Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-*Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Billie's Fifteen Minutes Of Fame

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing Rock Around The Clock to aid a little flavor to this entry.


Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Billie’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fsqYctXgM


CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1956: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989


I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing this Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we, we small time punk in the old-fashioned sense of that word, we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie who I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Ya right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

In many ways 1956 was the key year, at least to my recollection. And here is why. Elvis may have been burning up the stages, making all the teenage girls down South sweat, making slightly older women sweat and throw undergarments too, and every guy over about eight years old start growing sideburns before then but that was the year that I actually saw him on television and started be-bopping off his records. Whoa. And the same with Bill Haley and the Comets, even though in the rock pantheon they were old, almost has-been guys, by then. And Chuck Berry. And for the purposes of this particular review, James Brown, ah, sweet, please, please, please James Brown (and the Flames, of course) with that different black, black as the night, beat that my mother (and others too) would not even let in the house, and maybe not even in our whole white working class neighborhood. But remember that transistor radio and remember when rock rocked.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. I told you about him once when I was reviewing a 30th anniversary of rock film concert segment by Bo Diddley. I told the story of how he, and we, learned first hand down at the base, the nasty face of white racism in this society. No even music, and maybe particularly not even music, was excepted then from that dead of night racial divide, North or South if you really want to know. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or maybe almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music (which is where the innocent Bo Diddley imitation thing just mentioned came from although that story was later than the story I want to tell you now).

But see we were projects kids, and that meant, and meant seriously, no dough kids. No dough to make one look, a little anyway, like one of the hot male teen rock stars such as Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. Now this “projects” idea started out okay, I guess, the idea being that returning veterans from World War II, at least some vets like my father, needed a leg up in order to provide for their families. And low rent public housing was the answer. Even if that answer was four-family unit apartment buildings really fit for one family, one growing three boy family anyway, and no space, no space at all for private, quiet dreams. Of course by 1955, ‘56 during the “golden age” of working class getting ahead (or at least to many it must seem so now) there was a certain separation between those who had moved on to the great suburban ranch house dream land and those who were seemingly fated to end up as “the projects” fixtures, and who developed along the way a very identifiable projects ethos, a dog-eat-dog ethos if you want to know the truth. It ain’t pretty down at the base, down at the place where the thugs, drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters feed off the rough-edged working poor.

That didn’t stop Billie, or me for that matter, from having our like everybody else dreams, quiet spaced or not. In fact, Billie had during his long time there probably developed the finest honed-edge of “projects” ethos of anyone I knew, but that came later. For now, for the rock minute I want to speak of, Billie was distractedly, no beyond distraction as you will see, trying to make his big break through as a rock performer. See Billie knew, probably knew in his soul, but anyway from some fan magazine that he was forever reading that old Elvis and Jerry Lee (and many of the rockers of the day, black and white alike) were dirt poor just like us. Rough dirt poor too. Farm land, country, rural, shack, white trash, dirt poor which we with our “high style” city ways could barely comprehend.

And there was Elvis, for one, up in big lights. With all the cars, and not junkie old fin-tailed Plymouths or chromed Fords but Cadillacs, and half the girls in the world, and all of them “hot” (although we did not use that word then), or so it seemed. Billie was hooked and hooked hard on that rock star performer fantasy. It consumed his young passions. And for what purpose? If you answered to impress the girls, “the projects” girls right in front of him, hey, now you are starting to get it. And this is what this little story is about.

This was late 1956, maybe early 1957, anyway it’s winter, a cold hard winter in the projects, meaning all extra dough was needed for heat, or some serious stuff like that. But see here old Billie and I (as his assistant, or manager, it was never clear which but I was to be riding his star, no question) had no time for cold, for snow or for the no dough to get those things because what was inflaming our minds was that a teen caravan was coming to town in a few weeks. No, not to the projects, Christ no, but downtown at the high school auditorium. And what this teen caravan thing was (even though we were not officially teens and would not be so for a while) was a talent show, a big time talent show, like a junior American Bandstand television show, looking for guys and girls who could be the next teen heartthrobs. There were a lot of them in those days, those kinds of backwater talent shows and maybe now too.

This news is where two Billie things came into play so you get an idea of the kind of guy he was back then. First, one night, one dark, snowy night Billie had the bright idea than he and I should go around town and take down all the teen caravan announcement advertisements from the telephone poles and other spots where they were posted. We did, and I need say no more on the matter. Oh, except that a couple of days later, and for a week or so after that, there was a big full-page ad in the local newspaper and ads on the local radio. That’s one Billie thing and the other, well, let me back up.

When Billie got wind of the contest he went into one of his rants, a don’t mess with Billie or his idea of the moment rant and usually it was better if you didn’t, and that rant was directed first to no one else but his mother. He needed dough to get an outfit worthy of a “prince of rock” so that he could stand out for the judges. Moreover the song he was going to do was Bill Haley and The Comet’s Rock Around The Clock. I will say he knew that song cold, and the way I could tell was that at school one day he sang it and the girls went crazy. And some of the guys too. Hell, girls started following old Billie around. He was in heaven (honest, I on the other hand, was indifferent to them, or their charms just then). So the thought that he might win the contest was driving him mad (that same energy would be used later with less purpose but that story is for another day)

Hell, denim jeans, sneakers, and some old hand-down ragamuffin shirt from an older brother ain’t going to get anyone noticed, except maybe to be laughed at. Now, like I said, we were no dough projects boys. And in 1956 that meant serious problems, serious problems even without a damn cold winter. See, like I said before the projects were for those who were on the down escalator in the golden age of post-World War II affluence. In short, as much as he begged, bothered and bewildered his mother there was no dough, no dough at all for the kind of sparkly suit (or at least jacket) that Billie was desperate for. Hell, he even badgered his dad, old Billie, Senior, and if you badgered old Billie then you had better be ready for some hard knocks and learn how to pick yourself up off the ground, sometimes more than once. Except this time, this time something hit Old Billie, something more than that bottle of booze or six, hard stinky-smelling booze, that he used to keep his courage and television-watching up. He told Mrs. Billie (real name, Iris) that he would spring for the cloth if she would make the suit. Whoopee! We are saved and even Billie, my Billie, had a kind word for his father on this one.

I won’t bore you with the details of Mrs. Billie’s (there you have me calling her that, I always called her Mrs. Bradley, or ma’am) efforts on behalf of Billie’s career. Of course the material for the suit came from the Bargain Center located downtown near the bus terminal. You don’t know the Bargain Center? Sure you do, except it had a different name where you lived maybe and it has names like Wal-Mart and K-Mart, etc. now. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think the material came from? Brooks Brothers? Please. Now this Bargain Center was the early low rent place where I, and about half the project kids got their first day of school and Easter outfits (the mandatory twice yearly periods for new outfits in those days). You know the white shirts with odd-colored pin-stripes, a size or two too large, the black chinos with cuffs, christ with cuffs like some hayseed, and other items that nobody wanted some place else and got a second life at the “Bargie.” At least you didn’t have to worry about hand-me-downs because most of the time the stuff didn’t wear that long.

I will say that Mrs. B. did pretty good with what she had to work with and that when the coat was ready it looked good, even if it was done only an hour before the show. Christ, Billie almost flipped me out with his ranting that day. And I had seen some bad scenes before. In any case it was ready. Billie went to change clothes upstairs and when he came down everybody, even me, hell, even Old Billie was ooh-ing and ah-ing. Now Billie, to be truthful, didn’t look anything like Bill Haley. I think he actually looked more like Jerry Lee. Kind of thin and wiry, lanky maybe, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pretty good chin and face. I would say now a face that girls would go for; although I am not sure they would all swoon over him, except maybe the giggly ones.

So off we go on the never on time bus, a bus worthy of its own stories, to downtown and the auditorium, even my mother and father who thought Billie was the cat’s meow when I brought him around. Billie’s father, Old Billie of the small dreams, took a pass on going. He had a Friday night boxing match that he couldn’t miss and the couch beckoned (an argument could be made that Old Billie was a man before his time in the couch potato department). However all is forgiven him this night for his big idea, and his savior dough. We got to the school auditorium okay and Billie left us for stardom as we got in our rooting section seats. A few minutes later Billie ran up to us to tell us that he was fifth on the list so don’t go anywhere, like out for a cigarette or something.

We sat through the first four acts, a couple of guys doing Elvis stuff (so-so) and a couple of girls (or rather trios of girls) who did some serious be-bop stuff and had great harmonies. Billie, I sensed, was going to have his work cut out for him this night. Finally Billie came out, prompted the four-piece backup band to his song, and he started for the mike. He started out pretty good, in good voice and a couple of nice juke moves, but then about half way through; as he was wiggling and swiggling through his Rock Around The Clock all of a sudden one of the arms of his jacket fell off and landed in the front row. Billie didn’t miss a beat. This guy was a showman. Then the other jacket arm fell off and also went into the first row. Except this time a couple of swoony girls, girls from our school were tussling, seriously tussling, each other for it. See, they thought it was part of Billie’s act. And what they didn’t know as Billie finished up was that Mrs. Billie (I will be kind to her and not call her what Billie called her) in her rush to finish up didn’t sew the arms onto the body of the jacket securely so they were just held together by some temporary stitches.

Well, needless to say Billie didn’t win (one of those girl trios did, and rightly so, although I didn’t tell Billie that). But next day, and many next days after that, Billie had more girls hanging off his arms than he could shake a stick at. And you know maybe Billie was on to something after all because I started to notice those used-to-been scrawny, spindly-legged, pigeon-toed giggling girls, their new found bumps and curves, and their previously unremarkable winsome girlish charms, especially when Billie would give me his “castoffs.” So maybe his losing was for the best. My for the best.

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-Out In The Be-Bop Rock Night- Present At The Creation-The Birth Of Rock

Out In The Be-Bop Rock Night- Present At The Creation -The Birth Of Rock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fsqYctXgM&feature=related


Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing the classic rock anthem, Rock Around The Clock.


DVD Review


One For The Money: The Birth Of Rock, various artists, 2005


The birth of the “beat” movement or, at least the public awareness of its break-out, occurred in the 1950s. It even reached down to “the projects” kids like me with my dark sun-glassed, flannel shirted, black chino-ed look, and a mandatory pinch of teen angst if not of any real understanding of what that break-out meant. The seminal cultural moment for us kids, us clueless 1950s kids, was when the clean, free, breathe of fresh air that we call rock ‘n’ roll crashed onto the scene that also occurred in the be-bop 1950s.

Although the “beat” movement, especially its literary end, was driven, and driven hard by the cool, clear, high white note jazz performed by the likes of Charley Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and in no way frontally drove rock the two easily mingle in memory of that be-bop night. Especially for those of us who really were too young to be washed over by the beats and got our “beatitude” in a more second-hand way but who were dead center when that wild jungle night, “devil's music”, “what was that sound, and where can we hear more of it?” drum beat hit our virgin ears about 1955 or so. Call us the stepchildren of one movement, and the children, mad, crash-out, runaway children of the other.

That is the premise behind this one hour documentary as it tries to tap into what the roots of rock were, how it exploded onto the central 1950s teenage stage and how it was tamed beyond redemption, teenage redemption anyway within a few short years. One only needs to say the names Bill Haley and The Comets, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and Eddie Cochran, and then say Fabian, Rick Nelson, Conway Tweety, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vinton and Paul Anka to know that the music had died. And it wasn’t coming back, at least not in its innocent, hungry form, just as our youth never did either.

For an hour documentary this one covers a lot of territory. Much time is spent on the roots of rock and who pushed it along and also on the space that what we now call, sadly, classic rock, filled at just that moment in the 1950s when we, meaning teenage America, were desperate to have our own music, our own not-our parents-seal of approval music. If you think about the roots, it is almost a "no-brainer" that black rhythm and blues would be an important factor as a source for rock. Especially as it came all rambly and scrambly out of the Mississippi Delta and got electrified in the immediate post-World War II period as it followed the black migration north to the Southern river cities and then the Midwest industrial cities. And as it got more sophisticated as its mainly black listeners and a few white “hipsters” settled in. Just listen to early Bill Haley “jump” with that bass line and saxophone on classics like Rock Around The Clock and Shake, Rattle and Roll (even though Big Joe Turner’s version on the latter is about ten times better and sexier). Also a no-brainer, since it seems that every poor white boy child of the Great Depression who could strum three chords or pluck a few ivories was putting R&B together with that old time Appalachian mountain twang music, hillbilly music is the influence of rockabilly.. No question that this rock is purely American songbook-worthy music.

As for those who pushed the music first place, rightly I think, goes to Alan Freed (and last place to Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, although I like every other breathing 1950s kid frenetically raced home to watch the thing in the afternoon, every afternoon okay). He gets his just desserts here, especially in his attempts to bring to the fore the black groups who originally recorded many of the songs that would be covered by whites and who would gain much wider recognition for those efforts. Also deserving of mention is Sam Phillips and his Sun Record operation that was the first stop north for those who wanted to reach those teens waiting, waiting patiently, waiting out until hell froze over in the cold war night just to hear the likes Of Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, Elvis and Jerry Lee.

Well I’ve covered the roots, I covered the movers and shakers, and I should mention the ”talking head” music historians who give their take, half a century later, on what it all meant. But that is no the real reason to watch this thing. The real reason is to see Bill Haley’s sax and bass men hold forth like high heaven’s own angels; to see Elvis shake , rattle and roll like some demon sex fiend making all the girls sweat and all the boys practice their moves in dank cellars or before merciless mirrors; to hear Little Richard go wild, male/female wild, high pitched wild at the piano; to see Jerry Lee reach down in some primitive place and drive those ivories to bloody hell; to see Chuck Berry duck walk his stuff; and to see between segues all that jitterbuggery, that shear, happy energy as the kids danced their hearts out. That, my friends, my nostalgic friends was what it was like in that be-bop night of 1950s classic rock.

**********
Rock Around The Clock Song Lyrics from Bill Haley
One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock,
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.

Put your glad rags on and join me, hon,
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the clock strikes two, three and four,
If the band slows down we'll yell for more,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the chimes ring five, six and seven,
We'll be right in seventh heaven.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When it's eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I'll be goin' strong and so will you.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

When the clock strikes twelve, we'll cool off then,
Start a rockin' round the clock again.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night -One Night With You- Sam’s Song

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night -One Night With You- Sam’s Song  

By Allan Jackson

[One of the conditions that has allowed me to claim full attribution to this Root Is The Toots series of almost seventy sketches and coming in at about seven hundred pages if it was published as one hard copy volume is that I not bring up the internal struggle at this publication which began in early 2017 and wound up with me losing a key vote of no confidence. And my job. Having been through a million such fights both in the industry and when I was younger and my politics were on the radical side where “no prisoners were taken” I accepted that defeat obviously without liking it. I have agreed through the good offices of Sam Lowell who negotiated with current site manager Greg Green for my by-line to abide by those restrictions.

As part of that agreement though beyond my being allowed to make new introductions to each piece to give some background about how the piece came about or what was going on back in those days that made the piece a germane look back I have the right to bat back the slew of rumors, mostly outrageous or overblown, that have accumulated around my name since my departure. I had authorized my old friend Jack Callahan, a significant financial contributor to the success of this operation in both its previous hard copy form and now on-line, to swat as many rumors as he could when they came to the surface around this series. I will take some advantage here to give as Jack said “my take” on these rumors in order to clear my good name in the industry. That may require touching a little around the edges of that internal struggle but I feel the need to explain some things and Greg Green can always blue-pencil those parts if they go counter to the agreement.

Whether I had been “purged,” had gone into self-imposed exile out West or had simply gone into retirement is now beside the point. Except on that latter point which was clearly not possible for me to do since my financial situation prohibited me from retiring without taking care of some pressing matters. Those pressing matters included alimony payments to three ex-wives and more critically to the college tuitions for Lorry, Sean and Kenneth from my last marriage to Mimi Murphy and the last of my brood needing that assistance. So once the axe fell here I needed to grab some kind of editorial job someplace to make ends meet. The first place I tried here on the East Coast was American Film Gazette a place where I had worked when younger and where I knew the managing editor Ben Gold. This had also been the last place Greg Green had worked before I brought him over to do the day to day operations here as well.

Ben turned me down for any job and I thought maybe it was because of my age which while not allowable under various federal statutes and laws happens all the time in an industry where old is somewhere around forty and there is always the crush for young blood even in the editorial offices. That was not the case as Ben informed me on the QT. What had happened was that he had contacted his old employee and friend Greg to see why I was looking for work. Apparently (according to Sam Lowell’s take on the matter) Greg held some bitter animosities from the internal struggle and put “the kiss of death” on me. I was “hard to work with.”  Those few words were enough to allow Ben to pass, and allow every other place that I tried on the East Coast to do so as well. Places like Esquire, American Book Review, Progressive Nation (which I had helped start) and Music Today. Hell in desperation I tried places like Vogue and Elle. No soap.          

Seeing the writing on the wall in the East I headed west to the Coast figuring that Greg’s comment would not travel that far. Wrong, which I should have expected in these high tech communication days. All the West Coast publications including West Coast Review where they had put up with the craziness of dope and gun freak the late “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson for years turned me down. That is when I had the last chance gasp idea of going to secondary and tertiary markets and the start of the overblown rumor that I was in self-imposed exile out in American Siberia (and it really is except not so cold) Utah sucking up to the Mormons. What really hurt was the libel which I think Lenny Lynch published that I had “sold out for a mess of pottage.” I will admit that I might have been close on that issue but I never crossed the line. Couldn’t.

My selling point to the editor of the Salt Lake News was an article that I had written many years ago during 2008 when well-known Mormon (and ex-Massachusetts governor) Mitt Romney made his first bid for the U.S. presidency on the Republican side speaking admiringly of Mitt’s great-grandfather who had five wives-all at one time when polygamy was okay among the early Mormon settlers where the ratio of men to women was totally skewed. I assumed that the man had extraordinary executive skills to juggle that situation without murder and mayhem when I couldn’t even manage one (of three) at a time. The problem was that any reference to polygamy even though it is still practiced among hard-shell Mormons out in the canyons is anathema to the mainstream brethren. Another point was a slice of life article about the practice of Mormons wearing white underwear as part of their practice but that didn’t get me anywhere either. What I came to find out was that like a lot of other operations on the fringes of religion, politics, race, ethnicity and such that they “hire their own” keep it in the family.   

The worse part of the rumor mill about my stay, short stay, in Utah was a total slander, maybe libel too although I did not see it in any piece from this publication was that I had pitched myself trying to get a job as press secretary with Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign once ancient Orrin Hatch called it a day. What happened is that I showed up at some press conference where Mitt was going on and on about some issue and I spoke to a couple of his people during which I threw out the idea in jest that I would be a prefect “press secretary” for Mitt. The joke was that during both the 2008 and 2012 presidential bids by the man I had gone out of my way, gone way out of my way, to skewer him every chance I got for being so crooked that he couldn’t put his pants on by himself. Needed a valet to squeeze him in and even that was a close call. Those were the days when he was so “possessed” about being President that he changed his policies like he changed his socks. Didn’t know the truth if it came up and bit him. And that was the gentle stuff. Whoever back here caught that employment remark obviously missed the point. Maybe should have looked at the archives for 2008 and 2012 and gotten the real story. Allan Jackson]                      

*********

 Sam Lowell thought it was funny how things worked out sometimes in such a contrary fashion in this wicked old world, not his expression that “wicked old world” for he preferred of late the more elastic and ironic “sad old world” but that of his old time North Adamsville corner boy Peter Markin who will be more fully introduced in a moment (Markin aka Peter Paul Markin although nobody ever called him that except his mother, as one would expect although he hated to be teased by every kid from elementary school on including girls, girls who liked to tease him, tease him when they wanted to show their interest usually, and his first ill-advised wife, Martha, a heiress of the local Mayfair swells who tried, unsuccessfully since they sensed right away that he was not one of them, to impress her leafy horse country Dover suburban parents with the familiar waspy triple names).

Neither of those expressions referred to however dated back to their youth since neither Sam nor Peter back then, back in their 1960s youth, would have used such old-fashioned religious-drenched expressions to explain their take on the world since as with all youth, or at least youth who expected to “turn the world upside down” (an expression that they both did use although each in very different contexts) they would have withheld such judgments or were too busy doing that “turning” business they had no time for adjectives to express their worldly concerns. No that expression, that understanding about the wickedness of the world had been picked up by Sam from Peter when they had reconnected a number of years before after they had not seen each other for decades to express the uphill battles of those who had expected humankind to exhibit the better angels of their nature on a more regular basis. Some might call this nostalgic glancing back, especially by Peter since he had more at stake in a favorable result, on a world that did not turn upside down or did so in a way very different from those hazy days.  

The funny part (or ironic if you prefer) was that back then Sam had been in his youth the least political, the least culturally-oriented, the least musically-oriented of those corner boys like Markin, Jack Dawson, Jimmy Jenkins and “max daddy” leader Fritz Fallon (that “max daddy” another expression coined by Peter so although he has not even been properly introduced we know plenty about his place in the corner boy life, his place as “flak,” for Fritz’s operation although Fritz always called him “the Scribe” when he wanted something written and needed to play on Peter’s vanity) who kept the coins flowing into the jukebox at Phil’s House of Pizza. That shop had been located down a couple of blocks from the choppy ocean waters of Adamsville Beach (and is still there although under totally different management from the arch-Italian Rizzo family that ran the place for several generations now run by some immigrant Albanians named Hoxha).

That made Phil’s among other things a natural hang-out place for wayward but harmless poor teenage corner boys. The serious “townie” professional corner boys, the rumblers, tumblers, drifters, grifters and midnight sifters hung around Harry’s Variety with leader Red Riley over on Sagamore far from beaches. Night haunting boys far from sweated sun, tanned daytime beaches, with their equally pale, black dress-etched “tramps,” well known the boyos network at the high school for those few adventurous enough to mess with an off-hand “from hunger” girl looking for kicks and a fast ride in some souped-up Chevy or on back of fat hog Harley, the bike of choice around the town. Although tanned daytime beaches rumors had it that the beach, the isolated Rock Island enough, had been the site of more than one nighttime orgy with “nice” publicly virginal girls looking for kicks with rough boys down among the briny rocks. Rumors they remained until Sam ran into Sissy Roswell many years later who confessed that she and the “social butterfly” prom/fall dance/ yearbook crowd she hung around with on a couple of occasions had been among the briny rocks the summer after graduation when school social ladders and girls’ locker room talk didn’t mean a thing.   

Getting back to Harry’s, a place where cops with their patrol cars parked conspicuously in front of the store during the daytime placed their bets with “connected” Harry who used the store as a front for the bookie operation and fence for Red’s nighttime work, Fritz and the boys would not have gone within three blocks of that place. Maybe more from fear, legitimate fear as Fritz’s older brother, Timmy, a serious tough guy himself, could testify to the one time he tried to wait outside Harry’s for some reason and got chain-whipped by Red for his indiscretion. So the tame corner boys at Phil’s were more than happy to hang out there where the Rizzos were more than happy to have them spent dough on the jukebox and pizzas except on Friday family pizza night to give Mom a rest for once until after nine (and secretly, since these corner boys were, if tame, still appealing looking to passing girls glad to have then around at that hour to boost the weekend sales). Moreover this spot provided a beautiful vantage point for scanning the horizon for those wayward girls who also kept their coins flowing into Phil’s jukebox (or a stray “nice” girl after Red and his corner boys threw her over).

Sam had recently thought about that funny story that Markin had told the crowd once on a hot night when nobody had any money and were just holding up the wall at Phil’s about Johnny Callahan, the flashy and unstoppable halfback from the high school team (and a guy even Red respected having made plenty of money off of local sports who bet with him on the strength of Johnny’s prowess any given Saturday although Johnny once confessed that he, rightly, avoided Harry’s after what had happened to Timmy Fallon). See Johnny was pretty poor even by the median working poor standard of the old neighborhoods in those days (although now, courtesy of his incessant radio and television advertising which continues to make everyone within fifty miles of North Adamsville who knew Johnny back in the day aware of his new profession, he is a prosperous Toyota car dealer, called Mr. Toyota,  down across from the mall in Hull about twenty miles from North Adamsville, the town where their mutual friend Josh Breslin soon to be introduced came from). Johnny, a real music maniac who would do his football weight-lifting exercises to Jerry Lee’s Great Balls of Fire, Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula and stuff like that to get him hyped up, had this routine in order to get to hear songs that he was dying to hear, stuff he would hear late at night coming from a rock station out of Detroit and which would show up a few weeks later on Phil’s jukebox just waiting for Johnny and the kids to fill the coffers, with the girls who had some dough, enough dough anyway to put coins into that jukebox.

Johnny would go up all flirty and virile to some young thing (a Fritz expression coped from Jerry Lee and not an invention of Markin as Peter would later claim to some “young thing” that he was trying to “score”). Maybe, depending on whatever intelligent he had on the girl, maybe she had just had a fight with her boyfriend or had broken up with him Johnny would be all sympathy, or maybe she was just down in the dumps for no articulable reason like every teen goes through every chance they get, whatever it took. Johnny, by the way, would have gotten that intelligence via Peter who whatever else anybody had to say about him, good or bad, was wired into, no, made himself consciously privy to, all kinds of boy-girl information almost like he had a hook into that Monday morning before school girls’ locker room talkfest. Everybody already knew that he was hooked into the boys’ Monday morning version and had started more rumors and other unsavory deeds than any ten other guys.  Spreading ugly rumors about a guy whose girl he was interested in a specialty. But the guy was like Teflon, nobody ever thought to take him out for his actions they were so dependent on his information to keep their place in the social pecking order.

Now here is what Johnny “knew” about almost every girl if they had the quarter which allowed them to play three selections. He would let them pick that first one on their own, maybe something to express interest in his flirtation, maybe her name, say Donna, was also being used as the title of a latest hit, or if broken up some boy sorrow thing. Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted, stuff like that. The second one he would “suggest” something everybody wanted to listen to no matter what but which was starting to get old. Maybe an Elvis, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee thing still on the jukebox playlist but getting wearisome. Then he would go in for the kill and “suggest” they play this new platter, you know, something like Martha and the Vandelas Dancing in the Streets or Roy’s Blue Bayou both of which he had heard on the midnight radio airwaves out of Detroit one night and were just getting play on the jukeboxes. And bingo before you know it she was playing the thing again, and again. Beautiful. And Johnny said that sometimes he would wind up with a date, especially if he had just scored about three touchdowns for the school, a date that is in the days before he and Kitty Kelly became an item. An item, although it is not germane to the story, who still is Johnny’s girl, wife, known as Mrs. Toyota now.

But enough of this downstream stuff Sam thought. The hell with Johnny and his cheapjack tricks (although not to those three beautiful touchdowns days, okay) this thing gnawing at him was about old age angst and not the corner boy glory days at Phil’s, although it is about old time corners boys and their current doings, some of them anyway. So yeah he had other things he wanted to think about (and besides he had already, with a good trade-in, gotten his latest car from Mr. Toyota so enough there), to tell a candid world about how over the past few years with the country, the world, the universe had been going to hell in a hand-basket. In the old day, like he kept going back to, back in the day he was not the least bit interested in anything in the big world outside of sports, and girls, of course. And endlessly working on plans to own his own business, a print shop, before he was twenty-five. Well, he did get that small business, although not until thirty and had prospered when he made connections to do printing for several big high-tech companies, notably IBM when they began outsourcing their work. He had prospered, had married (twice, and divorced twice), had the requisite tolerated children and adored grandchildren, and in his old age a woman companion to ease his time.

But there had been for a long time, through those failed marriages, through that business success something gnawing at him, something that Sam felt he had missed out on, or felt he had do something about. Then a few years ago when it was getting time for a high school class reunion he had Googled “North Adamsville Class of 1964” and came upon a class website for that year, his year, that had been set up by the reunion committee, and decided to joint to keep up with what was going on with developments there. He would wind up not going to that reunion as he had planned, a long story about a slight ill-advised flirtation with an old flame classmate although that too is not germane to the story here except as one more thing that gnawed at him. But mostly in the end he could not face going home, came to believe what Thomas Wolfe said in the title of one of his novels, you can’t go home again).

After he had registered on the site giving a brief resume of his interests and what he had been up to those past forty years or so years Sam looked at the class list, the entire list of class members alive and deceased (a rose beside their name signifying their passing) of who had joined and found the names of Peter Markin. He had to laugh Peter had been listed as Peter Paul Markin since everybody was listed by their full names, revenge from the grave his poor mother, and that leafy suburban first wife who tried to give him Mayflower credentials, he thought.  He also found the name of corner boy Jimmy Jenkins among those who had done so. (Jack Dawson had passed away a few years before, a broken man, broken after his son who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan had committed suicide, according to Peter, as had their corner boy leader, Fritz Fallon, homeless, and found down along a railroad trestle in New Jersey, after going through a couple of fortunes, his own and a third wife’s).

Through the mechanism established on the site which allowed each class member who joined to have a private cyberspace e-mail slot Sam contacted both men and the three of them started a rather vigorous on-line chat line for several weeks going through the alphabet of their experiences, good and bad. The time for sugar-coating was over unlike in their youth when all three would lie like crazy, especially about sex and with whom in order to keep their place in the pecking order, and in order to keep up with Fritz whom lied more than the three of them combined. Peter knew that, knew it better than anybody else but in order to keep his place as “scribe” in that crazy quill pecking order went along with such silly teenage stuff, stuff that in his other pursuits he would have laughed at but that is what made being a teenager back then, now too, from what Sam saw of his grandchildren’s trials and tribulations.

After a while, once the e-mail questions had worked their course, all three men met in Boston at the Sunnyvale Grille, a place where Markin had begun to hang out in after he had moved back to Boston (read: where he did his daytime drinking) over by the waterfront, and spent a few hours discussing not so much old times per se but what was going on in the world, and how the world had changed so much in the meantime. And since Markin, the political maniac of the tribe, was involved in the conversations maybe do something about it at least that is what Sam had hoped since he knew that is where he thought he needed to head in order to cut into that gnawing feeling. Sam was elated, and unlike in his youth he did not shut his ears down, when those two guys would talk politics, about the arts or about music. He now regretted that he had not listened back then since he was so strictly into girls and sports, not always in that order (which caused many problems later including one of the grounds for his one of his divorces, not the sports but the girls).

This is probably the place for Sam to introduce Peter Markin although he had already given an earful (and what goes for Peter goes to a lesser extent for Jimmy who tended to follow in Pete’s wake on the issues back then, and still does). Peter, as Sam has already noted, provided that noteworthy, national security agency-worthy service, that “intelligence” he provided all the guys (and not just his corner boys, although they had first dibs) about girls. Who was “taken,” a very important factor if some frail (a Fritz term from watching too many 1940s gangster and detective movies and reading Dashiell Hammett too closely, especially The Maltese Falcon),was involved with some bruiser football player, some college joe who belonged to a fraternity and the brothers were sworn to avenge any brother’s indignities, or worse, worse of all, if she was involved with some outlaw biker who hung out in Adamsville and who if he hadn’t his monthly quota of  college boy wannabes red meat hanging out at Phil’s would not think twice about chain-whipping you just for the fuck of it (“for the fuck of it” a  term Jimmy constantly used then, and now, so it was not always Markin or Fritz who led the verbal life around the corner). Who was “unapproachable,”  probably more important than that social blunder of ‘hitting on” a taken woman since that snub by Miss Perfect-Turned-Up-Nose would make the rounds of the now legendary seminar, Monday morning before school girls’ locker room (and eventually work its way through Markin to the boys’ Monday morning version ruining whatever social standing the guy had spent since junior high trying to perfect in order to avoid the fatal nerd-dweeb-wallflower-square name your term existence). Strangely Markin made a serious mistake with Melinda Loring who blasted her freeze deep on him and he survived to tell the tale, or at least that is what he had the boys believe. Make of this what you will though, Peter never after that Melinda Loring mistake, had a high school girlfriend from North Adamsville High, who, well, liked to “do the do” as they called it back then, that last part not always correct since everybody, girls and boys alike, were lying like crazy about whether they were “doing the do” or not, including Markin.

But beyond, well beyond, that schoolboy silliness Markin was made of sterner stuff (although Sam would not have bothered to use such a positive attribute about Markin back then) was super-political, super into art and into what he called culture, you know going to poetry readings at coffeehouses, going over Cambridge to watch foreign films with subtitles and themes at the Brattle Theater that he would try to talk about and even Jimmy would turn his head when he went on and on about French films, especially those films by Jean Renoir, and super into music, fortunately he was not crazy for classical music (unlike some nerds in school then who were in the band) but serious about what is now called classic rock and roll and then in turn, the blues, and folk music. (Sam still shuttered at that hillbilly folk music stuff Markin tried to interest him in when he thought about it).

That folk music was how Peter had first met Josh Breslin, still a friend, whom he introduced to Sam at one of their meetings over at the Sunnyvale Grille. Josh told the gathering that Markin had met him after high school, after he had graduated from Hull High (the same town where Johnny Callahan was burning up the Toyota sales records for New England) down at the Surf Ballroom (Sam had his own under twenty-one memories of the place, some good, some bad including one affair that almost wound up in marriage). Apparently Josh and Peter had had their wanting habits on the same girl at one Friday night dance when the great local cover band, the Rockin’ Ramrods held sway there, and had been successively her boyfriend for short periods both to be dumped for some stockbroker from New York. But their friendship remained and they had gone west together, gone on that Jack Kerouac On The Road for a number of years when they were trying their own version of turning the world upside down on. Josh also dabbled (his word) in the turning upside down politics of the time.

And that was the remarkable thing about Peter, not so much later in cahoots with Josh because half of youth nation, half the generation of ’68 was knee-deep in some movement, but in staid old North Adamsville High days, days when to just be conventionally political, wanting to run for office or something, was kind of strange. See Peter was into the civil rights movement, nuclear disarmament, and social justice stuff that everybody thought he was crazy to be into, everybody from Ma to Fritz (and a few anonymous midnight phone-callers yelling n----r-lover in the Markin home phone).  He had actually gone into Boston when he was a freshman and joined the picket-line in front of Woolworths’ protesting the fact that they would not let black people eat in their lunchrooms down south (and maybe Markin would say when he mentioned what he was up to they were not that happy to have blacks in their northern lunchrooms either ), had joined a bunch of Quakers and little old ladies in tennis sneakers (a term then in use for airhead blue-haired lady do-gooders with nothing but time on their hands) calling on the government to stop building atomic bombs (not popular in the red scare Cold War we-are-fighting- against- the- Russians-terror North Adamsville, or most other American places either), running over to the art museum to check out the exhibits (including some funny stories about him and Jimmy busting up the place looking at the old Pharaoh times slave building Pyramids stuff uncovered by some Harvard guys way back), and going to coffeehouses in Harvard Square and listening to hokey folk music that was a drag. (Sam’s take on that subject then, and now.) So Peter was a walking contradiction, although that was probably not as strange now as it seemed back then when every new thing was looked at with suspicion, and when kids like Peter were twisted in the wind between being corner boys and trying to figure out what that new wind was that was blowing though the land, when Sam and the other corner boys, except Jimmy and sometimes Jack would try to talk him out of stuff that would only upset everybody in town.

But here is the beauty, beauty for Sam now that he was all ears about what Peter had to say, he had kept at it, had kept the faith, while everybody else from their generation, or almost everybody, who protested war, protested around the social issues, had hung around coffeehouses and who had listened to folk music had long before given it up. Markin had, after his  Army time, spent a lot of time working with GIs around the war issues, protested American foreign policy at the drop of a hat and frequented off-beat coffeehouses set up in the basements of churches in order to hear the dwindling number of folk artists around. He had gotten and kept his “religion,” kept the faith in a sullen world. And like in the old days a new generation (added to that older North Adamsville generation which still, from the class website e-mail traffic he received when classmates found out they were in communication had not gotten that much less hostile to what Peter had to say about this wicked old world, you already know the genesis of that term, right), was ready to curse him out, ready to curse the darkness against his small voice.

One night when Peter and Sam were alone at the Sunnyvale, maybe both had had a few too many high-shelf scotches (able to afford such liquor unlike in the old days when they both in their respective poverties, drank low-shelf Johnny Walker whiskey with a beer chaser when they had the dough, if not some cheapjack wine), Peter told Sam the story of how he had wanted to go to Alabama in high school, go to Selma, but his mother threatened to disown him if he did, threatened to disown him not for his desire to go but because she would not have been able to hold her head up in public if he had, and so although it ate at him not to go, go when his girlfriend, Helen Jackman, who lived in Gloversville, did go, he took a dive (Peter’s words).

Told a redemptive story too about his anti-war fight in the Army when he refused to go to Vietnam and wound up in an Army stockade for a couple of years altogether. (Sam thought that was a high price to pay for redemption but it may have been the scotch at work.) Told a number of stories about working with various veterans’ groups, throwing medals over Supreme Court barricades, chainings to the White House fence, sitting down in hostile honked traffic streets, blocking freeways complete with those same hostile honkings, a million walks for this and that, and some plain old ordinary handing out leaflets, working the polls and button-holing reluctant politicians to vote against the endless war budgets (this last the hardest task, harder than all the jailings, honkings, marches put together and seemingly the most fruitless). Told too stories about the small coffeehouse places seeing retread folkies who had gone on to other things and then in a fit of anguish, or hubris, decided to go back on the trail. Told of many things that night not in a feast of pride but to let Sam know that sometimes it was easier to act than to let that gnawing win the day. Told Sam that he too always had the gnaw, probably always would in this wicked old world. Sam was delighted by the whole talk, even if Peter was on his soapbox. 

That night too Peter mentioned in passing that he contributed to a number of blogs, a couple of political ones, including an anti-war veterans’ group, a couple of old time left-wing cultural sites and a folk music-oriented one. Sam confessed to Peter that although he had heard the word “blog” he did not know what a blog was. Peter told him that one of the virtues of the Internet was that it provided space (cyberspace, a term Sam had heard of and knew what it meant) for the average citizen to speak his or her mind via setting up a website or a blog. Blogs were simply a way to put your opinions and comments out there just like newspaper Op/Ed writers or news reporters and commentators although among professional reporters the average blog and blog writer were seen as too filled with opinions and sometimes rather loose with the facts. Peter said he was perfectly willing to allow the so-called “objective” reporters roam free to state the facts but he would be damned if the blog system was not a great way to get together with others interested in your areas of interest, yeah, stuff that interested you and that other like-minded spirits might respond to. Yeah that was worth the effort.

The actual process of blog creation (as opposed to the more complex website-creation which still takes a fair amount of expertise to create) had been made fairly simple over time, just follow a few simple prompts and you are in business. Also over time what was possible to do has been updated for ease, for example linking to other platforms to your site and be able to present multi-media works lashing up say your blog with YouTube or downloading photographs to add something to your presentation. Peter one afternoon after Sam had asked about his blog links showed him the most political one that he belonged to, one he had recently begun to share space with Josh Breslin, Frank Jackman and a couple of other guys that he had known since the 1960s on and who were familiar with the various social, political and cultural trends that floated out from that period. 

Sam was amazed at the topics that those guys tackled, stuff that he vaguely remembered hearing about but which kind of passed him by as he delved into the struggle to build his printing shop. He told Peter that he got dizzy looking at the various titles from reviews of old time black and white movies that he remembered watching at the old Strand second run theater uptown, poetry from the “beat” generation, various political pieces on current stuff like the Middle East, the fight against war, political prisoners most of whom he had never heard of except the ones who had been Black Panthers or guys like that, all kinds of reviews of rock and roll complete with the songs via YouTube, too many reviews of folk music that he never really cared for, books that he knew Peter read like crazy but he could not remember the titles. The guys really had put a lot of stuff together, even stuff from other sites and announcements for every conceivable left-wing oriented event. He decided that he would become a Follower which was nothing sinister like some cult but just that you would receive notice when something was put on the blog.

Peter also encouraged him to write some pieces about what interested him, maybe start out about the old days in North Adamsville since all the guys mined that vein for sketches. That is what Peter liked to call most of the material on site since they were usually too short to be considered short stories but too long to be human interest snapshots. Sam said he would think about the matter, think about it seriously once he read the caption below:                                                                          

“This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of our interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hardworking, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn our attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.”

Sam could relate to that, had something to say about some of those songs. Josh Breslin laughed when he heard that Sam was interested in doing old time rock and roll sketches. He then added, “If we can only get him to move off his butt and come out and do some street politics with us we would be getting somewhere.” Peter just replied, “one step at a time.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

Elvis Is Not In The House-Nor Is His Kin-Kevin Cosner’s “3000 Miles To Graceland” (2001)-A Film Review

Elvis Is Not In The House-Nor Is His Kin-Kevin Cosner’s “3000 Miles To Graceland” (2001)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins 

3000 Miles From Graceland, starring Kevin Cosner, Kurt Russell, Courtney Cox, 2001

I suppose that it will never happen even beyond the grave that a multitude of sins will not be laid at the door of the “King,” of Elvis, of Elvis Presley (those three designations reflecting the generational divide the first from those washed clean by the rising tide of rock and roll, now called classic rock and roll, lifted high on the Elvis tide by his generally acknowledged kingship of the genre, the second reflecting his latter day career as a garishly costumed Vegas lounge lizard act, sorry, for sweated mothers who never got over those hips swaying to and fro, and the third the clueless who need a last name to place him as some old fogy relic with wickedly silly sideburns and drawl plus swivel hips which their grandmothers still sweated over). When I was growing up, coming of age, meaning unlike for my long-time companion and fellow writer in this space Sam Lowell, not about going out to confront the great big raucous world but the more personal coming into young womanhood, getting “my friend,” my period Elvis meant in my household playing “the devil’s music,” making all the young women sweat, and not so young women too, making them think the “s-x” word (a term never ever expressed in that household. Yes, Elvis and those impossible swaggering hips making a young girl think who knows what thoughts and that hair and those songs which he seemed to be singing directly to me (whoever “me” was) was more than our proper mothers could handle without recourse to some strictures, and it was always mothers in such situations out on the farms in upstate New York where I grew up about twenty miles outside of Albany. Didn’t figure that the King would show up on television, on the freaking bland Ed Sullivan Show, and let the whole world know that Uncle Ed had given his blessing. Then he, the King, moved on to the Army, or died, or something like that and we, we young womanhood, moved on to the next crooner who was singing directly to the “me.”              

That was the King live but today in the film under review, 3000 Miles From Graceland, Graceland signifying the King’s homestead in Memphis and Holy Grail pilgrimage location even to this day for that clueless generation, he has to take the rap for “fronting” for a major armed robbery of one of the casinos in Vegas a town where last he dwelled on stage. The action centers on the seemingly endless fascination with his look, his image and his persona by a coterie of devotees, good and bad, at the annual Elvis impersonation festival which draws fervent crowds to worship once more at the shrine (and spent serious dough at the gambling tables).

So that is the draw that is the effect of the Elvis phenomenon, the storyline, the “skinny” as Sam says when reviewing films and I have picked up the term to announce a summary of the action for the readership to mull over when checking out older films. Before that though, since it struck me as funny, how I got this assignment in the first place. I had been complaining, complaining in the public prints, that I had to deal with current site manager Greg Green’s one time idea to reach a younger audience by reviewing every possible Marvel and DC  comic book super-hero come to the big screen in the universe. Although I was not alone in looking at the whole project with a very jaded eye I was one of the ones who complained in public and thereafter got a few better assignments (like a long sought after go at a Humphrey Bogart starring black and white film to gain some bragging rights with Sam who made a good career out of specializing in such fare).

Then “politics” came into play when Greg asked for a return of the favor asking me to review this film. He did not want Sam, really the natural choice for anything Elvis as far as music and growing up times in his old working class North Adamsville neighborhood went, to do it for he would get a long screed about that growing up scene and about two sentences on the film. Greg wanted a woman’s touch, a woman’s view, but also a woman who had been through the wringer with Elvis in her youth. With that “left-handed” compliment from Greg I agreed to do this one.       

Other than the Elvis/Graceland hook I knew nothing about this film except most of the actors so I was somewhat shocked by the gratuitous and seemingly non-stop violence displayed from almost the beginning of the film which was way over top even in modern day cinematic terms. Greg has made a point of stating publicly that he screens all the films before he makes his assignments (a trait he developed in his long years at American Film Gazette coming here). I am not so sure about that preview here, certainly why I would be picked to do this one which under other circumstances I wouldn’t touch in a million years.

Here goes. Murph, Kevin Cosner’s role, a serious cinematic psychopath if there ever was one and somebody to avoid like the plague on screen or in real life, and Michael, played by Kurt Russell both ex-cons are part of a six man team who are intent on robbing not a bank like the legendary bank robbery Willie Sutton is rumored to have said because “that is where the money is” but a high dollar casino in Vegas where the money also is when you think about it during Elvis Impersonation week. Nice idea, a one of a kind idea unlike that boring bank stuff that every hardened criminal takes a run at, so that the whole armed to the teeth crew has cover as Elvis impersonators like half the guys in town just then. The whole scheme actually works but here is where the over-the-top violence gets its first serious work-out. Unlike such cons as Danny Ocean (either the Frank Sinatra or George Clooney version will do) and his crowd of master criminal technicians worked out this one turned into an old Wild West shoot-out with murder and mayhem as much the loot part of the project. (One gets in the aftermath of the Vegas massacre of 2017 where a lone gunman wreaked havoc on the crowds a gruesome idea about the power of assault weapons to create horrible “killing fields” and I wonder if anybody short of an ardent NRA aficionado had a very queasy feeling like I had after this cinematic shoot-out.)         

The rest of the film essentially aside from the on-going violence at every turn even where it would not make sense except to an American pyscho like Murph (who also thought he was the long lost son of Elvis so you know how scarred he was by whatever life had passed his way) was done under the title of there being “no honor among thieves” (or as Sam would say in one of his reviews of those old time film noirs there is honor more in the breech than the observance). Once it got to be split the dough time Murph got ugly, wasted every one of his confederates (except the pilot who had gotten them out of the hell-hole casino). Or tried to. Michael sensing Murph’s, ah, instability donned a bullet-proof vest which saved him. From that point on it is strictly con against con to see who will get to keep the whole pile (some three million not bad even today for guys who seemed to be otherwise unemployable).        

Well maybe not strictly con against con because apparently even in a blood- bath saga Hollywood cannot resist evoking the “boy meets girl” story in some form. Before going off to battle the casino cash till with his erstwhile confederates Michael had met and bedded a fetching dish, Cybil with a “C,” played by very dishy Courtney Cox, and has tangled with her wayward young wannbe hoodlum son. As a single Mom she has her claws out once she knew that Michael had help pull the biggest heist she had ever heard of. That starts the merry-go-round (and the growing love interest between the bedmates and Michael’s growing paternal feeling toward that sullen youth) where who has the dough, who doesn’t have the dough and how to get it from the other might or main runs the chase (including an independent run by Cybil with a “C”) until the final war zone-like shoot-out (which reminded Sam of the fire-fights in Vietnam) between the coppers and Murph who goes down in a frenzied blaze of glory (with Michael on the side but unhurt by the action again due to that handy bullet-proof vest). A bit strangely since Michael has a fistful of criminal code violation on his own hook the love-bugs survive to live another day. This one may get the NRA’s seal of approval but in the light of the mass shootings since 2001 a thumbs down here. By the way Elvis should sue.