Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers”- A Film Adaptation-A Second Take (1962)

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1964 The Killers.

DVD Review

The Killers, starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickerson, Ronald Reagan, Clu Gulanger, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, Universal Studios, 1964

As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this crime noir genre I am an aficionado, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. I mentioned in a review of the 1946 version of the film under review, The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster (as the smitten fall guy) and Ava Gardner (as the femme fatale, what else) that for plot line, and plot interest, femme fatale interest and sheer duplicity that film was in the former category. This techno-color version pales (no pun intended) by comparison although in spots the twists in the plot line here are interesting.

Neither screen adaptation owes much, except the opening passages, to Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name. The beauty of the shortness of the Heminway story is that it left plenty of room for other possibilities to expand on his plot line. But in the end the central question of all three vehicles is the question- why did two professional killers, serious, badass killers want to kill the seemingly harmless fall guy (here, Johnny North, always a Johnny somewhere in these noir things, played by a young John Cassavetes)?. And why didn’t they run when they had the chance. But come on now, wake up, you know as well as I do that it’s about a dame, a frill, a frail, a women, and not just any woman, but a high roller femme fatale. In this case that frill I is Sheila Farr (here played by Angie Dickerson who whatever her charms for a 1960s audience pales, again no pun intended, to the earlier version’s Kitty Collins played by sultry, yes sultry, Ava Gardner, as a colleen).

As I have noted recently in a review of the 1945 crime noir, Fallen Angel, femme fatales come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. But high or low all want some dough, and a man who has it or knows how to get it. This is no modernist, post-1970s concept but hard 1940s realities extended into the early 1960s. And duplicity is just one of the “feminine wiles” that will help get the dough. Now thoroughly modern Sheila, like Kitty is not all that choosy about the dough's source, any mug will do, but she has some kind of sixth sense that it is not Johnny, at least not in the long haul and that notion will drive the action for a bit.

And if you think about it, of course Sheila is going with the smart guy, the guy with things really figured out (Jack, played here by a demure Ronald Reagan wearing a smashing greased down pompadour hair-do and looking very non-presidential). And old chump Johnny is nothing but a busted-up old palooka of a race car driving (Swede was a prize fighter) past his prime and looking for some easy money. No, no way Kitty is going to wind up with him in that shoddy rooming house out in the sticks hustling for short dough on the jalopy circuit , waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Let’s run through the plot a little and it will start to make more sense. You already know that other shoe dropped for Johnny. And why he just waited for the fates to rush in on him. What you didn’t know is that to get some easy dough for another run at Sheila’s come hither affections he, Johnny North, is involved along with Sheila's current paramour, Jack, and a couple of other midnight grifters in a major hold-up of a old-timey rural U.S. Mail truck (go big, or don’t go at all, right) The heist goes off like clockwork. Where it gets dicey is pay-off time. Just like with the earlier version’s Kitty and Big Jim Sheila and Jack are dealing the others out, and dealing them out big time. And they get away with it for a while until the guys who did the “hit” on Johnny (played by Lee Marvin and Clu Glanger) get all balled up trying to figure out why Johnny just cast his fate to the wind start to figure things out.

And they lead, or are led, naturally to figure out the big double-cross. But double-crossing people, even simple midnight grifters, is not good criminal practice and so all hell breaks loose. Watch this film. And take the same advise I gave in the 1946 review stay away from dark-haired Irish beauties AND also tall, leggy, brunettes with no heart, especially if you are just an average Joe. Okay.

Note: This is not the first Hemingway writing, or an idea for a writing, that has appeared in film totally different from the original idea. More famous, and rightly so is his sea tale, To Have Or Have Not, that William Faulkner wrote the screenplay for and that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall turned into a steamy (1940s steamy, okay) black and white film classic.

Added note:

Ernest Hemingway was a prolific short story writer and I have argued in the past elsewhere in this space that perhaps some of these were his best literary efforts. Needless to say, a writer whose command of a sparse and functional style is going do very nicely when Hollywood comes a-calling. In this case the short story was indeed short. A couple of hired killers come into a lunch counter looking for someone on the run. He doesn't show and that is the end of the story. Although we presume his fate is foresworn. But not for Hollywood. In this remake of the 1946 film that starred Burt Lancaster the hired killers (played by Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager) remain but they are thoughtful (and greedy). They want to know why Johnny North (the guy on the run) does not run and stands for the hit. As befits a 1960's film they want to get the motive and will get it come hell or high water. Naturally, there is a woman (a young Angie Dickerson) involved that leads old Johnny astray. From there the film goes through a series of flashbacks to figure out how Johnny became the fall guy. The original is a little closer to Hemingway's sense of the dynamics that lead to the patsy's fatalism but this is an interesting take, as well.

In Honor Of The Centenary Of Tennesse Williams' Birth-*Playwright’s Corner- "Fugitive Kind"

Friday, October 29, 2010
*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ "Fugitive Kind"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' early play, Fugitive Kind.

Book Review

Fugitive Kind, Tennessee Williams, New Directions, 2001

“Hey, the message of the social gospel (Marx or Christ, or some such figure) is fine, but I want get mine now not in the great by-and-by.” That message, or my paraphrase of that message, may seem old hat, but in one form or another it has animated the characters that people most of Tennessee Williams’ plays, including this early effort when he was just starting out in the old St. Louis days of the 1930s long before A Streetcar Named Desire insured his literary immortality. Here Williams uses the time-tested devise of the flop house (also used in Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and in other places like in Norman Mailer’s Barbary Shore) that permits him to, with some emotional and psychic economy, look at the human condition without having to stir up too much trouble out in the mean streets of Depression-era America (1930s version, sorry).

Of course when one thinks of flop houses, or rather when I think of flop houses I think of “losers” of one sort or another. The marginal people whose very existence is a monument to the paraphrase above, including one of the key characters here hiding away in that anonymous space, Terry. Outlaws, grifters, drifters, midnight shifters, drunks, homosexuals when that was a closeted thing, leftist political exiles (self-imposed or not), and generally those who must live by their wits as best they can are the stuff of Williams fare. After reading the introduction to this play apparently this gnawing search motivated him from early on in his writing career. And this is great stuff on the theater stage, although out in those means streets such characters are as likely to knock you down for your ready cash as be “colorful”. Marx (and others) called them the lumpen element that parasitically fed off and broke down the solidarity of the working stiffs. The Paris Commune, in its short existence, declared “death to thieves” from much the same motivation. Tennessee Williams says let’s get the stethoscope out and see what makes them tick. And on the stage he is right. Read this one, read (or see) every Williams play you can.

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth-Playwright’s Corner-“Suddenly, Last Summer”

Thursday, January 15, 2009
*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly, Last Summer”

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly, Last Summer."

Play/DVD Reviews

The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry

Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

“Suddenly, Last Summer" is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character, Sebastian, seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her “genius” son from the world even after his ‘untimely’ death in the play's ...last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian’s beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian’s appetites (some form of pedophilia) is to be permanently taken out of the picture (via institutionalization in a mental hospital) in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the ‘hope’ that there may actually be someone to believe the girl’s story before she becomes one more sacrifice to ‘beauty’ in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.

In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as cinematic flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian’s mother and ‘keeper of the flame’. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor as the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ….some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn’t he?

On The Theory Of “The Most Oppressed Are The Most Revolutionary”- A Short Note

Markin comment:

As Bob Mandel pointed out in the article posted today, February 23, 2011, Lessons Of The Anti-War Movement: A Trade-Union Militant Speaks On The New Left, youth vanguardism was rampant in the New Left as the student movement began to swing dramatically leftward. I was fully in tune with that sentiment, at least for a while. What I was not tuned into, and as he also mentioned, was the other strong current coming out of the New Left, especially from those elements reacting to those of us who were starting, gropingly, to reach out to the working class was the notion that the “most oppressed were the most revolutionary.”

And the reason for my skepticism was not some esoteric theory but pure fact. I came from a segment of that milieu as it came to be in post World War II America- the working poor, the chronically unemployed, the unskilled day workers, and those drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, as my school days friend Frankie used to say, who fed off their misery. In short, the lumpen proletariat. These segments need a revolution; desperately need a revolution but their life circumstances almost preclude political action unless some bigger turmoils are occurring in society. A lot of the New Left glorification stemmed, frankly, from ignorance of the ways of life down at the very edges of society. And "Third-World-ist" book romance with Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth and a movie like Battle Of Algiers. I have written previously on the latter and will do a review in the future on Fanon’s work.

No question down at the edges of society that the substance of Hobbes’ observation of life being “short, nasty and brutish,” holds true, as a matter of pure survival if nothing else. The “war” of all against all takes concrete form there either by fear of the takers, or fear of the consequences of not being a taker. Either way the bonds of social solidarity are indeed very tenuous. I will give a very concrete example from my own life so that we can dispense with any prettification of this theory. I, in my very early teens, hung around with a bunch of guys, guys a few years older, from “the projects” where I lived who were into “jack-rolling.” For those not in the know about this activity it is very simple. Take one dark alley, or other isolated place, stand in the shadows or some other out of the way place with a Billy club–like stick (or other blunt instrument) and wait on some likely (usually an old or otherwise helpless person) and when your “target” comes by either threaten or actually use that club to subdue the victim, taking their money or whatever valuables with you. Nice, right? I was, given my youth, the look-out, or set-up guy. I didn’t do it for long, the lure of the library made more sense at some point. As for those other guys, some went to jail for other more serious offenses, some were killed down in Mexico in a drug deal that went wrong, and at least one died in a police shoot out. Needless to say no Bolsheviks came out of that crew. And this, my friends, from other stories that I have heard later, was not all that different when you changed the faces to black or brown.

*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ "Fugitive Kind"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' early play, Fugitive Kind.

Book Review

Fugitive Kind, Tennessee Williams, New Directions, 2001

“Hey, the message of the social gospel (Marx or Christ, or some such figure) is fine, but I want get mine now not in the great by-and-by.” That message, or my paraphrase of that message, may seem old hat, but in one form or another it has animated the characters that people most of Tennessee Williams’ plays, including this early effort when he was just starting out in the old St. Louis days of the 1930s long before A Streetcar Named Desire insured his literary immortality. Here Williams uses the time-tested devise of the flop house (also used in Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and in other places like in Norman Mailer’s Barbary Shore) that permits him to, with some emotional and psychic economy, look at the human condition without having to stir up too much trouble out in the mean streets of Depression-era  America (1930s version, sorry).

Of course when one thinks of flop houses, or rather when I think of flop houses I think of “losers” of one sort or another. The marginal people whose very existence is a monument to the paraphrase above, including one of the key characters here hiding away in that anonymous space, Terry. Outlaws, grifters, drifters, midnight shifters, drunks, homosexuals when that was a closeted thing, leftist political exiles (self-imposed or not), and generally those who must live by their wits as best they can are the stuff of Williams fare. After reading the introduction to this play apparently this gnawing search motivated him from early on in his writing career. And this is great stuff on the theater stage, although out in those means streets such characters are as likely to knock you down for your ready cash as be “colorful”. Marx (and others) called them the lumpen element that parasitically fed off and broke down the solidarity of the working stiffs. The Paris Commune, in its short existence, declared “death to thieves” from much the same motivation. Tennessee Williams says let’s get the stethoscope out and see what makes them tick. And on the stage he is right. Read this one, read (or see) every Williams play you can.

Song From Popular American Folklore-The Walkabouts' "Bonnie And Clyde"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bonnie and Clyde as video accompanying The Walkabout's song on the pair.

Markin comment:

See today's entry on the film Bonnie and Clyde.

From "The Rag Blog" -FILM / Danny Schechter : Stone's 'Wall Street' Sequel Goes Soft

FILM / Danny Schechter : Stone's 'Wall Street' Sequel Goes Soft

Journalist, author, Emmy winning television producer, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, Tuesday, September 28, 2-3 p.m. (CST). To stream Rag Radio live, go here. To listen to this show after the broadcast, or to listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go here.

'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
Oliver Stone's sequel misses the mark


By Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2010

Lack of focus on corruption mars Stone's new Wall Street movie. It's heavy on atmosphere, light on anger.
The lead headline in The New York Times is “Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Afghan Election." The line below is "A Blow to Credibility," as if anyone who follows Afghanistan, a country known for blatant and notorious corruption, would be at all surprised by this latest “blow.” This “blow” followed an earlier “blow” a few weeks back with the disclosure of the crash of the Kabul Bank with $300 billion still unaccounted for.

In America, another fraud: CNN reported the next morning that the pathetic blonde beauty-celebrity Lindsay Lohan put up $300,000 to get out of jail. That’s the kind of story American media considers worthy of constant “Breaking News” attention.

When will we see the headlines like "Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Economic Recovery" or "Extensive Fraud Led to Financial Collapse"?

I ask this question, sort of knowing the answer, after two recent back-to-back film experiences.

Last Thursday I spoke at a packed screening of my film Plunder: The Crime of our Time that indicts financial crimes and corruption behind the financial crisis. The audience seemed overwhelmingly positive except for one Wall Streeter in the house who insisted that while there may have been “ethical lapses,” no crimes were committed, an expression of a conventional wisdom that most of the media has reinforced without investigating any evidence.

At a reception after the film in Suburban Long Island’s Cinema Arts Center, several people told me that one impact the crisis has had on them is sleeplessness because of anxiety over whether they can pay their bills and avoid joblessness and foreclosure.

Ironically, film director Oliver Stone also had sleep on his mind, as "Money Never Sleeps” is the subtitle of his remake of the movie Wall Street. To my surprise, the theater was not packed for a film distributed ironically by the money of mad mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox company.

After watching the movie, I realized why the right-wing Rupert Murdoch could be comfortable enough releasing the latest from the nominally left-wing Oliver Stone.

The movie built an “explainer” around a love story that in the end was as much about child-parent conflicts and pretentious philosophizing as the background of the collapse of Wall Street -- which is treated, ultimately, from a “we are all to blame” viewpoint. In many ways the movie celebrates the brash culture of greed and excess of our era while we watch Michael Douglas' portrayal of Gordon Gekko, known in earlier times for the slogan “Greed Is Good.”

Now, greed is everywhere, and there ain’t much we can do about it.

Oh Oliver, really.

Personally, I saw many of the stories I reported in my film turn up in his -- with even the same lines -- leading me to unprovable suspicions after having given my film personally to Stone with a request for his help months earlier.

How naive of me. We are in different leagues, clearly, and maybe on different sides.

In an interview on CNN, Stone seemed to argue that free speech is more of an issue than the insolvency of the banks. He became totally obsessed with the rumors that brought down Bear Stearns, an issue I explore in depth. Stone told CNN:

What I found out, what shocked me back in 2009, was that Goldman Sachs and those type of banks were really going long and short at the same time and were actually selling out on their clients. I thought that was shocking information to me, as well as the power of rumor, which, amazing. We show the power of that and how it can destroy a company...

I'm not so sure that's good for the system, although it's more transparent. But it does lead to circles of viciousness and rumor and hype and a stock, as you know, drops. I mean, look at what happened a few months ago, right? The market just crashed. So what's going to happen?

It does scare me, and I think it's the nature of the modern world, I suppose.
The following comment was on the website Ml-implode.com, where the intervew was excerpted:
There you go, "rumor,” mentioned as a causative factor 4 or 5 times; insolvency/leverage? Zero. Those poor, poor Wall Street banks -- they're victims, you know.
The movie dances on all sides of the issues, actually featuring an on camera cameo by Stone, of course and, Grayon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, who I quote in my film and book, The Crime of our Time, because he labeled the crisis “the greatest non-violent crime in history” Stone feigns to that view but ultimately rejects it.

Hedge Fund investor Jim Chanos, who I also quote, and who has called for the prosecution of wrongdoers, was even an advisor. It seems like he was wanted for his insight more on the atmospherics of the scene, not his demand for more perp walks.

Wall Street 2 features a father-son subtext as the young banker played by Shia LaBeouf watches as his mentor -- at a firm made to resemble Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers -- commits suicide after the company is brought down by rumors and dirty tricks. In the end he marries and has a son with Gekko’s daughter who, natch, runs a left wing website.

The kid is named Louie after the banker who died. Undisclosed is that Stone’s dad who worked on Wall Street was also a Lou. Clearly this movie was as much about the personal psychodrama of Stone’s life as many of his earlier films were about the ghosts of Vietnam. His movies about Nixon and W also featured father-son conflicts. The banker who died by jumping into the subway, Frank Langella, recently played Nixon in the movie about David Frost’s interview.

More disturbing was the film’s failure to call for any action. It starts with Gekko getting out of jail and getting back in the industry. So jail, in the end means nothing.

Many Wall Streeters interviewed about the film seemed confused about its message and meandering plot points. Most (including myself) liked the luscious cinematography of New York that even profiled Bernie Madoff’s former office, as well as David Byrne’s great music. Said former banker Nomi Prins who is in Plunder, “ I liked it until halfway through, and then it was a hodge-podge bunch of events.”

The pro-free market Daily Bell wrote:
Always, Oliver Stone seems a propagandist and apologist... One so successful and perspicacious as Oliver Stone must know generally where the truth lies. Would it be any news to him that the United States is over-extended from a monetary and military standpoint? Or that Fed money printing was the proximate cause of the economic crash. It should not be too hard to figure this out. The Internet is full of such analyses.
Critic Roger Ebert liked the film but added, "I wish it had been angrier. I wish it had been outraged. Maybe Stone's instincts are correct, and American audiences aren't ready for that. They haven't had enough of Greed."

Did those “instincts” lead to the pandering, or was it just the logic of the market or Murdoch’s neutering its critical edge with an insistence to “just tell us a story, Oliver, if you want this to be big.”

In my experience, audiences I met were furious about what’s happened to them and the country. Late last week Paul Volker warned that the financial system is still broken. Others fear another crash is only just a matter of time. This reality is not evident on Oliver Stone’s radar screen.

After my screening, a man named Milton told me he is active in the Democratic Party, but that the Dems will not really act against Wall Street. “They don’t have the guts,” he said. Can the same be said about Oliver Stone, who loves the Hugo Chavez’s of the world South Of The Border, but echoes CNBC here at home?

["News Dissector" Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, Emmy award winning television producer, and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs, and speaks about media issues. Schechter directed Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, and a companion book, The Crime of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail. Contact him at dissector@mediachannel.org.]

The Rag Blog

Posted by thorne dreyer at 11:00 AM
Labels: Banking, Corporate Corruption, Danny Schechter, Film, Financial Crisis, Oliver Stone, Rag Bloggers, Wall Street

1 Make/read comments:
Sherman De Brosse said...
This was a good review. The film sort of dragged at the end.

Stone left the clear impression that the financial system will implode again and again. The recent reregulation might cushon the shock somewhat.

I don't see much anger out there directed at Wall Street. It has been effectively redirected toward President Obama and the dreaded liberals.

You have to hand it to the Republicans. They are slick communicators.

They say no more bail-outs while they are getting ready to scrap the recent financial reform bill. That will guarantee that the taxpayer will have to bail out Wall Street again, and again, and again.

There may be a few dim-witted GOP congressmen who do not understand this, but I'll bet most do.

Sep 28, 2010 2:28:00 PM
Post a Comment

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Tom Waits' "Hold On"

Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing his Hold On.

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

********

Tom Waits Hold On Lyrics

They hung a sign up in our town
"if you live it up, you won't
Live it down"
So, she left Marty Rio's son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
She went and took that California trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
Hair like wind
She said don't look back just
Come on Jim

(Chorus)

Oh you got to
Hold on, Hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
You gotta hold on.

Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
But you share my bed, you share my name.
Well, go ahead and call the cops
You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes there's nothin left to do

Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here, you got to hold on.

Well, God bless your crooked little heart,
St. Louis got the best of me.
I miss your broken-china voice.
How I wish you were still here with me.
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
You burn your mansion to the ground
When there's nothing left to keep you here, when
You're falling behind in this
Big blue world

Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
You got to hold on

Down by the Riverside motel,
It's 10 below and falling.
By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
And started swaying.
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music.
Well your old hometown is so far away
But, inside your head there's a record
That's playing, a song called

Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
You got to hold on.

*The Ghost Classmate- A Personal Story And, Maybe, A Cautionary Tale

Every once in a while, although as much recently, some old high school classmates that I have stayed in touch with remind me that it has been 45 years since we went though those hallowed hall of the old school. That, knowledge, has on occasion sparked more than a few entries in this space. The following tale, although not filled with the humor that I tried to instill in of my earlier efforts, continues in that vein.

****
Not everyone who went through our old high school survived to tell the tale, or at least the way the tale was suppose to be told, or how they wanted it told. Moreover, we, as a class, after 45 years, are long enough in the tooth to have accumulated a growing list of causalities, of the wounded and broken, of the beaten down and disheveled. This entry is going to be about one of our classmates who got lost in the shuffle somehow and it only here, and only by me, that he gets his struggles voiced. I will not mention his name for you may have sat across from him in class, or given him what passed for "the nod" in the hallway back in the day, or had something of a ¿crush¿ on him because from pictures of him taken back then he certainly had that 'something' physically all the girls were swooning over. Let's just call him, as the title for this entry suggests- the ghost classmate (and in the interest of saving precious space in order to tell his story, shorten it to GC).

Now I will surprise you, I think. I did not know GC in our school days; at least I have no recollection of him from that time. I met him, or rather he met me, when we were in our early thirties in front one of the skid row run-down "hotels" that dotted the low rent (then) streets of the waterfront of San Francisco. My reason for being there is a tale for another day, after all this is GC's story, but rest assured I was not in that locale on vacation, nor was he. Ironically, at our first meeting we were both in the process of pan-handling the same area when the light of recognition hit him. After the usual exchange of personal information, and assorted other lies we spent some weeks together doing, as they say, the best we could. Then, one night, he split taking all his, and my, worldly possessions.

Fast forward. A few years later, when I was in significantly better circumstances, if not exactly in the clover, I was walking down Beacon Street in Boston when someone across the street on the Common started to yell my name. Well, the long and short of it, was that it was old GC, looking even more disheveled than when I had last seen him. After an exchange of personal data and other details I bought him some dinner. The important thing to know, however, is that from that day until very recently I have always been in touch with the man as he has descended further and further into the depths of the skid row ethos. But enough of the rough out-line, let me get to the heart of the matter.

I have left GC's circumstances deliberated vague until now. The reader might assume, given the circumstances of our first meeting, GC to be a man driven to the edge by alcohol, or drugs or any of the other common maladies that break a man¿s body, or his spirit. Those we can relate to, if not fully understand. No, GC was broken by his own almost psychotically-driven need to succeed, and in the process constantly failing. He had been, a number of times, diagnosed as clinically depressed. I am not sure I can convey, this side of a psychiatrist's couch, that condition in language the reader could comprehend. All that I can say is this man was so inside himself with the need to do the right thing, the honorable thing, the 'not bad' thing, that he never could do any of those. What a terrible rock to have to keep rolling up the mountain.

Here, however, to my mind is the real tragic part of this story, and the one point that I hope you will take away from this narration. GC and I talked many times about our youthful dreams, about how we were going to conquer this or that "mountain" and go on to the next one, how we would right this or that grievous wrong in the world, and about the, to borrow the English revolutionary and poet John Milton's words from his famous "Paradise Lost", need to discover the "the paradise within thee, happier far". Over the years though GC's dreams got measurably smaller and smaller, and then smaller still until there were no more dreams, only existence. That, my friends, is the stuff of tragedy, not conjured up Shakespearean tragedy. but real tragedy.

Writer’s Corner- William Kennedy’s “Ironweed”- A Film Review

Click on title to link to "Wikipedia"'s entry for William Kennedy, author of "Ironweed".

Film Review

Ironweed, based on the book by William Kennedy, The Viking Press, New York, 1983, starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, with Tom Waits, 1987

The paragraphs below were used to review the book that this film is based on. Since the film very closely follows the story line of the book the comments there can, for the most part, stand here. I would only add that Jack Nicholson’s role as ex- baseball player, hard guy, and hobo alkie Fran is probably more understated that the book character (and more understated for him, given some of his more in-your-face roles). Meryl Streep, well, is Merlyn Streep, and plays the role of Helen, Fran’s street companion/lover, to a tee (although she might be a tad bit more beautiful that your average "bag lady"). The surprise treat is the secondary role played by raspy-voiced singer-songwriter Tom Waits as Fran’s sidekick, Rudy. On reflection though, for those, like me, who know Waits’ later musical work his role should not be surprised. Who else, lately, could fill that kind of ‘lost soul’ hobo role so naturally?

********

William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down at the heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man’s work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check

The above, in a tangential way, gets you pretty much all you need to know about the why of reading this book (and other stories by Kennedy), except a little something about the plot line. Well, that is fairly simple. Old time baseball star Fran and his erstwhile companion, a gifted singer, Helen are drunks working their way through the edges between skid row and respectability. And, mainly, losing to the lure of the bottle and to the hard, hard struggle that it takes just to get through the day when your options are limited. Put that task together with trying to survive in the jungles, with its endless twisted characters, of the Great Depression (that other one in the 1930s) Albany, trying to figure out when life went wrong and trying to figure out why it all went wrong- while fighting a losing battle against society’s expectations- and one’s family’s. This will provide enough dramatic tension to keep you interested.

Oh did I mention that Kennedy writes with verve, with an uncanny understanding of his characters (although only Fran and Helen get the full treatment here)and with no holds barred, or punches pulled down there on cheap street. See, that is why Kennedy and Thompson connected in the literary world. They KNOW the under side of life. Read this thing, please.

*Writer's Corner- William Kennedy's "Ironweed"- A Book Review

Click on title to link to "Wikipedia"'s entry for the writer William Kennedy

Book Review

Ironweed, William Kennedy, The Viking Press, New York, 1983

William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down at the heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man’s work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check.

The above, in a tangential way, gets you pretty much all you need to know about the why of reading this book (and other stories by Kennedy), except a little something about the plot line. Well, that is fairly simple. Old time baseball star Fran and his erstwhile companion, a gifted singer, Helen are drunks working their way through the edges between skid row and respectability. And, mainly, losing to the lure of the bottle and to the hard, hard struggle that it takes just to get through the day when your options are limited. Put that task together with trying to survive in the jungles, with its endless twisted characters, of the Great Depression (that other one in the 1930s) Albany, trying to figure out when life went wrong and trying to figure out why it all went wrong- while fighting a losing battle against society’s expectations- and one’s family’s. This will provide enough dramatic tension to keep you interested.

Oh did I mention that Kennedy writes with verve, with an uncanny understanding of his characters (although only Fran and Helen get the full treatment here)and with no holds barred, or punches pulled down there on cheap street. See, that is why Kennedy and Thompson connected in the literary world. They KNOW the underside of life. Read this thing, please.

*A Tom Waits Encore- "Used Songs, 1973-1980"

Click On To Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Jersey Girl". Wow. Along with Greg Brown's cover of "Vincent White Lightning 52" (about a local motorcycle bandit, his bike and his Red Molly)this song are the leading candidates for the great, modern working poor/ lumpen proletarian love songs. In my own case, it was a near thing that I might have fallen into that life. It certainly had its attractions. Yes, it was near thing, indeed.

CD Review

Tom Waits Used Songs, Tom Waits, Rhino Records,2001

The name Tom Waits is no stranger to this space, particularly as I have recently reviewed many of his CDs. During that time I have reviewed both the early, more jazzy work that reflected his “night club act” approach and his later gravelly, time-worn, time-tested efforts that I always appreciate in any male singer (note, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Howlin’ Wolf, early Rod Stewart, etc.). Here, as a Waits encore, is something of a “greatest hits” CD from the early days.

There are many classic here. I note “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, “I Never Talk To Strangers” (nice repartee with female companion), the sardonic “Step Right Up” (with possibly every advertising cliché that every existed) and the whimsical, although heartfelt, tribute to those Edward Hopper folk of “Nighthawks At The Diner”, “Eggs And Sausage” (Tom Waits, whimsical?). However, my favorite is the homage to young love (and longings for love) “Jersey Girl”. (“I got not time for the corner boys..., I don’t want no whores from 8th Avenue…” are definitely lines that will get my attention.). Yes, that is the ticket.


Jersey Girl Lyrics

Got no time for the corner boys, down in the street makin all that noise,
Dont want no whores on eighth avenue, cause tonight Im gonna be with you.

Cause tonight Im gonna take that ride, across the river to the jersey side,
Take my baby to the carnival, and Ill take you on all the rides, sing sha la
La la la la sha la la la.

Down the shore everythings alright, you with your baby on a saturday night,
Dont you know that all my dreams come true, when Im walkin down the street
With you, sing sha la la la la la sha la la la.

You know she thrills me with all her charms, when Im wrapped up in my
Babys arms, my little angel gives me everything, I know someday that shell
Wear my ring.

So dont bother me cause I got no time, Im on my way to see that girl of
Mine, nothin else matters in this whole wide world, when youre in love with
A jersey girl, sing sha la la la la la la.

And I call your name, I cant sleep
at night, sha la la la la la

"(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night"

Well you gassed her up
Behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrelin' down the boulevard
You're looking for the heart of Saturday night

And you got paid on Friday
And your pockets are jinglin'
And you see the lights
You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6
And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night

Then you comb your hair
Shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace
All the other days
In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday
You're reachin' your peak

Stoppin' on the red
You're goin' on the green
'Cause tonight'll be like nothin'
You've ever seen
And you're barrelin' down the boulevard
Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night

Well you gassed her up
And you're behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrellin' down the boulevard,
You're lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of special down in the core
And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
It's found you stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
And you're stumblin'
Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night

*Tom Waits-The Early Jazzy Years

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Tom Traubert's Blues".

CD Reviews

The Early Years, Volume One, Tom Waits,

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

Good picks here are "I'm Your Late Night Evening Prostitute" and "When You Ain't Got Nobody". This compilation shows more of Tom's lounge act style and is a little more jazzy than some of his later work.

Tom Waits Lyrics

"Tom Waits I'm Your Late Night Evening Prostitute lyrics"

Well I got here at eight and I'll be here till two
I'll try my best to entertain you and
Please don't mind me if I get a bit crude
I'm your late night evening prostitute
So drink your martinis and stare at the moon
Don't mind me I'll continue to croon
Don't mind me if I get a bit loon
I'm your late night evening prostitute
And dance, have a good time
I'll continue to shine
Yes Dance, have a good time
Don't mind me if I slip upon a rhyme
Well I got here at eight and I'll be here till two
I'll try my best to entertain you and
Please don't mind me if I get a bit crude
I'm your late night evening prostitute
I'm your late night evening prostitute

*Rain Dogs- The Late Work Of Tom Waits

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Rain Dogs"

CD Reviews

Rain Dogs, Tom Waits, Island Records, 1985

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

This one is filled with great work. The evocative “Gun Street Girl”, the dark “Walking Spanish”, “Hang Down Your Head” and the title track “Rain Dogs” lead this parade.

"Gun Street Girl"

Falling James in the Tahoe mud
Stick around to tell us all the tail
He fell in love with a Gun Street Girl and
Now he's danced in the Birmingham jail.

Took a 100 dollars off a slaughterhouse Joe
Brought a bran' new michigan 20 gauge
Got all liquored up on that road house corn,
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette.
Brought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese
Dyed his hair in the bathroom of Texaco
With a pawnshop radio, quarter past 4
Well, he left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door
He left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door

Chorus:
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain't never coming home
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana, ain't never coming home.
Sitting in a sycamore in St. John's Wood
Soaking' day old bread in kerosene
He was blue as a robin's egg brown as a hog
Stayin' out of circulation till the dogs get tire
Stayin' out of circulation till the dogs get tired
Shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone
He never got up in the morning on a Saturday
Sittin' by the Erie with a bull whipped dog
Tellin' everyone he saw
They went thatta way

Tellin' everyone he saw
They went thatta way.
Now the rain's like gravel on old tin roof
And the Burlinton Northern's pullin' out of the world
With a head full of bourbon and a dream in the straw.
And a Gun Street Girl was the cause of it all.
Riding in the shadow by the St. Joe Ridge
He heard the click clack tappin' of a blind man's cane
Pullin' into Baker on New Year's Eve
With one eye on the pistol the other on the door,
With one eye on the pistol the other on the door.
Miss Charlotte took her satchel down to King Row
And the smuggled in a bran' new pair of alligator shoes.
With her fireman's raincoat and her long yellow hair, well
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire,
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire.

Chorus
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain't never coming home
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana, ain't never coming home.
Bangin' on a table with an old tin cup
Sing I'll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again,
I'll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again.

Repeat chorus

Walking Spanish Lyrics

He's got himself a homemade special
You know his glass is full of sand
And it feels just like a jaybird the way it fits into his hand
He rolled a blade up in his trick towel
They slap their hands against the wall
You never trip, you never stumble
He's walking Spanish down the hall

Slip him a picture of our Jesus
Or give him a spoon to dig a hole
What all he done ain't no one's business
But he'll need blankets for the cold
They dim the lights over on Broadway
Even the king has bowed his head
And every face looks right up at Mason
Man he's walking Spanish down the hall

Litella's screeching for a blind pig
Punk Sanders carved it out of wood
He never sang when he got hoodwinked
They tried it all but he never would
Tomorrow morning there'll be laundry
But he'll be somewhere else to hear the call
Don't say goodbye, he's just leaving early
He's walking Spanish down the hall

All St. Barthelemew said
Was whispered into the ear of Blind Jack Dawes
All Baker told the machine was that he never broke the law
Go on and tip your hat up to the Pilate
Take off your watch, your rings and all
Even Jesus wanted just a little more time
When he was walking Spanish down the hall

*"Frank's Wild Years"- The Late Work Of Tom Waits

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Frank's Wild Years"

CD Reviews

Frank’s Wild Years, Tom Waits

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.


This one is filled with some very experimental works like “Straight To The Top”and Frank’s Theme” More so than some of his other works this is a concept album, and it works. The high here are the two versions of “Innocent When You Dream”. Know this the song is one of the great modern love songs. Forget Cole Porter, Forget Irving Berlin. Hell, Forget Frank Sinatra. This is what the love story is down at the base of society without the fluff. Kudos, Tom.

Tom Waits » Innocent When You Dream Lyrics

The bats are in the belfry
the dew is on the moor
where are the arms that held me
and pledged her love before
and pledged her love before

Chorus

It's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stelaing
but you're innocent when you dream
when you dream
you're innocent when you dream

running through the graveyard
we laughed my friends and I
we swore we'd be together
until the day we died
until the day we died

Repeat Chorus

I made a golden promise
that we would never part
I gave my love a locket
and then I broke her heart
and then I broke her heart

Repeat Chorus

*Living On Dreams And Train Smoke-"Mule Variations"- The Late Work Of Tom Waits

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Hold On"

CD Reviews

Mule Variations, Tom Waits, Anti, 1999

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

"Hold On"

They hung a sign up in out town
"if you live it up, you won't
live it down"
So, she left Monte Rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
She went and took that California trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
Hair like wind
She said don't look back just
Come on Jim

(Chorus)

Oh you got to
Hold on, Hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
You gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone is looking for someone to blame
But you share my bed, you share my name
Well, go ahead and call the cops
You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops
She said baby, I still love you
Sometimes there's nothin left to do
Oh you got to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here, you got to
Just hold on.

Well, God bless your crooked little heart St. Louis got the best of me
I miss your broken-china voice
How I wish you were still here with me
Well, you build it up, you wreck it down
You burn your mansion to the ground
When there's nothing left to keep you here, when
You're falling behind in this
Big blue world
Oh you go to
Hold on, hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
You got to hold on
Down by the Riverside motel,
It's 10 below and falling
By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes
And started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Well your old hometown is so far away
But, inside your head there's a record
That's playing, a song called
Hold on, hold on
You really got to hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here
And just hold on.

Pony

I've seen it all boys
I've been all over
Been everywhere in the
Whole wide world
I rode the high line
With old blind Darby
I danced real slow
With Ida Jane

I was full of wonder
When I left Murfreesboro
Now I am full of hollow
On Maxwell street...
And I hope my Pony
I hope my Pony
I hope my Pony
Knows the way back home

I walked from Natcher
To Hushpukena
I built a fire by the side
Of the road
I worked for nothin in a
Belzoni saw mill. I caught a
Blind out on the B and O
Talullah's friendly Belzoni ain't so
A 44'll get you 99

And I hope my Pony
I hope my Pony
I hope my Pony
Knows the way back home

I run my race with burnt face Jake
Gave him a Manzanita cross
I lived on nothin
But dreams and train smoke
Somehow my watch and chain
Got lost.
I wish I was home in Evelyn's Kitchen
With old Gyp curled around my feet
(Chorus)

*A Tom Waits Anthology

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Waltzing Matilda".

CD Review

Anthology Of Tom Waits, Tom Waits, Electra/Asylum Records, 1985

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

This "greatest hits" compilation is just what it claims to be (circa 1985). If you need a Waits primer (and you should) you need to listen to the classics here. Tops on my list are “Diamonds On My Windshield”, ‘ Tom Traubert’s Blues” and his incredible paen to deperate young love, evocative of the best of Dylan in “Desolation Row” and some of Nelson Algren’s short stories about the love and longing down in the mean streets’, “Jersey Girl”. Wow.

"Tom Traubert's Blues"

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did, I've got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrow a couple of bucks from you
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English, and everything's broken, and my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me, you tore my shirt open,
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you'd bury the dagger
In your silhouette window light go
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

Now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen, and the cold-blooded signs,
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows, go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

No, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say
That the streets aren't for dreaming now
And manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories,
They want a piece of the action anyhow
Go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

And you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor,
And the old men in wheelchairs know
And Mathilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred,
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace,
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers
And goodnight to Mathilda, too

"Diamonds On My Windshield"

Well these diamonds on my windshield
And these tears from heaven
Well I'm pulling into town on the Interstate
I got a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
And it's these late nights and this freeway flying
It always makes me sing

There's a Duster tryin' to change my tune
He's pulling up fast on the right
Rolling restlessly by a twenty-four hour moon

And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
He's wishing he was home in a Wiscosin bed
But there's fifteen feet of snow in the East
Colder then a welldigger's ass
And it's colder than a welldigger's ass

Oceanside it ends the ride with San Clemente coming up
Those Sunday desperadoes slip by and cruise with a dry back
And the orange drive-in the neon billin'
And the theatre's fillin' to the brim
With slave girls and a hot spurn bucket full of sin

Metropolitan area with interchange and connections
Fly-by-nights from Riverside
And out of state plates running a little late

But the sailors jockey for the fast lane
So 101 don't miss it
There's rolling hills and concrete fields
And the broken line's on your mind
The eights go east and the fives go north
And the merging nexus back and forth
You see your sign, cross the line, signalling with a blink

And the radio's gone off the air
Gives you time to think
And you hear the rumble
As you fumble for a cigarette
And blazing through this midnight jungle
Remember someone that you met
And one more block; the engine talks
Whispers 'home at last'
It whispers 'home at last'
Whispers 'home at last'
It whispers 'home at last'
Whispers 'home at last'

And there are diamonds on my windshield
And these tears from heaven
Well I'm pulling into town on the Interstate
I got me a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
Late nights and freeway flying
Always makes me sing
It always makes me sing

(Hey look here Jack, ok)

*"Small Change"- The Early Music Of Tom Waits

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Tom Waits Doing "Sea Of Love". Wow.

CD Review

Small Change, Tom Waits, Electra/Asylum Records, 1976

The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

This CD is another early Waits album with some now classic material . “Tom Traubert’s Blues, the now prophetic post- Hurricane Katrina “I Wish I Was in New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward) and the title track “Small Change” stick out here.

"I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)"

Well, I wish I was in New Orleans, I can see it in my dreams,
Arm-in-arm down Burgundy, a bottle and my friends and me

Hoist up a few tall cool ones, play some pool and listen
To that tenor saxophone calling me home
And I can hear the band begin "When the Saints Go Marching In",
And by the whiskers on my chin, New Orleans, I'll be there

I'll drink you under the table, be red-nosed, go for walks,
The old haunts what I wants is red beans and rice
And wear the dress I like so well, and meet me at the old saloon,
Make sure that there's a Dixie moon, New Orleans, I'll be there

And deal the cards roll the dice, if it ain't that old Chuck E. Weiss,
And Claiborne Avenue, me and you Sam Jones and all

And I wish I was in New Orleans, 'cause I can see it in my dreams,
Arm-in-arm down Burgundy, a bottle and my friends and me
New Orleans, I'll be there

"Tom Traubert's Blues"

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did, I've got what I paid for now
See you tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrow a couple of bucks from you
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And I'm tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English, and everything's broken, and my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me, you tore my shirt open,
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you'd bury the dagger
In your silhouette window light go
To go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

Now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinamen, and the cold-blooded signs,
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows, go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

No, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say
That the streets aren't for dreaming now
And manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories,
They want a piece of the action anyhow
Go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

And you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor,
And the old men in wheelchairs know
And Mathilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred,
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda,
You'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace,
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers
And goodnight to Mathilda, too

A Walk On The Wild Side with Nelson Algren

BOOK REVIEW

The Neon Wilderness, Nelson Algren, Seven Stories Books, 2002

Parts of this review were used in a review of Algren’s classic Man With The Golden Arm. These short stories reflect the same milieu, that hard-hearted place where the lumpen proletariat and the working poor meet, that Algren worked in that novel. Algren throughout his literary career was working that same small vein- but what a mother lode he produced.

*****

Growing up in a post World War II built housing project this reviewer knew first hand the so-called ‘romance’ of drugs, the gun and the ne’er do well hustler. And also the mechanisms one needed to develop to survive at that place where the urban working poor meet and mix with the lumpen proletariat- the con men, dopesters, grifters drifters and gamblers who feed on the downtrodden. This is definitely not the mix that Damon Runyon celebrated in his Guys and Dolls-type stories. Far from it. Just read “A Bottle of Milk For Mother”.

Nelson Algren has gotten, through hanging around Chicago police stations and the sheer ability to observe, that sense of foreboding, despair and of the abyss of America’s mean streets down pat in a number of works, including this collection of his better stories. Along the way we meet an array of stoolies, cranks, crackpots and nasty brutish people who are more than willing to put obstacles in the way of anyone who gets in their way. Read “A Face On The Barroom Floor”- that will put you straight. But to what end. They lose in the end, and drag others down with them.

We, of late, have become rather inured to lumpen stories either of the 'death and destruction' type or of the 'rehabilitative' kind but at the time that these stories were put together in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s this was something of an eye-opener for those who were not familiar with the seamy side of urban life. The dead end jobs, the constant run-ins with the ‘authorities’ in the person of the police, many times corrupt as well. The dread of going to work, the dread of not going to work, the fear of being victimized and the glee of victimizing. The whole jumbled mix of people with few prospects and fewer dreams.

Algren has put it down in writing for all that care to read. These are not pretty stories. And he has centered his stories on the trials and tribulations of gimps, prostitutes and other hustlers. Damn, as much as I knew about the kind of things that Algren was describing these are still gripping stories. And, if the truth were told, you know as well as I do that unfortunately these stories could still be written today. Read Algren if you want to 'walk on the wild side'.

Grifters, Drifters, Midnight Shifters- The Music of Tom Wait

CD REVIEWS

Mule Variations, Tom Waits


If, as I do, every once in a while from a distance you need to hear about boozers, losers, dopesters, hipsters, fallen sisters, grifters, drifters, the driftless, small-time grafters, hobos, bums, tramps, the fallen, those who want to fall, Spanish Johnnies, stale cigarette butts, whiskey-soaked barroom floors, loners, the lonely, sad sacks, the sad and others at the margins of society then this is your stop. Tom Waits gives voice in song to the characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). In short, these are the people who do not make revolutions, far from it, but they surely desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial voice and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who, with far more justification that ex-President Bill Clinton could possibly muster, “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. And that, my friends, is definitely a political statement.