An American Werewolf In London-No-A British Werewolf In Spain-Hammer Productions’ “The Curse Of The Werewolf” (1961)-A Film Review

An American Werewolf In London-No-A British Werewolf In Spain-Hammer Productions’ “The Curse Of The Werewolf” (1961)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Curse Of The Werewolf, starring Oliver Reed, 1961     

No,  I am not going to use this space to further the “dispute,” the piddle that I can see old wise and wizen Sam Lowell calling his classic “tempest in a teapot” with Seth Garth over my so-called indiscretion, my faux pas if you will, about snitches, finks, you know guys and gals who squeak to the law for some reason usually to save their own asses, my expression from stir, from jail. Jesus with that “stir” I am starting to write like Seth. That came about when as I saw it Angela DeMarco in my review of Married To The Mob was ready to play ball with the law to get out from under the mob which was crowding in. I said it was in the interest of love as well since Angela had a thing for Mike the FBI guy who was following the mob and following her. That was then and this is now when I am on a different crusade and if Seth wants to make something of it, wants to wonder why I am defending who I am defending then bring it on, just bring it on. Hell, you’re the one who said I such be more assertive so live with it.     

This is the real deal I care about today. I am here to tell you that werewolves like some other furry animals like ferrets, weasels and coyotes, have taken some terrible public relations beating in novels and on the screen and I going all out to defend these poor creatures who have been misshapen by situations not of their own making. Case number one, the case before us which will serve as a not gentle reminder of what humans, what you and I have don’t to make werewolves even more hated by the general population than Frankenstein who at least had the defense that he was created by some evil genius as we celebrate the 200^th anniversary of his creation, of his first publication.

Take the poor werewolf Leon, played by a very young and hungry actor Oliver Reed before he hit Hollywood and the glamour rounds, in the film under review The Curse Of The Werewolf. A few things different here or there, maybe a mother who could have nurtured him rather than dying in his time of need or have not been so mesmerized by a wretched prisoner in milord’s castle where her own mother worked like a slave to provide for that bastard duke.  

Naturally though, or it seems natural now after I have a few reviews under my belt, a story goes with it as the short story writer and gadabout Damon Runyon used to say as a lead in to some of his work, about how I wound up doing this review, this review in defense of werewolves which before I delved into the matter I could have not given a damn about (my expression although when my editor saw where I was going with the review his said the same thing. A review which will be one of eight in this Hammer Production series which is what that studio made its nut on. When I was hired on here as a stringer by site manager Greg Green I was given the six- part Hammer Production series of psychological thrillers which the studio produced in the late 1950s, early 1960s. I had done two which were subsequently published, and which Greg said were good for a new hire.

Then office politics, the “good old boy” tradition which Greg was brought in to break up according to Leslie Dumont came to the fore when old time critic Sam Lowell saw the reviews and complained to Greg that he should have given the assignment since he had previous done a six- part film noir series that Hammer produced in the early 1950s. I was kicked off of that series unceremoniously and Sam was given the assignment. Not only that but he had the right, the effrontery really, to give his slant on the two film reviews I did to in what he called “the interest of completeness.” Worse, worse by far, was that whatever Sam’s reputation in the industry half the time he has some stringer do the review under his name again according to Leslie Dumont and that is what he wanted, wants me to do, including essentially to trash my own reviews. I complained very loudly and to “buy me off” I was assigned by Greg to do this series. (I will say as well as further ammunition since this is also well known in some circles, and I will name names if I get any blowback on this, that many times in the old days Sam would if he had some weekend tryst planned or wanted to get drunk with the boys he would just grab whatever the studio publicity department put out on a film, cut the top off and submit that as his masterpiece. Things must have been pretty lax since according to my sources they were all published here under his name.)

So here goes.          

Of course as a kid I was afraid of horror movies, afraid of Freddie Kruger on Nightmare On Elm Street and Jason in the ten million Halloween productions. I don’t remember if beyond American Werewolf in London I had seen any classic werewolf movies and that is not germane to my defense anyway. What is germane, what we all have to think through a bit is how to treat sentient creatures who have been abused and screwed up by human endeavor. The new model has come to us recently via the love affair between a mute young woman, a human, and a creature from the Amazon in The Shape Of Water. So whatever “crimes” a “monster,” a creature, a werewolf commit they cannot be held to the same standards as human beings who after all created the bad situation in the first place. I think in this film it was mainly a question of misunderstandings and spite which produced the ill effects.           

Aside from some religious, apparently Catholic teachings about the sad fates of those humans who lose their souls and hence are prime candidates for werewolf-dom, beautiful Leon really never had a chance to grow up and be somewhat normal. What can you expect when some damn Spanish nobleman showing the degeneracy of his class a couple of hundred years ago when he did some poor beggar wrong and kept him captive in his private prison and forgot about him. Forgot about him except the guy had to be fed and one of the feeders who was a young mute girl who didn’t flinch at his condition. Then as the young girl grew to womanhood the damn nobleman decided he want to take the “right of the first night with her.” She refused and found herself in the private prison with that crazed and apparently sex-starved mad man. The poor bugger died after having his way with her and when she decided to go to the nobleman to seek her revenge she killed him brutally out of hand. Good riddance.

Good riddance except, and here there is a strain of credibility, that poor girl after running away from the crime scene was found by a river by a kindly gentleman who took her in along with his wife and thereafter found that she was with child. The portents were not good when she died in childbirth and the gentleman and his wife raised Leon who exhibited some strange and bloody quirks even when young. Not good    

That was where the good gentleman went to the Church to see what could be done and was told the tale about soul lost and about the power of romantic love to conquer this beastly behavior. And it almost worked once Leon became smitten by the daughter of the guy he was working for in a winery when he came of working age. Almost but the power of evil was too strong and everything came to a head one horrible night after Leon had gone on a mad man killing spree and the towns people sought vengeance. Poor bedeviled Leon cornered, that kindly gentleman put the required by tradition silver bullet in the lad and that was the end of that poor misbegotten werewolf.

Except for one last comment that Hammer Productions known far and wide for its low- cost films must have spent about three dollars turning beautiful Leon into a raggedly werewolf that even I was not afraid of, not at all. That sentient being deserved better. And maybe Seth Garth does too but don’t tell him that.

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-In The Time Of The Great 45 RPM "Clip"- The "Cradle Of Love" Indeed

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Johnny Preston performing his Cradle Of Love.

CD Review

21 Hard To Find 45s On CD; Volume One, various artists, Eric Records, 1996

“ Hey Jimmy have you heard the latest Sonny Knight 45, Confidential, its all slow, smooth, and girl close hold-able, and maybe even kissable, “ yelled Sammy Rizzo across the seventh period study hall classroom. “ Christ, Sammy Whammy, where do you come up with those words, 'close hold-able,’ what does that mean, you’re poking her,” yelled Jimmy, Jimmy Cullen, back at his old friend. Just then Miss Wilmot, that old bitch thought Sammy, came into the room signaling lock-down, prison lock-down and that there would be no more talking, no more talking, period, except of course for the flurry, the massive flurry of notes, between boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and their confederates, boy or girl. Confederates like Sammy Rizzo and Jimmy Cullen, who from appearances would seem like an unlikely pair, except they had been friends, well, since way back in old Clintonville Elementary School days.

Jimmy, long, long and slender, wiry, sneaky wiry if you decided that he was an easy target in a hard fistfight, although all bets were off if you decided on switchblades, knives that every boy, every smart boy, carried, carried concealed on his person somewhere, and let’s just leave it at that. Carrying just in case he caught trouble at school in some dark back hall, or more likely, found himself on some foreign corner, some corner boy corner without his boys, and some king hell corner boy king decided he didn’t like your looks, or just didn’t like the idea of you on his corner. And Jimmy also had a handsome face set off by deep-blue eyes, a cross between Paul Newman movie star glamour eyes and the steel-blue eyes of "Stacks McGee," a serial killer now waiting to fry up in the death row of the state pen, if the appeals process ever ended. And long eyelashes, girl-driving crazy long eye lashes, to go with those eyes. Ya, Jimmy would never, probably until he was old and grey and maybe not even then, lack for female company, if that is what he wanted.

And Sammy, "Sammy Whammy," Rizzo, the Whammy part given a few years back in junior high school when the rhyming simon craze swept through Clintonville Junior High School and all the girls spent all their time making up names, double names, for every boy, and some boys did it too although not Jimmy and Sammy. So the Whammy part stuck to Sammy, like it or not, which he did. Sammy, some Sancho Panza sad-sack dumpling, stocky, hell no, kind of fat, with a non-descript face, except that it seemed to always need a shave even at eight in the morning, and no description eyes. Except that Sammy never lacked for girls, at least one date girls, or maybe two. See Sammy was the max daddy be-bop 45 record king hell king of the town of Clintonville, maybe of all Dewar County if someone decided to count. And so Sammy could use that old gag on the girls, on the be-bop rock and roll record-starved girls, about coming up to see his etchings after a date, except he actually had the records. Had them so it seemed as soon as they came off the presses. So he could work his magic, let’s say, for example, on some Born Too Late-crazed girl, some girl who liked an older guy, a guy, who had no time for, well, jail bait, and be the soul of compassion about her woes while the 45 played in the background. See it worked for that one date, maybe two, until she got tired of the song, or found a new boyfriend or that older guy said the hell with it and took his chances.

But see Sammy did not have those hundreds, seemingly hundreds, of 45s just by accident, or just by his parents having deep pockets to allow him to buy whatever he wanted right off the presses. No way. Sammy Whammy was from hunger. What Sammy was also master of, king hell king master of, was the clip. The clip from Bugsy’s Big Tent Record Shop up in Clintonville Center (in the heart of downtown Clintonville, according to Bugsy’s ads on the local 24/7/365 rock and roll radio station, WJDA, where his ads ran about every six seconds, or so it seemed, alternating with Benny’s Car Hop, a drive-in restaurant that also was owned by Bugsy).

See, here is how it worked, and this is where friend Jimmy came in (and also why Jimmy didn’t care if he had three, or three hundred, records as background for one of his dates, his girl crazy eyelashes dates. He could just cop one from Sammy). Let’s say they wanted Jimmy Jones’ Handy Man (a favorite of Sammy’s, he had two copies of it because the first one got worn out from working his gag about his being a handy man- and Christ, everybody knew about it because it got all around school, all around Monday morning girls’ lav talk school to be exact, the girls went for it, strictly one date went for it). Jimmy and Sammy would make the couple of mile trek to Bugsy’s, usually on foot since car times were few and far between in the Cullen and Rizzo households, especially for no work, no want to work, clip artist kids. Most of the time Bugsy’s daughter , Cindy, would be working out front helping customers, showing people to the record booths to play the latest, or ring up the sales.

And here was the beauty of it, Cindy, fellow classmate of theirs, was nothing but head over heels crazy for Jimmy, or maybe it was those long eyelashes and would get a little confused, or something, when Jimmy stepped up and asked her a question about a record. Maybe a weepy one like Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel, about a dizzy teenage dame who, after being led to safety from a car stranded on a railroad by her boyfriend, got the bright idea of tempting the fates and going back for the boy’s high school ring. She was last seen in heaven, or somewhere like that. Just then Sammy was looking for Ricky Nelson’s A Teenager's Romance because his upcoming date was with a girl all hung up of that twerp. So while Jimmy and Cindy were talking Sammy went to the record bin, grabbed the 45, and slipped it under his shirt. Easy, almost like taking candy from a baby. No just like it.

But being the king of the 45 record night ain’t easy, or maybe better, is filled with all kind of funny things. One time Jimmy and Sammy were in Bugsy’s for the clip and they were going through their normal paces. Jimmy started talking animatedly to Cindy about Johnny Preston’s Cradle of Love, and really laying it on in a way that made Cindy think he was making a play for her, a big play. Now Sammy was in looking for Ray Peterson’s Corrina, Corrina for a hot date. He grabbed the 45 okay but as he signaled to Jimmy that the deal was done and went to leave the store Cindy called him over and directed him to follow her to a certain record bin. Jimmy, meanwhile, waited outside. At the bin she put a record under his shirt and said, “That’s for Jimmy.” Sammy rushed out the store, called to Jimmy to move quickly, and when they got around the corner Sammy pulled out the Cindy picked record. Ya, a pristine Cradle of Love.

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- HONOR WOBBLIE "BIG BILL" HAYWOOD- CLASS-WAR MILITANT

HONOR WOBBLIE "BIG BILL" HAYWOOD- CLASS-WAR MILITANT

COMMENTARY

BELOW IS A POLITICAL OBITUARY WRITTEN BY JAMES P. CANNON, FRIEND AND COMRADE OF BILL HAYWOOD'S FROM THE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD (IWW) AND COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL DAYS FOR THE MAY 22, 1928 DAILY WORKER, NEWSPAPER OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY. AS NOTED BIG BILL WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE- THE CLASS-WAR PRISONER DEFENSE ORGANIZATION FOUNDED BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND LED BY CANNON UNTIL 1928. I ONLY NEED ADD THAT THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT HAS NOT PRODUCED SUCH LEADERS AS HAYWOOD FOR A LONG TIME. THERE ARE CERTAINLY MILITANTS OUT THERE AND NOW IS THE TIME TO EMULATE BIG BILL-THAT WOULD BE A FITTING TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY.


The death of Haywood was not unexpected. The declining health
of the old fighter was known to his friends for a long time. On each
visit to Moscow in recent years we noted the progressive weakening
of his physical powers and learned of the repeated attacks of the
fatal disease which finally brought him down. Our anxious inquiries
during the past month, occasioned by the newspaper reports of his
illness, only brought the response that his recovery this time could
not be expected. Nevertheless we could not abandon the hope that his
fighting spirit and his will to live would pull him through again, and
the news that death had triumphed in the unequal struggle brought
a shock of grief.

The death of Haywood is a double blow to those who were at once his comrades in the fight and his personal friends, for his character was such as to invest personal relations with an extra-ordinary dignity and importance. His great significance for the American and world labor movement was also fully appreciated, I think, both by our party and by the Communist International, in the ranks of which he ended his career, a soldier to the last.

An outstanding personality and leader of the pre-war revolutionary labor movement in America, and also a member and leader of the modern communist movement which grew up on its foundation, Bill Haywood represented a connecting link which helped to establish continuity between the old movement and the new. Growing out of the soil of America, or better, hewn out of its rocks, he first entered the labor movement as a pioneer unionist of the formative days of the Western Federation of Miners 30 years ago. From that starting point he bent his course toward the conscious class struggle and marched consistently on that path to the end of his life. He died a Communist and a soldier of the Communist International.

It is a great fortune for our party that he finished his memoirs and that they are soon to be published. They constitute a record of the class struggle and of the labor movement in America of priceless value for the present generation of labor militants. The career of Haywood is bound up with the stormy events which have marked the course of working-class development in America for 30 years and out of which the basic nucleus of the modern movement has come.

He grew up in the hardship and struggle of the mining camps ofthe West. Gifted with the careless physical courage of a giant and an eloquence of speech, Bill soon became a recognized leader of the metal miners. He developed with them through epic struggles toward a militancy of action combined with a socialistic understanding, even in that early day, which soon placed the Western Federation of Miners, which Haywood said "was born in a Bull Pen," in the vanguard of the American labor movement.

It was the merger of these industrial proletarian militants of the West with the socialist political elements represented by Debs and De Leon, which brought about the formation of the I.W.W. in 1905. The fame and outstanding prominence of Haywood as a labor leader even in that day is illustrated by the fact that he was chosen chairman of the historic First Convention of the I.W.W. in 1905.

The brief, simple speech he delivered there, as recorded in the stenographic minutes of the convention, stands out in many respects as a charter of labor of that day. His plea for the principle of the class struggle, for industrial unionism, for special emphasis on the unskilled workers, for solidarity of black and white workers, and for a revolutionary goal of the labor struggle, anticipated many established principles of the modern revolutionary labor movement.

The attempt to railroad him to the gallows on framed-up murder charges in 1906 was thwarted by the colossal protest movement of the workers who saw in this frame-up against him a tribute to his talent and power as a labor leader, and to his incorruptibility. His name became a battle cry of the socialist and labor movement and he emerged from the trial a national and international figure.

He rose magnificently to the new demands placed upon him by this position and soon became recognized far and wide as the authentic voice of the proletarian militants of America. The schemes of the reformist leaders of the Socialist Party to use his great name and popularity as a shield for them were frustrated by the bold and resolute course he pursued. Through the maze of intrigue and machinations of the reformist imposters in the Socialist Party, he shouldered his way with the doctrine of class struggle and the tactics of militant action.

The proletarian and revolutionary elements gathered around him and formed the powerful "left wing" of the party which made its bid for power in the convention of 1912. The "Reds" were defeated there, and the party took a decisive step along the pathway which led to its present position of reformist bankruptcy and open betrayal. The subsequent expulsion of Haywood from the National Executive Committee was at once a proof of the opportunist degeneration of the party and of his own revolutionary integrity.

Haywood's syndicalism was the outcome of his reaction against the reformist policies and parliamentary cretinism of the middle-class leaders of the Socialist Party—Hillquit, Berger and Company. But syndicalism, which in its final analysis, is "the twin brother of reformism", as Lenin has characterized it, was only a transient theory in Haywood's career. He passed beyond it and thus escaped that degeneration and sterility which overtook the syndicalist movement throughout the world during and after the war. The World War and the Russian Revolution did not pass by Haywood unnoticed, as they passed by many leaders of the I.W.W. who had encased themselves in a shell of dogma to shut out the realities of life.

These world-shaking events, combined with the hounding and dragooning of the I.W.W. by the United States government—the "political state" which syndicalism wanted to "ignore"—wrought a profound change in the outlook of Bill Haywood. He emerged from Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1919 in a receptive and studious mood. He was already 50 years old, but he conquered the mental rigidity which afflicts so many at that age. He began, slowly and painfully, to assimilate the new and universal lessons of the war and the Russian Revolution.

First taking his stand with that group in the I.W.W. which favored adherence to the Red International of Labor Unions, he gradually developed his thought further and finally came to the point where he proclaimed himself a communist and a disciple of Lenin. He became a member of the Communist Party of America before his departure for Russia. There he was transferred to the Russian Communist Party and, in recognition of his lifetime of revolutionary work, he was given the status of "an old party member"—the highest honor anyone can enjoy in the land of workers' triumph.

As everyone knows, Haywood in his time had been a prisoner in many jails and, like all men who have smelt iron, he was keenly sensitive to the interests of revolutionaries who suffer this crucifixion. He attached the utmost importance to the work of labor defense and was one of the founders of the I.L.D. He contributed many ideas to its formation and remained an enthusiastic supporter right up to his death. What is very probably his last message to the workers of America, written just before he was stricken the last time, is contained in a letter which is being published in the June number of the Labor Defender now on the press.

As a leader of the workers in open struggle Haywood was a fighter, the like of which is all too seldom seen. He loved the laboring masses and was remarkably free from all prejudices of craft or race or nationality. In battle with the class enemies of the workers he was a raging lion, relentless and irreconcilable. His field was the open fight, and in mass strikes his powers unfolded and multiplied themselves. Endowed with a giant's physique and an absolute disregard of personal hazards, he pulled the striking workers to him as to a magnet and imparted to them his own courage and spirit.

I remember especially his arrival at Akron during the great rubber-workers' strike of 1913, when 10,000 strikers met him at the station and marched behind him to the Hall. His speech that morning has always stood out in my mind as a model of working-class oratory. With his commanding presence and his great mellow voice he held the vast crowd in his power from the moment that he rose to speak. He had that gift, all too rare, of using only the necessary words and of compressing his thoughts into short, epigrammatic sentences. He clarified his points with homely illustrations and pungent witticisms which rocked the audience with understanding laughter. He poured out sarcasm, ridicule and denunciation upon the employers and their pretensions, and made the workers feel with him that they, the workers, were the important and necessary people. He closed, as he always did, on a note of hope and struggle, with a picture of the final victory of the workers. Every word from beginning to end, simple, clear and effective. That is Haywood, the proletarian orator, as I remember him.

There was another side to Bill Haywood which was an essential side of his character, revealed to those who knew him well as personal friends. He had a warmth of personality that drew men to him like a bonfire on a winter's day. His considerateness and indulgence toward his friends, and his generous impulsiveness in human relations, were just as much a part of Bill Haywood as his iron will and intransigence in battle.

"Bill's room", in the Lux Hotel at Moscow, was always the central gathering place for the English-speaking delegates. Bill was "good company". He liked to have people around him, and visitors came to his room in a steady stream; many went to pour out their troubles, certain of a sympathetic hearing and a word of wise advice.

The American ruling class hounded Haywood with the most vindictive hatred. They could not tolerate the idea that he, an American of old revolutionary stock, a talented organizer and eloquent speaker, should be on the side of the exploited masses, a champion of the doubly persecuted foreigners and Negroes. With a 20-year prison sentence hanging over him he was compelled to leave America in the closing years of his life and to seek refuge in workers' Russia. He died there in the Kremlin, the capitol of his and our socialist fatherland with the red flag of his class floating triumphantly overhead.

Capitalist America made him an outlaw and he died expatriated from his native land. But in the ranks of the militant workers of America, who owe so much to his example, he remains a citizen of the first rank. He represented in his rugged personality all that was best of the pre-war socialist and labor movement, and by his adhesion to communism he helped to transmit that inheritance to us. His memory will remain a blazing torch of inspiration for the workers of America in the great struggles which lie before them.

His life was a credit and an honor to our class and to our movement. Those who pick up the battle flag which has fallen from his lifeless hands will do well to emulate the bigness and vision, the courage and the devotion which were characteristics of our beloved comrade and friend, Bill Haywood.

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)- “The King Of The Beats”-Jack Kerouac- The Road Down Hill After “On The Road”-“Big Sur”

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)- “The King Of The Beats”-Jack Kerouac- The Road Down Hill After “On The Road”-“Big Sur”

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60^th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has happened or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation.  Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my older brother Alex thy called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner coffees and cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50^th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind. The kind that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).              

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother Alex’s name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967 just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.     

Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely end. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like he wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60^th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Jack Kerouac reading from his work. Always a treat whatever his literary fate.

Book Review

Big Sur, Jack Kerouac, Penguin Books, New York, 1992

Some of the general points made below have been used in other reviews of books and materials by and about Jack Kerouac.

As I have explained in another entry in this space in a DVD review of the film documentary “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac’s lesser work under review here, “Big Sur”, that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space. Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell’s ‘bad boy’, the “king of the 1950s beat writers”.

And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then, “On The Road”, his classic modern physical and literary ‘search’ for the meaning of America for his generation which came of age in post-World War II , readily comes to mind. No so well known, however, is the fact that that famous youthful novel was merely part of a much grander project, an essentially autobiographical exposition by Kerouac in many volumes starting from his birth in 1922, to chart and vividly describe his relationship to the events, great and small, of his times. The series, of which the book under review, “Big Sur”, bears the general title “The Legend Of Duluoz”. So that is why we today, in the year of the forty anniversary of Kerouac’s death, are under the sign of “Big Sur”.

The action of this novel, a relatively short narrative expression of Kerouac’s now famous spontaneous writing style, takes place in San Francisco and along California’s central coastline at Big Sur. Kerouac was there as a self-imposed retreat by him after the whirlwind of ‘success” of his major work “On The Road” in 1957 and the media’s subsequent proclamation of him as “King of The Beats”. Along the way he talks about the trials and tribulations surrounding his losing fight against alcoholism, his paranoias, his attempts to dry out, and his patterned misadventures, with and without women, mainly as a desperate response to the pressures and other problems associated with his new found, but not necessarily wanted, fame,

I have mentioned, in a DVD review of the excellent film documentary “What Happened To Kerouac?” that part of Kerouac’s “fall from grace” was using so much youthful autobiographical material composed, in retrospect, of basically similar experiences that there was only so much that the market could bear, especially the volatile youth market that would make up the mass base of his audience. That factor and the intense media blitz to single out the ONE authentic voice of the “beats”, his (because he was articulate, at least in the beginning, and handsome in a very television camera-friendly way unlike some of the other wild boys), for which his whole prior personal history left him ill-equipped. In any case he came crashing down.

“Big Sur” is, to my mind, an almost tragically self-conscious literary expression of that fall. And here the points just made really come into play. Sure, there is plenty of Kerouac introspective, some of it very perceptive as always. Of course, there will be plenty of evocative word play, be-bop feeling and other literary tidbits that add to our stock of literary language (including as an addendum, a poem/ranting/ocean sound bite- “Sea” (Sounds Of The Pacific Ocean At Big Sur). Naturally,as well, the cast of characters include a round-up of the usual suspects like Neal Cassady (here under the name Cody), his wife, his mistress, assorted lumpen-proletarian types and the literary West Coast “beats” that have peopled his previous works. But that is exactly the problem. These are no longer the poster boys of the post-World War II cultural scene. Pranks, misadventures, pratfalls and, oh yes, their Kerouac literary presentation as the voice of the “beats” don’t age well as the characters age. Cassady, at least partially, was able to adjust to the new winds blowing in the 1960s. Kerouac could not, or would not. Here is the simplest way I can put it- “On The Road” I NEEDED to read at one long sitting, “Big Sur” I took at small samples over a few days. Jack, I think, knew that was where he was, I now know it and you will too.

For Rosalie Sorrels -Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?

For Rosalie Sorrels -Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?

Commentary

I have been on a something of a Utah Phillips/Rosalie Sorrels musical tear lately but I want to pay separate attention to one song, Phillips’ “Starlight On The Rails", that hits home on some many levels- the memories of bumming around the country in my youth, riding and living free (or trying to), my on and off love affair with trains as a mode of transportation, and, of course the political struggle to fix what ails this country. And as Utah acknowledges below in introducing the song (from the Utah Phillips Songbook version) we get a little Thomas Wolfe as a literary bonus. Utah and I, in the end, had very different appreciations of what it takes to do this political fixin' mentioned above but we can agree on the sentiments expressed in his commentary and song.

Utah, aside from his love of trains as a form of personal transportation when he was “on the bum”, also was a vocal advocate for their use as mass transportation. He originally argued this proposition at a time when the railroads were losing passengers in droves to the great automobile explosion. Utah wrote a song for one of his sons “Daddy, What’s A Train?” on the demise of this more people-friendly form of getting around. Since then there has been, due to the mercurial economics of oil and some conscious social and environmental policy planning, something of a resurgence of the train as a means of transportation.

Nevertheless the saga of the train in this writer’s imagination remains more of a boyhood memory than an actuality today. I can still see those historic old names: Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, B&O, and Boston & Maine. I can still hear the whistle blow as the train comes into the station. The conductor’s yell of “All, aboard” or the station’s name. Those rattling sounds of wheels hitting the metal of the rails. But, mainly, I think of the slower times, the time to look at the scenery as the train ambles along and to understand the how, if not the why, of the contours of the way America sprouted up as it out moved in all directions from its Eastern shores.

I noted in a review of a PBS American Experience documentary, “Riding The Rails” (see archives, “Starlight On The Rails, Indeed”, November 4, 2008) growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those then abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. I can still picture that scene now trying to hit my stride on each tie. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-country trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel on longer trips.

Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that the one looked at in the American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were usually merely as a paying passenger, although when down on my luck I rolled onto a couple of moving trains. An experience not for the faint-hearted, for sure. But this was mainly slumming. Their experiences were anything but. The only common thread between them and me was the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE. I spent a whole youth running to THERE. But enough of this- let Utah tell his story about the realities, not the romance of the rails.

Guest Commentary

Starlight On The Rails- Utah Phillips

This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.

I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.

We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?

STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)

I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me

Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails

I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme


Daddy What's A Train

Most everybody who knows me knows that I'm a train nut. In Dayton, Ohio, when I was 12 years old during the Second World War, there was a railroad that went close by Greenmont Village. A bunch of the kids and I built a fort out of old railroad ties, half dug in the ground and half above the ground. We let a bum sleep in there one night - I think he was the first railroad bum I remember meeting - came back the next day and it had been burned down. He'd evidently set it on fire or started it accidentally.

Playing around in that fort we'd see the big steam engines run by. The engineers would wave, and the parlor shack back in the crummy - that's the brakeman who stays in the caboose - would wave, too. Put your ear down on the rail and you could hear the trains coming. We'd play games on the ties and swing ourselves on the rails. Also we'd pick up a lot of coal to take home. I understand that during the Depression a lot of families kept their homes warm by going out along the right of way and picking up coal that had fallen out of the coal tenders.
This song is written for my little boy Duncan. His grandfather, Raymond P. Jensen, was a railroad man for over 40 years on the Union Pacific, working as an inspector. There's a lot of railroading in Duncan's family, but he hasn't ridden trains very much.



(sung to chorus tune)
When I was just a boy living by the track
Us kids'd gather up the coal in a great big gunny sack,
And then we'd hear the warning sound as the train pulled into view
And the engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through;

(spoken)
She blew so loud and clear
That we covered up our ears
And counted cars as high as we could go.
I can almost hear the steam
And the big old drivers scream
With a sound my little boy will never know.

I guess the times have changed and kids are different now;
Some don't even seem to know that milk comes from a cow.
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
And I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars -


The Wabash and TP
Lackawanna and IC
Nickel Plate and the good old Santa Fe;
Names out of the past
And I know they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say.

Well, we climbed into the car and drove down into town
Right up to the depot house but no one was around.
We searched the yard together for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so.

All the things I did
When I was just a kid-
How far away the memories appear,
And it's plain enough to see
They mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips

*For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- Another Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri-Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

*For The Late Rosalie Sorrels- Another Rosalie Sorrels Potpourri-Idaho, Cafe Lena, Childhood Dreams and Such

CD Review

Walking, Talking, Singing Storytelling-The Old Traditions

What Does It Mean To Love, Rosalie Sorrels, Green Linnet, 1994

The first paragraph here has been used in reviewing other Rosalie Sorrels CDs in this space.

“My first association of the name Rosalie Sorrels with folk music came, many years ago now, from hearing the recently departed folk singer/storyteller/ songwriter and unrepentant Wobblie (IWW) Utah Phillips mention his long time friendship with her going back before he became known as a folksinger. I also recall that combination of Sorrels and Phillips as he performed his classic “Starlight On The Rails” and Rosalie his also classic “If I Could Be The Rain” on a PBS documentary honoring the Café Lena in Saratoga, New York, a place that I am also very familiar with for many personal and musical reasons. Of note here: it should be remembered that Rosalie saved, literally, many of the compositions that Utah left helter-skelter around the country in his “bumming” days.”

I am on something of a Rosalie Sorrels streak after getting, as a Christmas gift, a copy of “Strangers In Another Country”, her heart-felt tribute to her recently deceased long time friend and old working class warrior Utah Phillips. Thus, in the interest of completeness as this is the ‘last’ Rosalie Sorrels CD in my possession to be reviewed I will make some a couple of comments. I need not mention Rosalie’s singing and storytelling abilities. Those are, as always, a given. I have noted elsewhere that Rosalie and the old curmudgeon Phillips did more than their fate share of work in order to keep these traditions alive. Old Utah handled the more overtly political phase and Rosalie, for lack of a better expression, the political side as it intersected the personal phase.

That informal division of labor is on full display on this CD as Rosalie sings and tells stories of her childhood, her children’s childhoods, stories of other family members and some wisdom that you can take or leave, but at least consider. Fair enough. Of course this reviewer, as a man who loves the oceans, got hooked by this woman of the Rocky Mountain West, by her snippets of stories on a child’s eye view of that first ocean experience (“I have watched and respected the solitude of a child”). So I had to listen to the rest. And so we hear about waltzing with bears, apples and pears, cats and scats, broken tokens and a few other of her observations about growing up to be sane in a seemingly irrational world. And not doing to badly by it as well. Not Rosalie’s most interesting work but worth a listen.