Let's Have A Party- The Year 1957

Let's Have A Party- The Year 1957

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin: 

 

With an introduction by Sam Lowell

 

I first met Josh Breslin several months after my old corner boy high school friend, the late Peter Paul Markin, brought him around our hang-out, Jack Slack’s bowling alley, in the winter after the summer of love, 1967 (or is it Summer of Love, 1967 I have seen it both ways) out in San Francisco when Josh had gone up on to Russian Hill searching for dope, marijuana at the time the drug of choice among the newly liberated from uptight-ness about the evils of such pleasures, and ran into Markin asking him if he had a joint. Markin, freshly dropped out of college (Boston University) in order to “find himself” had been travelling on one of the ubiquitous psychedelically-painted converted yellow brick road school buses with Captain Crunch (road moniker which we would all take once we hit the road as some form of liberation from tired out old parent-imposed names, the variety and reasons for which could fill an entire book on the “hippie” genealogy of the time) for a few months and had been staying in the park on the hill waiting, waiting for anything at all to happen told Josh “here light this one up, but ‘don’t bogart that joint’ when you are done because we save every twig to build up enough for the pipe.” And with that a 1960s-type friendship started, one that would have them travelling together over the next several years (minus Markin’s two years in the Army in Vietnam but that is a story for another time) until Josh lost touch with him in late 1974 him shortly before he took that last fatal trip to Mexico where he was murdered by parties unknown after a busted drug deal and is now resting in an unmarked grave in potter’s field in Sonora and moaned over to this day by his old friends, including Josh and me.

 

Markin often said, and it proved to be true, that despite a couple of years difference in age and despite the fact that Josh had grown up in Olde Saco in Maine, an old-time textile mill town, his life story, the things that drove him in his younger days were remarkably similar to ours down in North Adamsville, an old industrial town about twenty miles south of Boston. That was why they got along on the road out West and why we who took to the road with Markin later once we got the bug to move along got along with Josh as well. Josh is today an honorary North Adamsville corner boy when we, the remnants still living anyway, get together to speak of those times. (And always wind up with some mention of some madcap, maniacal thing Markin did which only gets us mistier about the bastard these days.)

 

Recently a bunch of us, Frankie Riley, the old corner boy leader now a big-time lawyer in Boston (“of counsel” these days whatever that means other than big dough for saying even word one on the lawyer-o-meter to a client), Jimmy Jenkins, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Lefty Malone, Josh and me got together at Jack’s Grille in Cambridge to have a few drinks and swap a few lies. Bart who still lives in growing up town North Adamsville mentioned that while looking up in his attic for something (something old one presumes since that is what attics act as the catch basins for) he spotted his old dusty copy of our yearbook, the Magnet. Naturally that triggered many stories about what did or did happen not back in the day Josh, who is a writer of sorts, a music reviewer mostly these days from what he says, decided after viewing the contents of that fabled item with a little prompting, a little “inside dope” from us, and the memory of what the late Markin told him about the fate of his yearbook to write up something for us to chuckle over. Decided too to tempt the fates by putting the narration in Markin’s “voice.” This one is about a favorite topic of Markin’s, stuff that he would regale us with on misty girl-less, dough-less, car-less corner boy Friday and Saturday night, music, musical trends, and the “deep” meaning of any lyrics that popped into his unwieldy head once he heard something on the radio or fresh from the jukebox at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where were hung out on those miserable nights (and later, after the pizza parlor changed hands and the new “family-friendly” owners did not want unseemly corner boys hanging their feet off their walls then to Jack Slack’s  bowling alleys where Jack’s son was a classmate of ours). I hope Josh did okay otherwise, moaning over our brother or not, Markin is liable to come after us from that forlorn unmarked grave and give us hell for touching a single word of the eight billion facts he had in his fallen head. 

 

Here is what he had to say which is pretty insightful for a “foreigner”:         


Let's Have A Party- The Year 1957

 

At one time I spilled much ink memory covering, extensively covering, many records compilations from a Rock ‘N’ Rock Era series [that would be, ouch, a classic age of rock and roll series Markin would be talking about now, damn-JB]. A highlight of that series, and the one thing that clearly peaked my interest beyond the songs, or some of the songs, the ones that were able to defy age, and are lyric remembrance etched in my brain, had been the cover artwork that had evoked, and evoked strongly, the themes that dominated our lives, our hubristic teenage lives, in the golden age of rock, say from about the mid-1950s to about the mid-1960s as we watched it unfold (after that things went all over the place, the music and the times both). Things like last dance school dances (and dreams of that she I had been getting sore eyes over all night taking me up on my request for that key dance to make the night worthwhile and dreads of not getting that she for that last one, but in any case god it had better be a slow one in order to make my pitch), lovers’ lanes (down by the seaside sifting sand, against the cold ocean night, against the Seal Rock night, in the back seat of Jimmy’s car, and, well let’s leave it at that, okay since Jimmy Jenkins  might sue me for false advertising, although with fat chance of winning given what I have on that guy and the low-rent girls he hungered after now that he just married Lorraine Parsons, she of the Sunday church novena book and rosary beads crowd, and they “starting a family” as the old saying goes),  drive-in movies (alternative spot for that “and let’s leave it at that” mentioned above), drive-in restaurants (a night cap of burgers and fries after that “and, let’s leave it at that ” hopefully) , summer beach life (watching, intensely watching,  those long-legged college girls home for the summer and restless, freshman year behind them restless, after having dusted the dust from the old town and gotten a little wild at those Frosh mixers everybody who was going to college had heard about and paid serious attention to as a “babe’ magnet trying to look sophisticated but we a few years younger and looking to catch a sly glance just watching high school odd-ball watching between the two yacht clubs where they were preening themselves) and on and on.

 

One part of the series, the one I am thinking of here, driven as it is by year dates, at least as observed through the cover work, seemed to be less concerned with strong old time evocations by flashy artwork but rather used old time photos (Kodak, of ancient memory now that Polaroids and Nikons are in style, of course). Nevertheless sometimes just a simple photograph as appears on the 1957 cover evokes those memories in a more subtle way. Now 1957 was year fraught (nice word, right) with all kinds of perils what with Soviets in that hard-boiled, coiled, foiled red scare “turn in your mommy, if she is a commie (or just for kicks if she denied you something, anything for any reason in that “child-centered” time) Cold War night having blasted American ingenuity and know-how and sent the first satellite up into space and who knew what the hell else they were up to destroy our parents “golden age” dreams. Us, well, we were in thrall to our teen angst, our teen identity crisis, our teen what the hell is this sex business about hormone crazed time of our time and short of some world-wide nuclear explosion where such personal matters would have gone by the boards anyway we could have given a rat’s ass (an old term coined locally by Billie Bradley the king of “the projects” corner boys where I grew up) about that world, when all we knew, all we wanted to know, was whether Betty Bleu or Linda Lou or Peggy Sue was going to show up at some “petting party” and what were we going to do about it. (At the first one nothing since when Betty Bleu did show interest I ran like hell from the “family room” where the party was being held, although that was the last time for a long time I did that when a girl/woman expressed the least interest in me. And later dear Betty and I had plenty of hot kisses and “copped feels” so I did get the hang of it, yes, indeed) So that is the 1957 that I want to talk about, the 1957 of the album cover and of the prospects that Mother Earth would not go to hell in hand-basket before those earth-shattering questions got resolved.  

 

And what does that album cover photograph picture (is that the right way to say it, well you get what I mean-what does it show). Well, Johnny (we’ll just call him that for our purposes here, okay, although it could have been Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Butch, Billy, Ronny, Peter or six thousand other conventional names that when the new age did come in the 1960s we were more than happy to shed and begin again with monikers like Prince of Love, Josh Breslin’s moniker, the Be-Bop Kid, mine, Far-Out Phil, Captains America, Midnight and Crunch and other lesser mock military rankings as almost a joke on the serious action going on in red-infested Vietnam), hair slicked back as was the Elvis-want-to-be style (although no sign of the sneer, that patented Elvis sneer that had many a girl, and not just girls as the wet panties thrown on his stages attested to, thinking midnight dreams about personally taking off his face), no facial hair, jesus, no facial hair, we are not dealing with those low-life reefer mad beat down hipsters, beat beasts bopping around sneering at the squares and I don’t care if big daddy leader Jack Kerouac really meant “beatitude,” mean spiritual beauty when he coined the big beat phrases which drove the edges of youth society in  those years they were persona non grata in the  Amityville night, so no way, that is music for the future, square suited up in sports coat, white shirt, and tie (pants not observed although they had to be black chinos, uncool cuffed or cool uncuffed, and shoes, well, loafers for sure, no silly pennies inserted that was strictly for nerds, thank you, serious nerds). So any one of six zillion guys you would see around town, around school, around America oozing square if for no other reason that that was that, and thinking otherwise didn’t get you anywhere in that good night.  

 

And then there was Susie (ditto Johnny on the name thing although her monikers in the 1960s would reflect royalty rather than military prowess with names like Snow White, Princess Alice, the Czarina, Queen Jane, Countess Clara or frilliness like Mad Alice, Mustang Sally, Olive Oyl, and the like), pulled back pony-tail, blonde, real blonde before that became an issue in boys’ locker rooms, to keep that long hair out of her eyes while fast-dancing with Eddy, Billy and Teddy before lemming on to Johnny , dressed up in her best frilly party dress, long, and not black, not black as night anything for the same reason, the same non-beat in Amityville reason Johnny has not facial hair, (no bobby socks or nylons showing so I cannot discuss that issue here nor will I venture into the girl shoe night any more than I would today into the woman’s shoe night).

 

And they, well, the glue that holds them together is that they are comparing notes on the latest 45s. Nice wholesome kids, white kids just so you know who the record companies were appealing too although most of the best music was black, black and beautiful as the darkest night [like the songs from YouTube that accompanies this sketch-JB]. No mad dog hopheads, or dipsos and no nerds either. Let them go use the library or something.

 

For those not long in the tooth who may have wandered into this review and are not sure why that 45RPM was the size record we played on our old time record players (no, not stereos and, no, not wind-up Victrolas, wise guys) when we wanted to drown out ma, pa, and sibling noises about homework, chores, or just the stuff of everyday life. Each record had a one song A side (the hit) and a one song B side (maybe a hit but usually something to fill the B side grooves), each side a little over two minutes long (Jim Morrison on The End or Bob Dylan on Desolation Row would have gone apoplectic if they had to face those limits although they too grew up on 45s). That idea didn’t last too long before responding to the crush of the market they started making LPs, records with several songs on each side. I have given enough time to the subject of record size in any case.

 

And in the year 1957 what musical chooses might the pair be comparing on this night, this house party night from a look at the décor, maybe some Jenny’s birthday party (or Chrissie’s, Chrissie who gave me my first kiss, not real, not real as far as I know, since it was more like a peck on the lips and she shortly thereafter became our corner boy king Frankie Riley’s girl), or maybe on other nights, school dance nights. As usual another round in the “battle of the sexes” will be played out just like from teen time immemorial, or whenever that guy who invented teen-hood invented it a while back. At least records and record player time immemorial. While Buddy Holly, Patsy Kline, Rickey Nelson, and the Everly Brothers have some spin in the early going the real fight, the real important fight, school dance or house party, is what song will be played for the last dance. Yes, the key last dance to see whether the evening continues when they hold each other tight after a night of apart self-expression fast rock and roll dancing. So the battle really boils down to Could This Be Magic? by The Dubs or Happy Happy Birthday Baby by the Tune Weavers and if Johnny does not want to be lonely tonight he better make the right choice. Good luck, Brother Johnny, good luck. [Listen below and see who wins the “battle”-JB]