would Frankie Riley or the rest of us let him lead the expeditions-hell we would still be in jail.)

Others, including Frank Jackman, have now seemingly endlessly gone over the effect Scribe had on them a little later when the turbulent 1960s we all got caught up in blew a gasket in the Summer of Love, 1967 as the culmination of what he also had been talking about for years on those lonely forlorn weekend nights when we hung around good guy Tonio’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” in the growing up Acre section of North Adamsville. What most guys did not know, or did not want to know, was that a little of what Scribe was thinking at the time was that maybe Karl Marx might be proven to be right, might have been onto something when he spoke about the working classes, us, getting a big jump ahead in the world once things turned upside down. He held those views  pretty closely then, especially when he was practically red-baited into silence by those guys who were even more hung up, as was Scribe in many ways, on normal American propaganda about Russia, Communism, and Karl Marx.

Like I say a glimmer then in high school, not at all thought out like it would be more so later in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we got back to the “real” world from ‘Nam and knew we had been fucked over by our government. That the “reds” in Vietnam were poor folk, peasants, with whom we had no quarrel. But that was later. I remember one night Scribe told me that he had had to stay after school one day for Mr. Donovan, the World History teacher and football coach which tells you what he was about, when Scribe had given a surly answer about some question Mr. Donovan had asked not about Marxism but something else and Donovan had asked him if he was a “Bolshevik.” Scribe recoiled in horror he said knowing that to say yes would get him in some trouble (probably more after school time at least) and for the simple fact that he could not say truthfully whatever teen angst and alienation he was feeling was driven by that kind of understanding of the world-then.         

What this confrontation did do was get Scribe looking again at his dog-eared copy of Karl Marx’s (and his co-thinker and financial “angel” Friedrich Engels) classic statement of his views The Communist Manifesto to confirm whether he was a “Marxist,” “Communist,” whatever and he came away from that re-reading knowing that he was not one of those guys, a red. That was the kind of guy Scribe was when he was confronted with something he didn’t understand. The rest of us would have said “fuck it” and let it go at that or have challenged old Donovan with a spurious “yeah, what about it.” Maybe some silly remark like “better red than dead” or “my mommy is a commie,” expressions making the rounds in that dead air time.

To finish up on this though I should say that the way Scribe got his copy of the Manifesto back when he was fourteen or fifteen and had heard that it was a cool document or something, who knows with Scribe was kind of strange. He couldn’t find the book in either the school or town libraries for the simple fact that neither had the document not wanted to have it in circulation. Yeah it was that kind of time. A young librarian suggested that he try the Government Printing Office which might have a copy if somebody in Congress (like the red-baiter par excellence Senator Joseph McCarthy) or some governmental agency had ordered it printed for whatever reason. He got the address in Washington and the GPO sent back a brochure with their publications for sale. And there it was. He ordered a copy and a few weeks alter it came in the mail. Here’s the funnier part, funnier that the government providing copies on the cheap (or maybe free I forget on that point) of such a notorious document the document had been placed on the publication list because it was part of the record for the raucous House Un-American Activities Committee meeting in San Francisco in 1960 when they were practically run out of town by protestors as the Cold War began to thaw in certain places. Of course that was a recollection later when we were deep into the Summer of Love out in that very town.

Yeah, Scribe was a piece of work and he would eventually drag some of along with him in his good days like the Summer of Love and later after Vietnam time running around with radical students in Cambridge when checking out Mark and Marxism was all the rage. Like I said old Marx has had his up and downs, has taken his beatings but some things he said were spot on. Worse, in a way, some of the stuff reads like it could have been written today. How about that.             

"America, Where Are You Now...."- Steppenwolf’s The Monster-Take Three

"America, Where Are You Now...."- Steppenwolf’s The Monster-Take Three

A YouTube Film Clip Of Steppenwolf Performing Monster. Ah, 

Those Were The Days

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Steppenwolf: 16 Greatest Hits, Steppenwolf, Digital Sound, 1990

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

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 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 from Chicago with mad monks Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf jumping (country too from whence they all came in the great World War II to the factories migration leaving the old-timers like Son House, Skip James,John Hurt back in the woods  to carry on that tradition, come to think of it) and the various strands of folk music from hard rain falling, times are changing, blowing in the wind protest fuss to rediscovery of old time traditional music from the mountains (think the original Carters) to the hollows with Hobart Smith and Buell Kazee.    

Some bands played, consciously played, to the “drop out” notion popular at the times. “Drop out” of rat-race bourgeois society and it money imperative, its “white picket fence with little white house attached” visions. That 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 (and reflecting an earlier turned upside down world around the 17^th century English revolution. Drop out and create a niche somewhere (a commune maybe out away from the rat-race places which did spring up in the likes of Taos, Oregon, and the hills of old Vermont which if you care to see what happened to that old vision once the seekers got older you can go to and witness first hand these days but take your heart medicine along cause it ain’t pretty), 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. 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, mimicking recently learned Native American traditions was the revolution. 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 1968, with May 1968, with Chicago 1968, with the “days of rage,” with Altamont and with a hundred other lesser downers I subscribed to (hence the expression “generation of ’68” to signify that portion of youth always a minority that took the plunge to the “newer world.” That before those events and a draft notice made me get “religion” on the need for “in-their-face” political struggle. And every other young man and not a few young women have to decide to cooperate or seek that second road.       

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). [CL1] 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 which hadn’t, hasn’t change much whatever the new vision and dreams).  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 seek to finish up the endless 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" (the chorus which I have posted above and lyrics below) 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.

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 now

We can't fight alone against the monster

© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

--Used with permission--

Born To Be Wild

Words and music by Mars Bonfire

Get your motor runnin'

Head out on the highway

Lookin' for adventure

And whatever comes our way

Yeah Darlin' go make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning

Heavy metal thunder

Racin' with the wind

And the feelin' that I'm under

Yeah Darlin' go make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

Like a true nature's child

We were born, born to be wild

We can climb so high

I never wanna die

Born to be wild

Born to be wild

© MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

--Used with permission--

THE PUSHER

From the 1968 release "Steppenwolf"

Words and music by Hoyt Axton

You know I've smoked a lot of grass

O' Lord, I've popped a lot of pills

But I never touched nothin'

That my spirit could kill

You know, I've seen a lot of people walkin' 'round

With tombstones in their eyes

But the pusher don't care

Ah, if you live or if you die

God damn, The Pusher

God damn, I say The Pusher

I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man

You know the dealer, the dealer is a man

With the love grass in his hand

Oh but the pusher is a monster

Good God, he's not a natural man

The dealer for a nickel

Lord, will sell you lots of sweet dreams

Ah, but the pusher ruin your body

Lord, he'll leave your, he'll leave your mind to scream

God damn, The Pusher

God damn, God damn the Pusher

I said God damn, God, God damn The Pusher man

Well, now if I were the president of this land

You know, I'd declare total war on The Pusher man

I'd cut him if he stands, and I'd shoot him if he'd run

Yes I'd kill him with my Bible and my razor and my gun

God damn The Pusher

Gad damn The Pusher

I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man\

© Irving Music Inc. (BMI)

--Used with permission--

---

Happy Birthday Mississippi John Hurt-*Sweet and Low- The Blues of Skip James-Part Three

Happy Birthday Mississippi John Hurt-*Sweet and Low- The Blues of Skip James-Part Three

Heroes Of The Blues: The Very Best Of Skip James, Skip James, Shout Factory, 2003

The contents of this CD only confirm Skip's power. His great falsetto voice accompanied by guitar or piano (as a nice change up) hold forth here. Interestingly, the CD features newer arrangements of several songs from James' 1931 Paramount recording, like the well-known title track "61 Highway” (this is the most fervent rendition of several that I have heard on various CD compilations. By the way Mississippi Fred McDowell does a tanked up version of this one, as well). There are also some moodier songs for piano here like the "22-20 Blues" and "Illinois Blues”. Also featured here is the classic “I’m So Glad” that Cream turned into a rock classic. The killer on this one though is the haunting “Cherry Ball Blues”. Here is the “skinny” though on James. Like a number of blues artists you have to be in the mood and be patience. Then you don’t want to turn the damn thing off. That is the case here.

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Folk Music For Aging Children- The Music Of Judy Collins And Friends CD Review Wildflower Festival, Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Arlo Guthrie, Wildflower Records, 2003 Okay, just when you thought there could not possibly be any more country folk, urban folk, suburban folk, folk rock, rock folk, semi-folk, or quasi-folk music from the folk revival of the early 1960 to review here I am again reviewing some of the stars of that time-in their dotage. Well, maybe not dotage, but we are all, including Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie, getting a little long in the tooth, and no one can dispute that hard fact. The real question is whether the artists in this compilation still have it, at least for those of us in that dwindling, graying, arthritic, prescription-needing folk audience that fills the small church basement “coffee houses” on this planet. And they do. Still have it, I mean. That said, this little Wildflower Festival setting in 2003 provided Judy and her guests with a chance to show their stuff, new and old. Now, for those who have heard Judy Collins sing back in the day the question is why she did not challenge Joan Baez for the “queen” of folk title. She had the voice, the style, and the looks (ya, that WAS important, even then) to do so. I have been running a “Not Joan Baez” series and will deal with that question there at some other time but her work here is pretty good, especially her well-known cover of Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon”. Eric Andersen, who I have already looked at in a “Not Bob Dylan” series hold forth on his “Blue River”. Tom Rush, ditto, on “The Remember Song”. Finally, Arlo, whom I have covered in relation to his father’s, Woody Guthrie, music “steals” the show here with his storytelling, notably the kids’ story, “Mooses Came Walking”. Someday Soon Ian Tyson There's a young man that I know whose age is twenty-one Comes from down in southern Colorado Just out of the service, he's lookin' for his fun Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon My parents can not stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo My father says that he will leave me cryin' I would follow him right down the roughest road I know Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon But when he comes to call, my pa ain't got a good word to say Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days So blow, you old Blue Northern, blow my love to me He's ridin' in tonight from California He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon When he comes to call, my pa ain't got a word to say Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days So blow, you old blue northern, blow my love to me He's ridin' in tonight from California He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon Someday soon, goin' with him © 1991

Happy Birthday Eric Andersen -Folk Music For Aging Children- The Music Of Judy Collins And Friends

CD Review

Wildflower Festival, Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Arlo Guthrie, Wildflower Records, 2003

Okay, just when you thought there could not possibly be any more country folk, urban folk, suburban folk, folk rock, rock folk, semi-folk, or quasi-folk music from the folk revival of the early 1960 to review here I am again reviewing some of the stars of that time-in their dotage. Well, maybe not dotage, but we are all, including Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie, getting a little long in the tooth, and no one can dispute that hard fact. The real question is whether the artists in this compilation still have it, at least for those of us in that dwindling, graying, arthritic, prescription-needing folk audience that fills the small church basement “coffee houses” on this planet. And they do. Still have it, I mean.

That said, this little Wildflower Festival setting in 2003 provided Judy and her guests with a chance to show their stuff, new and old. Now, for those who have heard Judy Collins sing back in the day the question is why she did not challenge Joan Baez for the “queen” of folk title. She had the voice, the style, and the looks (ya, that WAS important, even then) to do so. I have been running a “Not Joan Baez” series and will deal with that question there at some other time but her work here is pretty good, especially her well-known cover of Ian Tyson’s “Someday Soon”. Eric Andersen, who I have already looked at in a “Not Bob Dylan” series hold forth on his “Blue River”. Tom Rush, ditto, on “The Remember Song”. Finally, Arlo, whom I have covered in relation to his father’s, Woody Guthrie, music “steals” the show here with his storytelling, notably the kids’ story, “Mooses Came Walking”.

Someday Soon
Ian Tyson

There's a young man that I know whose age is twenty-one

Comes from down in southern Colorado

Just out of the service, he's lookin' for his fun

Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon

My parents can not stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo

My father says that he will leave me cryin'

I would follow him right down the roughest road I know

Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon

But when he comes to call, my pa ain't got a good word to say

Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days

So blow, you old Blue Northern, blow my love to me

He's ridin' in tonight from California

He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me

Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon

When he comes to call, my pa ain't got a word to say

Guess it's 'cause he's just as wild in his younger days

So blow, you old blue northern, blow my love to me

He's ridin' in tonight from California

He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me

Someday soon, goin' with him someday soon

Someday soon, goin' with him

© 1991

Present At The Creation-When Luke, Leia And Han Could Say To Be Young Was Very Heaven-George Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977)-A Film Review

Present At The Creation-When Luke, Leia And Han Could Say To Be Young Was Very Heaven-George Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne (somehow the editorial assistant, obviously a stringer, in a few of my previous recent reviews didn’t believe in spell-check or in inquiring to me personally how to spell my name and did so with the incorrect “LeMoyne” which drew a tell-tale red line under the incorrect spelling and should have been picked up.)     

Star Wars, starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher (Eddie Fisher, he of the flyaway to Elizabeth Taylor reputation and jilted former girl next door Debbie Reynold’s daughter), Harrison Ford (he of the sullen Valley boy post-World War II hot rod “chicken run’ at midnight set in future star-studded American Graffiti ), and a cast of odd-ball characters from wizard Alex Guinness to Darth Vader aka James Earl Jones he of the authoritative-or else-voice and all the refuge of the galaxy wars and whatever techno-props were available at the time of film shooting) directed by George Lucas, 1977      

********

Seth Garth of this publication (and formerly for a long time of the prestigious American Film Gazette which impressed me no end since I had been spoon-fed on that publication, on-line of course from my young girlhood) is a beautiful man. Is a guy who has helped me out ever so much in trying to establish myself as a writer, a journalist really in this my first real job since I got out of journalism graduate school at NYU (we won’t count the couple of years spent as a waitress, ah, waitperson at Zack’s in the Village, a barista at you know where and as a cashier at Whole Foods although maybe eventually once I get established and get my own by-line I can use the material I gathered at those locales to fill out a few columns when I need something in a hurry like every writer since Homer’s time has done when deadline approaches).

Let’s settle this right away before the Internet rumor mills churn their grist and spew out the usual scandalous misinformation, no way, since I already have a companion whom I met as a barista at you know where, are Seth, the older seasoned writer who has seen it all and I, who still has star-dust in my eyes, sleeping together. That little literary trope has been done to death both in real life with the likes of the late Norman Mailer and others of the male-heavy literary establishment of a generation ago, now too as it turns out with the rise of the #MeToo expose movement, and their “young female met at some publishing event” so-called acolytes or in fiction most recently as part of the novel Asymmetry reviewed in the New York Review of Books.  Christ Seth has daughters older than I am and moreover as much as he has helped me he is “damaged goods” in the romance department having like half the older guys around here been married at least three times and is adamantly no longer interested in the marriage ceremony. I am the “B” of LGBTQ” so marriage is a hope especially if to another woman not that we can do that. I am very interested in that prospect once I earn my keep in the literary world, or at least can write reviews for cold hard cash.         

Seth has helped me in ways that matter as a matter of being a mentor to me, nothing more. Teaching me the ropes in this dog eat dog business where truly you are only as good as your last piece hitting publication and then the wolves begin to howl, especially if you are any good. And especially by those will fall by the wayside and can’t write and will earn their cold hard cash keep trashing those of us who can, who want to, as “film historians,” culture critics, book review essayists from whatever rock they have make their short climb. Teaching me things that they have never taught in any journalism class because if they did then many more people would be perfectly content to end their days as baristas at you know where. The biggest thing Seth has taught me which came in handy recently when I had my first real set-back in the business was that you had better yell loudly, very loudly when some cowardly editor succumbs to office politics and takes a plum assignment away from you.

Along with that very sound advice Seth also said, hell, since I am only a stringer anyway and life is precarious down at the bottom of the publishing food chain that I should take the opportunity when it presents itself to publicly write about what is what inside the fish bowl. Basically to dare any editor or fellow writer to cut me off at the knees and not let it be published (and laughingly Seth said what the hell you are getting paid by the word so stretch things out to pay the rent anyway-another good piece of advice especially when you submit your piece just before the deadline and that empty space you were supposed to fill is empty and the first smells of panic take flight from the offices upstairs). Again it is good to know the animal you are dealing with, fangs or licks. Seth told me that Greg, the guy who hired me and the guy who has taken that plum assignment away from me was put in charge after a vote of no confidence in the last site manager and so is actually something of a usurper, a guy who got his job on the rebound. Moreover, Greg is responsible to an Editorial Board and no new guy wants to lock horns with that crowd so Seth said I should write whatever comes into my thoughts and dare Greg and/or the Ed Board to not publish the piece.   

The number one villain in this dog eat dog saga is one Sam Lowell (who as he told me to do in the interest of full disclosure also happens to be a friend of Seth from the old days when they were in high school and hung around the same forlorn corner in the small town where they both come from and which tells you how really cutthroat this business is despite high tone glossy presentations and nice manners at cocktail parties and awards galas). Yes, that Sam Lowell of the big film review by-line back in the day who won his spurs in the profession by doing an incredible job of analyzing the history of film noir. That work is still the benchmark by which anybody who has come after has to consult if they don’t want to be laughed out of the room. A powerful man, a fixture, a force of nature if he wants to be, even if he is well past his prime and when I met him seemed to be a little wizened and not the florid-faced big shot I had expected to meet. But more on that later. For now though what has me pissed off, what had Seth pissed off for his own reasons about “passing the torch” and of plain orneriness from their long-time sometimes prickly relationship, is that Sam took without a murmur from anybody but Seth my Hammer Film Production six-film series of psychological thrillers from the 1950s that Greg had given to me after I had done a good on a couple of small reviews (for little money as one might expect from a stringer). Sam’s reason, if he needed one, was that he had done a couple of years ago the eight- film Hammer Film Production of film noirs from the late 1940s and early 1950s that Columbia Pictures had outsourced to them as low-cost using low production values, and unknown or has-been actors to keep the expenditures down in a time when movie attendance was being eaten away by the advent of television.

Greg immediately called me in to give me the bad news. I sat there stunned, left, and ran into Seth at the water cooler and told him my story. He said march myself right back into Greg’s office and get something in return. That is when Greg offered me this complete (so-far) Star Wars series looking back at the epic from the fresh eyes of somebody who was not present at the creation but who, truth, loved the action-packed series. Not only that but I have first dibs on any future Marvel or DC Comic studio productions with the understanding that I would have a better grip on why millions of kids have their parents pony up for high-priced tickets and expensive sodas and inedible popcorn to see this stuff that the older writers who have been drafted, mostly kicking and screaming, to write about since I love those films as well.

My blood is up though, egged on a little by Seth who has his own axes to grind with Sam or maybe just for old times blood sport sake, and I am not finished with Mr. Sam Lowell the big-time by-line columnist. I might have been, I might have let it go given what Greg had given me to get me on my way to a coveted by-line but Sam made the fatal mistake of thinking I was some carpet to walk all over. I had started two of the reviews for that Hammer Production (that outfit if you have never heard of it is English by the way, or it was back in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s when beside noir and psychological thrillers they also did low-rent horror and monster movies) and had, my mistake, shown him those rough drafts. What he said about them, that snake in the grass, my expression, that wizened old thief bastard, Seth’s expression, was that they were good, that they should be published, and he would see Greg about doing so. That part I took with some kindness and was starting to have a different opinion of the guy, starting to see that this cutthroat business was real but only on the surface when Sam said he wanted me to then, under his by-line “ghost” a couple of rebuttal reviews essentially trashing what I had written and making me out to be some holy goof who should have stayed in the service industry, have stayed a barista at that place. That done, that holy goof stuff done, Sam had the bright idea that we would have “dueling” reviews with me playing the naïve dunce and him the thoughtful and erudite film critic. With me writing everything on both sides like some sleazy lawyer, some hired gun, writing whatever paper or cyberspace would take.

This is where Seth really did put me straight, really made me realize that if I was to make it in the profession I had better know what was what or else I would be continually hammered by guys like Sam Lowell[O1] . This is what Seth told me about Sam (aided by a little independent research and some serious conversations with Leslie Dumont, who when she was younger had been put under the same Sam hammer as a stringer until she finally left and got her big by-line at Women Today and by Sam’s long-time companion Laura Perkins who nevertheless knew the pitfalls and pranks of her man). Everybody knows that Sam Lowell re-wrote the book on the meaning of film noir. Made his name and rightly so telling that new wave of film makers of the 1960s who were interested in the genre going forward what made noir so compelling, even B-film material, from plot to shadowy photography to the sublime sound tracks. Even today if one is serious about film noir your first stop is Sam’s work. I have never heard anybody, even his most vociferous detractors like Cella Dunne say otherwise. What people don’t know although if they had thought about and had compared it to academia and other professions Sam like the professors, the one note book writers, the one genre artists had one big idea which he milked forever. Got that by-line and never looked back. But aside from the million all expenses paid lectures and conferences, the pithy little pieces for half-baked journals generated by aficionados, that expensive by-line Sam never really expanded his universe. Truth.

Seth thought maybe it was because Sam like him was from hunger and that once he made his mark he quit, he let the fate sisters ride him to wherever they wanted to take him. I have mentioned this before as has Seth but Sam was perfectly happy when he was short of an idea for a review, especially if it was a not a noir to take whatever the studio publicity department handed-out, cut off the top, type his name in and sent it along. Allan Jackson, when he was walking with the king here, unaided by any such hinderance as an Ed Board was perfectly happy to publish the piece no questions asked. Meanwhile Sam was on some beach, maybe with Seth, maybe with some young woman, some Seven Sisters young woman who were his preferred acolytes and grinders, snagged from one of those high-priced lectures drinking whiskey sours and cavorting the day and night away. The other thing that Sam would do and this is where Leslie Dumont came in with her insights was to have a stringer, her mostly, write the whole thing and sent it in under Sam’s name. Even tried, the old dog, the old “controversy” gag with Leslie which Sam had tried on me. Allan was more than happy to publish the pieces in double columns. Hopefully this will get some dewy eyes opened up and not throw writers off the trial but I thought you should know what I now know courtesy of Seth Garth, a beautiful man.             

       

Now to the task at hand. As I mentioned a minute ago in the “negotiations” between Greg and I we agreed that I would do a retrospective of the entire Star Wars series now in its eighth rendition (plus a couple of outliers in the bunch to introduce new elements, a black resistance fighter and a female wannabe Jedi for starters) from fresh eyes, from eyes that were not bedazzled by the first spectacle which animated my parents’ generation back in the 1970s when they needed to have something to take their minds off of what with the international gas crisis and endless ragtag inflation eating up their dollars like crazy. This “fresh eyes” approach is important since we have just witnessed in young Will Bradley’s review of the eight installment Star Wars: The Last Jedi what were jaded eyes since Will in his own words could give a fuck about the stupid series. This from a guy who slept through the one film he did see when his parents grabbed a video from their local store and threw it in their VCR.  Greg wanted a much better take, a rationale for why new generations have gravitated to the series over the past forty or so years, young, old and in between.

I am just the gal to do this job because I too saw my first Star War film via the old VCR although it was the very first one that I am reviewing here. My parents loved the movies, had met at some retrospective at the Tattler Theater in old-time Ann Arbor, at Michigan and while their professions never intertwined with their love of films there was a constant flow of films from the 1960s to 1990s running through the house in Cos Cob. From then on I was hooked on the series unlike timid and fearful Will. I might add, and here Seth has given me another good piece of advice kick your competitor when she or he is down and Will is very down in the eyes of our supreme leader Greg. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were reviewing Saturday morning kid shows before long after that stunt with the precious A-1 review material he was given to work with and blew. In case you have forgotten Will in any case was a guy who went mano a mano with sainted Seth over the question of the homosexuality of Sherlock Holmes and Doc Watson in their long film collaboration and got it wrong, totally wrong not knowing about the dilly boys that this pair hung around with on the wharves between cases. Will got caught with what I would call his pants down not knowing of the rampant homosexuality in the English public school (private schools here). Everybody, except beloved Seth who does have a heart after all he has gone through, had a great big laugh at that faux pas, even I chuckled when I heard what he had tried to do to defend himself after Seth lashed him to the mast.        

As the Star War series has progressed we have seen many more sophisticated technological gizmos per film but I am here to tell you that the basics were all set up in that first film from the grotesques of the galaxy who no self-respecting persons not bitten by the “politically correct” bug would let in the neighborhoods to the latest in space age travel. That is however not the most important part-not the Hollywood “hook” that Seth has told me that every film and every film review needs. Usually it is the time-honored boy meets girl or these days girl meets boy or whatever other combination, hopefully “B” meeting “B” but you don’t see much of that yet the screen can produce-including inter-species love if the 2018 Oscar for Best Film is any indication. Here though and it will drag out at least through this first trilogy, the part of the saga that is the fight against the dark side, the Darth Vader side is the whole question of good and evil and what to do about it. What do good guys and gals do about it when the baddies want the galaxy and they want it now.

With that as the backdrop we have our three main players here and in the trilogy. Future Jedi warrior prince angel avenger Luke Skywalker, played by young Mark Hamill, the fairy queen Princess Leia of the royal house of whatever since apparently even is advanced space technology and future times we are going to be bedeviled by goddamn monarchies and future romantic interest Han Solo, played by hard-working Harrison Ford of the jut-jaw who is the only one who broke out of the sci-fi paydays good as they were. (Han was in once everybody figured out you can’t have incest once it turns on a dime that Luke and Leia were brother and sister and, and the children of … well see the film, oops see the trilogy). They will be guided in their battles against the fallen satanic angel gone on a vengeance run one Black Knight breathing heavy Darth Vader and his boss some mad monk who as usual wants to rule the world and needs a good gunslinger to do his dirty word. The battle is joined, the endless battles and heavy casualties on the bad guys side. This is one point I will agree with Will Bradley on for such a massive force the bad guys seem to be very ill-trained not to be able to beat a few kids and assorted amateurs. More later since I have run out of billable words.