Keep The Presses Rolling-Humphrey Bogart’s “Deadline-USA” (1952)-A Film Review

Keep The Presses Rolling-Humphrey Bogart’s “Deadline-USA” (1952)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

Deadline-USA, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, directed by Richard Brooks, 1952 

I am thrilled to be doing my first review, first film review, in this space of a film, Deadline-USA, starring Humphry Bogart an actor whom my parents would forever be quoting lines from one of his films like “Play it again, Sam,” “We will always have Paris” stuff like that since they had “discovered” him at a second-run artsy theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan where they met and went to school back in the 1980s. Of course Bogie (and his sweetie wife Lauren Bacall) was, is a legend, somebody to watch go through his paces whatever your age. Whenever they got nostalgic for their youth my parents would find some re-run retrospective theater and they would take me in tow to see things like The Big Sleep (which would make me hungry later for everything crime detective novelist Raymond Chandler ever wrote), Dark Passage (a film I never understood what with the face change and all in some back alley with a doctor who looked and acted more like a barber), and To Have And Have Not (where he and Bacall steam up the screen with some of the sexiest stuff with clothes on you will ever see but that observation was not made until much later-post puberty later having seen the film a few more times). Although Deadline is nowhere in the same category as the aforementioned films it nevertheless has a plotline about the fate of the modern newspaper business and freedom of the press that interests me.    

Now freedom of the press as my father, Lester, an editor of the famous These Times when he was in college said the best lesson he ever learned about press freedom  was given to him by an old English professor who had been through the red scare of the 1950s (the time frame of this film although none of those press self-censorship and acting on governmental directives issues were addressed by this film), had been something of a radical and had suffered the fate of plenty of people in those day not being able to find work in newspapers. That professor, I forget his name, told my father that freedom of the press was important to those who owned the presses the rest of us want to defend the freedom of expression part wherever we land. For a long time I thought that myself but this film brought out something else that professor had not mentioned and that was the death of the presses was the death of democracy. Although non-linear social and commercial on-line media is now a primary and growing place for people to get their news and that has dramatically portended the ellipse of the hard-copy versions that point is still worth thinking through.          

Some film critic when I was doing background for this piece, Roger Evans from the American Film Gazette I think, has called Deadline the best film about the inner workings of the hard copy newsprint industry ever made. Maybe he is right although every filmed newspaper story, and that includes sent-ups of front page sensationalism like The Front Page, serious investigative journalism like the Watergate expose All The President’s Men, and the recent The Post about the fight to publish Daniel Ellsberg’s The Pentagon Papers has extolled the notion of the big story which motivates the newsrooms and makes careers driving the plotline to culmination. Deadline is no different in that regard and so maybe that critical remark should be the beginning of further research rather than the last word on this film.

Greg Green, the site manager here, knowing this is my maiden effort has asked me especially when reviewing older films, in this case a film when I wasn’t even born and my parents weren’t  either to give a few details about the film. This is truer still of Deadline which in the great Bogie list of film credits had almost disappeared from sight until last year when it was released on Blu-Ray. A little against type considering such roles as the hard-boiled private detective Phillip Marlowe, the old salt Captain Harry Morgan and the framed-up escaped con Victor Parry Bogie plays the idealistic, if heavy-handed, crusading editor, Hutchison, of a major daily newspaper in what is New York City in the days when there were many newspaper for every taste and readership competing dog eat dog for the public’s acceptance. As stated in one of the dialogues between Hutchison and the hard-pressed owner, played by Ethel Barrymore, he was all newspaperman and would have as she said “married the paper if it had legs” (which is true since he was estranged from his actual wife until late in the film).    

      

That hard-pressed publisher had trouble keeping up with what was needed and so a lot of the story revolves around that aspect of the business and her decision to sell the paper which would be sold to parties who would close it down tight. The other big part, the part that sells newspapers by drawing the public to the headlines created is “the big story.” Here the big story is not the red scare effects like I mentioned above or the world going to hell in a hand-basket but your “bread and butter” crime and corruption story. The crime. A young woman who turns out to be connected to a known mobster, a bad guy to mess with, is found murdered after she would not reveal where the money he had given her to hold to pay off some crooked politicians in her apartment. Hutchison sends out his investigative reporters to sniff around. They make the connections, dot the i’s and cross the t’s and come up with a big story connecting that mobster to the murder and the corruption. That despite all kinds of threats against hard guy Hutchison by him who keeps spouting Fourth of July picnic oratory about the beauties and hard-fought struggles to keep that free press intact against all the pressures to fold up shop and run. A story that seemed very appropriate today what with all the talk about the press being “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Yeah, very much a film for these times.            

Friday, November 30th Veterans For Peace Stands In Solidarity with Central American Asylum Seekers by Gerry Condon Members of San Diego Veterans For Peace marched to the border with Tijuana, Mexico on Sunday, November 25, as part of a San Diego coalition expressing solidarity with and support for thousands of Central American asylum seekers. VFP members were on both sides of the border and joined in with a march of asylum seekers on the Mexican side. So we had a good look at the crisis which was contrived by the Trump administration to make it look like there was indeed an "invasion" of "criminals" and "terrorists." A perfectly peaceful march turned into chaos when the legal entry point to where the asylum seekers were headed was closed off by Mexican authorities, presumably at the request of Homeland Security. When some marchers then surged toward the border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CPB) officers wasted no time in firing multiple CS (tear gas) canisters across the border into Mexico, causing great chaos as mothers fled with their choking children. As if on cue, U.S. authorities then totally shut down the busiest border crossing in North America, an exercise they had been practicing during the week. Soon Marine helicopters were landing on the railroad tracks next to the border, and Marines, apparently armed, were dis-engorging along the border fence. At the same time, 300 Army soldiers with shields and clubs stood menacingly behind CPB officers. In the meantime, rains and a shortage of food and shelter for the asylum seekers in Tijuana are turning an already difficult into a serious humanitarian crisis. As many as one-third of the 6,000 or so asylum seekers are suffering from respiratory and other illnesses. Mexico's federal government has provided no aid, and the mayor of Tijuana says that the city can provide little further assistance. NGO's on both sides of the border are doing what they can to help, but so far their efforts are insufficient. The Unified U.S. Deported Veterans chapter of Veterans For Peace has also been helping asylum seekers who are camped out at the border, only about a half-block from their office. The Deported Veterans have experience with this, as they have helped previous caravans of asylum seekers as well. They are supplying food, water, blankets, and now seek to provide much needed tarps. San Diego VFP is helping out with this. Ultimately, they would like to provide backpacks filled with essential items. Most needed are dollars, which can be used to purchase essential items in Mexico. You can donate directly through a special link on the VFP website. Just indicate that your donation is for the asylum seekers. Read Gerry's Entire Report

Friday, November 30th Veterans For Peace Stands In Solidarity with Central American Asylum Seekers by Gerry Condon Members of San Diego Veterans For Peace marched to the border with Tijuana, Mexico on Sunday, November 25, as part of a San Diego coalition expressing solidarity with and support for thousands of Central American asylum seekers. VFP members were on both sides of the border and joined in with a march of asylum seekers on the Mexican side. So we had a good look at the crisis which was contrived by the Trump administration to make it look like there was indeed an "invasion" of "criminals" and "terrorists." A perfectly peaceful march turned into chaos when the legal entry point to where the asylum seekers were headed was closed off by Mexican authorities, presumably at the request of Homeland Security. When some marchers then surged toward the border wall, Customs and Border Protection (CPB) officers wasted no time in firing multiple CS (tear gas) canisters across the border into Mexico, causing great chaos as mothers fled with their choking children. As if on cue, U.S. authorities then totally shut down the busiest border crossing in North America, an exercise they had been practicing during the week. Soon Marine helicopters were landing on the railroad tracks next to the border, and Marines, apparently armed, were dis-engorging along the border fence. At the same time, 300 Army soldiers with shields and clubs stood menacingly behind CPB officers. In the meantime, rains and a shortage of food and shelter for the asylum seekers in Tijuana are turning an already difficult into a serious humanitarian crisis. As many as one-third of the 6,000 or so asylum seekers are suffering from respiratory and other illnesses. Mexico's federal government has provided no aid, and the mayor of Tijuana says that the city can provide little further assistance. NGO's on both sides of the border are doing what they can to help, but so far their efforts are insufficient. The Unified U.S. Deported Veterans chapter of Veterans For Peace has also been helping asylum seekers who are camped out at the border, only about a half-block from their office. The Deported Veterans have experience with this, as they have helped previous caravans of asylum seekers as well. They are supplying food, water, blankets, and now seek to provide much needed tarps. San Diego VFP is helping out with this. Ultimately, they would like to provide backpacks filled with essential items. Most needed are dollars, which can be used to purchase essential items in Mexico. You can donate directly through a special link on the VFP website. Just indicate that your donation is for the asylum seekers. Read Gerry's Entire Report

Happy Birthday Keith Richards-*Stonesmania-Back To Basics- The Rolling Stones When The Earth Was Young

*Stonesmania-Back To Basics- The Rolling Stones When The Earth Was Young


Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of The Rolling Stones performing "Not Fade Away".

CD Review

High Tide And Green Grass, The Rolling Stones, ABKCO Records, 1986

I will repeat here what I have mentioned in other reviews of the early work of The Rolling Stones…. “Hey, in 2009 no one, including this reviewer, NEEDS to comment on the fact that The Rolling Stones, pound for pound, have over forty plus years earned their place as the number one band in the rock ‘n’ roll pantheon. Still, it is interesting to listen once again to the guys when they were at the height of their musical powers (and as high, most of the time, as Georgia pines)”. This “greatest hits” compilation takes us back to the days, before the heavier rock sound but right up their in competition with the Beatles for the ‘soul’ of the youthful rock fans of the 1960’s. Some of these songs are classic of the rock ‘n’ roll song book others are just faded memories. The cover of “Not Fade Away”,their own “Satisfaction”, “The Last Time” and “19th Nervous Breakdown” will endure as long as people need rock ‘n’ roll to get through the day. “Tell Me” and “Play With Fire” are more for youthful memories.

UNDER MY THUMB
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Under my thumb
The girl who once had me down
Under my thumb
The girl who once pushed me around

It's down to me
The difference in the clothes she wears
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb

Ain't it the truth babe?

Under my thumb
The squirmin' dog who's just had her day
Under my thumb
A girl who has just changed her ways

It's down to me, yes it is
The way she does just what she's told
Down to me, the change has come
She's under my thumb
Ah, ah, say it's alright

Under my thumb
A siamese cat of a girl
Under my thumb
She's the sweetest, hmmm, pet in the world

It's down to me
The way she talks when she's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb
Ah, take it easy babe
Yeah

It's down to me, oh yeah
The way she talks when she's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb
Yeah, it feels alright

Under my thumb
Her eyes are just kept to herself
Under my thumb, well I
I can still look at someone else

It's down to me, oh that's what I said
The way she talks when she's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb
Say, it's alright.

Say it's all...
Say it's all...

Take it easy babe
Take it easy babe
Feels alright
Take it, take it easy babe.

When The Blues Was Dues- Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stone Tribute –“Shine A Light”

DVD Review

Shine A Light. starring The Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese, Paramount, 2008

… he, manic film director he, hell, famous film director, Martin Scorsese, all Hollywood –awarded, all blank check name your next project, all well known for capturing the mean rumble-stumble-tumble streets of Little Italy corner boy life in front of Mama’s Pizza Parlor, for New Jack City taxi cab saviors, or devils, for be-bop blues Muddy-Howlin’ Wolf- Ike (Tina-less)Turner-Willie Dixon- The Blinds(Blake-Jefferson-Johnson-McTell-Lewis) tributes (kindred to Stone-blessed early day Chess Record Mecca trips) and for a scad of other worthy projects lay heaven-bent in his hotel suite, sweating, sweating like he had just landed his first directing job and his whole career depended on getting the essence of his generation’s music, second wave (first wave Elvis, Chuck, Roy, Jerry Lee and progeny) stone-crazy rock and roll. So he fretted the night before the big theater performance (always a tough venue for camera perspective shots anyway) away thinking about what god crazy impulse made him think he could capture such energy, such performance level, such potential for everything to go off the wheels and wind up like so many rock docks looking like some stoned (weed stoned not depths cousin cocaine stoned) suburban kid’s homemade video. Like some kid in the audience. Jesus.

And they, they the reigning emperors of the known rock universe fought him every inch of the way, cut the lights, brighten the darks, keep those goddam cameras out of our faces, off of our stage, and away from our big- wig event audience. Hey, maybe you should film it from the last row of the balcony and deal with chasing away those kids that snuck in the theater through the back door. Wise guys, he thought, we knew how to deal with these limey river rats back in that Little Italy corner boy night, and no questions asks. And to top it off they didn’t even give him the play list (or rather he, Mick he, okay, it’s his play list and depends on his moods), the potential play list, hell, maybe they were going to do a night of Muddy Waters or Beatles covers for all he knew. He needed, desperately needed, to know whether they were going to burn the stage down opening up with Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Gimme Shelter, or Tumblin’ Dice and then pick up the wreckage or slow and easy rider their way in with As Tears Go By, Far Away Eyes, or Back Street Girl and then burn the place down. Jesus, he thought to himself, this one will age me about ten years.

He, his satanic majesty, he, Mick, Mick Jagger, laugh, Queen (no, not the rock group) benighted, oops, be-knighted on that same pre-show night sat on his hotel suite sofa fretting, fretting about whether he had done enough voice exercises, like his coach, that damn bastard coach had insisted to keep him from sounding like Bob Dylan’s brother, fretting whether that new lame shirt would hold up, fretting whether his slightly arthritic fingers could guitar hold the notes on Shine A Light night, and fretting whether his new diet of soy milk and rice puffs were enough to keep his fighting weight slim body in one piece. Yah and then he fretted, fretted simple stuff like what do you call an ex-president of the United States and the bag of glad-handers he was bringing with him. Fretted whether doing a Muddy tribute with Buddy Guy on Champagne and Reefer would just be taken as an autobiographical note. And fretted too whether Keith might use something, anything, as an excuse to go all crazy-up before the show. Start Me Up alright. Ronny and Charley too, for that matter.

And then he thought maybe he should ask around and get a little something for the head, a little something to put that edge on when he was coming out all black and black satanic on Sympathy For The Devil. And then he thought back, back to the youthful jails, the endless court appearances, the close escapes, the missing days (damn weeks when he was in high dudgeon stoned, sister morphine stoned, or love girl stoned ) and thought better of it. Christ he was probably just going to squeeze out the two hours straight as it was. And on top of that the pressure from Marty (and his maze of a crowd) to do this, do that, put this camera here, put that light there (burning up his bum or some other part of him in the sweaty night) AND he wanted to know the play list. Christ he himself didn’t know it, that was part of keeping the act fresh, of keeping the boys, Keith, Ronny, Charley, those boys, on their toes (to speak nothing of those wacko trumpet players, sexy sax players and that damn bass player)

Showtime. All doubts gone, or put aside for the siege, eyes front he, Mick he, forget Marty he until the film premier, Rasputin-like, Rasputin on speed maybe, drawing the audience in with his first juke moves, feet moving faster than the speed of light, hips playing ring-a-rosy, bounce shirt showing a little skin around the waist (eye-candy for the girls, girls six to sixty, and AARP papa moans about how can he keep so fit and jealous ),every hand moving like some stoned hitchhiker out on the great blue-pink American search night, gesturing about twelve different ways. Ready, set, go. Jumpin’ Jack Flash for the opening, They, Mick, have decided to burn the place down, take no prisoners, and see who is still standing at the end. Mick is on fire, Keith, like some William S Burroughs’ Naked Lunch junkie, like some poor mother’s (mothers’) worst nightmare daughter coming home with (what will the neighbors say), doing some ten thousand year old blues riff, mixed with every sound he has heard since about 1956 solid (solid smoking that cigarette , bans Keith-exempted, okay). Yah, for about the nine hundredth time he and Mick are in synch, check Ronnie, and check steady drum beat Charley, cool as a cucumber Charley. And just for that one moment (okay two hours) for those who went through it the first time back in the day, and for those who were spoon-fed it on their mother’s lap, the audience, knew what it was like when men (hell, women too) played rock and roll for keeps.

…and hence this film

I’m Going Away My Own True Love-What More Can Be Said

I’m Going Away My Own True Love

By Sam Lowell

Lana Jamison had been frustrated for most of her twenty-eight young years. Frustrated by her whole past, her past that included a serious bout of a childhood where she was not listened to by her parents, was treated like a dishrag, was told to be silent and like it by her tyrannical father and her go-along-with father mother. Had spent years in therapy after college trying to get to the bottom of what that did to her psyche and had come up with few good clues as to how to proceed with her life without feeling she had to look over her shoulder every time he made a remark that expressed her true feelings. That situation had been made worse by the seemingly inevitable run of boyfriends and lovers who had decided on the basis of her demur presence that they could treat her like a dishrag as well. Didn’t feel the need to expect that she might have an opinion of her own and tried might and main to direct her life for her. That woeful series included one husband, Jeff Mullins, who made an art form of putting her down wherever she had an idea that did not jell with his. That marriage had fallen apart of its own weight after a couple of years when Jeff decided one night to run off with the next best thing that came along and left Lan cold.     

Then Fritz, Fritz Taylor came along, came along like a fresh breeze after that disaster with Jeff. She had met him one when she was feeling lonely at a bar in Cambridge that she would frequent before her marriage to Jeff and where they played country music of all things in the heart of Harvard Square. That country music thing had been a throwback to her days on that silent father farm and he would play the stuff on the radio every day. Fritz’s interest had been more recent, what he called his outlaw country music minute when that genre had a run even in urban areas of this country. The Wheatstack had been playing, a group that he followed which played Willie Nelson covers among others and so he had shown up there one Friday night and kissed fate. He had spied her, so he said, while he was sitting a bit forlorn at the bar since he had recently been divorced from his own didn’t understand him wife. Spied her sitting like heaven’s own angel at  a corner table with her girlfriend, so he said as he talked to her as she passed by his bar stool as she was going to the Ladies’ Room. She had been impressed by his light touch, his giving her room to speak about what interested her, and most of all by the no pressure way that he handled the idea of calling her up once she insisted that she really had to go home with her girlfriend. But gave him her phone number. In response he gave her the most gentle good night handshake she had ever received from a man. And so started their love affair.           

Fritz proved, mostly, to be as advertised that first night, except his own bouts of withdrawal and distance which he told her he had inherited from his own dismal childhood down among the working poor by parents who were way over their heads trying to raise six kids on an unskilled worker’s pay. He called them, he and she, soulmates and that stuck, stuck as true as anything he ever said. Lana could take those bouts of darkness for a while as long as they were mixed in with days of happiness. But that mix had of late fallen on hard times. Many times burned she needed some space, needed room to think things through and so one day she mentioned to Fritz that she wanted to head to California by herself, wanted drive across at her own pace and see the country she had missed seeing all her sweet young life. They battled back and forth on the matter for weeks. Fritz telling her that he would improve his disposition and she, having heard it all before and really wanting to get away, arguing for her space. Finally one morning out of the blue he gave in, wished her Godspeed and that she should keep in contact with him in case anything happened along the way. The idea being when she left that she would return and they would try to start over again, start their love on a higher plain.                

So one sunny April day Lana took off in her Chevrolet, a car filled to the brim with seemingly every possible thing that she owed. No pioneer woman trekking across the country intrepidly, not Lana. Told Fritz as they kissed good-bye that she would call him when she hit Philadelphia. Would see if she couldn’t find him some nice gift to make him feel better, make him get through their separation better. Fritz said in reply simply that he didn’t want any material gift but that the thought of her speedy return was enough to keep her going. That brought a tear to her eyes but she still insisted that she would get him something. So in Philadelphia she called him and asked him if he wanted a nice gold ring that she had seen in a jewelry store that would be a sign of their friendship and love. Fritz begged off again saying he only wanted her own sweet love.       

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-“The Dark Corner”- A Film Review

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-“The Dark Corner”- A Film Review

DVD Review


By Ronan Saint James

The Dark Corner, Clifton Webb, Lucille Ball, William Bendix, Mark Stevens, directed by Henry Hathaway, 1946

As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this crime noir genre I am an aficionado, especially of those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, The Dark Corner, is under that former category.

And here is why. The dialogue, even though the film itself was under the direction of Henry Hathaway a more than competent noir director, if not of the first order, is, well, way too smaltzy for a good crime noir. First off the love interest between the framed-up detective, Brad Galt (played by Mark Stevens), and his girl Friday secretary (played by Lucille Ball) is played up front and without subtly and lacks the dramatic cat and mouse build-up of classic noirs. In any case whatever Ms. Ball’s later recognized talents as a screw-ball comic, and they were considerable, here as a lower-class "good girl" with all the right morals, all the right world-wiseness for her joe, and all the right instincts to stand by her man set my teeth on edge. That lack of tension between two such leading characters spills over into the rest of the doings. This one does not even have the cutesy “Oh, you devil Sam” of Sam Spade and his girl Friday secretary, Gladys, in The Maltese Falcon.

A little summary of the plot line is in order to demonstrate that lack of tension. Said Detective Galt is being framed again in New York (and had already been framed before, although not in New York but San Francisco) by, he believes, his SF ex-detective agency partner. That, however, is merely a blind ruse used by a certain high-powered high society art dealer (played, naturally, by Clifton Webb, a central casting fit for such a role if there ever were one), an art dealer with a young wife. After all the other misdirection this one was telegraphed the minute that we see the “divine” pair together, and that fact is cemented when we see said ex-partner and lovely society art dealer trophy wife ready to take off right under the nose of Mr. High Society. But a high society art dealer, with a young wife or not, does not get where he is without a strong possessive desire and so the frame is on and our detective is made to fit the frame, and fit it very easily until our real culprit is discovered and dealt with. And dealt with forthrightly, as all overwrought, possessive older husbands are dealt with in noir. By the pent-up hatred of that trophy wife, after she finds out that dear hubby has killed her lover man. You don’t need to know much more to know what that will mean, or that the framed guy and his good girl Friday will eventually walk down the aisle together. Doesn’t this sound a little too familiar? Like, maybe a low-rent Laura in spots? Hmm.

Note: Clifton Webb, as mentioned above, seems to have been a gold-plated central casting stereotype for the repressed, possessive, and, well, psychopathic high-powered high society swell with an eye (or maybe two eyes) for lovely young women. As seen here, and more famously, in the classic crime noir, Laura. Apparently Mr. Webb never learned that those 1940s lovelies may be wily enough to latch on to a rich man for fame and fortune but are a little headstrong about being roped in, roped in completely by, well, an old lecher, high class or not. It doesn’t take a Mayfair swell to know this is not a country for old men. Any young joe could have told him that.

***When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964

***When Young Women’s Voices Ruled the Airwaves Before The British Rock Invasion, Circa 1964

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

Early Girls, Volume One, various singers, Ace Records , 1997


I mentioned one time in a review of a two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl doo wop (1950s stuff, okay where the lead singer, a girl singer, sang some sad tale, usually about some lost boy, Johnny or Jimmy, who cheated on her, left her high and dry for another girl, stood her up or, worse, much worse, failed to make that midnight phone call she had been waiting by the phone for hours to pick up, pick up and hear, uh, his voice, his manly voice, and a group of two or three other girls just kind of say-do lang, do lang, sha na na or stuff like that. Look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t get it, or don’t believe me that humans being could make such sounds and make beautiful music. ), I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music and that of my generation, the generation of ’68 (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, about what I was listening to, and that was just fine, as I am sure you will agree whatever generation you inhabit these days).

Naturally one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Big Joe Turner. And, of course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis, Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson, and Jerry Lee Lewis on. Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love? (good question, right). I noted there that I had not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great "girl" groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I would expand that observation here to include girls’ voices generally. As there, I make some amends for that omission here.

As I also noted in that earlier review one problem with the girl groups, and now girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics to many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks looking wistfully over to the girls on the right side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy's heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.

Reviewing the material again gave me the same flash-back feeling I felt listening to girl doo wop sounds back then. I will give examples of that for this volume, and this approach will drive the reviews of all five of these volumes in the series. Yah, for starters what is a girl-shy boy to make of a song that when some big-voiced woman is telling one and all that her man is no good just because he was catting around on her in Betty Everett’s Your No Good; or some girl all chained up by a guy (not S&M stuff but worst, in a way, chains of mixed-up love) in Chains by The Cookies; or get all weepy about the trauma of a girl who is boy-less all summer by a girl-less guy for all seasons in It Might As Well Rain Until September by Carole King.

And how could a young ragamuffin get catch a break listening to some girl spreading the glad tidings about her new found love in the girls' lav Monday morning before school when one and all bared their trophy weekends in I'm Into Something Good by Earl-Jean; or, the same kind of message, except maybe at the local pizza parlor, in I've Told Every Little Star by Linda Scott. And it goes on and on. Christ, even guys wearing pink shoe laces and looking like some goof had their devotees in Pink Shoe Laces by Dodie Stevens (but what about no song poor boy, plaid flannel-shirted, black chinos with cuffs, Thom McAn-shoed guy, no way right). And the love eternal love-style songs were worst, for example, a giggling, gaffing girl all plushed up by her boy in I Love How You Love Me by The Paris Sisters. Jesus, that could have been me.

And is there a place for such a lad even in the love’s trials and tribulations-type songs like when the moon took a holiday from looking out for lovers in Dark Moon by Bonnie Guitar; or when it didn’t in You by The Aquatones and was absolutely beaming in the incredible paean to everlasting love, 'Til by The Angels. Hell, even no account, long gone, no stamps, no stationary, no pen, no time to write Eddie has someone pining over him, pining big time, in Eddie My Love by The Teen Queens. And Eddie was nothing but long gone and never coming back guy who took what he could take, took it easy, and left no forwarding address. But the one that gets me, gets me big time, is a total song homage by some sweet girl just because he is her guy in Dedicated To The One I Love by The Shirelles. Lordy, lord.

So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Yah, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics of the songs presented here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was the time of our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great. And from girls even.

As We Pass The 1st Anniversary Of The “Cold” Civil War In America-A Tale Of Two Boston Resistance Events –Join The Resistance Now!

As We Pass The 1^st Anniversary Of The “Cold” Civil War In America-A Tale Of Two Boston Resistance Events –Join The Resistance Now!

By Si Lannon

The headline to this piece is something of a misnomer as the “cold” civil war in America as I have been calling the great expanding divide between left and right, the oppressed and the oppressor (and its hangers-on including, unfortunately, a not insignificant segment of the oppressed), the haves and have nots and any other way to express the vast gulf, getting wider, between those siding with white rich man’s power and the rest of us, since this cold civil war has been building for a couple of decades at least. The Age of Trump which started officially one year ago though is a pretty good milestone to measure both how far we of the left, of the oppressed, have come and to measure the responses by the oppressed (the ones not hanging on to the white rich men) a year out in Year I of the Age of Trump Resistance.

Two local signposts, let me call them, stick out this weekend of January 20^th. One, the Women’s Rally on Cambridge Common on the 20^th organized to commemorate the anniversary of the historic Women’s mega-rally and march in Washington and it’s gigantic satellite event on Boston Common, The other a cultural/political event organized by Black Lives Matter and its allies held in the historic Arlington Street Universalist-Unitarian Church in Boston on the 21^st.

Those two events which I attended in person in my capacity as a member Veterans Peace Action (VPA, an organization which my old friend Sam Lowell who will take the spotlight below got me involved in as fellow Vietnam War veterans) while they share some obvious over-lapping political perspectives to my mind represented two distinct poles of the resistance as it has evolved over the past several years.

No one, including I assume the organizers of the Women’s Rally, expected anything like the turnout for the 2017 Inaugural weekend event on the Boston Common or else they would have had the event on the Common so I did not expect a tremendous turnout. That event could not be duplicated and moreover over the year some of the anger over the Trump victory, etc. and maybe just plain horror and discouragement would have sapped some energies. However the several thousand who showed up represented a good turnout to my mind.

What I didn’t expect was the rather celebratory feeling that I got from the crowds as the poured into Cambridge Common from the nearby Harvard MBTA subway stop. I was positioned along with a number of my fellow VPAers as volunteers to insure the safety of the crowds and any threaten action by the Alt-Right who were said to be “organizing” a counter-rally at the Common as well. (In the event that small clot of people were isolated and protected by the Cambridge police without incident. We kept our side cool as well.)

That celebratory spirit, rather unwarranted given the defeats on our side over the previous year from Supreme Court justice to DACA to TPS to a million other injustices, flowed into the main thrust of the rally. Get Democrats, get women Democrats, elected to public office and “scare” the bejesus out of Donald J. Trump and his hangers-on. In other words the same old, same old strategy that the oppressed have been beaten down by for eons. Like things were dramatically better for those down at the base of society, down where everybody is “from hunger” with Democrats. Worse though than that pitch for the same old, same old was as the younger radicals say “who was not in the room, who had not been invited.” Who didn’t show up for the “lovefest” if it came to that. The representation on the speaker platform, always a key indicator of whose agenda and whose buttons are being pushed, looked like the old-time white middle-class feminist      cabal that has been herding these women-oriented political events for years to the exclusion on the many shades (and outlooks) of people of color. Not a good sign, not a good sign at all a year out when we are asking people in earnest to put their heads on the line for some serious social change.

Fast forward to the very next day at Arlington Street U-U Church in Boston where a Black Lives Matter event, co-sponsored by Veterans Peace Action, was held to a infinitely smaller crowd around black cultural expression and serious political perspectives. The cultural events were very fine, rap, music, poetry slam put on by skilled artists in those milieus. Interspersed in between those performances was very serious talk, egged on by the moderator, about future political perspectives, about the revolution, however anybody wanted to define that term, In short a far cry from what was being presented and “force-fed” in Cambridge the previous day.             

Now it has been a very long time since, except in closed circle socialist groups, that I have heard about the necessity of revolution (again whatever that might mean to the speaker), so it was like a breath of fresh air to hear such talk in Arlington Street Church, a place where legendary revolutionary abolitionist John Brown spoke, to drum up support for his Kansas expeditions and the later Harpers Ferry fights against slavery. Listening to the responses, as Sam Lowell who attended with me noted later, the missing links to the 1960s generation, to our generation, the last time a lot of people seriously used the word revolution, have left the younger activists in various states of confusion. That will be worked out in the struggle as long as people keep the perspective in mind. What bothered Sam, and me as well although I could not articulate it like him, were two points that seemed to have been given short shrift by the various talkers.

I was going to enumerate them but why don’t I let my recollection of what Sam said (edited by him before posting so very close to what he actually meant) to the gathering after listening to some things that as Fritz Taylor from the South, another VPAer and Vietnam vet used to say- “got stuck in his craw.” Sam had not intended to speak since he, we, thought the event was to be totally a cultural one so he kept it short but also to the point, to our collective agreement point:

“Hi, I am Sam Lowell for Veterans Peace Action (VPA), a co-sponsor of this great event. I didn’t expect to speak since I thought this would be solely a cultural event. But some comments here have got me thinking. First a quick bio point or two-like one of the sisters who performed I grew up in “the projects,” a totally white one, although still “the projects” with all the pathologies that entails and I have remained very close to those roots my whole life whatever successes I have had in breaking out of those beginnings. Early on, don’t ask me how or why, I came to admire John Brown, the white righteous avenging angel revolutionary abolitionist who fought slavery tooth and nail out in Kansas and later, more famously, at Harpers Ferry slave insurrection. He was, is, my hero, my muse if you can use such a term for avenging angels.      

A couple of points. One speaker mentioned a litany of oppressions which had to be eliminated by us, by society, by us as the most conscious of things like patriarchy, racism, classism, gender-sexual preference phobia for lack of a better term, a term that I could use anyway, capitalism and so on. What I have noticed though as people here have tried to struggle with all of that and come up with some kind of strategy is what Lenin, and others, have called imperialism, our American imperialism, which means against all the oppressed of the world we are “privileged” Americans privileged no matter what oppressions we face in this society.   

On this point I will bring back from the dead two important quotes from the legendary revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara-“it is the duty of revolutionaries to make the revolution.” We cannot spent our precious lives “purifying” ourselves of all the oppressions and all the ways we, in turn act as oppressors, so we are “worthy” of the revolution while the world outside this room suffers from our wrong-headed sense of liberation struggle. Second “we who are in the heart of the beast,” who are in America have a special obligation to bring the monster down. To fight the fight now and to be there when the masses rise up in righteous indignation.    

Second and last point. One speaker a few minutes ago mentioned that it seemed impossible that we could win against, 

I assume she meant the American ruling class, through the route of violent revolution so she projected by non-violent alternative which seemed to my ears rather utopian. She mentioned that the other side, the ruling class, had the heavy military advantage and so that route was precluded. That statement showed a lack of “imagination” which is the theme of this event. No question right now an armed uprising would be ruthlessly crushed. But when the masses rise and are determined a funny thing happens at least if you read history. The military splits along officer and soldier lines, the fighters of the war, the grunts, either go over to the people or go home. The cops go into hiding. 

 I would use the example of the Vietnam War which a lot of Veterans Peace Action members are very familiar with. At some point around 1968, 1969 the troops, the grunts on the ground in Vietnam, hell, here at home too began to essentially “mutiny” against the war in fairly big numbers. That army became unreliable, was in many ways broken both by the futility of fighting a determined enemy and vocal opposition at home. And that was not even close to a revolutionary situation but will give you an idea what that situation would look like as the masses rise. If it ever happened where will you be? Thank you.        

Peace is Possible! Veterans For Peace

Peace is Possible!

Veterans For Peace<vfp@veteransforpeace.org>

12/21/2018 4:55 PM

T

Quick reply all

Reply

Forward

Delete

• Actions

Thank you for interest and engagement with Veterans For Peace. It is our hope that you will support us further with a monetary donation today! As 2018 comes to a close I am aware that the news cycles have many of us weary. But I am reminded we have seen this before.  Fifty years ago, in 1968, this country was also at a moment of great uncertainty.  We were engaged in a horrific war in Viet Nam and the Tet Offensive shocked the nation into realizing the optimistic picture being painted of the war by the Johnson Administration was a lie.  At home, the U.S. was in the midst of large-scale civil rights struggles.  The year saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  The government and police had ramped up surveillance of activists and community organizers and were increasingly aggressive at peaceful protests. Although I was a young child during that time, I also know what many of you know, that these struggles and uncertainties also inspired resistance. Hundreds of thousands continued the Poor People’s Campaign in a tent city in Washington D.C., forwarding King’s vision before his death of poor people across all differences banning together to advocate for themselves. Resistance against the war in Viet Nam saw incredibly courageous actions by active duty servicemembers, many of whom are now in Veterans For Peace.  And many organizations, groups and individuals applied so much pressure on Congress and the President that the Civil Rights Bill was passed. Resistance brought change that would not have otherwise happened. It is when we are weary, that we must look to our legacy of struggle for inspiration and what we know is true so that we do not forget that peace is possible. And YOU are what makes Peace Possible! We can and must continue this work to stand up against the powerful forces that are looking to drag us back.  We appreciate the interest you’ve shown Veterans For Peace in the past and we are hoping you will stand with us by donating $25, $100, or $200 today to help us build for a more peaceful future? Sincerely, Michael McPhearson Veterans For Peace apologizes if your donation and our email crossed paths! Veterans For Peace appreciates your generous donations. We also encourage you to join our ranks. Click to no longer receive updates from Veterans For Peace

Happy Birthday Keith Richards- In The Heat Of the Be-Bop 1960s Rock Night- Ya, We Were All Exiles On Main Street- “The Rolling Stones: Stones In Exile"- A DVD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Howlin' Wolf performing Willie Dixon's classic Little Red Rooster. I am sure that Mick and the boys will gladly take a back seat to Howlin' Wolf on this one.

DVD Review

Rolling Stones: Stones In Exile, The Rolling Stones, directed by Stephen Kijak, 2010

In the old days, the old high school days when such things mattered, my best friend at North Adamsville High School (we actually went back to old North Adamsville Middle School days together), Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley to give his full moniker, spent endless hours arguing over the merits of The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones as the primo rock band of the times. The times being the early 1960s, the time of the edge, just the wee edge of the beginning of the uprisings associated with our generation, the generation of ’68.

I will get into the specifics of that Frankie controversy a little later but for the purposes of this review of a film documentary about the making of the Stones’ 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, the real controversy is over whether this album was their best ever or not. At that point Frankie and I had lost contact so that I will just give as my opinion that for pure blues-ness, pure Stones’ foundational blue-ness, for country rooted-ness, and for musicianship it is hard to argue that any other Stones' album was better. And that opinion, now with the benefit of the documentary footage and current interviews with many of the personalities from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to the sidemen, hangers-on, gofers, and their manager during this period, Marshall Chess (son of the legendary blues label founder, Leonard Chess), about how it was produced, and what it all meant, still holds up.

I noted in the headline that in the 1960s we, at least those of us who were politically alienated from mainstream Western social norms or at wits end for some other more personal reasons, were all exiles on Main Street. Main Street being a convenient term of art for all that was square, not cool, up-tight, piggish, and a thousand other words we used to separate our youth culture out from the ticky-tack little white house with the picket fence dream that passed for social reality then (and, unfortunately, now, well kind of now). For the Stones this notion of exile, self-imposed exile, not glad-tiding self-imposed exile to hear the lads tell it, had another element. They had to flee England in order to escape from some terrible tax burdens that had accumulated and for which they did not have control over solving (or money to pay). So off to the south of France they go, to live and to produce the new album and in order to get some dough.

Of course, with such well-known edge city crazies as Mick and Keith this was not going to be a Sunday in the park. Along the way they picked up musicians, groupies, hangers-on, bag men, bad guys, dope dealers and everyone with a little cache who could get to France and be around the scene. And that scene included, surprise, surprise, dope of every kind- from pills to smack (heroin, then, as now, not a “cool” drug staple), booze by the buckets full, women, sex, and everything else under the sun. Let’s leave it that the scene was the epitome of the slogan “drug, sex and rock and roll” and along with the expression “live fast, die young and make a good corpse” will get you the flavor of what went on just about right. Oh ya, in case you forgot, it also included an incredible amount of work by Mick and Keith writing material, all members playing riffs until arms got sore, throats died and fingers began to bleed. Not a recipe that your mothers would suggest for making successful careers, of any kind. But just the right recipe to unleash the rock energy built up in one of the great rock bands that every exited, then and AARP and old age home-worthy now.

Take an hour out and look at some serious rock history. Then go up in the attic and dust off the album, or check it out in your CD collection, or download it to your iPOD, or Google it on YouTube but listen to it. Especially the blues-ish stuff like Tumblin' Dice (that will get even grandpa out of his rocking chair); Sweet Virginia; Sweet Black Angel; and the rootsy (Robert Johnson rootsy) Stop Breaking Down.

Now back to serious Frankie business. The Frankie business of figuring out the real places of The Stones and The Beatles in the rock pantheon, for eternity. Back on those hot, steamy, endless summer nights standing (or sitting on the curb) beneath those North Adamsville street lights when that question mattered, mattered as a "universal one" question. I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song, although it was probably Satisfaction, and it was probably up in Frankie’s cluttered bedroom, a place that served as a refuge from my own storm-tossed house what with my mother’s tirades against, well, against anything that I might do, or might think of doing. You know that song, or have heard about it.

However, what really hooked me on The Stones was when they covered the old Willie Dixon blues classic, Little Red Rooster. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But beyond the implicit sexual theme was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, if you are from the generation of ’68, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make. And that is what also set Frankie and me apart on this question.

See, Frankie was from no where on the blues. And I mean no where. Although Frankie reigned supreme as the king hell king of our corner boy high school scene (headquartered at the local pizza parlor, Salducci’s, owned by a mad-hatter of a zen pizza-maker, Tonio, who loved Frankie practically like a son for some reason never explained, at least that I could figure out) and was cool in many things, he was pretty square in his music tastes. He never got over Elvis, really, and followed his ever depressing descend into Blue Hawaii-dom (or worst) avidly, and Frankie really believed that Roy Orbison was a demon (there is a story behind that belief which involved the machinations of his girlfriend, Joanne, which need not detain us here). Carl Perkins was another idol, and I need not speak of the fact that he almost cried when they started picking on Jerry Lee Lewis just because he married his cousin, or something. Thus far though we were not that far apart.

But get this. He, king of the be-bop night, no question, a guy whom I talked about universal things to and got a thoughtful talking back to on, took it in strife when guys like Fabian, Booby (oops) Bobby Vee, Conway Twitty (be serious), Bobby Darin, the Everly Brothers, and Rick Nelson, jesus, Rick Nelson led the musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Music that made me, on certain days, abandon the transistor radio that was central to my home life peace. (Ya, that Ma thing mentioned previously). So when The Beatles turned up he was kind of nonplussed by them, and I swear he actually said this one night and I will quote his words exactly just in case there are any legal ramifications over it- “They did a nice cover of Twist and Shout”-jesus christ. Even I saw them as a breathe of fresh air then.

Now you get the idea of the musical gap that developed between us. That hearing of Little Red Rooster, moreover, began my long love affair with the blues, although somewhere deep in my psyche, my projects boy psyche, I had that beat in my head way before I could name it. I swear I grabbed every Muddy Waters, Joe Turner, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker album that I could get my hands on. And then branched out to such esoteric stuff as the work of blues pioneers like Son House, Robert Johnson, and Bukka White (he did Panama Limited and Aberdeen Mississippi Woman on the sweat-dripping National Steel guitar and flipped me out, and still flips me out. Google those on YouTube) and other early country blues boys. Some of this also got mixed in at the time with my budding interest in the folk music scene, the folk protest music scene. And that is probably why, although the blues, particularly the Chicago blues, also influenced The Beatles, it is The Stones that I favor. Their cover on Rooster still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf's version but good.

I have also thought about the Stones influence more recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon's earnest, plaintive Working Class Hero and The Stones' agitated Street Fighting Man (yes, I know these are later works, later than the be-bop corner boy schoolboy night, but they serve to make my point here) and I believe that something in the way The Stones from early on presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my sense of working class alienation. Let’s leave it as they “spoke” to me and The Beatles didn’t. Frankie, always caught up with some twist (although mainly the Joanne mentioned above) moved to less defiant sounds. But he was the king hell king corner boy, and bailed me out of tough situations, tough girl situations and some other semi-legal things, more times than not so he draws a pass on his vanilla tastes here. Thanks, Frankie.

Note: If we were really thinking about comparisons between rock groups the better one is actually not The Beatles vs. The Stones but Stones vs. The Doors. On any given night in the late 1960s when Jim Morrison dug deeply into his psyche and bared his shamanistic soul (and dug, dug deeply, into his medicine bag as well) The Doors were the best rock band in the world. No question. But when you start to list the all-time classic Stones hits from Gimme Shelter to Tumblin’ Dice (like I say the one that will still get even grandpa up and about) and how they stand the test of time The Stones win hands down.


Street Fighting Man Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Rolling Stones
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance
I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No


"Working Class Hero" lyrics- John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.


The Red Rooster
Howling Wolf

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

Oh the dogs begin to bark,
and the hound begin to howl
Oh the dogs begin to bark, hound begin to howl
Ooh watch out strange kind people,
Cause little red rooster is on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard,
Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon