From The Lenin Internet Archives- Lenin And The Fight Against Imperialist War (1914-1917)-Principles Involved in the War Issue (1916)

From The Lenin Internet Archives- Lenin And The Fight Against Imperialist War (1914-1917)-Principles Involved in the War Issue (1916)

Markin comment:

It would seem almost unnecessary to comment on Lenin’s Bolshevik positions on imperialist war, as exemplified by his analysis of the war that he actually had to fight against, World War I. Those positions reflected his understanding that with that war the nature of capitalism had changed, definitively, from a progressive step for humankind to just a squalid, never-ending struggle among “thieves” for control of the world’s resources. It would have seemed almost unnecessary to mention this, that is, for earlier leftist generations who were familiar with his various slogans centrally-“the main enemy is at home” (adapted from German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht-“not one penny, not one man for the imperialist war”- “turn the guns the other way” (toward your own rulers)-and, specific to Bolsheviks- “fight for a new workers international, the Third International” (to replace bankrupt Second International).

Now, especially after the past several anti-war rallies that I have attended, I am not sure who among the attendees is familiar with his work. With all the pacifist, stop war in general, peace now, let all men and women be brothers and sisters rhetoric ringing in my ears I have to assume not. More importantly, I do not see such slogans (or anything close to them) emblazoned on any banners lately. Thus, in a month when we of the international communist movement honor Lenin anyway (along with the aforementioned Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the revolution) this series will try to familiarize those who seek a better struggle against imperialist war than is being presented now with “red” anti-war positions.
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V. I. Lenin

Principles Involved in the War Issue

Published: First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written in German in December 1916. Translated from the German. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23, pages 152-160.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README


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Swiss Left Social-Democrats are unanimous in rejecting the defence of the fatherland principle in the present war. The proletariat, at any rate its best elements, is likewise opposed to defence of the fatherland.

Hence, on this most burning issue confronting contemporary socialism in general and the Swiss Socialist Party in particular, it would appear that necessary unity has been achieved. Closer examination, however, is bound to lead us to the conclusion that it is only seeming unity.

For there is absolutely no clarity, let alone unanimity, that a declaration against defence of the fatherland places exceptionally high demands on the revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary viability of the party that makes such a declaration, providing, of course, that it is not reduced to a hollow phrase. And such a declaration does become a hollow phrase if we merely reject defence of the fatherland without being fully aware of, i.e., without appreciating, the demands implied, without realising that all propaganda, agitation, organisation, in short, the sum total of party activity must be radically changed, “regenerated” (to use Karl Liebknecht’s expression) and adapted to the supreme revolutionary tasks.

Let us carefully consider what rejection of fatherland defence implies, if we approach it as a serious political slogan that must really be carried out.

First. We call on the proletarians and the exploited of all the belligerent countries, and of all countries faced with the danger of war, to reject defence of the fatherland. We definitely know now, from the experience of several of the warring countries, what this actually implies in the present war. It implies rejection of all the foundations of modern bourgeois society, the undermining of the very roots of the modern social system, and not only in theory, not only “in general”, but in practice, directly and immediately. Is it not clear that this can be accomplished only if we go beyond the firm theoretical conviction that capitalism has fully matured for its transformation into socialism and accept the practical, direct and immediate carrying out of such transformation, i.e., the socialist revolution?

Yet that is nearly always lost sight of in discussing refusal to defend the fatherland. At best there is “theoretical” acceptance of the fact that capitalism is ripe for transformation into socialism. But immediate, radical change of all aspects of party activity in the spirit of the directly imminent socialist revolution—that is shunned!

The people, it is alleged, are not prepared for that!

But that is ridiculously inconsistent. Either, or. Either we do not proclaim immediate rejection of defence of the fatherland—or we immediately develop, or begin to develop, systematic propaganda for immediate socialist revolution. In a certain sense the “people”, of course, are “not prepared” either to reject fatherland defence or accept socialist revolution. But that does not justify two years—two years!—of procrastination and delay in starting to systematically prepare them!

Second. What is being opposed to the policy of defence of the fatherland and civil peace? Revolutionary struggle against the war, “revolutionary mass actions”, as recognised by the 1915 Aarau Party Congress resolution. No doubt a very good decision, but ... but the party’s record since that congress, the party’s actual policy, show that it has remained a paper decision.

What is the aim of revolutionary mass struggle? The party has made no official statement, nor is the question being discussed in general. It is either taken for granted, or frankly admitted, that the aim is “socialism”. Socialism is being opposed to capitalism (or imperialism).

That, however, is absolutely illogical (theoretically) and void of all practical meaning. Illogical because it is too general, too nebulous. “Socialism” in general, as an aim, as the opposite of capitalism (or imperialism), is accepted now not only by the Kautsky crowd and social—chauvinists, but by many bourgeois social politicians. However, it is no longer a matter of contrasting two social systems, but of formulating the concrete aim of the concrete “revolutionary mass struggle” against a concrete evil, namely, the present high cost of living, the present war danger or the present war.

The whole Second International of 1889–1914 opposed socialism to capitalism in general, and it was precisely this too general “generalisation” that brought on its bankruptcy. It ignored the specific evil of its age, which Frederick Engels nearly thirty years ago, on January 10, 1887, characterised in the following words:

“...a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representation in the Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranks of the Reichstag group. This is done in the following way: while the fundamental views of modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of production into social property are recognised as justified, the realisation of this is declared possible only in the distant future, a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight. Thus, for the present one has to have recourse to mere social patchwork...” (The Housing Question, Preface).[1]

The concrete aim of “revolutionary mass struggle” can only be concrete measures of socialist revolution, and not “socialism” in general. The Dutch comrades have given a precise definition of these concrete measures in their programme (published in the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee No. 3, Berne, February 29, 1916): annulment of the national debt, expropriation of the banks and big industry. When we suggest that these absolutely concrete measures be included in an official party resolution, and be systematically explained in the most popular form, in day-to-day party propaganda at public meetings, in parliamentary speeches, in legislative proposals—we get the same procrastinating, evasive and thoroughly sophistical reply that the people are not yet prepared for this, and so on and so forth!

The point is, however, that we should begin preparing them right now, and firmly stick to this work!

Third, the party has “accepted” revolutionary mass struggle. Very well. But is the party capable of waging it? Is it preparing for it? Is it studying these problems, gathering together the necessary material, setting up the proper bodies and organisations? Is it discussing the issues among the people and with the people?

Nothing of the kind! The party clings to its old line—a thoroughly parliamentarian, thoroughly trade union, thoroughly reformist and thoroughly legalistic line. The party remains manifestly incapable of facilitating the revolutionary mass struggle and leading it. It is obviously making no preparations whatever for this. The old routine rules supreme and the “new” words (rejection of fatherland defence, revolutionary mass struggle) remain mere words! And the Lefts, failing to realise this, are not mustering their forces, systematically, perseveringly and in all fields of party activity, to combat the evil.

One can only shrug one’s shoulders on reading, for in stance, the following phrase (the last) in Grimm’s theses on the war issue:

“In conjunction with trade union organisations, party bodies must in this event [i.e., the calling of a mass railway strike if there is a danger of war, etc.] take all the necessary measures.”

The theses were published in the summer, and on September 16, the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung,[2] issued over the names of its editors, 0. Schneeberger and K. Dürr, contained the following phrase (I was on the verge of saying, the following official reply to Grimm’s theses or pious wishes):

“...The phrase ‘the worker has no fatherland’ is in very poor taste at a time when the workers of all Europe, in their overwhelming majority, have for two years been standing shoulder to shoulder with the bourgeoisie on the battlefields against the ‘enemies’ of their fatherland, while those who remain at home want to ‘live through it’ despite all the poverty and hardship. Should we be attacked by a foreign power we shall doubtlessly see the same picture in Switzerland too!!!”

What is this if not “Kautsky” policy, the policy of the impotent phrase, Left declaration and opportunist practice, when, on the one hand, resolutions are proposed urging the party, “in conjunction with trade union organisations”, to call for revolutionary mass strikes, and, on the other, no struggle is waged against the Grütli, i.e., social-patriot, reformist and thoroughly legalistic, trend and its supporters within the party and the trade unions?

Are we “educating” the masses or corrupting and demoralising them if we fail daily to say and prove that “leading” comrades like 0. Schneeberger, K. Dürr, P. Pflüger, H. Greulich, Huber and many others hold exactly the same social-patriot views and pursue exactly the same social-patriot policy as the one Grimm so “courageously” exposes and castigates... when it concerns the Germans (in Germany) and not the Swiss? Rail against the foreigners, but protect one’s “own” “fellow-citizens”.... Is that “internationalist”? Is that “democratic”?

This is how Hermann Greulich describes the position of the Swiss workers, the crisis of Swiss socialism and also the substance of Grütli policy within the Socialist Party:

“...The standard of living has risen insignificantly and only for the top strata [hear! hear!] of the proletariat. The mass of workers continue to live in poverty, beset by worry and hardship. That is why, from time, to time, doubts arise as to the correctness of the path we have been following. The critics are looking for new paths and place special hope on more resolute action. Efforts are being made in that direction, but as a rule [?] they fail [??] and this increases the urge to revert to the old tactics [a case of the wish being father to the thought?].... And now the world war ... drastic decline in the standard of living, amounting to outright poverty for those sections which in the past still enjoyed tolerable conditions. Revolutionary sentiments are spreading. [Hear! hear!] In truth, the party leadership has not been equal to the tasks confronting it and all too often succumbs [??] to the influence of hot heads [??].... The Grütli-Verein Central Committee is committed to a ‘practical national policy’ which it wants to operate outside the party... Why has it not pursued it within the party? [Hear! hear!] Why has it nearly always left it to me to fight the ultra-radicals?” (Open Letter to the Hottingen Grütli-Verein, September 26, 1916.)

So speaks Greulich. It is not at all, therefore, a matter (as the Grütlians in the party think, and hint in the press, while the Grütlians outside the party say so openly) of a few “evil-minded foreigners” wanting, in a fit of personal impatience, to inject a revolutionary spirit into the labour movement, which they regard through “foreign spectacles”. No, it is none other than Hermann Greulich—whose political role is tantamount to that of a bourgeois Labour Minister in a small democratic republic—who tells us that only the upper strata of the workers are somewhat better off now, while the mass is steeped in poverty, and that “revolutionary sentiments are spreading” not because of the accursed foreign “instigators”, but because of “the drastic decline in the standard of living”.

And so?

And so, we shall be absolutely right if we say:

[[DOUBLE-LEFT-BOX-ENDS:
Either the Swiss people will suffer hardships that will increase with every passing week and they will be faced daily with the threat of involvement in the imperialist war, i.e., of being killed in the capitalists’ interests, or they will follow the advice of the finest part of their proletariat, muster all their forces and carry out a socialist revolution. ]]

Socialist revolution? Utopia! “A remote and practically indefinable” possibility!...

It is no more a utopia than rejection of fatherland defence in the present war or revolutionary mass struggle against it. One should not be deafened by one’s own words or frightened by the words of others. Nearly everyone is prepared to accept revolutionary struggle against the war. But one must visualise the magnitude of the task of ending the war by revolution! No, it is not a utopia. The revolution is maturing in all countries and the question now is not whether to continue to live in tranquillity and tolerable conditions, or plunge into some reckless adventure. On the contrary, the question is whether to continue to suffer hardship and be thrown into the holocaust to fight for alien interests, or to make great sacrifices for socialism, for the interests of nine-tenths of mankind.

Socialist revolution, we are told, is a utopia! The Swiss people, thank God, have no “separate” or “independent” language, but speak the three world languages of the neighbouring warring countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are in such close touch with developments in these countries. In Germany, things have reached a point where the economic life of 66 million people is directed from one centre. The national economy of a country of 66 million is run from this one centre. Tremendous sacrifices are imposed on the vast majority of the people in order that the “upper 30,000” can pocket thousands of millions in war profits, and that millions die in the shambles for the enrichment of these “finest and noblest” representatives of the nation. And in the fase of these facts, of this experience, is it “utopian” to believe that a small nation, with no monarchy or Junkers, with a very high level of capitalism and perhaps better organised in various unions than in any other capitalist country, will try to save itself from hunger and the danger of war by doing the very same thing that has already been practically tested in Germany? With the difference, of course, that in Germany millions are being killed and maimed to enrich a few, open the road to Baghdad, conquer the Balkans, whereas in Switzerland it is merely a matter of expropriating a maximum of 30,000 bourgeois, i.e., not condemning them to perish, but to the “horrible fate” of receiving “only” 6,000–10,000 francs income and giving the rest to the socialist workers’ government in order to ward off hunger and the war danger.

The Great Powers, however, will never tolerate a socialist Switzerland and will use their immensely superior strength to crush the socialist revolution at the very beginning!

That, undoubtedly, would be so if, first, the beginnings of a revolution in Switzerland did not generate a class movement of solidarity in neighbouring countries, and, second, if these Great Powers were not tied up in a “war of attrition” which has practically exhausted the patience of the most patient peoples. Military intervention by the mutually hostile Great Powers would, in present circumstances, only be the prelude to revolution flaring up throughout the whole of Europe.

Perhaps you think I am so naïve as to believe that such issues as socialist revolution can be resolved by “persuasion”?

No. I only wish to illustrate, and, what is more, merely one partial issue, the change that must take place in all party propaganda if we want to approach the question of rejection of fatherland defence with all the seriousness it deserves. That is only an illustration, and it concerns only one partial issue. I lay claim to no more.

It would be absolutely wrong to believe that immediate struggle for socialist revolution implies that we can, or should, abandon the fight for reforms. Not at all. We cannot know beforehand how soon we shall achieve success, how soon the objective conditions will make the rise of this revolution possible. We should support every improvement, every real economic and political improvement in the position of the masses. The difference between us and the reformists (i.e., the Grütlians in Switzerland) is not that we oppose reforms while they favour them. Nothing of the kind. They confine themselves to reforms and as a result stoop—in the apt expression of one (rare!) revolutionary writer in the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (No. 40)—to the role of “hospital orderly for capitalism”. We tell the workers: vote for proportional representation, etc., but don’t stop at that. Make it your prime duty systematically to spread the idea of immediate socialist revolution, prepare for this revolution and radically reconstruct every aspect of party activity. The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on these reforms (in such a manner) that—to oversimplify the matter for the sake of clarity—five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.

Socialist revolution is impossible without a hard revolutionary mass struggle in which many sacrifices have to be made. But we would be inconsistent if we accepted the revolutionary mass struggle and the desire for an immediate end to the war while, at the same time, rejecting immediate socialist revolution! The former without the latter is nil, a hollow sound.

Nor can we avoid hard struggle within the party. It would be sheer make-believe, hypocrisy, philistine “head-in-the sand” policy to imagine that “internal peace” can rule within the Swiss Social-Democratic Party. The choice is not between “internal peace” and “inner-party struggle”. Suffice it to read Hermann Greulich’s letter mentioned above and examine developments in the party over the past several years to appreciate the utter fallacy of any such supposition.

The real choice is this: either the present concealed forms of inner-party struggle, with their demoralising effect on the masses, or open principled struggle between the internationalist revolutionary trend and the Grütli trend inside and outside the party.

An “inner struggle” in which Hermann Greulich attacks the “ultra-radicals” or the “hotheads”, without naming these monsters and without precisely defining their policy, and Grimm publishes articles in the Berner Tagwacht larded with hints and only comprehensible to one out of a hundred readers, articles in which he castigates those who see things through “foreign spectacles”, or those “actually responsible” for the draft resolutions he finds so annoying—that kind of inner struggle demoralises the masses, who see, or guess, that it is a “quarrel among leaders” and do not understand what it is really all about.

But a struggle in which the Grütli trend within the party—and it is much more important and dangerous than outside the party—will be forced openly to combat the Left, while both trends will everywhere come out with their own independent views and policies, will fight each other on matters of principle, allowing the mass of party comrades, and not merely the “leaders”, to settle fundamental issues—such a struggle is both necessary and useful, for it trains in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission.


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Notes
[1] See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1962, pp. 549–50.

[2] Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (Swiss Metalworkers’ Gazette)—a weekly paper founded in Berne in 1902; adopted a social-chauvinist position during the First World War.

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing"

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing" 

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!

The Times They Are A-Changin’

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

Copyright

© 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

From The Archives- HUNTER THOMPSON-DR. GONZO-HELP!!!

From The Archives- HUNTER THOMPSON-DR. GONZO-HELP!!!

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit    would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

COMMENTARY

THE 2006 ELECTION CYCLE IS BEYOND FEAR AND LOATHING-AND IT HAS NOT EVEN

FAIRLY BEGUN YET.

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

With all due respect to the ‘bad boys’ of American political journalism, Alexander Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens, this misbegotten political campaign leading to the 2006 elections in the fall needs the master’s touch. Only Doctor Thompson could deal with the political madness that is about to descend on us. Yes, I know in the end he got to a place that in his early career he definitely wanted to stay away from. That is, the position Theodore White found himself in after a couple of volumes of his The Making of a President series- tied to the vortex of political campaigns as a political junkie. When that happens you can definitely forget about writing the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. It leaves one too depleted to make a proper literary career in the aftermath. Hunter may not have been able to hit that high political fastball in his later years, but he still belonged up in the bigs. Here’s why…

‘Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, common criminal and all- around political bandit. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, to skewer that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the ‘dark side’ of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as a craven brute. (Sound familiar?). If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man Nixon before history please consult Thompson’s work’.

This insipid campaign has created some much fear and loathing in this writer that it will take years of reality therapy to regain my political soul- AND IT HAS NOT EVEN BEGUN IN EARNEST YET. Moreover, I am far removed from having to deal with these political cretins personally. Hunter liked to get down in the swamp with them. HE REALLY LIKED IT. Well, Dr. Gonzo what would you make of the following exhibits randomly picked by this writer.

The following is definitely not for the faint hearted. Be forewarned.

EXHIBIT#1- Closet Republican, Democratic Senator Lieberman of Connecticut is in a well-deserved fight for his political life for his pro- Iraq war stand against the neophyte dissident Democrat Lamont. If he does not win the Democratic primary Lieberman intends to take his ball and bat and go home and run as an independent. From this writer’s perspective, Lieberman should go home but it should be a real anti-war activist who ousts him. One who will vote against the war budget. By the way anti-war Mr. Lamont, will you?

Senator Lieberman is the case study for why we need a huge political realignment in this country. His soul belongs in the Republican Party. Remember, however, his was the liberal darling during his Vice-Presidential run in 2000. Jesus, he could have been President. For the things the rest of us need we desperately have to break with the Democrats and form a workers party. And fast.

EXHIBIT#2 General Hillary “Hawk” Clinton, currently running for reelection for United States Senator from New York has been ‘on the low’ running around all spring positioning herself for a presidential run in 2008 by keeping just slightly to the left of the Republicans. Of course, the Republicans are positioning themselves just slightly to the left of Genghis Khan. On second thought they are carrying out the Khan’s program. Apparently Hillary has been reading Lady Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs. More on her later as she raises her political profile. “Hawk” is the case study for the proposition that women can have ugly politics, just like men. That must be some kind of feminist victory, of sorts.


EXHIBIT#3 Senator John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts, currently resurrecting himself as a darling of the anti-war Democratic Party left. Maybe? He recently gave a speech in Boston in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of his testimony against the Vietnam War before a Senate Committee. Jesus, in the age when everyone commemorates the flimsiest moment does one nevertheless really commemorates such an event. I try to give every man his due, but, after all, his testimony was in 1971 as a civilian after millions had already most vociferously opposed the war. And after the army had already half-mutinied in Vietnam. Christ, soldiers were burning down the barracks and jails and going AWOL in Vietnam.

I would not nominate Kerry for Profiles in Courage for his efforts. He, moreover, very quickly thereafter moved on to electoral politics when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War started getting tactically serious in opposition to that war. He took a beating from the right on this issue in 2004; he can take a beating from the left in 2008. And like it. John Kerry is the case study for that mythical ‘fire in the belly’ that attacks those with presidential ambitions. They will say anything or do anything for the prize. Ask one Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

Hey, what about the Republicans? Okay, Okay.

EXHIBIT#4 Anne Coulter is currently touring with her foot in her mouth, deliberately. My candidate for poster child for the Widows and Orphans Fund. In the old- fashioned rough and tumble of politics widows and orphans used to be a politician’s best friend. Now it is open season on anybody. If the Republican Party was really honest about itself it would run Annie for president, unopposed, in the primaries. She represents the heart and soul of the party. No matter that she is just some upstart white trash (oops! I can imagine the headlines on this one in the Washington Times- Communist Hack Blog Journalist Slams RAP Star). (RAP-Republican American Princess). Given what Ms. Annie says publically, one can only imagine the political comments of the old-money Republicans. I wonder if they still wear their old uniforms? Come to think of it, Annie is a case study for the proposition that Hillary is not the only woman with ugly politics. Except she’s an honest reactionary. Know this. Annie better not come out in of favor kicking your dog around. Then there will be hell to pay. Enough said.

Hey, what about the Greens?

Ya, what about them. From what I have gathered from the Green program it is, except with greater emphasis on the environment, perfectly in line with the Democratic Party’s program- of 1964. For those who think that we who fight for a workers party are utopians, know this, trying to pressure the Democratic Party to the left is the real utopia. For proof, just ask any old member of the American Communist party. They KNOW.

Hunter, e-mail, use the ‘mojo’, channel a message through Johnny Depp, call collect or write me a letter anytime, from anywhere if you can help me out. I’ll take the charges, no problem. These are desperate times. Selah.

Woody Allen Redux-To Rome With Love (2012)-A Film Review

Woody Allen Redux-To Rome With Love (2012)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

To Rome With Love, starring Woody Allen, Alex Baldwin, Penolope Cruz, 2012

I really believe, and after watching this film under review Woody Allen’s 2012 filmed in Rome To Rome With Love I believe I have additional ammunition, that once Woody got away from his roots in New York City, hell, from Manhattan, the quality of his work overall fell off. Maybe it was that quintessential Jewish nerdish comedian raised among the high rises and absorbing the culture of the Jewish quarter, the city and maybe Coney Island in the 1940s that left its mark on him. And was not transferable. He certainly flaunted it in great NYC- based movies like Manhattan.    

Other towns from LA to Barcelona and here Rome leave me with very mixed feelings about his filming in other locales. (Although Midnight In Paris worked it depended on the heavyweight fantasy figures of Hemingway and his crowd in Jazz Age Paris times to carry the thing off.) This despite the fact that he, a funny man almost without talking, was in the film after an absence of some years.

Rome might be a great locale for love but to hitch four basically unrelated stories together to fill up a script seemed disjoined and unwieldy. The four: a standard boy meets girl story; an average Joe waking up to celebrity; a young rural couple lost in the big city, and; a trip down memory lane (by Alex Baldwin) in a semi-fantastic setting don’t seem to have much to hold the whole production together. Too bad Woody but I guess not every effort can reach Annie Hall or a slew of others that made a poor gentile boy from the suburbs laugh, laugh hard.     

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Leslie Dumont

Dark Knight Rises, starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, 2012      

[I noted in a recent thumbs down film review of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable’s 1933 Dancing Girl which really turned out to be just a freebie chance to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders since the film itself took about thirty seconds to pan about what had been going on around this publication in the short time I have been here. Here as a result of it turns out a serious decision by new site manager Greg Green to change things around, to get young women, younger everything if not yet more widespread racial and ethnic diversity which the times and American social demographics cry out writing major pieces rather than the old standard stringer role that went on here for years. I have heard, mostly around the water cooler and mostly from Seth Garth who has become something of a mentor to me, that some of the older white writers have not been happy with this new regime, especially one Sam Lowell who I am now locking horns with over what is really the direction of the publication.

Frankly Greg has been all over the place trying new ideas, some working and some even to a novice like me just out of journalism grad school kind of crazy. I will give an example because it directly affects how I wound up doing this review of one of the endless DC Comics Batman sagas that has hit the cinemas. Greg, trying to assert his authority as new site manager, after what appears to have been an all-out bloodless blood-bath to remove former chief Allan Jackson who I really want to talk more about since it turned out he was “resurrected” or according to Seth who was involved in radical politics back in the 1960s with Allan “rehabilitated” to do the successful encore of The Roots Is The Toots series had the “bright” idea to have the older writers broaden their horizons by reviewing various Marvel/DC Comic films. That set of assignments set up a firestorm among the older guys who could not possibility sit through such fare much less understand why hard-working parents are forced to refinance their homes to get tickets, deadly soda and inane popcorn for their loving off-spring under penalty of insurrection-or worse.         

I freely admit I hope that the thing would fizzle giving me a chance to do my thing with fresher eyes and with a less draconian view of such films since they were a staple of one of my journalism classes- The Rise of The Blockbuster. As such thing were bound to do the older writers got squirrelly about things and so Will Bradley, Maura Mason, Lenny Grace and I think a couple of others, younger writers all got the assignments. But that is not the end of the story although I have already detailed my “dispute” with Sam Lowell in that last review mentioned above when he connived to get a prestige assignment away from me and under Seth Garth’s guidance and mentorship screamed to high heavens and got a couple of series of my own including the superhero comics work. Work that I will like Sam did to me on that prestige series rewrite what others have written in the interest of completeness. Since this one got lost in the turnover I will start with the last saga of the Dark Knight trilogy. Sarah Lemoyne]     

********

There is a lot the average reader of film reviews, probably reviews of any kind at least professional reviews about what goes on behind the scenes in the selection, assignment and use of the editorial fist. Some of it is generic to any organization but other things are subject to the whims of whoever is in charge. The play of say the New York Review of Books which goes for high-brow twisting reviews is very different from the cloisters of the American Film Gazette which in its long history has reviewed virtually every Hollywood and foreign film ever made in its nearly seventy-five year existence. That who is in charge, who is in charge here is my first point and for a reason having nothing to do with this yet another super-hero comic book come to cinema Dark Knight Rises which frankly I thought had been abandoned once the site manager, the guy who shapes and gives out the assignments here, heard loud and clear from us peon writers that the mass audience for this stuff does not, I emphasize, does not read film reviews in exotic flower publications filled with plenty of other stuff they could care less about.

Greg Green, the guy who shapes the contours of what gets into the public prints here after a grueling internal battle in 2017 before I signed on thought, I believe in order to quell the disquiet after that battle, to solidify his new position and create his own brand, or maybe all of the above that reviewers should feel free, without recrimination, to what old leftie the wizened and somewhat senile Sam Lowell has called “fire on the party headquarters” meaning a reviewer can, if she or he so chooses, go beyond the scope of the review and let readers get an insight glimpse of what goes on in section of the publishing world. I have taken that liberty here and without recrimination since it has seen the light of day. More ominous thought, my second point stab, is why after all of the anguish and gnashing of teeth by serious writers here are we going back to reviewing this kids’ stuff, this comic book madness. That is where the whims and whatever other fluff is going on in an editor’s head comes into play. Greg although he acquiesced ready did believe that action-packed films, above all comic book super-heroes were the wave of the future.

He suffered in silence for a while apparently but once Black Panther came out and he saw the gross ticket receipts he did a big backslide. He called it “in the interest of completeness,” meaning that we collectively had not reviewed every possible film in the genre. So here I am, woe is me, doing hard time going on and on about what mind-numbing stuff I have to review. I had to laugh when in a recent review of one of the million 007 James Bond films, another Greg Green pet project, Seth Garth brought back to memory the old days in the industry when we got paid by the word and he, I, would when we were lowly stringers trying not to starve “pad” our reviews with plenty of stuff which had not much to do with the film and hope to not get edited too badly. Now I have to write this extraneous stuff for a flat fee. And I do so here.     

This Superman, no, Batman long drawn out film is the long- expected sequel to the first one in this series. Stay with me on this since Batman like his buddy Superman has had various reincarnations depending on a generation’s take on what will play, or at least some half-baked Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of what will play, beyond the bang-bang action a minute pace expected of these things. In the first film Batman had taken the sword over the death of some do-gooder D.A. who harbored evil thoughts although he had nothing to do with that good guy turned bad guy’s demise. Except it allowed him, Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, to hibernate in some isolated splendor out on mansion row and not worry about scumbags and creeps returning to fair Gotham (the sky line of which looked amazing like, ah, New York City), to wreak havoc and turn the place into a cesspool of drugs, prostitution, gambling, shady deals and endless corruption-again. A thankless task.  

Maybe someday we will reduce the scumbag and creep population to manageable size but for now every crazy monomaniac with some dough and manpower sees such places as Western Civilization urban areas as fair game, as merely a subject for spoils. Enter one hellish brute Bane and his underground, literally underground, army ready to reduce Gotham to their playground. This guy is relentless, tough and unlike others who have tried to make an end run on the town had a plan, a plan beyond total devastation if he does not get his way. So once word gets up to Mansion Row Batman has the old flame lighted under his ass to save “his” city once again. Save with the sometimes help, sometimes unhelpfulness of Cat Woman, played by fetching Anne Hathaway breaking the mold of her girl next door looks who has her own agenda, has her own rock to get out from under.

Like I said this Bane really was a piece of work, really had his stuff together despite wearing a weird semi-mask to alleviate ancient wounds. As the battled ensues on the first go-round Batman shows some rust after that long hiatus and loses the round, is taken prisoner never to be seen again. At least that is what Bane had thought. Once Bane and crew take some action which includes having access to a nuclear machine which can be turned into a weapon the town’s police force and its general population accept the new regime for a while. At one point the machine was in cold storage but a big- time woman environmentalist has taken charge and so despite her the damn thing was weaponized. A few resistance fighters, including Cat Woman in her better moments, pushed back until Batman escaped coming back to town looking for creeps, scumbags and glory. Push back not only against Bane and his thugs but that woman who controlled the nuclear button turned out to be something like the big guy’s lover, or friend. So chaos looms, looms as long as Batman can’t figure out how to get that freaking bomb out of Gotham City’s harms’ way.           

Bruce/Batman falls on his sword again but really only off-stage in case there is to be another sequel, the desire to make this yet another trilogy which seems to be the way these comic book adventures go. Having said all that I hope, I really hope, everybody can see what a forlorn task it is write this foolishness. I hope Greg is listening-again. Just kidding but I wanted to show that I can do insightful film panning just as well as moribund Sam Lowell, or whoever writes his stuff these days         

An Encore Presentation-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind

An Encore Presentation-In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute- With Tom Rush’s No Regrets In Mind 

I know your leavin's too long over due
For far too long I've had nothing new to show to you
Goodbye dry eyes I watched your plane fade off west of the moon
It felt so strange to walk away alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms
Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone
I woke last night and spoke to you
Not thinkin' you were gone
It felt so strange to lie awake alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

Our friends have tried to turn my nights to day
Strange faces in your place can't keep the ghosts away
Just beyond the darkest hour, just behind the dawn
It feels so strange to lead my life alone

No regrets
No tears goodbye
Don't want you back
We'd only cry again
Say goodbye again

From The Pen Of Zack James 

A few years ago, maybe more like a decade or so, in an earlier 1960s folk minute nostalgia incantation fit Sam Eaton, who will be described further below, had thought he had finally worked out in his head what that folk moment had meant in the great musical arc of his life. Had counted up, had taken up and put value on its graces, did the great subtractions on its disappointments, that lack of beat that he had been spoon fed on in his head having heard maybe in the womb the sweats of some backbeat that sounded an awful lot like a band of the devil’s bad ass angels giving battle to the heavens, and got his head around, his expression, its clasps with certain young women, some absolute folkie women met in the Harvard Squares of the heated horny sex night and loves too not always with folkie women but just the muck of growing up and taking what came his way. So he had taken a back-flip, his expression, when he was required not out of his own volition like that great prairie fire burning before in his youth about why he felt after all these years that he needed to go back to what after all was a very small part of his life now that he was reaching four score and seven, going back over the terrain of a small part of the musics that he had cultivated since early childhood.

Some of those musics from his parents’ slogging through the Great Depression and World War II be-bop swing big band Saturday night get your dancing slippers on imposed on his tender back of brain not to be revived and revisited until many years later when he had heard some ancient Benny Goodman be-bop clarinet backing up a sultry-voiced Peggy Lee getting all in a silky sweat rage because her man like a million others was not a "do right" man but had been chasing her best friend the next best thing when he got his wanting habit on and Peggy turned ice queen when he ran out of dough after shooting craps against the dealer and decided he had been wrong to dismiss such music out of hand. Some of the music along the edges of his coming of  age from that edgy feeling he got when he heard the classic rock that just creeped into his pre-teen brain and lingered there unrequited until he found out what in that beat spoke to his primordial instincts, what caused his feverish nights of wonder, of what made him tick, of what he had missed.

Folk, the folk minute he deeply imbibed for that minute, at least the exciting part of the minute when he heard, finally heard, something that did not make him want to puke every time he turned on the radio, put his ill-gotten coins, grabbed from mother’s pocketbook laying there in wait for his greedy hands or through some con, some cheapjack con he pulled on some younger kids in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner jukebox to impress a few of the girls in town who were not hung up on Fabian or Bobby, heard something very new in his life and so different from the other musics that he had grown up with that he grabbed the sound with both hands. He thought that sweating a decade ago where he done a few small pieces to satisfy his literary sense of things and put them in a desk drawer yellow, frayed and gather dust until he passed on and somebody put the paper in a wastebasket for the rubbish men, thought he had ended those thoughts, closed out the chapter.

Recently though he did another series of short citizen-journalist sketches of scenes from that period for various folk music related blogs and social media outlets. Sam had done that series at the request of his old time friend, Bart Webber, who will also be described in more detail below, from Carver, an old working-class town about thirty miles south of Boston which at the time was the cranberry capital of the world or close to it, and close enough to Boston to have been washed by the folk minute that sprouted forth in Harvard Square and Beacon Hill in Boston.

Sam and Bart, who in their respective youths had been very close, had been corner boys together when that social category meant something, meant something about extreme teen alienation and angst combined with serious poverty, dirt poor poverty as in hand-me-down older brother clothes, as in no family car for long periods between old wreak of cars, of many surly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, many Spam suppers, all fashioned to make these young men forever talking about big break-outs, about getting something for them and theirs but also for big candy-assed dreams too all put paid to, as one would expect of sons of “boggers,” those who cared for and harvested those world famous  cranberries, but also close because that was the way that corner boys were then, “having each other’s backs” was the term they used which confused even the best of the social scientists who investigated the phenomenon when that corner boy life meant juvenile delinquency, meant some unfathomed anger, some lack of socialization, some throwback to primeval muds, to some rising of the unkempt heathens they were payed to watch out for. Meant as well worry to those in power who were trying to weld society as one piece of steel to fight the internal and external red scare Cold War fight against the faithless, fang-toothed Ruskkie reds wielding nuclear weapons from the hip.

Like a lot of high school friends the cement that bound them in high school, that alienation, that comradery, those best left unsaid larcenous moments, the “midnight creeps” in Bart’s words when somebody asked him later what had made him and the corner boys put their reputations at risk for such small gain, a fact which also played a part in that “having each other’s back” broke apart once they graduated, or rather in their case once they had sowed their wild oats in the 1960s, those wild oats at the time meaning “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” combined with drifting the hitchhike road west in what one of their number, the late Pete Markin, called the search for the great blue-pink American West night.

Sam had stayed out in the West longer than the others except Markin and Josh Breslin whom he and Markin had met on a yellow brick road merry prankster bus before he drifted back East to go to law school and pursue a professional career. Bart had returned earlier, had gotten married to his high school sweetheart and had started up and run a small successful specialty print shop in hometown Carver based on the silk-screening tee-shirt and poster craze. They would run into each other occasionally when Sam came to town but for about twenty years they had not seen each other as both were busy raising families, working and travelling in different circles. One night though when Sam had been sitting in Jimmy Jakes’ Diner over on Spring Street in Carver having a late dinner by himself after having come to town to attend the funeral of a family member Bart had walked in and they then renewed their old relationship, decided that some spark from high school still held them together if nothing else that they both had been deeply formed, still held to those old corner boy habits toward life whatever successes they had subsequently enjoyed.

Along the way to solidifying there new relationship they would alternate meetings, some in Carver, some in Boston or Cambridge where Sam lived. On a recent trip to Boston to meet Sam at the Red Hat at the bottom of Beacon Hill Bart had walked pass Joy Street which triggered memories of the time in high school when he and his date who name he could not remember but she was a cousin of Sam’s “hot” date, Melinda Loring, who they went to school with and whom Sam was crazy to impress even though Melinda was not the daughter of a “bogger” but of school teachers and so from among the town’s better element and he was constantly on eggshells that she would toss him aside once she had figured out he was just another Fast Eddie corner boy trying to get into her pants, had taken them on a cheap date to the Oar and Anchor coffeehouse which stood at the corner of Joy and Cambridge Street to hear Lenny Lane. Lenny was an up and coming folk singer whom Sam had met on one of his clandestine midnight trips to Harvard Square on the Redline subway to hang out at the Hayes-Bickford.

That "cheap" part of the cheap date thing was important since Bart and Sam were as usual from hunger on money in the days when around Carver, probably around the world, guys paid expenses on dates, girls just looked beautiful or if not beautiful glad to not be forever hanging around the midnight telephone waiting for some two-timing guy to call them up for a date, and so short of just hanging at the Hayes for free watching weirdoes, con men, whores plying their trade, drunks, winos and occasional put upon artists, poets, writes and folk-singers perfecting their acts on the cheap, for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” for the performer you could get away with a lot especially when Bart was doing Sam a favor with that cousin (and worse could have gotten in trouble if Besty Binstock, his high school sweetheart. found out he was two-timing her although the two-timing involved the possibility of some off-hand sex with that cousin who was supposed to be “easy” but that in another story although come to think of it the situation could serve as another  prime example of “having each other’s back” when one of them was up against it).

Bart remembered that he had been very uncomfortable that night since he had had some feelings of guilt about two-timing (and lying to) Betsy starting out, had had trouble talking about anything in common, school, sports, the weather, with that cousin since she said she was doing Melinda a favor in order that she could go to Boston with Sam which Melinda’s mother would have balked at if she had told her they were going into Boston alone, going into Boston with a “bogger” alone. Moreover she knew nothing, cared nothing for folk music, didn’t even know what it was, said she had never heard of the thing, was fixated on Bobby Vee, dreamy guys, or something like that. What made that date worse was that Bart too then could hardly bear the sound of folk music, said repeatedly that the stuff was all dreary and involved weird stuff like murder and mayhem done on the banks of rivers, in back alleys, on darkened highways just because some woman would not come across, Jesus, strangely thwarted love reminding him of Sam’s forlorn quest for Melinda which seemed like some princess and pauper never the twain shall meet outcome, or hick stuff about home sweet home down in some shanty town in some desolate cabin without lights or water which sounded worse than Boggertown, singing high holy Jehovah stuff that made him wince, and of the hills and hollows in some misbegotten mountains made his teeth grind. So not a good mix, although it did turn out that the cousin was “easy,” did think he was dreamy enough to have sex with (with their clothes mostly on which was how more than one quicky one night stand wound up down by the boathouse near the Charles River after they had split from Sam and Melinda after the coffeehouse closed and that helped but had been the result of no help from the folk music they half-listened to but more some dope that she had in her pocketbook after she had passed a joint around to get things going.            

After telling Sam about his recollections of Joy Street and that cousin, whose name was Judy Dennison Sam told him and who Sam had gone out with and agreed was a little sex kitten once she was stoned, Bart started asking some questions about folk music. Sam said he was not finished with that Judy story, told Bart that fling was after the thing with Melinda had passed due not to class distinctions but to that hard fact that she was saving “it” for marriage, and had been very glad that he had that run around with Judy and was not sorry he did. Bart started in again and asked Sam a million questions about various folk-singers and what had happened to them, were they still playing, still alive since Sam although he did not have the same keen interest of his youthful folk minute still kept small tabs on the scene, the now small scene through his long-time companion, Laura Perkins whom he met one night at the Café Nana several years before when Tom Tremble was playing there after Sam had not heard him in about forty years.

The reason for Bart’s interest given that above he had said that the genre made his teeth grind was that after that night with Judy Bart did go on other double dates with Sam and Melinda, and later Suzanne when she was Sam’s next flame and a real folkie, to folk places and while he still would grind his teeth at some of the stuff he did develop more tolerance for the genre, especially if the date Sam set up was a real foxy folkie girl (thinking on it now he couldn’t believe how unfaithful he had been to Betsy in those days but she too was saving “it” for marriage and some of those young women were very willing and had apartment or dorm rooms too).

The upshot of all of Bart’s questions was that Sam found that he was not really except for Tom Tremble who had lost his sweet baby James voice, forgot lyrics and had “mailed it in” that night he had met Laura and was cold “stonewalled” by the audience but possibly motivated by that old folkie feeling, or maybe just feeling sorry for a guy who had a big local following back in the day when the “basket” went around everybody put some dough in, Sam and Laura included, and a couple of other guys up on what had happened to the old-time folkies since for years he had merely listened on radio station WCAS and when that station went under WUMB out of U/Mass-Boston or listened to records, tapes or CDs. (Sam got big points from Laura that first night when he panned Tom, who Laura had never heard before being enough younger not to have been bitten by the folk minute craze and she agreed that Tom had “mailed it in”.) Since Sam was not all that familiar with what had happened to most of them he thereafter did some research, asked Laura some questions to lead the way and wound up writings that series of sketches. One series entitled Not Bob Dylan about the fate of prominent male folk-singers was a direct result of the Sam and Bart conversation. Here’s what he had to say about Tom Rush who back in the day he knew best from hanging around the old Club 47 on Mount Auburn Street:     

“…Other than enigmatic Bob Dylan who is the iconic never-ending tour male performer most people would still associate with that folk minute period they would draw a blank on a list of others who also were aspiring to make names for themselves in the folk milieu. I am not talking about guys like Lenny Lane who had one hit and then went back to graduate school in biology when he couldn’t get another contract, when his well ran dry, or like Tom Tremble who had a big local following around the old Club Nana when it was on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge not where it is now on Brattle Street but who did mainly covers and just never broke out or Mike Weddle who had good looks, a good stage presence, had the young women going crazy but who just walked away one day when some good looking woman from Radcliffe came hither and he “sold out” to her father’s stockbroking business.

I’m talking about people like Tom Rush from New Hampshire who lit up the firmament around Cambridge via the Harvard campus folk music station, Dave Von Ronk the cantankerous folk historian and musician who knew more about what happened in the early, early days in the Village at the point where “beat” poetry was becoming passe and folk was moving in to fill in the gap, Phil Ochs who had probably the deepest political sensibilities of the lot and wrote some of the stronger narrative folk protest songs, Richard Farina who represented that “live fast” edge that we were bequeathed by the “beats” and who tumbled down the hill on a motorcycle, and Jesse Collin Young who probably wrote along with Eric Andersen and Jesse Winchester the most pre-flower child lyrics mid-1960s hippie explosion before folk got amplified of the bunch.

My friend Bart had just seen a fragile seeming, froggy-voiced Bob Dylan in one of stages of his apparently never-ending concerts tours up in Maine and had been shaken by the sight and had wondered about the fate of other such folk performers. That request turned into a series of reviews of male folk-singers entitled Not Bob Dylan (and after that, also at Bart’s request, a series entitled Not Joan Baez based on some of the same premises except on the distaff side (nice word, right, you know golden-voiced Judy Collins and her sweet songs of lost, Carolyn Hester and her elegant rendition of Walt Whitman’s Oh Captain, My Captain, Joan’s sister Mimi Farina forever linked with Richard and sorrows, and Malvina Reynolds who could write a song on the wing, fast okay, and based as well on the mass media having back then declared that pair the “king and queen” of the burgeoning folk music minute scene).

That first series (as had the second) had asked two central questions-why did those male folk singers not challenge Dylan who as I noted the media of the day had crowned king of the folk minute for supremacy in the smoky coffeehouse night (then, now the few remaining are mercifully smoke-free although then I smoked as heavily as any guy who though such behavior was, ah, manly and a way to seen “cool” to the young women, why else would we have done such a crazy to the health thing if not to impress some certain she)  and, if they had not passed on and unfortunately a number have a few more since that series as well most notably Phil Ochs of suicide early, Dave Von Ronk of hubris and Jesse Winchester of his battle lost over time had come, were they still working the smoke-free church basement, homemade cookies and coffee circuit that constitutes the remnant of that folk minute even in the old hotbeds like Cambridge and Boston. (What I call the U/U circuit since while other church venues are part of the mix you can usually bet safely that if an event is scheduled it will be at a U/U church which is worthy of a little sketch of its own sometime in order to trace the folk minute after the fanfare had died down and as a tribute to those big-hearted souls at radio stations like WCAS and WUMB and in places like Club Passim whose efforts have kept the thing going in order to try to pass it on to the younger generations now that demographics are catching up with the folkies from the 1960s heyday). Moreover, were they still singing and song-writing, that pairing of singer and writer having been becoming more prevalent, especially in the folk milieu in the wake of Bob Dylan’s word explosions back then. The days when the ground was shifting under the Tin Pan Alley Cole Porter/Irving Berlin/ Jerome Kern kingdom.   

Here is the general format I used in that series for asking and answering those two questions which still apply today if one is hell-bent on figuring out the characters who rose and fell during that time: 

“If I were to ask someone, in the year 2005 as I have done periodically both before and after, to name a male folk singer from the 1960s I would assume that if I were to get any answer to that question that the name would be Bob Dylan. That “getting any answer” prompted by the increasing non-recognition of the folk genre by anybody under say forty, except those few kids who somehow “found” their parents’ stash of Vanguard records (for example, there were other folk labels including, importantly, Columbia Records which pushed the likes of Dylan and John Hammond forward) just as some in an earlier Pete Seeger/Weavers/Leadbelly/ Josh White/Woody Guthrie records in our parents’ stashes. Today’s kids mainly influenced by hip-hop, techno-music and just straight popular music.

And that Dylan pick would be a good and appropriate choice. One can endlessly dispute whether or not Dylan was (or wanted to be since he clearly had tired of the role, or seemed to by about 1966 when he for all intents and purposes “retired” for a while prompted by a serious motorcycle accident and other incidents) the voice of the Generation of ’68 (so named for the fateful events of that watershed year, especially the Democratic Convention in America in the summer of that year when the old-guard pulled the hammer down and in Paris where the smell of revolution was palpably in the air for the first time since about World War II, when those, including me, who tried to “turn the world upside down” to make it more livable began to feel that the movement was reaching some ebb tide) but in terms of longevity and productivity, the never-ending touring until this day and releasing of X amount of bootleg recordings, the copyrighting of every variation of every song, including traditional songs, he ever covered and the squelching of the part of the work that he has control over on YouTube he fits the bill as a known quality. However, there were a slew of other male folk singers who tried to find their niche in the folk milieu and who, like Dylan, today continue to produce work and to perform. The artist under review, Tom Rush, is one such singer/songwriter.”

“The following is a question that I have been posing in reviewing the work of a number of male folk singers from the 1960s and it is certainly an appropriate question to ask of Tom Rush as well. Did they aspire to be the “king” of the genre? I do not know if Tom Rush, like his contemporary Bob Dylan, started out wanting to be the king of the hill among male folk singers but he certainly had some things going for him. A decent acoustic guitar but a very interesting (and strong baritone) voice to fit the lyrics of love, hope, and longing that he was singing about at the time, particularly the No Regrets/Rockport Sunday combination which along with Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm and Joshua Gone Barbados were staples early on. During much of this period along with his own songs he was covering other artists, particularly Joni Mitchell and her Urge For Going and The Circle Game, so it is not clear to me that he had that same Dylan drive by let’s say 1968.

I just mentioned that he covered Joni Mitchell in this period. A very nice version of Urge For Going that captures the wintry, got to get out of here, imaginary that Joni was trying to evoke about things back in her Canadian homeland. And the timelessness and great lyrical sense of his No Regrets, as the Generation of ’68 sees another generational cycle starting, as is apparent now if it was not then. The covers of fellow Cambridge folk scene fixture Eric Von Schmidt on Joshua Gone Barbados and Galveston Flood are well done. As is the cover of Bukka White’s Panama Limited (although you really have to see or hear old Bukka flailing away on his old beat up National guitar to get the real thing on YouTube).”

Whether Tom Rush had the fire back then is a mute question now although in watching the documentary, No Regrets, in which he tells us about his life from childhood to the very recent past (2014) at some point he did lose the flaming “burn down the building fire,” just got tired of the road like many, many other performers and became a top-notch record producer, a “gentleman farmer,” and returned to the stage occasionally, most dramatically with his annual show Tom Rush-The Club 47 Tradition Continues held at Symphony Hall in Boston each winter. And in this documentary appropriately done under the sign of “no regrets” which tells Tom’s take on much that happened then he takes a turn, an important oral tradition turn, as folk historian. 

He takes us, even those of us who were in the whirl of some of it back then to those key moments when we were looking for something rooted, something that would make us pop in the red scare Cold War night of the early 1960s. Needless to say the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge gets plenty of attention as does his own fitful start in getting his material recorded, or rather fitful starts, mainly walking around to every possible venue in town to get backing for record production the key to getting heard by a wider audience via the radio and to become part of the increasing number of folk music-oriented programs, the continuing struggle to this day from what he had to say once you are not a gold-studded fixture.

“Other coffeehouses and other performers of the time, especially Eric Von Schmidt, another performer with a ton of talent and song-writing ability who had been on the scene very, very early on who eventually decided that his artistic career took first place, get a nod of recognition.  As does the role of key radio folk DJ Dick Summer in show-casing new work (and the folk show, picked up accidently one Sunday night when I was frustrated with the so-called rock and roll on the local AM rock station and flipped the dial of my transistor radio and heard a different sound, the sound of Dave Von Ronk, where I started to pick up my life-long folk “habit”).

So if you want to remember those days when you sought refuse in the coffeehouses and church basements, sought a “cheap” date night (for the price of a couple of cups of coffee sipped slowly in front of you and your date, a shared pastry and maybe a few bucks admission or tossed into the passed-around “basket” you got away easy and if she liked the sound too, who knows what else) or, ouch, want to know why your parents are still playing Joshua’s Gone Barbados on the record player as you go out the door Saturday night to your own adventures watch this documentary and find out what happened to one Not Bob Dylan when the folk world went under.