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
The New Breed Of Sci-Fi Adventure-“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (VII), starring Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, 2015
Science Fiction movies sure aren’t what they used to be. Although I was, am not a great fan of the genre and have taken this assignment to review one of the seemingly never-ending Star Wars sagas (number 7 if you can believe it) that ripple through the cinematic universe every few years to give flagging studio tickets sales a boost as our boss Greg Green said when he assigned this beast to “broaden my horizons” I sat through my fair share of them growing up. Growing up just outside of Albany, New York my older brother would in the interest making his “baby-sitting” of me woes lighter take us in his car to the Majestic Theater in downtown Albany on Saturday afternoon’s to the matinees.
Of course since the average film was much shorter then usually around an hour and one half there would be a double-feature, sometimes a horror movie and a sci fi or sometimes two sci fi’s for the afternoon. What has struck me as amazing according to my recollections (and some “cheap sheet” research via invaluable for movie summaries if not for everything Wikipedia) after viewing this chapter of Star Wars was how differently these films have tracked society in their respective times. Then, the late 1950s maybe early 1960s these sci fi films had “aliens” (not earthly aliens seeking shelter from earth’s storms in places like America to work and raise families without fear of death and disaster from the forces controlling their home societies) who were inevitably scary and ready to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting earth. Were in those deep freeze Cold War days foreboding when we were not quite sure we would make it from one day to the next if the “big one,” the nuclear bombs we rightly feared would blow us away. And the storylines and bad guy monsters and weird forces from outer space left no room for compromise-it was earthly civilization, us, such as it was or them.
Naturally the earthly civilization won out over the mutants and creeps who tried to do us in (read in newspeak the Soviets). Naturally as well in those days the leaders, usually one leader, who figured out how to tame the alien menace was an All-American, uh, guy who as Si Lannon loves to say went mano a mano with these unearthly forces. Saved civilization and grabbed the good-looking young woman in the fall-out (some things haven’t changed witness the younger versions of Hans Solo and Princess now General Leia and their courting ritual in the first three Star War sagas from about a million years ago it seems). Alternatively beat down the mad scientist who created some kid scary stuff, usually grossly radioactive and had to take the fall.
That was then though. Maybe it is the intervening years where the Soviet menace has turned to dust and those “alien” enemies, the “them” have gone from outer space to around the corner and the world having explored the skies and found nothing unfriendly or otherwise (the cynic would say thus far) that has changed things. Add in a little what I would call sarcastically “universal multi-culturalism” and you have a very different mix. Now those scary monsters who populate the Star Wars alternative planets are just regular guys and gals who hang around bars mixing in with humans and whatnot.
Gruesome monsters that still scare me who I wouldn’t want to run into in daylight much less a dark alley at night but who we can’t offend because they might be allies, and besides “body-shaming” is socially taboo these days. More hopefully real live earthling minorities as in this film actually do good in the struggle against what is now not just earthly evil but universal. But perhaps the biggest difference, surprise is that those delicate passive young women of the 1950s have been transformed into righteous warriors in their own right kicking ass and taking numbers just like the good guys of yore. Here the warrior Rey played by Daisy Ridley showing her metal to good effect and throwing down bad guys left and right.
All of those changes are basically pluses but that does not stop the story line from being the same old same old-here the latest incarnation of the bad guys, the First Order, looking for universal dominance against the gnat-like Resistance (a very appropriate term these days in America). Here the line-up is a young woman, a young black man, a gung-ho pilot, Hans Solo, General Leia against that mass of incompetent soldiers in that silly white armor aided by massive firepower which would make the Pentagon generals green with envy, led by General Huk, directed by ugly Supreme leader Snoke with the ringer being an imitation Darth Vader dressed in Johnny Cash black Kylo.
The ringer part-this Kylo aka Ben is none other than the progeny of Hans and Leia when they were doing their own version of mano a mano. Get this though Kylo aka Ben is so enamored of the dark side that he kills his Oedipal father Hans. Nothing but mourning all around. Except the Resistance is able to crush the First Order (for now) and that young woman, that Rey, gets to Luke Skywalker which is what this whole trip was all about. Stay tuned for the next one (2017 already filmed and shown) and the next one for 2019 just in time once again to boost flagging studio ticket sales. Nothing here made me want to grab onto the genre for dear life.
Click on the headline to link to Comrade Nikas' Facebook page for pictures of our revolutionary heroes Rosa and Karl.
Markin comment:
Those who honor Rosa Luxemburg-the Rose Of The Revolution-and Spartacist leader and anti-militarist Karl Liebnecht are kindred spirits. Forward to the socialist revolution.
Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King
Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-
“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by
Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard
copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line
edition.
[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in
the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing.
That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50th anniversary
of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary
writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been
around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017
in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I
was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought
on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole
operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors
have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in
general about what had happened and I will get to that in a minute before
dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.
What you need to know first, if you don’t
know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an
encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I
edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been
part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit
and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and, about the
subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to
school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning
I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin
material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called
nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not
go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a
younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book
character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair
is fair.
What I need to mention, alluded to above,
is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that
decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies
in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went
for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail
on noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to
frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have
evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.” Kick
when somebody is down their main interest in life.
I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in
Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when
old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided
alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the
wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City
(presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal
“hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting
work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives
and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with
alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name
Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I
had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had
been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor
for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their
newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I
have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for
bottles with deposits. Christ.
Needless to say, how does one actually
answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some
surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my
sack time with her and this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend
and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I
was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a
taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end
brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt
was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel
and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could
not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from
my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.
I will, must deal with two big lies which also
center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign
which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City. The
first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly
to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt
Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential
candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from
Utah (now successful ready to take office in January) to “get well.” The
premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy
while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon
fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father
who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the
peace in that extended family situation. The unbelievable part is that those
Mormon folk, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble
with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing
anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day
saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were
known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the
rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks,
indeed.
The biggest lie though is the one that had
me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat
Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so
by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag
queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate,
some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other that one of our old corner
boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the
rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who
seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really
know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between
his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to
make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy
fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco.
He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some
loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy
for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag
queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat
Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that
was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the
publication.
But enough of this tiresome business
because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac
who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in
1969
******
All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the
king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete
Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of
North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we
young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our
fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in
those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid
going “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables
and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the beat
musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off,
at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat
scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our
knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool
and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down
looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl
would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model”
beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom
stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs
standing in for all be-bop-dom.
So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up
if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed
by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used
then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world
Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin
here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe,
that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn
things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive.
Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a
different sort novel On The Road.
Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we
let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to
something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he
would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to
be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going
to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play
the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned
at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a
working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River.
The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much
homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic
neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and
want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even
Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we
were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of
took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who
was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at
Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both
wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad
daylight if you can believe that.
Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac
really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we
could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze
was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will
confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous
generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to
banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling
desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we
had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin
before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and
“find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring
out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.
That is when one night, this is when we
were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways
and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out
at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic
travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that
night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and
took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first
buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its
core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision
of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a
“newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I
recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us,
join him in the Summer of Love experience. Maybe the whole thing with Jack
Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary
Gazette when he was down in
Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the
“hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking
about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom,
of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies
looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts
but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us
those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan
Jackson
On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (1957)-Poet's Corner-Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish"
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th
Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for
something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that
had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or
some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a
name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet
Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a
junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in
flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on
every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first
used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane
journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will
crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis) Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line
backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told
me, maybe my older brother Alex they called “blowing to the China seas” out in
West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one
skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women,
life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate
repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get
caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home
parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell,
let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy
Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a
dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast
on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the
club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean
streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five
cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and
cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing
reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling
out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my
brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about
that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at
a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory
two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an
event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well
and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers,
connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to
trash those connection when they acolytes came calling looking for the “word.”
So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the
beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings
of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s
travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth
Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother
and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a
place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands). Literary
stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think
the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of
which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as
a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then
add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories
of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex
and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si,
Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine), Bart, and a few others still alive recently
had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love,
1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.
Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk
seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see
what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a
number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or
dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the
local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural
days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of
Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran
wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major
towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very
different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of
a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had
caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the
story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause
Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a
ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even
now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for
their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part).
Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to
spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant
dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high
through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a
while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and
other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that
was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not
always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first
back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into
the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more
years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end. With maybe this
difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what
is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except
commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes.
Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin
included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung
around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money
fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as
anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s
goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger”
takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not
the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close
thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But
back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now
too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners
anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor
corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe”
from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high
school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although
Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for
books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most
of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds
would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as
silk Frankie now also a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was
why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer
later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him).
Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide
in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social
pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That
sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten
billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him
about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy
life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae
for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get
out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to
folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still
doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny
Bob Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and
his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956
which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less
Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that
they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road.
They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about
some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a
mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my
brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown
up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he
had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some
grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the
base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring.
So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure
on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several
times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was
having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping
almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper
scroll in about three weeks. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the
Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug
to you.
Kaddish, Part I by Allen Ginsberg For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894-1956 Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after-- And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing how we suffer-- And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An- swers--and my own imagination of a withered leaf--at dawn-- Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apoca- lypse, the final moment--the flower burning in the Day--and what comes after, looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed-- like a poem in the dark--escaped back to Oblivion-- No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance, sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worship- ping each other, worshipping the God included in it all--longing or inevitability?--while it lasts, a Vision--anything more? It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder, Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shoul- dering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant--and the sky above--an old blue place. or down the Avenue to the south, to--as I walk toward the Lower East Side --where you walked 50 years ago, little girl--from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?--toward Newark-- toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards-- Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream--what is this life? Toward the Key in the window--and the great Key lays its head of light on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the sidewalk--in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward the Yiddish Theater--and the place of poverty you knew, and I know, but without caring now--Strange to have moved thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again, with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on the street, fire escapes old as you --Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me-- Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe--and I guess that dies with us--enough to cancel all that comes--What came is gone forever every time-- That's good! That leaves it open for no regret--no fear radiators, lacklove, torture even toothache in the end-- Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul--and the lamb, the soul, in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger--hair and teeth--and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin, braintricked Implacability. Ai! ai! we do worse! We are in a fix! And you're out, Death let you out, Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with God, done with the path thru it--Done with yourself at last--Pure --Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all--before the world-- There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you've gone, it's good. No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more fear of Louis, and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts, loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands-- No more of sister Elanor,--she gone before you--we kept it secret you killed her--or she killed herself to bear with you--an arthritic heart --But Death's killed you both--No matter-- Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and weeks--forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address human- ity, Chaplin dance in youth, or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar --by standing room with Elanor & Max--watching also the Capital ists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds, with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920 all girls grown old, or dead now, and that long hair in the grave--lucky to have husbands later-- You made it--I came too--Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer--or kill --later perhaps--soon he will think--) And it's the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now --tho not you I didn't foresee what you felt--what more hideous gape of bad mouth came first--to you--and were you prepared? To go where? In that Dark--that--in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at last, with you? Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon--Deaths- head with Halo? can you believe it? Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence, than none ever was? Nothing beyond what we have--what you had--that so pitiful--yet Tri- umph, to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower--fed to the ground--but made, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe, shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth wrapped, sore--freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless. No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the knife--lost Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy--even in the Spring--strange ghost thought some--Death--Sharp icicle in his hand--crowned with old roses--a dog for his eyes--cock of a sweatshop--heart of electric irons. All the accumulations of life, that wear us out--clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoes, breasts--begotten sons--your Communism--'Paranoia' into hospitals. You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of stroke. Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in death. Is Elanor happy? Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over midnight Accountings, not sure. His life passes--as he sees--and what does he doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Im- mortality, Naomi? I'll see him soon. Now I've got to cut through to talk to you as I didn't when you had a mouth. Forever. And we're bound for that, Forever like Emily Dickinson's horses --headed to the End. They know the way--These Steeds--run faster than we think--it's our own life they cross--and take with them. Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, mar- ried dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder. In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept. Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity-- Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing--to praise Thee--But Death This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Won- derer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping --page beyond Psalm--Last change of mine and Naomi--to God's perfect Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms! II Over and over--refrain--of the Hospitals--still haven't written your history--leave it abstract--a few images run thru the mind--like the saxophone chorus of houses and years-- remembrance of electrical shocks. By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your nervousness--you were fat--your next move-- By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you-- once and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my opinion of the cosmos, I was lost-- By my later burden--vow to illuminate mankind--this is release of particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)-- But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and spied a mystical assassin from Newark, So phoned the Doctor--'OK go way for a rest'--so I put on my coat and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed, unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered-- and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma-- And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on--to New York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--
Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.
Markin comment:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
******* Antonio Gramsci 1916
These are the days of subscription campaigns. The editors and administrators of bourgeois newspapers tidy up their display windows, paint some varnish on their shop signs and appeal for the attention of the passer-by (that is, the readers) to their wares. Their wares are newspapers of four or six pages that go out every day or evening in order to inject in the mind of the reader ways of feeling and judging the facts of current politics appropriate for the producers and sellers of the press.
We would like to discuss, with the workers especially, the importance and seriousness of this apparently innocent act, which consists in choosing the newspaper you subscribe to. It is a choice full of snares and dangers which must be made consciously, applying criteria and after mature reflection.
Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation.
But the beautiful – that is the ugly – thing is this: that instead of asking for money from the bourgeois class to support it in its pitiless work in its favor, the bourgeois newspapers manage to be paid by...the same laboring classes that they always combat. And the laboring class pays; punctually, generously.
Hundreds of thousands of workers regularly and daily give their pennies to the bourgeois newspapers, thus assisting in creating their power. Why? If you were to ask this of the first worker you were to see on the tram or the street with a bourgeois paper spread before him you would hear: “Because I need to hear about what happening.” And it would never enter his head that the news and the ingredients with which it is cooked are exposed with an art that guides his ideas and influences his spirit in a given direction. And yet he knows that this newspaper is opportunist, and that one is for the rich, that the third, the fourth, the fifth is tied to political groups with interests diametrically opposed to his.
And so every day this same worker is able to personally see that the bourgeois newspapers tell even the simplest of facts in a way that favors the bourgeois class and damns the working class and its politics. Has a strike broken out? The workers are always wrong as far as the bourgeois newspapers are concerned. Is there a demonstration? The demonstrators are always wrong, solely because they are workers they are always hotheads, rioters, hoodlums. The government passes a law? It’s always good, useful and just, even if it’s...not. And if there’s an electoral, political or administrative struggle? The best programs and candidates are always those of the bourgeois parties.
And we’re aren’t even talking about all the facts that the bourgeois newspapers either keep quiet about, or travesty, or falsify in order to mislead, delude or maintain in ignorance the laboring public. Despite this, the culpable acquiescence of the worker to the bourgeois newspapers is limitless. We have to react against this and recall the worker to the correct evaluation of reality. We have to say and repeat that the pennies tossed there distractedly into the hands of the newsboy are projectiles granted to a bourgeois newspaper, which will hurl it, at the opportune moment, against the working masses.
If the workers were to be persuaded of this most elementary of truths they would learn to boycott the bourgeois press with the same unity and discipline that the bourgeoisie boycott the newspapers of the workers, that is, the Socialist press. Don’t give financial assistance to the bourgeois press, which is your adversary. This is what should be our battle cry in this moment that is characterized by the subscription campaigns of all the bourgeois newspapers. Boycott them, boycott them, boycott them!
Year 3-The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Second Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
By Frank Jackman
Over the first year of the Trump regime as this massive control freak regime has plundered right after right, made old Hobbes’ “life is short, brutish and nasty” idea seem all too true for a vast swath of people residing in America (and not just America either) I have startled many of my friends, radical and liberal alike. Reason? For almost all of my long adult life I have been as likely to call, one way or another, for the overthrow of the government as not. This Republic if you like for a much more equitable society than provided under it aegis. This year I have been as they say in media-speak “walking that notion back a bit.” Obviously even if you only get your news from social media or twitter feeds there have been gigantic attempts by Trump, his cronies and his allies in Congress to radically limit and cut back many of the things we have come to see as our rights in ordinary course of the business of daily life. This year I have expressed deep concerns about the fate of the Republic and what those in charge these days are hell-bend of trying to put over our eyes.
Hey, I like the idea, an idea that was not really challenged even by the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes in their respective times that I did not have to watch my back every time I made a political move. Now maybe just every move. This assault, this conscious assault on the lives and prospects of immigrants, DACAs, TPSers. Trans-genders, blacks, anti-fascists, Medicaid recipients, the poor, the outspoken media, uppity liberals, rash leftist radicals and many others has me wondering what protections we can count on, use to try to protect ourselves from the onslaught.
I, unlike some others, have not Cassandra-cried about the incipient fascist regime in Washington. If we were at that jackboot stage I would not be writing, and the reader would not be reading, this screed. Make no mistake about that. However there is no longer a question in my mind that the “cold” civil war that has been brewing beneath the surface of American society for the past decade or more has been ratchetted up many notches. Aside from preparing politically for that clash we should also be aware, much more aware than in the past, about our rights as we are confronted more and more by a hostile government, its hangers-on and the agents who carry out its mandates.
I have been brushing up on my own rights and had come across a small pamphlet put out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a good source for such information in these times. I have placed that information below.
As the ACLU disclaimer states this information is basic, should be checked periodically for updating especially the way the federal courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court have staked the deck against us of late. In any case these days if you are in legal difficulties you best have a good lawyer. The other side, the government has infinite resources, so you better get your best legal help available even if it cost some serious dough which tends to be the case these days with the way the judicial system works.
Most importantly when confronted by any governmental agents from the locals to the F.B.I. be cool, be very cool.
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
******* Antonio Gramsci 1920
Split or Disorder?
Source: L’Ordine Nuovo, December 11-18, 1920;
Translated: by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2008.
The Unitary Social-Communists don’t want a split in the party because they don’t want to ruin the Italian proletarian revolution. We recognize that the Unitary Social Communists represent and embody all the most “glorious” traditions of the great and glorious Italian Socialist Party (which will turn into the Unitary Social-Communist Party): glorious ignorance, glorious and broadminded absence of any scruple in polemic and of any sense of responsibility in national politics; glorious low demagogy, glorious vanity, greatly glorious charlatanry. This is the corpus of glorious and so Italian traditions that are embodied and represented by the Unitary Social Communists.
The Congress of the Communist International has posed the problem to the Italian Socialist Party of organizing itself on the basis of the acceptance of the deliberations approved by its assembly. It is a matter of breaking with the reformists, of breaking, that is, with a small part of its own body, with a part that has no vital function in the organism, that is distant from the proletarian masses, that can say it represents the masses only when they have been demoralized by the errors, the uncertainty, the absenteeism of the revolutionary leaders.
The Unitary Social-Communists haven’t wanted to accept the deliberations of the II Congress so as not to split the reformists from the party, and they affirm that they don’t want to split the reformists from the party so as not to split the masses. They have sunk the masses, both in the party and in the factories, into the darkest chaos; they have put in doubt the correctness of the International Congress, they have repudiated the party’s adherence to the congress (Serrati has returned to Italy from Moscow the same way that Orlando one day returned from Versailles, to protest, to split up the responsibility, to save the Italians’ honor and glory); they have discredited (or sought to discredit) the highest authority of the working class International, have spread, in an ambience as propitious for it as ours, a putrid tide of rumor and insinuations; of cowardice, of skepticism.
And what have they obtained? They have split the party in three, four, five tendencies; they have, in the big cities, split the working masses, which were united against reformism and the reformists; they have spread far afield the seed of disorder and decomposition in the ranks of the party.
What then is Unitarism? What occult evil is hidden by this word, which causes greater and more widespread discord and splits, while affirming that it wants to avoid a limited and precise split? That which is had to occur. If Unitarism provoked the current disorder the truth is to be found in the fact that disorder already existed; Unitarism has no other fault than to have violently opened the dams to a cloacal mass. The truth is that the Socialist Party wasn’t an “urbe,” it was an “orda.” It wasn’t an organism it was an agglomeration of individuals who had the amount of class-consciousness necessary for organizing itself in a professional union, but didn’t have the capacity and the political preparation necessary to organize itself into a revolutionary party such as is demanded in the current historical period.
Italian vanity always led us to see that we had a unique Socialist Party, that couldn’t and wouldn’t suffer the same crises as the other Socialist Parties. What has happened is that in Italy the crisis was artificially delayed and that it broke out at precisely the moment when it would have been better to avoid it, and it broke out in a way all the more violent and devastatingly by the will and the stubbornness of those who always denied it and who today deny it still (we are Unitarists! Unitarist damn it!)
It would be ridiculous to whimper over what has occurred and what is irremediable. Communists must reason coldly and collectedly: if everything is in a state of disorder we have to remake the party. Starting today it is necessary to consider and to love the Communist fraction as a true and actual party, as the solid framework of the Italian Communist Party, which is acquiring proselytes, solidly organizes them, educates, forms active cells of the new organization that is developing and will develop until it becomes the entire working class, until it becomes the soul and the will of all the working people.
The crisis we are today undergoing is perhaps the greatest revolutionary crisis of the Italian people. To understand this truth the comrades should put forth this hypothesis: what would have happened if the Socialist Party had suffered this crisis in the middle of the revolution, having all the responsibility for a state? What would have happened if the government of a revolutionary state had found itself having in hand men who fought for their tendencies and who in the passion of this struggle placed in doubt the most sacred patrimony of a worker: faith in the International and in the capacities and loyalty of the men who occupied its highest offices? What would have happened is what happened in Hungary: the abandonment by the masses, the relaxing of revolutionary energy, the rapid victory of the counter-revolution.
The Unitarists charlatan mania has today only caused disorder in a party. Tomorrow they would have caused the fall of the revolution. For this reason they have damaged the working class and reinforced reaction. The evil is not decisive; men of good will yet have a boundless field to harvest and render fruitful.
Traipsing Through The
Ghost Of Tin Pan Alley Looking For The Muse Of Music-Looking For A Melody
Too-With Drew Barrymore And Hugh Grant’s “Music And Lyrics” (2007)-A Film Review
And More
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Music and Lyrics,
starring Drew Barrymore, Hugh Grant, 2007
Very seldom has a movie
theme and moment in my life come together but that is the case with the theme
of the film under review Music and Lyrics.
In the film Alex, who I give more detail on in a moment, played by boyish Hugh
Grant, is struggling to keep his head above water in the music business and
needs to find a lyricist badly and Sophie, ditto on the details, is just
struggling to be a writer but who is a natural born lyricist who is not looking
at the start to do lyrics.
How does that dilemma
apply to me. Well let me tell you in a few thousand words, just kidding. As the
reader may know and if not, I will mention that I have relatively recently
retired from the day to day grind of writing a by-line for Women Today a publication I was associated with for some thirty
plus years. I am sure that the average reader does not know that I started out
as a free-lance stringer at this publication as did many others. After a couple
of years though my fellow writer and then companion (and we are friendly again
now too and let’s leave it at that) advised me that I needed to move on, get myself
a by-line at a publication which would value my skills more than as a long-term
free-lancer here. Good advice. When a change of leadership came through a
couple of years ago and to keep my hand in the business the current site manager
Greg Green on Josh’s recommendation hired me to do a general assignment
by-line. Meaning I could write on any subject that might interest me.
That information gives
you an idea about my career but does not give an understanding on what my
youthful dreams had been. That is where the theme of this movie comes in and
why I strongly related to it beyond the charming acting of the two principals.
I grew up in New Jersey close to New York City, close enough to imbibe in the folk
music revival on the weekends that swept the bohemian clots and campuses around
the country in the early 1960s. I had a good voice and a fair knowledge of that
folk part of the American Songbook. Moreover I could write songs, lyrics anyway
and had something of an amateur’s success in the coffeehouses around the
Village on “open mic” nights and when I went to college up in Saratoga Springs
I grabbed some gigs at the famous and still going Caffe Lena’s. Here’s the rub
though I like many other “folkies” had to make some kind of decision when that folk
minute faded, or at least became something for aficionados meaning only a few could
make a living out of their art. My big problem then, and now, which is the
opposition problem Alex had was that I never was good at putting a fine finish
on my lyrics, needed a never found melody maker to go up the next step.
I always, as Josh could
testify back when we were an item, kept that musical interest up, kept writing lyrics
even while working as a stringer and with my by-line when I had spare time. I
was always dissatisfied with the melodies, with meshing the two together as
Josh could tell you then, and now too that I have time to work some on those lyrics
that had piled up in drawers. I need a melody maker, a person who could hone my
lyrics into something good. Josh, did I say we are now friends again and let’s
leave it at that, offered to help me. Problem, big problem is that Josh doesn’t
have a musical bone in his body. No, that is not true, he knows more of the
American Songbook than I do, has written more about music than any other subject
in his own long career as a free-lancer and then here. But that take is more
about the place of different kinds of music in the American experience or about
the stuff that he and his corner boys up in Olde Saco, Maine listened to growing
up, stuff like that. What I need is a melody maker, end of story.
Well not quite end of story
since I have been very frustrated not being able to find somebody to work with,
someone like in the old days of the mythical Tin Pan Alley when one person
wrote lyrics and the other did the melody, common practice and for the times a good
one before the superstar kids who could write and make music all in one fell
swoop, in one person like say Bob Dylan, guys like that came on the scene. I
brought the issue of my frustrations to my chiropractor who has helped me with
stress management and other troubles who recommended this film which I was
totally unaware of. So, I, well, Josh and I watched, and while it didn’t solve my
own musical problems it was as Josh said, “just what the doctor ordered.”
Of course from minute
one when Sophie comes to water “has been” rock star Alex’s plants as a substitute
for a friend you know that this is going to be the inevitable “boy meets girl”
or vici versa story that has saved many a lame Hollywood plot (this one in the “so-so”
category saved by the main characters’ performances more than anything else). And
they will get under the inevitable silky sheets. With a twist-“has been” Alex is looking via
the next generation superstar Cora (although how and why was beyond me except I
plead guilty to not understanding what thirteen-year olds, my grandkids, listen
to currently) to “get well” to make something of a comeback, since this Cora is
the conduit to that return. Problem, big problem again, Alex hasn’t written anything
but trash for a long time, since he was king of the hill in the famous 1980s rock
group Pops-you may remember them if you are from Generation X. He needs, maybe
not as desperately as I need a melody maker, a lyricist.
Turns out that Sophie is
not just a spaceshot plant-tender but a spaceshot writer with a few credentials
who beyond that seems to have a grasp for writing appropriately endearing lyrics.
Naturally there have to
be some ups and downs like Alex even getting spaceshot serious writer Sophie to
write bubble gum lyrics for this teen idol Cora. They do, do a good job too as
the romantic attraction builds. Then it all comes crashing down-almost. Seems
Cora has a very different take on how to present this well-crafted song to her
audience. Alex desperate to move back up the music food chain (Seth Garth’s forever
term) is willing to let Cora do whatever butchery she wants to the song as long
he gets back into the limelight or at least moves up from playing for his once youthful
now aging audiences at state fairs and conventions. Split issue. Well almost
since they are smitten, and all is well once Alex realizes he can’t sellout and
keep his dear Sophie. And they compose and write happily ever after. Well I
have had my say-except if any melody maker is out there you know where to find
me.
[I was not sure where to
put this but Josh and I had a conversation recently, really going back to the
1970s and just revisited by this film about “has-beens” like Alex, like me at a
more amateur level and what you do when the flame burns out, when the music that
made you goes out of fashion and you wind up playing conventions and coffeehouses.
I decided, a right decision to move on to a professional career. Alex decided to
stick it out no matter how far down in the mud he went. Josh reminded of a series
he did covering two folk icons-Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the media-anointed king
and queen of the folk minute. His take was what happened to those who had maybe
not as much fame as that pair but who were famous for the moment but who
decided to move on when it looked like they were not going to be able to make a
career out of their youthful dreams. Or did not want to trek the awful miles in
some rundown car staying on the road at some broken down motel in order to play
to twenty people in Kingstown, Pennsylvania or someplace like that. Josh is
thinking of asking Greg to okay an encore performance of that series in light of
this film-L.D.]
