Happy Birthday Keith Richards-From The Archives- The Cultural Contradictions Of The Generation Of '68

Commentary

Those who have followed this space over the past year may have noticed that I have spend some little time going back down memory lane some forty years to that decisive year of 1968, a year to which I have attached the term the 'Generation of ’68'-the generation who fought or fought against the Vietnam war and other issues of that day. Blame the misbegotten elections of 2008 for my preoccupations. I expected to spend more time on that presidential campaign but around June of this year I discovered that it was basically so much “ill wind” abrewing. So onward.

Of course the generic term ‘Generation of ‘68’, like that of our immediate forbears the media-crowned ‘greatest generation’, is as much a metaphor for what we attempted to do in those days on a social, political and cultural level as an actual definable structured phenomena. In the past I have mentioned that we, mainly out of innocence or better still ignorance (sometimes willfully so, as in the early rejection of Marxism as a guide to seeing things) made every mistake in the social, political and cultural book. We have, unfortunately, lived to pay for those essentially youthful mistakes with a forty year ‘blow back’ from the reactionaries who have had a free run of this country ever since.

If today, in December 2008, we have a little breathing room for our old time visions we best think things through better this time because, as it turns out, we are historically only given limited space and time to prove that we are capable of listening to “the better angels of our natures”. That said, as I have been at pains to point out in this space, not all of our long ago efforts should be dismissed out of hand. I nevertheless want to use this entry as a place to examine some of the cultural conceptions that, upon reflection, while they seemed very radical and progressive then seem kind of stale and ‘corny’ today. I intend this as a continuing entry through the next year or so. Feel free to add your "howlers" from the old days. Here’s the grab bag for now.

Back To The Archives, Please.

The Rolling Stones: Sympathy For The Devil, starring The Rolling Stones (1968 members), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1968

In an entry elsewhere in this space I noted my early youth allegiance to The Rolling Stones with the following remarks:

“I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably “Satisfaction”. However, what really hooked me on them was when I hear them cover the old Willie Dixon blues classic “The Red Rooster”. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But, beyond that it was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost….

That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although American blues also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf’s version but good. I have also thought about The Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (yes, I know these are later works) and I believe that you will find that something in the way The Stones presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my working class alienation.”

Thus when I recently re-watched this Stones-based documentary, self-styled political manifesto and 'new wave' film by one of the cultural hero-directors of the 1960’s I expected to get as excited over its presentation as the first time I saw it. Well, here is the “skinny”. I still love The Stones’ song “Sympathy For The Devil” the production of which forms the core of this film. I do not, however, need to see the creation of this musical rock and roll gem over the course of an hour and one-half interspersed with one thousand and one of Godard’s pre-occupations of the day from Marxism to pornography to racism to Black Nationalist politics. In out youths we accepted anything that was new, different and haphazard as pure as the driven snow. Forty years later this reviewer may be a more little jaded but certainly less self-indulgent, as Godard should have been in directing this film. Some things from the 1960’s age very well like the social commitment to “seek a newer world”. Others are best left in the archives.

Strictly For Aficionados

The “Genuine” Basement Tapes”, Volumes 1-5, Bob Dylan and The Band (1967 members), Alternate Edge Productions, 2002

In a review of Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” elsewhere in this space I noted:

“In reviewing Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic album “Bringing All Back Home” (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.”

And I am still glad of that fact. What I am less enamored of is the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd location versions of Dylan’s work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan’s usually well-produced albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, somehow, made to feel in the process that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material. In short, these five volumes of practice, outtakes, cuts, etc. done with The Band while he was “hiding” out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident are strictly for aficionados.

That said, for those who insist on getting their little hands on this material here is the “scoop”. From Volume One- “Odds And Ends”. From Volume Two- “Quinn The Eskimo”. From Volume Three-“Tiny Montgomery”, “Santa Fe” and “Sign Of The Cross (excellent)”. From Volume Four- “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”, “Confidential To Me” and “Bring It On Home”. From Volume Five (the album to get if you get just one)-“Four Strong Winds”, Joshua Gone Barbados” “I Forgot To Remember To Forget”, “Bells Of Rhymney”, “Spanish Is The Loving Tongue”, “Cool Water”, “Banks Of The Royal Canal”. These are all covers and very nicely done, if sometimes hard to hear.

Once Again, On Those Damn Tapes

The Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan and The Band (1967 members), CBS Records, 1975

Parts of this review were used in a review of The “Genuine” Basement Tapes. I make most of the same objections here for this set as I did there, except if you need to choose between the two the quality of the production values here is greater than on the former. Although the more I listen to Volume 5 of the “genuine” tapes with that “Joshua Gone Barbados” and hard to hear but mesmerizing cover of “ I Forgot To Remember to Forget” and a couple of others I am starting to waver.

In a review of Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” elsewhere in this space I noted:

“In reviewing Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic album “Bringing All Back Home” (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.”

And I am still glad of that fact. What I am less enamored of is the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd location versions of Dylan’s work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan’s usually well-produced albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, somehow, left to feel that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material. That same sentiment applies to the virtuoso work of The Band in their heyday. And certainly to their joint work. In short, this two disc set of practice, outtakes, cuts, etc. done with The Band while he was “hiding” out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident are strictly for aficionados.

That said, for those who insist on getting their little hands on this material here is the “scoop”. “Tears Of Rage” ; “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”; “Yazoo Street Scandal” and “Odds and Ends” are what you are getting this CD for. That does not seem like enough given what I mentioned above.

Blame It On Woody Allen, Okay?

Blame It On Woody Allen, Okay?

CD REVIEWS

Yes, here is one more thing to blame on Woody Allen, as if he hasn’t had enough problems in his life. Earlier this year I watched and reviewed in this space the film Radio Days that Woody directed. Every since then in the deep recesses of my brain the tunes Paper Dolls and Sentimental Journey have been pounding away. Hey this is music made before I was born, although maybe I picked it up in the womb. Why is it in my head? I am still a child of my generation (the Generation of '68) and fought the anti-Vietnam War fight to the tunes of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter but I think I can make a little room for this, if only to keep my brain from stopping that pounding. Directly below are a few comments from my Radio Day review that fit here and below that some specific comments on the CDs being reviewed.

"…I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate Director (and narrator) Woody Allen’s valentine to the radio days of his youth. I am just old enough, although about a half generation behind Allen, to remember the strains of songs like Paper Dolls and Autumn Leaves that he grew up with and that are nicely interspersed throughout his story as backdrop floating in the background of my own house.

I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop that makes Radio Days most memorable to me……

….Allen’s youth, during the heart of World War II, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this film touched a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’) whether it was his Jewish families (as portrayed here) on the shores of New York’s Far Rockaway or my Irish families on the shores of Quincy, Massachusetts. Nice work, Woody."

Songs that Got Us Through WWII- Vol. 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1994

The highlights here are Vaughan Monroe’s There I’ve Said It Again. This is the time of the male crooner and the big band orchestra and Monroe combines both here. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters hit with Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby. Male crooner and three female harmonies was another trade mark of the times. Billie Holiday’s Lover Man. Let me keep this one simple- I could get through war, pestilence and the apocalypse as long as I had a Billie album with me.

Sentimental Journey- Vol. 1 (1942-1946) various artists, Rhino Records, 1993

The highlights here include, obviously, Les Brown and his band doing Sentimental Journey with a young Doris Day on vocals-nice. Dick Haymes doing You’ll Never Know is something like the crooner voice of World War II. Of course, Paper Dolls by the Mills Brothers done here with a little jump middle section is classic. A nice version of Cole Porter’s Night And Day by one Frank Sinatra. It will not replace Billie Holiday’s rendition but is very nice and with the trademark Sinatra phrasing. The top tune here though is Lena Horne doing an incredible version of Stormy Weather. I have heard this tune done by many vocalists- male and female- this is the first time I stopped what I was doing to make sure I gave it its proper due.

The 1940’s, Volume I- 16 Most Requested Songs, various artist, Columbia Records, 1989

Highlights here include the classic Sentimental Journey with Les Brown and his band. Harry James and his band doing a bang up job on You Made Me Love You. A startlingly beautiful version (I didn’t expect it to be in this kind of compilation) of Some Enchanted Evening from the Broadway musical South Pacific done by Ezio Pinza. Kudos here. The surprise is a very sensuous Latin- tropical version of Amor in Spanish done by Xavier Cugat and his band with an unknown (to me) Carmen Castillo on vocals. Wow.

16 Most Requested Songs, Rosemary Clooney, Columbia, 1989

Yes there was a musical world before 1956 and the Elvis explosion. That musical world, however, was the world of the parents, including mine, of the Generation of ’68. One of those voices was that of Rosemary Clooney. Then I thought she was square- you know with that smooth voice and ‘good girl’ image and all in a film like White Christmas with Bing Crosby. Then, several years ago, before she died I heard her in an interview on National Public Radio where she admitted to a drug problem and other little indiscretions. Of course, for this reviewer that meant that I might have to reevaluate her work now that I knew she was not really that ‘good girl’. Now a lot of her sound is still beyond the pale for me and her seeming addiction to bebop novelty songs like Mambo Italiano is off-putting but she certainly is more interesting as a singer to me now. I like the sound of Come On-A My House but what really is nice is Ms. Clooney's way with a ballad. Try Hey There and Tenderly on for size. Then work your way to Half As Much and then a nice little version of Blues In The Night and Too Young. It only took me 50 years to recognize it but Rosemary- you done good.

The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles?

On The 50th Anniversary Of Beatle's "Sgt Pepper" Album (2017)    The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles?

Allan Jackson (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin on this site) commentary

Working Class Hero

Street Fighting Man

The following is a response to a canned Q&A section from a committee of my high school Class of 1964 (a few edits here to delete personal information). I share it with the aging lefties and rock and roll aficionados in the audience.

Okay, so Markin has come in from the cold and reunited with the Class of 1964 after over forty years of ignoring that fact. Big deal, right? For those interested in my profile you can read my comments in the My Story section. But today, since I have joined this work and it is my dime, I feel I might as well use it for the purpose that I joined, to network with some of the old crowd.

I propose to use my bulletin board space to pose certain questions to my fellow classmates to which I am interested in getting answers. Thus I will be periodically throwing a question out and would appreciate an answer. No, I do not want to ask personal family questions. After forty years this space is hardly the place to air our dirty little secrets. No, I do not want to talk religion. That is everyone private affair. No, I do not want to talk politics, although those who might remember me know that I am a ‘political junkie’ from way back. In fact I mean to get myself into some 12 step rehab program as soon as this current campaign is over, if ever. What I want to do is ask questions like that posed below. Join me…..

“Manchurian Candidate” McCain vs. The Huckster”? Boring. Ms. Hillary vs. Obama ‘The Charma”? Ho, hum. Three dollar gas at the pump? Oh, well. No, what has my blood boiling is a question that I am, after forty years, desperate to know about my classmates from 1964. In your callow youth, back in the mist of time, did you prefer the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? The question was posed in the canned Q&A section above but I feel the issue warrants a full airing out. I make no bones about my preference for the Rolling Stones and will motivate that below but here let me just set the parameters. I am talking about when we were in high school. I do not mean the later material like the Beatles "Sergeant Pepper" or the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". And no, I do not want to hear about how you really swooned over Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. Answer the question asked, please.

I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably “Satisfaction”. However, what really hooked me on them was when I hear them cover the old Willie Dixon blues classic “The Red Rooster”. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But, beyond that it was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make.

That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although American blues also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf’s version but good. I have also thought about The Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (yes, I know these are later works) and I believe that you will find that something in the way The Stones’ presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my working class alienation. But enough. I will close with this. I have put my money where my mouth is with my preference. When the Stones’ toured Boston at Fenway Park in the summer of 2005 I spend many (too many) dollars to get down near the stage and watch old Mick and friends rock. Beat that.

*To Be Young Was Very Heaven- Professor And Ex-SDS Leader Todd Gitlin's 1960s

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Professor and ex-SDS leader (early 1960s) Todd Gitlin.

BOOK REVIEW

THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE-DAYS OF RAGE, TODD GITLIN, BANTAM BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1987

Over the last several months this writer has alluded several times to the 1960’s movements for social change –the defense of the Cuban Revolution, the fight for nuclear disarmament, the centrally important black civil rights fight, the struggle against the Vietnam War and the emerging struggles for women’s and gay rights. And ultimately, for a few (too few) of us, the necessary struggle to change the social organization of the American society-the fight for socialism. In short, all the signposts for that part of a political generation, my generation, which in shorthand I will call the Generation of ’68. Let us be clear, nostalgia and the ravages of time on the memory on the part of this writer aside, this was a short but intense period that he believes requires serious study. Militant leftists today face many, if not all, of the social problems that confronted the generation of ’68. Thus, reading the book under review written by a literate participant in many of those struggles, although then, as today, a political opponent of the reviewer, can help today’s militant leftists learn the lessons of that experience.

While it is entirely possible for today’s militant leftist youth to start fresh and ignore what for all of them is, at best, a mythical experience, that stance would be short-sighted. I agree, due to the lack of a critical mass of militant leftists who could have assimilated and transmitted those experiences , that a militant movement today could get along very well without knowing anything about the 1960’s. However, at some point the issues, the conflicts, the struggle for a victorious strategy to fight the monster (otherwise known as American imperialism) will be replayed. Believe me it is never fruitless to learn something from the past.

Professor Gitlin has written, in the currently reviewed volume, what is probably the definitive general survey of the central events that roiled American (and eventually, much of Western society) in the 1960’s. Let us be clear, we are not talking about the working class 1960’s, we are not talking about the 1960’s of the mainly middle class parents of the generation of ’68. We are most definitely not talking about the Vietnamese 1960’s. In fact we are not talking about an experience that most of the people during that period experienced, except as media events or at the margins. What we are talking about is the youth explosions of the 1960’s, their repercussions, effects and legacies. This is the area of Professor Gitlin’s intimate personal experience and therefore is a good place to start.

In the usual case this writer spends his book reviewing time describing and analyzing events that occurred before his time. Things like the American, French and Russian Revolutions. It is therefore with certain amount of pleasant, if not nostalgia, that he can review a book that deals with events that made up not only the author’s but the reviewer's youth. All the signposts of my youth are described and analyzed here from the ‘beats’ through Cuba to the civil rights movement and eventually through the struggle against the Vietnam War. That said, the author and this reviewer have very different interpretations of the meaning of the events at the time and the inevitable lessons to be drawn from then.

A part of that difference is personal. It may be that I am just a few years younger than the author but I believe that that difference in age explains a little the difference between the author’s approach to politics and organization and the reviewer’s. That is not a small difference- the difference today between Professor Gitlin’s apparent embrace of the ‘virtues’ of a patriotic attitiude to American imperialism as exemplified in his initial support for the current Iraq War and his latest book and my militant leftist position. I may have come later to radical leftist politics but over thirty years later nothing on the political landscape, including 9/11, has forced me to change my resolve.

There is also, frankly, a class issue Gitlin’s parents were respectable teachers and therefore middle class or striving to be middle class in a time when such an aspiration was attainable and not deemed a worthless goal. This reviewer on the other hand grew up at the margins of the bottom of the working class-his father was from the Kentucky coal mines and he grew up in a white housing project. In short, the promise of the 1950’s with which Professor Gitlin begins his book escaped my family. While most working class people have desperately tried to get out of the class or, at least, deny their class position this reviewer has stayed with his class. Professor Gitlin, on the other hand, went on to his academic pursuits and Socialist Scholars conferences in exotic locales.


Professor Gitlin takes us through the necessary influences which formed the basis for the 1960’s revolt. It is always problematic whether the general cultural climate or particular prior events had much influence on what followed later. It is easier to see both types of influences in hindsight and to over-analyze their importance. Nevertheless he takes us through the trials and tribulations of the ‘beats’, the rise and mainstream commercialization of the original rock and roll movement and the initial youth culture rebellion through such figures as James Dean, Marlon Brando, the work of Tennessee’s Williams and other cultural figures. It strikes me that such figures rather than, let us say Che, acted as a catalyst to move away from the mainstream society and not change it. The rise of the counerculture movement bears witness to that effect. It is easy enough to challenge the orthodoxy of the 1950’s it is another to have seen a way out. None of these phenomena that explode don the scene pretended to, or sought, to do so.

Professor Gitlin gets closer to the core of the influence when he discusses the Kennedy Administration, particularly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Two issues galvanized youth- the struggle against nuclear war and the struggle for black civil rights. The pretensions of the Kennedy administration in attempting to form a liberal consensus were the legitimate and logical target for the increasing numbers of young who wanted to take the Kennedys at their word- the need to roll up your sleeves and change society. However, they did not expect that change to start with them as the targets. The early 60's movement started with that love/hate relationship with the liberals-it never really got resolved then (and still hasn’t today).

The central organizational expression of the student/youth rebellion and the key to Professor Gitlin’s political perspective then, especially on the campuses, was Students for Democratic Society (SDS). Professor Gitlin was an early president of that organization and therefore can and generally does present the political and organizational ups and downs of SDS accurately and with a certain amount of insight. A couple of caveats though- he is very wedded to the notion that early SDS and its ‘old politicos’ network was something of 'Golden Age' tarnished by the later craziness of Progressive Labor and Weatherman interventions that brought about the demise of the organization in 1969. In short, he takes a fundamentally social democratic side on the 'reformist vs. revolutionary' question.

Professor Gitlin also suffers from a belief that the student movement by itself could have then led the fight for social change as some kind of ‘new class’ to lead a new society. If nothing else the history of the last forty years of campus life has cruelly placed that theory in the shade. Nevertheless read this book and learn why we would both agree to be 'young in that time was very heaven'.

*A Walk Down Dream Street, Circa 1964

The is a response to another question (edited somewhat for local and personal references)asked by my Class of 1964 committee. Apparently this is walk down memory lane week. Not everything is political in this world, but a lot turns on that fact.

Today’s Question: When you were a student did you ever sit on the main entrance steps of our old high school and dream of your future?

Obviously not every question I intend to answer is as whimsical as the first one about the comparative merits of the Rolling Stones and Beatles. Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives. I will confess here, as this seemingly is a confessional age, that my returning to the High School Class of 1964 fold did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years ago my mother, passed away. For a good part of her life she lived a stone’s throw from the school. You could see the back of the school from my grandmother’s house. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to the old home town. To my roots and hers. As part of that experience I passed by the old high school. That triggered some memories that motivate today’s question.

If my memory is correct I had not be in my old home town for at least the pass 25 years and so I was a little surprised that the main steps of the high school were no longer there. You remember the steps, right? They led to the then second floor and were flanked by, I think, a couple of lions or some gargoyles. I can remember spending many a summer night during high school, along with my old pal Billy, the great track man and cross country runner who I am trying to reach, sitting on those steps talking about our futures. Now for this question I am only using the steps as a metaphor, so to speak. Your probably have your own ‘steps’ where you thrashed out your dreams. How did they work out?

A lot of what Billy and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons. (Remember those were the days when future expectations were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every athlete does. Billy went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, at best, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.

We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember the content of Billy’s but mine went something like this. I wanted to be an educator (however vaguely defined at the time) and I also wanted to fulfill my grandfather’s dream for me of becoming a lawyer. Well, come hell or high water and through a very circuitous route I managed to do both of those. Put a check next to those dreams. I also had dreams for social justice, for working people to get a fair shake in this sorry old world. That, my friends, has, sorry to say, not turned out as expected. But enough. I will finish with this entry with an old expression from a Bob Dylan lyric. “I ‘ll let you be in my dream, if I can be in your dream.” Fair enough?

In Honor Of Newport 1965-Bob Dylan- Unplugged, Again

Click on the headljne to link to a "YouTube" film clip of ob Dylan performing "John Brown".

DVD REVIEW

Bob Dylan: Unplugged, Bob Dylan in a 1995 MTV Concert, Sony Records, 2004

Not intentionally, a least I do not think that is the case, I watched this Bob Dylan MTV Concert from 1995 directly after watching his Bob Dylan: The Other Side of The Mirror: Live at The Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965, Bob Dylan and various other artists, 2007. I have reviewed that documentary separately in this space. However, comments, and of necessity, comparisons between the two are in order here. I will not go on and on about hair styles and clothing as I did in the earlier film, in order to draw contrasts, because except wearing some sunglasses his persona has not changed dramatically from the 1965 Concert where he set himself on his own personal rock and roll (or better, I think) folk rock path.

Obviously, there cannot be a complete comparison between play lists for the two films because in 1965 some of the material covered in the 1995 film had not been created like Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door or things like that. Others are older works, like a well- done "John Brown", which had not been released earlier. Or the 1990’s-created "Dignity". One can, however, compare certain material covered in both films like "The Times They Are A- Changin’" , the classic "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Love Minus Zero, No Limit" (hereafter, No Limits).

Two things are clear by 1995. One is that Dylan, either by design or happenstance, had changed the mood and the manner in which he sang those songs, some for the better, some not. I believe that his newer version of "Like a Rolling Stone" geared to the musical tastes of a new generation works, "No Limits" does somewhat and "Times" not at all. First, I had to get over the sentimentally of knowing how these songs were played in my youth and wanting to cling to that notion, especially on a favored love anthem like "No Limits". Still the changed-up in rhythm only partially works to demonstrate the original pathos of that song.

Second, and this is something I had also observed in a live concert that I attended in the early 1990’s, old Bob had lost his voice and had adjusted some of his material to that new fact. Here comparison with the strong vibrant voice of 1965 is truly amazing. His adjustments worked best on a then new song like "Dignity" that has lyrics like in the old days but reflected his new vocal range. Nice. So is this thing worth seeing and hearing. Sure. But I would get that old "The Other Side of the Mirror" documentary – on purpose- to check out why, for a minute anyhow Dylan was the voice of my generation, the generation of ’68.

As The Kennedy Legacy In American Politics Passes- Reflections Of An Old Leftist On Bobby Kennedy

Click on title to link to the Public Broadcasting System's "American Experience" episode on Robert Kennedy.

Markin Commentary-August 28, 2009

With the passing of Massachusetts United Senator Edward Kennedy on August 26, 2009 there is a palpable sense that a political era has passed in American bourgeois politics. That may be. There will be plenty of time to analyze that, for those so inclined, later. For now though this reviewer, as one who was born in Massachusetts and has been face to face with the Kennedy aura since early childhood, has a few comments to make, not on Ted Kennedy, but on the political hero of my youth his older brother, Robert. I am reposting two entries, “The Real Robert Kennedy” and “On Bobby Kennedy”, from last year, the 40th anniversary of Bobby’s assassination during his run for the 1968 democratic presidential nomination.

As for the late Ted Kennedy he probably went as far it is possible to do in professing the liberal capitalist credo inherited from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Admittedly, since the halcyon “Camelot” days of the early 1960s that has been a bar that has been progressively lowered. Nevertheless, on specific issues, we leftists could unite (and did), with the appropriate freedom of criticism that we needed to insist on as a condition for joint action, with Ted Kennedy. That, my friends, who may not understand is under the old principle of uniting with “the devil and his grandmother” for the good of our cause.

But here is the real “skinny” on Ted Kennedy from our prospective. When, and if, the deal went down and the existence of the capitalist system was on the line old Teddy would have been the last “liberal” defender on the last barricade of that system. And why not? It was his system. Somewhere to Kennedy’s left there was a great divide that he could not pass and where we would, of necessity, have had to part company on those barricades just mentioned. Enough said on Ted though today I really want to go back to my young and reminisce about Bobby. Again.

Posted on “American Left History”-July 17, 2008

*The Real Robert Kennedy- A Sober Liberal View From PBS's American Experience Series

DVD REVIEW

Robert Kennedy, American Experience, PBS, 2004

It is somewhat ironic that at just the time that when presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a recent addition to the Democratic Party pantheon of heroes and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy, is claiming the nomination of the party that the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1968 is being remembered in some quarters. That event holds much meaning in the political evolution of this writer. The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 was the last time that this writer had a serious desire to fight solely on the parliamentary road for progressive political change. So today he too has some remembrances, as well. This documentary from the Public Broadcasting System’s "American Experience" series only adds some visual flashes to those remembrances.

In a commentary in another space I have mentioned that through the tumultuous period leading to the early spring of 1968 that I had done some political somersaults as a result of Bobby Kennedy’s early refusal to take on a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Moreover, I committed myself early (sometime in late 1967) to the reelection of Lyndon Johnson, as much as I hated his Vietnam War policy. Why? One Richard M. Nixon. I did not give Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent campaign even a sniff, although I agreed with his anti-war stance. Why? He could not beat one Richard M. Nixon. When Bobby Kennedy jumped in and Johnson announced that he was not going to run again and I was there the next day. I was a senior in college at the time but I believe I spent hundreds of hours that spring working the campaign either out of Boston, Washington, D.C. or elsewhere. Why? Well, you can guess the obvious by now. He COULD beat one Richard M. Nixon.

It was more than that though, and I will discuss that in the next paragraph. I took, as many did, Bobby's murder hard. It would be rather facile now to say that something of my youth, and that of others who I have talked to recently about this event, got left behind with his murder but there you have it. However, to show you the kind of political year that it was for me about a week after his death I was in the Hubert Humphrey campaign office in Boston. Why? You know why by now. And for those who don’t it had one name- Richard M. Nixon.

But let us get back to that other, more virtuous, political motive for supporting Bobby Kennedy. It was always, in those days, complicated coming from Massachusetts to separate out the whirlwind effect that the Kennedy family had on us, especially on ‘shanty’ Irish families. On the one hand we wished one of our own well, especially against the WASPs, on the other there was always that innate bitterness (jealousy, if you will) that it was not we who were the ones that were getting ahead. If there is any Irish in your family you know what I am talking about.

To be sure, as a fourteen year old I walked the neighborhood for John Kennedy in 1960 but as I have mentioned elsewhere that was a pro forma thing. Part of the ritual of entry into presidential politics. The Bobby thing was from the heart. Why? It is hard to explain but there was something about the deeply felt sense of Irish fatalism that he projected, especially after the death of his brother, that attracted me to him. But also the ruthless side where he was willing to cut Mayor Daly and every politician like him down or pat them on the back and more, if necessary, to get a little rough justice in the world. In those days I held those qualities, especially in tandem, in high esteem. Hell, I still do, if on a narrower basis.

Okay, that is enough for a trip down memory lane back to the old politically naïve days, or rather opportunistic days. Without detailing the events here the end of 1968 was also a watershed year for changing my belief that an individual candidate rather than ideas and political program were decisive for political organizing. That understanding, furthermore, changed my political appreciation for Bobby Kennedy (and the vices and virtues of the Democratic Party). That is the import of this well-produced (as always) portrayal of the short life and career of Robert Kennedy. If in 1968, with my 1968 political understandings, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Robert Kennedy my political evolution and his political past, as detailed here, have changed my perceptions dramatically.

This documentary highlights the close relationship between Robert and his older brother John starting with the Massachusetts United Senate campaign in 1952 (and that would continue in the 1960 campaign and during John Kennedy’s administration right up to the assassination). We are presented here, however, with the ‘bad’ Bobby who was more than willing to join Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” anti-communist campaign and the anti-labor McClellan Committee campaigns against Jimmy Hoffa in particular. There is no love lost between this writer and labor bureaucrats like Hoffa (or his son) but a bedrock position then and today is the need for labor to clean its own house. What purpose does government intervention into the labor movement do except to weaken it? Bobby was on the other side on this one, as well.

Under the John Kennedy Administration Robert, moreover, played a key role in putting a damper on the early civil rights movement in the South (as well as putting a 'tap' on Martin Luther King at the behest of one J. Edgar Hoover), the Bay of Pigs decision and aftermath , the Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation with the Soviet Union and the early escalation, under the rubric of counter-insurgency, in Vietnam. As readily observable, where I had previously downplayed my opposition to some of Bobby's positions I now put a minus next to them. That is politics.

Finally though, I will frankly admit a lingering ‘softness’ for Bobby. Why? The late political journalist Jack Newfield one of the inevitable 'talking heads' that people PBS productions, a biographer of Robert Kennedy I believe but in any case a close companion in the mid-1960’s and a prior resident of the Bedford-Stuveysant ghetto of New York City, made this comment about a Robert Kennedy response to his question during a tour of that area. Newfield asked Kennedy what he would have become if he had grown up in Bedford-Stuveysant. Bobby responded quickly- I would either be a juvenile delinquent or a revolutionary. I would like to think that he meant those alternatives seriously. Enough said.

*The Real Robert Kennedy- A Sober Liberal View From PBS's American Experience Series

Click on title to link to the Public Broadcasting System's "American Experience" episode on Robert Kennedy.

DVD REVIEW

Robert Kennedy, American Experience, PBS, 2004

It is somewhat ironic that at just the time that when presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a recent addition to the Democratic Party pantheon of heroes and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy, is claiming the nomination of the party that the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1968 is being remembered in some quarters. That event holds much meaning in the political evolution of this writer. The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 was the last time that this writer had a serious desire to fight solely on the parliamentary road for progressive political change. So today he too has some remembrances, as well. This documentary from the Public Broadcasting System’s "American Experience" series only adds some visual flashes to those remembrances.

In a commentary in another space I have mentioned that through the tumultuous period leading to the early spring of 1968 that I had done some political somersaults as a result of Bobby Kennedy’s early refusal to take on a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Moreover, I committed myself early (sometime in late 1967) to the reelection of Lyndon Johnson, as much as I hated his Vietnam War policy. Why? One Richard M. Nixon. I did not give Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent campaign even a sniff, although I agreed with his anti-war stance. Why? He could not beat one Richard M. Nixon. When Bobby Kennedy jumped in and Johnson announced that he was not going to run again and I was there the next day. I was a senior in college at the time but I believe I spent hundreds of hours that spring working the campaign either out of Boston, Washington, D.C. or elsewhere. Why? Well, you can guess the obvious by now. He COULD beat one Richard M. Nixon.

It was more than that though, and I will discuss that in the next paragraph. I took, as many did, Bobby's murder hard. It would be rather facile now to say that something of my youth, and that of others who I have talked to recently about this event, got left behind with his murder but there you have it. However, to show you the kind of political year that it was for me about a week after his death I was in the Hubert Humphrey campaign office in Boston. Why? You know why by now. And for those who don’t it had one name- Richard M. Nixon.

But let us get back to that other, more virtuous, political motive for supporting Bobby Kennedy. It was always, in those days, complicated coming from Massachusetts to separate out the whirlwind effect that the Kennedy family had on us, especially on ‘shanty’ Irish families. On the one hand we wished one of our own well, especially against the WASPs, on the other there was always that innate bitterness (jealousy, if you will) that it was not we who were the ones that were getting ahead. If there is any Irish in your family you know what I am talking about.

To be sure, as a fourteen year old I walked the neighborhood for John Kennedy in 1960 but as I have mentioned elsewhere that was a pro forma thing. Part of the ritual of entry into presidential politics. The Bobby thing was from the heart. Why? It is hard to explain but there was something about the deeply felt sense of Irish fatalism that he projected, especially after the death of his brother, that attracted me to him. But also the ruthless side where he was willing to cut Mayor Daly and every politician like him down or pat them on the back and more, if necessary, to get a little rough justice in the world. In those days I held those qualities, especially in tandem, in high esteem. Hell, I still do, if on a narrower basis.

Okay, that is enough for a trip down memory lane back to the old politically naïve days, or rather opportunistic days. Without detailing the events here the end of 1968 was also a watershed year for changing my belief that an individual candidate rather than ideas and political program were decisive for political organizing. That understanding, furthermore, changed my political appreciation for Bobby Kennedy (and the vices and virtues of the Democratic Party). That is the import of this well-produced (as always) portrayal of the short life and career of Robert Kennedy. If in 1968, with my 1968 political understandings, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Robert Kennedy my political evolution and his political past, as detailed here, have changed my perceptions dramatically.

This documentary highlights the close relationship between Robert and his older brother John starting with the Massachusetts United Senate campaign in 1952 (and that would continue in the 1960 campaign and during John Kennedy’s administration right up to the assassination). We are presented here, however, with the ‘bad’ Bobby who was more than willing to join Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” anti-communist campaign and the anti-labor McClellan Committee campaigns against Jimmy Hoffa in particular. There is no love lost between this writer and labor bureaucrats like Hoffa (or his son) but a bedrock position then and today is the need for labor to clean its own house. What purpose does government intervention into the labor movement do except to weaken it? Bobby was on the other side on this one, as well.

Under the John Kennedy Administration Robert, moreover, played a key role in putting a damper on the early civil rights movement in the South (as well as putting a 'tap' on Martin Luther King at the behest of one J. Edgar Hoover), the Bay of Pigs decision and aftermath , the Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation with the Soviet Union and the early escalation, under the rubric of counter-insurgency, in Vietnam. As readily observable, where I had previously downplayed my opposition to some of Bobby's positions I now put a minus next to them. That is politics.

Finally though, I will frankly admit a lingering ‘softness’ for Bobby. Why? The late political journalist Jack Newfield one of the inevitable 'talking heads' that people PBS productions, a biographer of Robert Kennedy I believe but in any case a close companion in the mid-1960’s and a prior resident of the Bedford-Stuveysant ghetto of New York City, made this comment about a Robert Kennedy response to his question during a tour of that area. Newfield asked Kennedy what he would have become if he had grown up in Bedford-Stuveysant. Bobby responded quickly- I would either be a juvenile delinquent or a revolutionary. I would like to think that he meant those alternatives seriously. Enough said.

The Battered, Tattered Generation of ' 68, Part II- Hands Off Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn

There is currently a tempest in a teapot swirling around Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama concerning his relationship with former Weatherpeople Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Here are a couple of reviews from last year on the historic significance of that movement. The real question to ask though is not why Obama was hanging around with Ayers and Dohrn but why they were hanging around with this garden-variety bourgeois candidate on the make. Enough said.

YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

DVD REVIEW

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND: REBELS WITH A CAUSE, 2003

In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.

One of the political highlights of the film is centered on the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention that was a watershed in the student anti-war protest movement. That was the genesis of the Weathermen but it was also the genesis of the Progressive Labor Party-led faction that wanted to bring the anti-war message to the working class by linking up the student movement with the fight against capitalism. In short, to get to those who were, or were to be, the rank and file soldiers in Vietnam or who worked in the factories. In either case the point that was missed, as the Old Left had argued all along and which we had previously dismissed out of hand, was that it was the masses of working people who were central to ‘bringing the war home’ and the fight against capitalism. That task still confronts us today.

One of the paradoxical things about this film is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that that movement also fought out the above-mentioned fight in 1969. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the worldwide revolutionary movement in order to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) had a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.


YOU NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS, PART II

BOOK REVIEW

FUGITIVE DAYS, A MEMOIR, BILL AYERS, PENGUIN, 2001

Recently in this space I reviewed the documentary Weather Underground so that it also makes sense to review the present book by Bill Ayers, one of the ‘talking heads’ in that film and a central leader of both the old Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground that split off from that movement in 1969 to go its own way. Readers should see the documentary as it gives a fairly good presentation of the events around the formation of the Underground, what they tried to accomplish and what happened to them after the demise of the anti-war movement in the early 1970’s.

To get a better understanding of what drove thousands of young American students into opposition to the American government at that time the documentary Rebels With A Cause (also reviewed in this space) is worth looking at as well. Between those two sources you will get a better understanding of what drove Professor Ayers and many others, including myself, over the edge. Professor Ayers makes many of those same points in the book. Thus, I only want to make a couple of political comments about the question of the underground here. They were also used in my review of the Weather Underground documentary and apply to Professor Ayers thoughts as well. I would also make it very clear here that unlike many other leftists, who ran for cover, in the 1970’s I called for the political defense of the Weather Underground despite my political differences with their strategy under the old leftist principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. Moreover, and be shocked if you will, the courageous, if misguided, actions of the Weather Underground require no apology today. I stand with the Professor on that count. Here are the comments.

“In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company. ......


"One of the paradoxical things about the documentary is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that that movement also fought out the above-mentioned fight in 1969. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the worldwide revolutionary movement in order to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) had a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.”