Press Release... Press Release... Press Release... Press Release... Press Release... Contact: Giorgio Riva (Payday men's network) 07837 89699 Anne Neale (Queer Strike) 07958  152171 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHELSEA MANNING - FREE HER NOW! Tuesday 17 December 2013  3 - 4.30 pm Vigil at St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square London WC2N 4JJ, Charing Cross tube   Supporters of international whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning will gather in London on Tuesday to celebrate her 26th birthday by demanding her immediate release. The US soldier was jailed for 35 years for leaking documents via Wikileaks that exposed US and other governments’ war crimes and corruption. There will be similar actions in Berlin, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco . . . Thanks to Chelsea's whistleblowing, we the public now knows about: The “collateral murder” video of a US helicopter crew killing Iraqi civilians ● the cover-up of rape in Iraq & Afghanistan ● the extent of drone strikes ● US dirty tricks in Haiti, Venezuela, Peru & elsewhere ● the corruption of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali that spurred the 2011 revolution ● Israel consulting with the Egyptian government and the Palestinian Authority before invading Gaza . . . Protestors will invite people to support a petition by Amnesty International demanding her immediate release and another petition by the Private Manning Support Network demanding President Obama's pardon.  "The sentence imposed on Chelsea Manning is harsher than most convicted murderers and rapists. The US government wants to make an example of Chelsea Manning to discourage whistleblowing on their crimes, including the surveillance of all of us," says Giorgio Riva of Payday men's network, joint organiser of the vigil. "Ever since Chelsea was detained and tortured in 2010, international protests, including by LGBTQ people, have demanded the release of our Queer Hero.  It’s urgent that we increase the pressure for her immediate release. The prison authorities need to respect her new identity as a woman - Chelsea should now be able to start the hormone therapy he wants,” explains Anne Neale of Queer Strike, joint organiser of the event. The vigil will denounce the recent witch-hunting of The Guardian which published secret information on government surveillance operations. As well as demanding that governments "stop spying on us," the vigil will highlight the situation of the growing list of courageous whistleblowers: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, confined by the UK to the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was granted asylum ● Edward Snowden, computer expert exiled in Russia for revealing massive spying by government agencies NSA & GCHQ ● Sarah Harrison, British Wikileaks journalist who ensured Snowden's safety to Russia and whose return to the UK is deemed "unsafe" ● David Miranda, interrogated at Heathrow airport on Snowden's disclosures, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act ●  Jeremy Hammond,  jailed for 10 years for hacking the intelligence contracting firm Stratfor, exposing the use of paid informants ● Barrett Brown:  US journalist who faces over 100 years in prison for reporting on firms like Stratfor and linking to hacked information.      Julian Assange Edward Snowden Sarah Harrison David Miranda Jeremy Hammond Barrett Brown  Payday men’s network  payday@paydaynet.org  www.refusingtokill.net  020 7267 8698  Queer Strike  queerstrike@queerstrike.net   020 7482 2496

***From Out In The Doo Wop Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Golden Age – A CD

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing the classic doo wop song, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004

Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah

Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why

(Background Music)

Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy

Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)



Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.

Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.

All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.

A YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing the classic doo wop song, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004

Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah

Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why

(Background Music)

Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy

Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)



Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.

Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.

All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101

Fidgety. No, not some usual schoolboy eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next-up girl swaying fidgety but fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac highway (after a mad midnight to dawn or later fresh air 1971 re-reading of On The Road, the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody was reading to be cool), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.

And just maybe too to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship (see I told you it goes to the grave, eternal, or close) that was heading to the rocky shores. Rocky shores just then meaning “commitment,” commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she to name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after just escaping, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years and pension. No, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, I think.

So off into the chili night (no sic, the final southern destination is winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca) we roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum we could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds) that I had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out knowing whose friend of a friend he was. We, smart we, smart Joyell we, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when we headed north.

Working funds to see us through thick and thin, you ask? Well said white picket fence dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such I never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip we would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.

So our brother, our story brother, me, worked at this and that and if you asked me (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nozzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville, got it.

And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad.) First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences), fix hungry dinner on Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. We are off, we are free, and we are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.

Head north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called it sweet before, no reason, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more easts can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and we are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.

Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of us are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night crickets, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101

Fidgety. No, not some usual schoolboy eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next-up girl swaying fidgety but fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac highway (after a mad midnight to dawn or later fresh air 1971 re-reading of On The Road, the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody was reading to be cool), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.

And just maybe too to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship (see I told you it goes to the grave, eternal, or close) that was heading to the rocky shores. Rocky shores just then meaning “commitment,” commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she to name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after just escaping, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years and pension. No, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, I think.

So off into the chili night (no sic, the final southern destination is winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca) we roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum we could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds) that I had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out knowing whose friend of a friend he was. We, smart we, smart Joyell we, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when we headed north.

Working funds to see us through thick and thin, you ask? Well said white picket fence dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such I never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip we would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.

So our brother, our story brother, me, worked at this and that and if you asked me (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nozzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville, got it.

And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad.) First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences), fix hungry dinner on Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. We are off, we are free, and we are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.

Head north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called it sweet before, no reason, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more easts can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and we are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.

Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of us are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night cicadas, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.

***Out In The Belle Epoque Crime Noir Night- Simone Signoret’s Casque D’Or

DVD Review

Casque D’Or, starring Simone Signoret, Criterion Collection, 1952
Crime doesn’t pay in the 2000s and it didn’t pay in the Belle Epoque. Except in the film under review, Casque D’Or, that crime business gets short shrift to the star-crossed love story that drives the plot here. There are criminals aplenty here but the one that counts is not the worst of the lot. Here’s the deal though- this is nothing but a classic boy meets girl story in the very old time criminal underground. Golden Girl (played by a young Simone Signoret, an icon of 1950s French cinema) meets ex-con Georges. But the problem is that she is up and coming criminal Roland’s girl. Forget Roland though once Georges hit town and literally dances her off her feet. But Roland and his confederates do not easily forget. Roland gets killed by a third party, Georges takes the rap for it, escapes, and kills the guy behind the scenes (Felix)who has been manipulating things like crazy because he too is crazy about golden girl. Georges offs Felix and for his efforts gets his head cut off, French justice style. Love faced tough, tough times back in those Belle Époque (beautiful time) days although not as tough as the slaughter of World War I yet to come but tough. Ya, crime doesn’t pay but isn’t there some kind of rule that love conquers all, at least in the cinema.

***Out In The Be-Bop Rock Night- Present At The Creation -The Birth Of Rock ‘n’ Roll

A YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing the classic rock anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

DVD Review

One For The Money: The Birth Of Rock, various artists, 2005
The birth of the “beat” movement or, at least the public awareness of its break-out, occurred in the late 1950s. (Although road mad warriors like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady were revving up the ground underneath plain vanilla America in the late 1940s, but that was sideshow and strictly for aficionados.) It even reached down to “the projects” kids like me with my dark sun-glassed, flannel shirted, black chino pants look, and a mandatory pinch of teen angst if not of any real understanding of what that break-out meant. The seminal cultural moment for us kids, us clueless 1950s kids, was when the clean, free, breathe of fresh air that we call rock ‘n’ roll crashed onto the scene that also broke out in the be-bop 1950s.

Although the “beat” movement, especially its literary end, was driven, and driven hard by the cool, clear, high white note jazz performed by the likes of Charley Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and in no way frontally drove rock the two easily mingle in memory of that be-bop 1950s night. Especially for those of us who really were too young to be washed over by the beats and got our “beatitude” in a more second-hand way but who were dead center when that wild jungle night, “devil's music,” “what was that sound, and where can we hear more of it?” drum beat hit our virgin ears about 1955 or so. Call us the stepchildren of one movement, and the children, mad, crash-out, runaway children of the other.

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

For an hour documentary this one covers a lot of territory. Much time is spent on the roots of rock, who pushed it along and also on the space that what we now call, sadly, classic rock, filled at just that moment in the 1950s when we, meaning teenage America, were desperate to have our own music, our own not-our parents-seal of approval music. If you think about the roots, it is almost a "no-brainer" that black-centered rhythm and blues would be an important factor as a source for rock. Especially as R&B came all rambly and scrambly out of the Mississippi Delta and got electrified in the immediate post-World War II period as it followed the black migration north to the Southern river cities and then the Midwest industrial cities. And as it got more sophisticated as its mainly black listeners and a few white “hipsters” settled in.

Just listen to early Bill Haley “jump” with that bass line and saxophone on classics like Rock Around The Clock and Shake, Rattle and Roll (even though Big Joe Turner’s version on the latter is about ten times better and sexier). Also a no-brainer, since it seems that every poor white boy child of the Great Depression who could strum three chords or pluck a few ivories was putting R&B together with that old-time Appalachian mountain twang music, hillbilly music is the influence of rockabilly.. No question that this rock is purely American songbook-worthy music.

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

Well I’ve covered the roots, I covered the movers and shakers, and I should mention the ”talking head” music historians who give their take, half a century later, on what it all meant. But that is not the real reason to watch this thing. The real reason is to see Bill Haley’s sax and bass men hold forth like high heaven’s own angels; to see Elvis shake , rattle and roll like some demon sex fiend making all the girls sweat and all the boys practice their moves in dank cellars or before merciless mirrors; to hear Little Richard go wild, male/female wild, high pitched wild at the piano; to see Jerry Lee reach down in some primitive place and drive those ivories to bloody hell; to see Chuck Berry duck walk his stuff; and to see between segues all that jitter-buggery, that shear, happy energy as the kids danced their hearts out. That, my friends, my nostalgic friends, was what it was like in that be-bop night of 1950s classic rock when women and men played the music for keeps.
**********
Rock Around The Clock Song Lyrics from Bill Haley

One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock,
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.

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

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

***Out In The Be-Bop Late 1960s Night- A First Misstep In The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night

The scene below stands(or falls)as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the title and in previous scenes.
Let me tell this story, okay, this story about a couple of guys that I picked up hitch-hiking out on the 1960s highway. I’ll get to what highway it was later because it could have been any highway, any American or European, or maybe even African or Asian highway, if those locales had such highways, at least highways for cars back in those days. Anyway it’s their story, these two guys, really, and maybe around the edges my story, and if you are of a certain age, your story, just a little anyway.

Some of it though just doesn’t sound right now, or read right, at least the way they told it to me but we will let that pass ‘cause it has been a while and memories, mine in this case, sometimes seize up even among the best of us. Ya, but this part I do remember so let’s just subtitle this one a segment on that search for the blue-pink great American West night and that makes this thing a lot of people’s story. Let’s get to it right now by picking up where they and I intersect on the great American 1960s road:

Two young men were standing pretty close together, talking, up ahead at the side of a brisk, chilly, early spring morning 1969 road, a highway really, a white-lined, four-laned, high-speed highway if you want to know, thumbs out, as I came driving down the line alone in my Volkswagen Beetle (or bug, hey, that’s what they were called in those days, you still see some old restored or well-preserved ones around, especially out on the left coast), see them, and begin to slow down to pick them up. I would no more think not to pick them up than not to breathe. A few years earlier and I would have perhaps been afraid to pick up such an unlikely pair, a few years later and they would not have been on that road. But the thumbs out linked them, and not them alone on this day or in this time, with the old time hitchhike road, the vagabond road that your mother, if she was wise or nervous, told you never ever, ever to take (and it was always Ma who told you this, your father was either held in reserve for the big want-to-do battles, or else was bemused by sonny boy wanting to spread his wings, or better yet, was secretly passing along his own long ago laid aside blue-pink highway dreams).

This pair in any case, as you shall see, were clearly brothers, no, not brothers in the biological sense, although that sometimes was the case, but brothers on that restless, tireless, endless, hitchhike road. My hitchhike road yesterday, and maybe tomorrow, but today I have wheels and they don’t and that was that. No further explanation needed. I stopped. From the first close-up look at them these guys were young, although not too young, not high school or college young but more mid-twenties maybe graduate student young. I’ll describe in more detail how they looked in a minute but for those who desperately need to know where I picked them up, the exact locale that is, let me put your anxieties to rest and tell you that it was heading south on the Connecticut side of the Massachusetts-Connecticut border of U.S. Interstate 84, one of the main roads to New York City from Boston. Are you happy now? Not as sexy as some of those old-time Kerouac-Cassady late 1940s “beat” roads, but I believe their ghosts were nevertheless hovering in the environs. Hell, now that I think about it, would it have mattered if I said it was Route 6, or Route 66, or Route 666 where I picked them up. I picked them up, that was the way it was done in those halcyon days, and that’s the facts, man, nothing but the facts.

Hey, by the way, while we are talking about facts, just the hard-headed fact of this pair standing on the side of a highway road should have been enough to alert the reader that this is no current episode but rather a tale out of the mist of another American time. Who in their right mind today would be standing on such a road, thumb out, or not, expecting some faded Dennis Hopper-like flower child, or Ken Kesey-like Merry Prankster hold-out to stop. No this was the time of their time, the 1960s (or at the latest, the very latest, about 1973). You have all seen the bell-bottomed jeans, the fringed-deerskin jackets, the long hair and beards and all other manner of baubles in those exotic pre-digital photos so that one really need not bother to describe their appearances. But I will, if only to tempt the fates, or the imaginations of the young.

One, the slightly older one, wispy-bearded, like this was maybe his first attempt at growing the then de rigueur youth nation-demanded male beard to set one apart from the them (and from the eternal Gillette, Bic, Shick razor cuts, rubbing alcohol at the ready, splash of English Leather, spanking clean date night routine, ah, ah, farewell to all that). Attired: Levi blue-jean’d with flared-out bottoms, not exactly bell-bottoms but denims that not self-respecting cowboy, or cowboy wanna-be would, or could, wear out in the grey-black , star-studded great plains night; plaid flannel shirt that one would find out there in that bronco-busting night (or in backwoodsman-heavy Maine and Oregon in the time of the old Wobblies or Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion); skimpily-sneakered, Chuck Taylor blacks, from the look of them, hardly the wear for tackling the great American foot-sore hitchhike road which makes me think that these are guys have started on something like their maiden voyage on that old road; and over one shoulder the ubiquitous string-tied bedroll that speaks already of ravine sleep, apartment floor pick your space sleep, and other such vagabond sleep certainly not of Holiday Inn or even flea-bag motel sleeps; and over the other shoulder the also ubiquitous life’s gatherings in a knapsack (socks, a few utensils, maybe underwear, and the again maybe not, change of shirt, a few toilet articles, not much more but more than the kings (and queens) of the roads, 1930s ancestor forbears carried, for sure , ask any old Wobblie, or bum-hobo-tramp hierarch- take your pick-who took that hard-scrabble, living out of your emptied pocket road).

And the other young man, a vision of heaven’s own high 1960s counter-cultural style: long-haired, not quite a pony tail if tied back and maybe not Easy Rider long but surely no advertisement for Gentleman’s Quarterly even in their earnest days of keeping up with the new tastes to corner the more couth segments of the hippie market; cowboy-hatted, no, not a Stetson, howdy, Tex, kind of thing but some Army-Navy store-bought broad brimmed, sun-bashing, working cowboy hat that spoke of hard-riding, branding, cattle night lowing, whiskey and women Saturday town bust-ups, just right for a soft-handed, soft-skinned city boy fearful of unlit places, or places that are not lit up like a Christmas tree; caped, long swirling cape, like someone’s idea of old-time film Zorro stepping out with the senoritas; guitar, an old Martin from the look of it, slung over one shoulder, not protective cased against the winds, rains, snows, or just the bang-ups of living, but protective in other ways when night falls and down in the hills and hollows, or maybe by a creek, heaven’s own strum comes forth. Woody Guthrie’s own child, or stepchild, or some damn relative. I swear.

Welcome brothers, as I open up the passenger side door. “Where are you guys heading?” This line is more meaningful than you might think for those who know, as I know, and as these lads will know, as well, if they spent any time on the hitchhike road. Sometimes it was better, even on a high-speed highway, to not take any old ride that came along if, say, some kind–hearted local spirit was only going a few miles, or the place where a driver would let you out on the highway was a tough stop. Not to worry though these guys, Jack and Mattie, were hitchhiking to California. California really, I swear, although they are stopping off at a crisscross of places on their way. A pretty familiar routine by then, playing hopscotch, thumbs out, across the continent.

These guys were, moreover, indeed brothers, because you see once we started comparing biographical notes, although they never put it that way, or really never could just because of the way they thought about things as I got to know them better on the ride, were out there searching, and searching hard, for my blue-pink night. Christ, there were heaven’s own blessed armies, brigades anyway, of us doing it, although like I said about Jack and Mattie most of the brothers and sisters did not get caught up in the colors of that night, like I did, and just “dug” the search. Jack and Mattie are in luck, in any case, because on this day I’m heading to Washington, D.C. and they have friends near there in Silver Springs, Maryland. The tides of the times are riding with us.

And why, by the way, although it is not germane to the story or at least this part of it, am I heading to D.C.? Well, the cover story is to do some anti-war organizing but, for your eyes only, I had just broken up, for the umpteenth time, with a women who drove me to distraction, sometimes pleasantly but on that occasion fitfully, who I could not, and did not, so I thought, want to get out of my system, but had to put a little distance away from. You know that story, boys and girls, in your own lives so I do not have to spend much time on the details here, although that theme might turn up again. Besides, if you really want to read that kind of story the romance novels section of any library or the DVD film section, for that matter, can tell the story with more heart-throbbing panache that you will find here.

I’ve got a kind of weird story to tell you about why Jack and Mattie were on this desolate border stretch of the highway in a minute but let me tell a little about what they were trying to do out on that road, that west road. First, I was right, mostly, about their ages, but Jack and Mattie were no graduate students on a spring lark before grinding away at some master’s thesis on the meaning of meaning deconstuct’d (although this reference is really an anachronism since such literary theories were not then fashionably on display on the world’s campuses, but you get the drift) or some such worthy subject in desperate need of research in a time when this old world was falling apart and the bombs were (are) raining (literally) on many parts of the world.

In one sense they were graduates though, graduates of the university of hard knocks, hard life, and hard war. They had just a few months before been discharged, a little early as the war, or the American ground troops part of it, was winding down, from the U.S. Army after a couple of tours of duty in ‘Nam (their usage, another of their privileged usages was “in-country”). I swear I didn’t believe them at first, no way, they looked like the poster boys for the San Francisco Summer of Love in 1967. Something, something big was going on here and my mind was trying to digest the sight of these two guys, “good, solid citizens” before the “man” turned them around in that overseas Vietnam quagmire who looked in attire, demeanor, and style just like the guy (me) who picked them up.

Ya, but that is only part of it and not even the most important part, really, because this California thing was also no lark. This is their break-out, bust-out moment and they are going for it. As we rode along that old super highway they related stories about how they came back from “in-county”, were going to settle down, maybe get married (or move in with a girlfriend or seven), and look forward to social security when that distant time came. But something snapped inside of them, and this is where every old Jack London hobo, every old Wobblie, every old bummer on the 1930s rail highway, hell even every old beat denizen of some Greenwich Village walk-up was a kindred spirit. Like I said, and I am sitting right in the car listening to them with a little smirk on my face, the boys are searching that same search that I am searching for and that probably old Walt Whitman really should take the blame for, okay. I’ll tell you more, or rather; I’ll let them tell you more some other time but let me finish up here with that weird little story about why they were at that god forsaken point on the highway.

Look, everybody knows, or should know, or at least knew back then that hitchhiking, especially hitchhiking on the big roads was illegal, and probably always was even when every tramp and tramp-ette in America had his or her thumb out in the 1930s. But usually the cops or upstanding citizenry either ignored it or, especially in small towns, got you on some vagrancy rap. Hey, if you had spent any time on the hitchhike road you had to have been stopped at least once if for no other reason than to harass you. Still some places were more notorious than others in hitchhike grapevine lore in those days, particularly noteworthy were Connecticut and Arizona (both places where I had more than my own fair share of “vagrancy” problems).

So I was not too far off when I figured out that Jack and Mattie were on their maiden voyage. Thumbs out and talking, the pair missed the then ever-present Connecticut state police cruiser coming from nowhere, or it seemed like nowhere, as it came to a stop sharply about five feet away from them. The pair gulped and prepared for the worst; being taken to some state police barracks and harassed and then let go at some backwater locale as the road lore had it. Or getting “vagged”. Or worst, a nice little nasty trick in those days, have “illegal” drugs conveniently, very conveniently, found on their person.

But get this, after a superficial search and the usual questions about destination, resources, and the law the pair instead were directed to walk the few hundred yards back across the border line to Massachusetts. Oh, I forgot this part; the state cop who stopped them was a Vietnam veteran himself. He had been an MP in ‘Nam. Go figure, right. So starts, the inauspicious start if you think about it, in one of the searches for the blue-pink great American West night. Nobody said it was going to be easy and, you know, they were right. Still every time I drive pass that spot (now close to an official Connecticut Welcomes You rest stop, whee!), especially on any moonless, starless, restless, hitchhiker-less road night I smile and give a little tip of the hat to those youthful, sanctified blue-pink dreams that almost got wrecked before they got started.

***Bertolt Brecht’s "To Those Born After"- In Honor Of A Veteran Communist Militant For Forty Years Of Service To The Struggle

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
My old friend and political compatriot, Peter Paul Markin, and I have been on many a picket line, joined many a rally, walked many an endless march, and attended, seemingly, countless meetings (emergency meetings, of course) since we first met in the summer of love in the year of our lord, 1967. We had sat on many an ad hoc committee as well. Although Markin has flirted with more than one on-going organization I have studiously avoid that means of political expression preferring the free-lance organization life. Nevertheless in our circumscribed small left-wing circles we have worked with, been friends with, and even had affairs with those who have been committed to the organized left-wing life. Recently Markin came across some information about one such woman, her real name and her organization are not important to publish here, whom I was very close to back in the early 1970s. I had not heard her name nor been in contact with her for well over thirty years. Nor am I in contact with her now. Nevertheless I will honor her here and the reader can read why below.

Dear Roberta,

Way back, back in the 1970s day, when we had our personal and political Boston minute, I sensed, strongly sensed although I, perhaps, never articulated it that way that here was a person who was in the struggle for the long haul. Here was somebody, a woman, out of long misty past European traditions of revolutionary struggle, a Verna Figner, Krupskaya, or beloved Rosa Luxemburg. Maybe it was the careless way you wore your hair then (and your seeming disdain for creature comforts). Maybe it that tone in your voice, the one that said this is not somebody to trifle with politically. Or maybe it was just East Texas po’ girl grit. (Christ, trying to be communist out of Texas in the 1960s required some serious grit.) But here you are now a veteran communist passing on the lessons of our common history to the next communist generation a-borning (actually the next next generation we lost the Reagan generation). And I am sure that they were listening attentively, or else.

I, on the other hand, turned out to be a poor communist. But know this, through all my personal foibles and faults, and they were massive and egregious then, I never lost faith in the communist future. While I do not have forty years of dedicated organized communist service to my credit I am comfortable in the knowledge that I too will finish up as a communist, and that those better instincts of my nature got me through.

Enough of that though. In a righteous world we could sit in some Bay Area ocean spot (or the Charles River) and compare notes in a League of Old Communists. Fate has dealt us a terrible blow and we have no time for such drawn out reflections. The youth will make the revolution and make this wicked old world a far better place to live in. But just in case they falter we had better stay in the fight to the end.

Have courage –Josh Breslin

Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor of a Veteran Communist (Of course it had to be a German poet to honor this communist)

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
*******
To Those Who Come After

History in the conditional is always a funny tricky little thing. You can get wrapped up it in so bad that you begin to deny the hard reality of what really happened, what really bad happened usually. On the other hand you can do as most historians do and just plod along assuming because X, Y, or Z happened that was that. That’s the facts, jack and that’s it. Obviously to resolve this thing, or rather to get a real sense of the possibilities, some combination, some mix and matching needs to be placed in the maelstrom. And it is under that sign that I wish to understand Bertolt Brecht’s great poem, his great big tied-up with ribbons and bows valentine to future generations really, To Those Who Come After, that I have dedicated to a veteran communist who will understand my choice.

Of course it is a matter of generations, no question. And what that generation could have, or could not have, done, and done differently to sway the funny little rhythms of history. For his, Bertolt’s generation, if they only could have held out against the imperialist imperative onslaught of World War I, or at least not gone alone like sheep until almost the very end. More germane, if it could have carried out to completion one of those big-time revolutionary possibilities in Germany it had in the early 1920s. Or ceased, Communists and Social-Democrats alike, their willfully myopic view that the Weimar regime would hold out against the jackboot of Hitler’s storm streets without having to unite for an all-out fight to the death against the Nazi menace.

Moving forward to my parent’s generation, the generation that scarecrow survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and went on to survive, or wait on the survivors, of the D-Day and Pacific bloodbaths of World War II. If only they could have seen clearly enough that that Roosevelt guise was sheer deception to save his class in power (even if he had to fight them, the economic royalists, the one percent of his time, tooth and nail to do it) and create their own party, a workers party, after the tremendous class battles of the mid to late 1930s when they had the bosses on the run, a little anyway. Or hadn’t bought, bought hard into that white picket fence post-war dream and let the red scare dark night wash away whatever big (or little, but I think big) spark got them through the dustbowl miseries and war shellshock.

Once again moving forward to my generation, my disposable income record store soda fountain be-bop high school confidential night with some undiagnosed teen angst mixed with teen alienation generation, the generation of ’68, who didn’t want, well, didn’t start out wanting to anyway, buy into that red scare night white picket fence dream. If we could have just, a big “could have just” I agree, not thrown everything out with the bathwater and read some history we could have realized that it wasn’t just about us. Well, one way or the other, the Vietnamese taught us that lesson, that lesson about perseverance, about a sense of history and about using every tool around to get free. Or, closer to home, if we could have remembered where we had come from, most of us anyway, and dug our working class heels in sooner we could have left some kind of social movement worthy of the name instead of leaving future generations to start almost from scratch.

And moving on to our children’s generation. Oh, well, history records many retrogressions in the uphill struggle.

And now on to the generation that I am really directing this little “history” lesson to, the real subject of my “to those who come after,” those who roughly are students today, and are moreover the heart and soul of the Occupy movement that has suddenly jumped up onto the historic stage giving them a chance to change the course of history- on their terms. And, by the way incidentally giving to me (and others) from the generation of ’68 a second chance to make things right. Each generation I am firmly convinced must (and will) find its own ways to fight the monster. But know this, know this from first-hand experience, there is a monster on the loose out there, and that monster has a name, the American imperial state just now being captained by one Barack Obama. Whoever the captain is though the monster remains and that is where the “to the death” fight is.

And this is where Brother Brecht and I can share the same sentiments about being ill-equipped in our times to face those hard realities, to worry over half-measures, to not stay the course we knew we had to stay. So forgive us for not doing better, not doing a lot better. But forgive, or not, go slay that damn dragon.

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People? - Magical Realism 101

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let her rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war (World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Ya, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were, had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think, but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted) to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

***I’ll Get By-Love and Lose In WWII- “Until We Meet Again”- A CD Review

CD Review

Until We Meet Again: The Love Songs of World War II, various artists, Smithsonian Institute, 1993
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

My late mother (Delores, nee LeBlanc) from the French-Canadian sections of Olde Saco up in Maine was an inveterate letter-writer and letter saver. After she passed on I went up into the attic of our old tumble-down working- class house on Atlantic Avenue to start the long process of sorting out her “legacy.” What I discovered was that not only did she save her own received letters but those of her family, her brothers and sisters mostly. One written by her sister, Nina, from World War II three-cent stamped and all shook me up for days. Here it is and in it is the essence of what the CD mentioned above is all about.
********

December 13, 1942

Hi Jimmy,

I hope this letter gets to you okay and that you are in good health and good spirits. We haven’t heard much recently about Guadalcanal so we are taking that as a good sign that things have settled down and you can rest. Even my father, my straight arrow Army World War I father, says you guys are doing a hell of job mopping up the Japs out there. Sorry for the swear but, you know Dad, that’s how he speaks when he talks about stuff like that. I guess that means that you are okay and that he has gotten over the fact that you chose to go into the Marines instead of waiting, like a lot of guys, a lot of guys like Jimmy LaCroix, Delores’ beau, to be inducted into the Army. I am proud of you and hope your every waking thought (and dreams too) are of me. Well, except when you are shooting or doing Marine stuff.

Jimmy, every time I listen to the radio and hear I Don’t Want To Walk Without You I get a little teary and think of that last night we had together before you shipped out. Oh, I am not crying about what we did and why I let you go as far as you did. No that only brings me closer to you. What I am teary about is that you had to go away right away and I didn’t get a chance to tell you it was okay. That I was your girl forever now whatever happens. The same thing happens when I hear your old favorite song We’ll Meet Again. Remember when we fought half the night a couple of weeks  before you left about whether that song or I’ll Never Smile Again was the cat’s meow. And then I Don’t Want To Walk Without You won in the end. Funny, hah.

Say, I had been feeling a little funny lately, a little sick, not much nothing to worry about but I feel better today because I am writing you. Gee, I wish you were here and we could go somewhere and dance, and do you know what. I wouldn’t let you down. Well, that’s about it for tonight because my pen is running out of ink.

Always your girl- Nina
********

P.S. The envelope that contained this letter bore the makings- Return To Sender-Deceased stamped across the front. Jimmy Dubois had been killed under a hail of enemy fire while trying to rescue a buddy on hellhole Guadalcanal on December 10, 1942. RIP-Jimmy Dubois-JLB

***Out Of The 1950s Crime Noir Night-French-Style- Jules Dassin’s “Rififi”

DVD Review

Rififi, starring Jean Servais, directed by Hollywood black-listed director Jules Dassin, 1955.
Recently I went out of my way to honor the French cinematic crime noir tradition in reviewing Jean Gabin’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a film right out of the Hollywood gangster shoot-em-up and ask questions later genre. The film under review, Rififi, reflects another French cinematic homage to a different aspect of that tradition, the well-planned (almost) heist saga. In fact, given the approximately one half hour depiction of the heist itself, I would argue that it more than put paid to that homage. Maybe the fact that the film was directed by American red scare black-listed director Jules Dassin was key to those dramatic, skillful and realistic scenes. While reading his Marx in the morning Dassin, maybe, spent a few afternoons at the local two films for the price of one movie theaters of the day watching, intensely watching those heist scenes.

So, as I have already telegraphed,, this one revolves around a heist, a big jewel heist, naturally at an almost impossible to bust, high tech (for the day) protected establishment. Of course to take on such a risky task you either have to be very smart (street smart) or desperate, or both. Enter one Tony, just out of stir, with no prospects, no dough, and no pension (occupational hazard of the profession). And with about seven chips on his shoulder, number one chip being two-timed (who knows maybe more) by his woman. (Ya, I know, two-timing women, and the crazy way they turn smart (street smart) guys goofy in the plot lines of crime noirs, are a dime a dozen.) Tony is ready though to go for the brass ring. And he grabs it, almost.

See, while two-timing women may be a dime a dozen, two-timing women who take up with rival boss gangsters and live to tell about it, are not. So said rival boss gangster, once he cops to the fact that our Tony has “scored” is ready to move heaven and earth to get the jewels, and get them cheap. Cheap? Ya, easy, just kidnap one of the heist guys’ kids and that will have them squealing and handing over jewels ASAP. Well no, not at all. Remember Tony is not going back to stir, no way. And come hell or high water he is not leaving his buddy (and his buddy’s wife) in the lurch. Without giving the whole thing away let’s just put it this way, Hollywood or Paris, film wise anyway, crime does not pay. RIP Tony.