When The World Imitated Elvis, Circa 1956

When The World Imitated Elvis, Circa 1956

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Nobody in the whole wide 1956 Western world wanted to be the be-bop max daddy king hell king of rock and roll more than Billie Bradley (not Billy, not regular old ordinary vanilla Billy, or some goat Billy. Not if you didn’t want a fight about it after your first passed-by indiscretion , and believe me you didn’t, no unless you wanted about ten generations of fury and of unhealed hurts compacted in one twelve year old boy with a set of brass knuckles in your face). Well, nobody wanted it more except maybe the king himself, Elvis, a guy who had had his own share of stored furies and unhealed hurts of an indeterminate number of generations that needed to get out of the bottle and was as fame-hungry beneath the volcano surface as any person alive, but Billie was a close second. And maybe, forget about talent and opportunity for a minute, for pure hunger, for pure get out from under the rock hunger, a lot closer to first than second.

What Billie was first at, definitely, and maybe more first than Elvis, who after all had the swivel hips, had the trainable voice, had the genetically-encoded rock rhythm, had the smoldering snarl, had the deep alienation look, and had that that fugitive sex appeal that made the women wet and the guys let their sideburns grow long, was the desire to use whatever musical talents he had (and they were promising) to be the king hell king of the projects where he grew up, the Olde Saco projects (up in Maine, a place they locally called the Acre) to name it but it could have been any such place in the go-go golden age American 1950s. And so whenever Billie (don’t spell it the other way even now, even now when he is long gone from king hell king strivings. Remember what I said about the furies and that set of “nucks”) was not in school, was not humoring his corner boys (including me) with some song or skit down in hang-out back of the elementary school, or was not robbing (“clipping” we called it but robbing was what it was, petty larceny anyway) some uptown Olde Saco merchant of his earthy goods or planning to, he was before the mirror (vanity thy name is Billie or one of thy names is Billie) singing some song but more importantly developing that certain look that was meant to drive the girls wild.

And it worked for a while, a while around the Olde Saco projects for a while, with the local girls (junior division about age twelve or under) who wanted their Elvis moment even if it was once removed. Not that Billie’s look was anything like Elvis’ (in tense moments, Billie fury moments, moments when Elvis got another boost of stardust, maybe the Ed Sullivan Show, to add to his fame Billie would call Elvis’ style pure punk, nothing , nada. All we said was okay Billie, okay). Billie, kind of wiry tough, kind of with a long thin face, and more importantly, with blondish brown hair would had perhaps done better to work off a Bill Haley imitation but the one time I mentioned that to him he exploded (no nucks though) that Bill Haley was yesterday, a has been, a never was, nobody and, maybe with that big sax sound something our parents would listen to. [Billy Haley and his Comets were the jump street in 1955 with their Rock Around The Clock youth anthem.-JLB]

Every time Olde Saco South Elementary School put on a charity talent show, or Saint Sebastian’s ran a church dance with its included talent show between sets during the period from, say, 1956 to 1958 Billie was there. And for several shows running he was the be-bop king hands downs. Beating everybody with his faux renditions ofJailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel and the like. One time at Saint Sebastian’s when Billie performed, all in black suit (borrowed from a cousin), black shirt, black tie, and white shoes (yah, he did look good that night, looked like the next heavyweight contender that night) the place went wild when he did his rendition of One Night With You. The girls, and not just the twelve year old junior division girls either, hell, maybe not even the twelve years old girls, started storming the stage throwing themselves and whatever they had in their hands at Billie. It was all that he could do for Father Lally, the priest assigned to monitor the church dances, to get order restored and close the hall up for the night after that scene. That Sunday the Monsignor himself, a fierce old fire and brimstone orator from the old school, read from the pulpit that anyone who had been present at the melee had better show up at confession within the week, and be quick about it. At last count about two people showed, and they were not Billie or me. 

Needless to say all through this period the girls would flock around Billie, more so after the San Sebastian episode (the girls from over at the San Sebastian Elementary School and Saint Brigitte’s too started mysteriously showing up at our hang-out) and his “rejects” would wind up with his corner boys (including me). So for all the Olde Saco days and nights of that period, especially those summer nights when for a change of pace Billie would lead us in some doo wop harmony and the girls would, like lemmings to the sea, come gathering around as dusk turned to night we were his biggest promoters. All hail King Billie.

Then one night, one 1958 night, at a church benefit held in the basement of Sainte Brigitte’s Billie’s world came unglued. See he had become something of a “local kid makes good” celebrity by then after winning those local contests. More importantly he had established himself as a girl magnet, girls with dough to buy dreamy guy records, and therefore a prospect in a music world looking for next big thing after Elvis( who had just signed up to do some military service), or maybe by then Jerry Lee. Every record label had scouts out in every nook and cranny to find the next Tupelo honey magic. So Alabaster Records, the big label for new untried and unattached talent, had sent an agent to see Billie do his stuff.

Naturally Billie wanted to impress the agent so he tore into his best current cover, Carl Perkin’s Bopping The Blues. What nobody knew, at least nobody in the audience (except said corner boys), was that his suit, his sweet Billie blue suit, had been quickly made by his mother on the fly from material purchased at some bargain discount joint over on Second Avenue. On the fly in this case meaning that there had been a dispute in the Bradley family about buying Billie a new suit (he already had acquired that San Sebastian black suit as a hand-me-down from his cousin which his father said was good enough) when dough for the rent money was scarce just then A compromise was reached and Mrs. Bradley had purchased the material to make the suit herself. All of this just a couple of days before Billie’s showcase show time. About half way through the performance though first one arm of his suit jacket came flying off and then the other. Needless to say the Alabaster agent wrote Billie off without a murmur.

Here is the funny part. The girls in the audience, those giggling teeny-bopper girls, thought that the arm gag was part of Billie’s act. So for many, many months Billie was followed by an even larger bevy (nice, word, huh) of adoring girls from school and the neighborhood. And we, his loyal corner boys gladly took his “rejects.”

Here is the not funny part though. After than night, after that rejection (the agent had left without a word said to Billie, maybe the unkindest cut of all) something kind of snapped in Billie. I don’t know what it was exactly, call it loss of innocence, project style, although we were already wise to the not having enough dough when others had plenty part. And the breaks in the world breaking to those with some spoon-fed clout part too.

I was the closest of his corner boys to Billie then. The others, sensing some impending disaster or Billie fury busting out, started to move away from his orbit. We would talk for hours about stuff but there was an edge to his dream talk, an edge that hadn’t been there before when we talked about his great big break-through and how he was going to take care of all of us corner boys, and the girls too. Something about the world being fixed a certain way, a certain not Billie way, and it ate at him. He dropped away from his music, from the talent shows and school dances. From that point on the wanna-be gangster began to take over. I stayed with him through part it, through being his look-out man when he was on the “chip,” being his “hold” man when he started doing minor breaking and entering over in plush Ocean City, and, for a minute, when he moved on to more serious stuff. Then I too moved on. The last I heard, and this was a while back, he was doing ten to twenty for armed robbery up at Shawshank. But when William James Bradley, Billie, was in his Elvis moment, yes, when he was in his Elvis moment, he made this whole wide world move.

Won’t You Come See Me Plain Jane-William Hurt’s “Jane Eyre” (1996)-A Film Review

Won’t You Come See Me Plain Jane-William Hurt’s “Jane Eyre” (1996)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Jane Eyre, starring William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte, 1996   

I have already gone through the genesis of how I came to review a now growing bunch of films based on that early 19^th century English author Jane Austen’s works having viewed a film titled The Jane Austen Book Club whose theme was based on the plots of her six major novels. I don’t have to now go into the details of the Jane Austen experience except to cite the obligatory mention that in my young adulthood back down in New Jersey reading Ms. Austen’s books or watching a film adaptation was strictly “girls” stuff. (Except of course an also mandatory mention if you were interested in a girl and she either wanted to rattle on and on about some old time romantic theme from those books or wanted you to take her to a movie which if you expected to get anywhere, and usually it was not anywhere with Austen devotees so don’t lie guys, you were obliged to sit through.) That same youthful standard (including exceptions to the “girls” book aversion) applies to the other big 19^th century English romantic novelist Charlotte Bronte of the infamous Bronte sisters.        

This is where for once the aging process actually produces a positive result. Sitting through this film adaptation of Ms. Bronte’s Jane Eyre starring William Hurt as the brisk Edward Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as why don’t you come see me plain Jane (Rochester’s continued plaintive plea toward her throughout the film) showed me why the Austen/Bronte combination was so strong not only as great literature but as something that would appeal to the hearts of all but the most hardened of young women. That I sat through it with my wife who was in suspense about the fate of her poor Jane added to the pleasure when despite every possible obstacle she gets her man, gets the slippery slope Rochester.        

This is the point where my old friend and fellow film critic here, Sam Lowell, before his recent retirement from the day to day film review work would begin to outline the plot and I have increasingly attempted to follow in his footsteps when reviewing older films. With this important caveat from him since he unlike myself (yet) has actually read the book (and Austen’s as well) so knew that the director here Franco Zeffirelli had eliminated much of the last part of the book when attempting to be true to the author’s plotline the thing became too long for the screen. Still the film adaptation is faithful to the key element of what drove the young girls to distraction and my wife recently plain Jane gets her man. 

Like I said not without a ton of work and a fistful of trials and tribulations along the way starting when Jane’s bitch aunt pawned her off on a hellish orphanage to break her willfulness. Somehow she survived that institutional experience (having actually taught there a couple of years as well as eight years as an inmate) and since she needed to poor and plain fend for herself in this wicked old world sought gainful employment in her chosen profession. That necessity led her to Thornhill Castle and the mysterious and secretive Rochester when she was hired as a governess for his charge/illegitimate daughter. From the beginning when they met by chance on the estate there was no question that the thoughtful and intelligent Jane whatever her plain looks (as opposed to the one Mayfair swell upper-class gold-digger on his trail) and the troubled but ultimately good-hearted and able Rochester were if not a match made in heaven (or “society” earth since as the household administrator said a landlord and governess don’t mesh in that world) then drawn together by some passion not related to looks, class, money or previous experiences.                

Still the road was tough since whatever attraction there was between them there was that little quirky secretive side of Rochester who was vague about his daughter’s mother and the way she was brought to him and more importantly as her world came crashing down on her on her wedding day that he had a mad hatter of a wife living up the penthouse (okay, okay not penthouse but maybe attic). There would be as Sam Lowell suggested more trials and tribulations after that fiasco but a romance novel as great literature or as a Harlequin dime store novel needs to in the end proclaim victory for love-and it does here as well.  

Veterans for Peace: Ring Church Bells on Armistice Day

Veterans for Peace: Ring Church Bells on Armistice Day

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8/9/2018

Veterans for Peace is calling on churches to ring their bells at 11 AM on Sunday, November 11 - Armistice Day - in recognition of the futility of war and to show our commitment to world peace.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the original Armistice Day, a day of celebration marking the end of fighting during World War I (the Great War). Today, Armistice Day is a call to Americans, in recognition of the horrors and futility of that war, to rededicate themselves to world peace.

While November 11 was declared Veteran's Day in 1954, Armistice Day legislation (1919; 1926 and 1938) remains in place to this day. Read excerpts from that legislation here.
                     
Veterans For Peace (VFP)  is an international organization made up of military veterans, military family members, and allies dedicated to building a culture of peace, exposing the true costs of war, and healing the wounds of war. Their goal is to change public opinion in the U.S. from an unsustainable culture of militarism and commercialism to one of peace, democracy, and sustainability. They do this primarily, although not exclusively, through grassroots organizing and education at the local level.  

Learn more about the organization  Veterans for Peace, or the local chapter, Smedley Butler Brigade. Contact Doug Stewart, VFP Chapter Leader in Boston and member of the Eliot Church of Newton, a Mass. Conference church,  here.

Ring your Bells on November 11!

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –George Braques

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –George Braques 

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath    

By Lenny Lynch

I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20^th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios. 

I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.         

Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,  would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.

The Night When The World Came Down Upon Peter Paul Markin’s Head-With Roy Lichtenstein’s 1968 Time Magazine Cover Of Bobby Kennedy In Mind

The Night When The World Came Down Upon Peter Paul Markin’s Head-With Roy Lichtenstein’s 1968 Time Magazine Cover Of Bobby Kennedy In Mind

By Bart Webber (with the ghost hand of Sam Lowell on his shoulder)

The ghost of the late sorely lamented Peter Paul Markin has hovered over this publication long after his early, too early demise back in the 1970s (and in its sister publications as well as a quick recent glance indicated starkly to me upon investigation). Maybe it because we have begun reaching a milestone, 50^th anniversary commemorations of various youth-defining events, maybe arbitrary, maybe as the late scientist Steven Jay Gould was fond of saying mere man-made constructs and no more but which has infested a number of us older writers some of who knew Markin personally and others who have been influenced by the hairy tales of his existence. (The younger writers mostly, as one told me, could give a fuck about an old junkie has been who didn’t have sense enough to not try some crazy scheme to get rich quick in the cocaine trade against the growing Columbian cartels so what could he expect.) Almost every event during this commemoration period had Markin’s imprint on it. (We always called him Scribe but I will stick with his surname here.)

Therefore it does not take much to flicker a flame if something going back to those days jumpstarts renewed thoughts of Markin. That happened one afternoon recently when Si Lannon was on assignment to do an article on the Cezanne Portraits exhibition at the National Gallery and as is his wont (and Sam Lowell’s too especially if Laura Perkins is along) he runs up to the National Portrait Gallery to see what is up there. Not much since the last time he was there except on a wall on the first floor under the title Remembrance there was Roy Lichtenstein’s famous Time magazine cover of Robert Kennedy done in the spring of 1968 shortly before his assassination in California after his primary victory over Eugene in June of that year. Si was so shaken by that picture that he immediately called me and I thereafter called a few other guys and the mere mention of that cover got us back to Markin square one.

See Markin, beyond being the guy who in our circle named the fresh breeze coming through the land for what would be called by others the Generation of ’68 and which we thanks to Markin we were card-carrying members was also far and away the most political of us all. Saw that any dreams of that newer world he was always hassling us about was going to require serious changes in the political winds. Moreover Markin had from I don’t remember how early on but as long as I had known him tied his fate to becoming some kind of politician, some kind of mover and shaker in that newer world. As for me I could have given a damn about politics then since I was starting up my printing business and, truth, was busy trying to get into my girlfriend’s pants. Not Markin though he had spent that whole spring working his ass off for Robert Kennedy, had gone up and down the East Coast trying to recruit resistant students not only to vote for Bobby but get out on the trail. That student resistance factored in by the fact that Bobby had not gotten into the presidential contest until after Lyndon Baines Johnson the sitting President and odds on favored in 1968 to win the election decided after the debacle of Vietnam, of Tet, not to run and the previously “Clean for Gene” crowd was reluctant to go with Bobby. Saw him as an interloper.       

Here is the beauty, maybe treachery now that I think about the matter, of that bloody bastard Markin before Lyndon blew himself up and Bobby entered the fray he was sitting on his freaking hands perfectly willing to      

give Johnson a pass as vile as Vietnam was against the expected contest against Richard Nixon. Didn’t think whatever lukewarm and ill-formed sympathy he had for McCarthy’s anti-war positions he could beat Nixon (or anybody else he once mentioned after the New Hampshire primary upended politics for good that year with McCarthy’s better than expected showing-wasn’t Bobby-like ruthless enough). Two minutes after Bobby announced he called up some Bobby operatives he knew from the Boston mayor’s fight in 1967 and was on his way.     

When Bobby went down I think, and this is only speculation on my part since I didn’t see him much after he went into the Army and then afterward headed out to California to start “a new life,” something went out of Markin, some sense that the whole thing had been a mirage and that he was doomed. He always thought of himself as doomed, spoke of it sometimes when he was depressed, or things were tough at home. So as the ghost of Bobby Kennedy showed up on that Lichtenstein cover know this the ghost of Markin is right there too.           

Not All Blog Entries Are Serious-For Christmas In The Abstract-A Photo Take

Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part One-The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Malvina Reynolds

Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part One-The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Malvina Reynolds

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."


Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”. Like everyone else from the “Generation of ‘68” who paid attention to folk music on their way to greater social and political consciousness I know this song from Pete Seeger’s rendition. I only knew the name Malvina Reynolds much later. I only ‘knew’ the musical work of Ms. Reynold much later through the efforts of Rosalie Sorrels who did a whole CD compilation of Malvina's work (reviewed in this space). The lyrics to “Little Boxes”, by the way, are a very concise and condensed expression of the way many of us were feeling about the future bourgeois society had set up for us back in the early 1960s. As the song details-it was not pretty. I submit that it still is not pretty.

Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems

Little Boxes

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation (not the PTA, as Pete Seeger says in the documentary about Malvina, “Love It Like a Fool”). As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”


Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –

As The 100^th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –

By Seth Garth

A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100^th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100^th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.

Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath    

By Lenny Lynch

I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20^th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios. 

I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.         

Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,  would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.

For Bob Dylan *Once More Into The Time Capsule, Part One-The New York Folk Revival Scene in the Early 1960’s-Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Ramblin' Jack Elliott performing Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues".

CD Review

Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001

"Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:

Disc One; Woody Guthrie on “Hard Travelin’”, Big Bill Broonzy on “Black , Brown And White”, Jean Ritchie on “Nottamun Town”, Josh White on “One Meat Ball” Malvina Reynolds on “Little Boxes”, Cisco Houston on “Midnight Special”, The Weavers on “Wasn’t That A Time”, Glenn Yarborough on “Spanish Is A Loving Tongue”, Odetta on “I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain”, The New Lost City Ramblers on “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down”, Bob Gibson and Bob Camp on “Betty And Dupree”, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”, Peggy Seeger on “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Hoyt Axton on “Greenback Dollar” and Carolyn Hester on “Turn And Swing Jubilee”."

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on “San Francisco Bay Blues”. Jack made this Jesse Fuller classic practically an Elliott national anthem on his endless traveling. I have recently written much about his role in the very early folk revival as a transmission belt (maybe THE transmission belt) for Woody’s Guthrie’s work as it passed to the new generation. He was the true believer, but I think, at least from the film documentary “Ballad Of Ramblin’ Jack” that his estranged daughter did about his life and times, that he never really moved beyond that. He might have been ticked off at Dylan for not staying at Woody’s shrine but the rest of us should be glad, glad as hell, that Dylan moved on while still paying his respects.


San Francisco Bay Blues- Jesse Fuller

Lyrics as performed by Bob Dylan on East Orange Tape, Feb-Mar 1961.
Transcribed by Manfred Helfert

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I got the blues when my baby left me
By the San Francisco Bay,
Ocean liner, gone so far away.
Didn't mean to treat her so bad,
Best girl I ever has had.
Made me cry, like to make me die,
Wanna lay down and die.
Ain't got a nickel, ain't got a lousy dime,
If she don't come back, Lord, I think I'm gonna lose my mind.
If she ever comes back an' stay,
Be another brand new day,
Walkin' with my baby down by San Francisco Bay.

Sit down, lookin' through my back door,
Wonder which way to go.
That woman I'm so crazy about,
Lord, she don't want me no more.
Think I take me a freight train
Cause I'm a-feelin' blue,
Ride on up to the end of the line
Thinkin' only of you.

Just about to go on a city (?),
Just about to go insane,
I think I heard that woman
Cry the way she used to call my name.
If she ever come back an' stay,
Be another brand new day,
Walkin' with my baby down by San Francisco Bay.

Meanwhile at another city (?),
Just about to go insane,
I think I heard that woman
Cry the way she used to call my name.
If she ever come back an' stay,
Be another brand new day,
Walkin' with my baby down by San Francisco Bay, hey,
Walkin' with my baby down by San Francisco Bay.

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.