Once Again-At The Ebb Tide Of The 1960s- With Helter-Skelter Charles Manson Who Passed At 83 In Mind

By Greg Green  

[Recently, as something an introduction of myself into this space, I wrote a shorter version of this piece. I felt that piece was much about my understanding of went on, and what went wrong, in that big 1960s “jail-break” that the administrator of this space who goes by the moniker Peter Paul Markin to honor a growing up hometown friend who had taught him a lot about life, mostly good but not always, and his friends who as he said were “washed clean” by the experience as about what the criminal mind of someone like Charles Manson was able to feed off of when that moment ebbed. Some the writers in this space like Sam Lowell, Frank Jackman, Bart Webber, Si Lannon, and Josh Breslin knew the real Markin, known to them as always as “Scribe” either from the North Adamsville neighborhood where they grew up or met him as a result of a very fateful (according to Sam Lowell’s estimate in any case) decision that he made during the turbulent days of the Summer of Love in 1967. That year and that event marked them all once Scribe was able to fire them up to head out west to San Francisco the epicenter of the whole explosion and consummate the jail-break.        

I am, like Zack James, Jack Jamison, Bradley Fox, Jr. and Lance Lawrence at least a decade removed from that 1960s experience and sensibility and that second-hand knowledge was reflected in the original article. I had no axe to grind with those times. But neither did I bow down to what guys like Frank, Sam, and Josh told me about their experiences. That said, Pete Markin the soon to be retired administrator and something of a guiding light in this space (and the on-line version of The Progressive American) suggested after several talks that I expand my article somewhat to include his and the others reflections of the 1960s to give a more rounded approach to those days and events. I do so here-Greg Green]      

  

A couple of writers in this space, I think Zack James and Bart Webber, have spent a good amount of cyber-ink this past summer commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the San Francisco-etched and hued Summer of Love in 1967. The million things that occurred there from free concerts in Golden Gate Park by the likes of Jefferson Airplane, The Doors and the Grateful Dead (the free concert concept in line with a lot that went on then under the guise of “music is the revolution and the recruits would be those who got turned on by the music and lived by it too), to cheap concerts at the Avalon and Fillmore West (the beginning of an alternative way to entertain the young in formerly rundown arenas which would keep ticket costs down and provide indoor night space for those same young patrons), to plenty of drugs from Native American ritual peyote buttons to Owsley’s electric Kool-Aid acid to high end tea, you know, ganga, grass, marijuana, to communal soup kitchens, to communal living experiment, communal clothing exchanges and above all a better attitude toward sexual expression and experience reached something like the high tide during that time.

(According to Josh Breslin who at the time was just out of high school and looking for something to do during the summer before his freshman year of college much to the chagrin of his hard-working parents who expected him to it was almost like lemmings to the sea the draw of San Francisco was so strong. For many kids like Josh and others he met out there aside from Scribe and the North Adamsville guys it really was something of a jail-break although I still can’t feel the intensity which drove Josh and the others to forsake, most for just a while, some family, career, settle down path during those admittedly turbulent times. My generation, and I was among the loudest up in Rockland, Maine where I grew up and where a cohort of the hippie-types encamped once the cities became too explosive, kind of laughed off the whole experiment as the hippies liked to say “ a bad trip,”  a waste of time and energy. Although the idea of free or cheap concerts seems like a good idea especially when you see the ticket prices today for acts like Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones who were ready to perform gratis then the rampant uncontrolled use of illegal drugs, the idea of communal living outside of say very safe dorm life, wearing raggedy second or third hand clothes which looked like and were out of some Salvation Army grab box or Army-Navy surplus store, the idea of even eating out of some collective stew pot of who knows what composition and unbridled and maybe unprotected sex seemed weird, seemed seedy when I would see these people on the streets in town when they came for provisions or whatever they were looking for that brought them to town.]     

So as even Josh and a couple of others would admit not all of it was good or great even at that high tide which he personally places at 1967 (others like Sam placed it at the Stones’ Altamont concert in 1969 and Scribe for his own reasons had placed it at May Day, 1971 when the government counter-attacked a demonstration with a vengeance) since casualties, plenty of casualties were taken, from drug overdoses to rip-offs by less enlightened parties to people leeching off the work of others who were doing good works providing energies to go gather that food, work that kitchen, rummage for those clothes, keep the house afloat with the constant turn-over of desperate seeking people. (Markin chided me on this point originally because he did not believe that those he knew, he met were desperate, most had come from comfortable middle class homes and just wanted to shake things up a little before, which many, too many according to him did, going back to that lifestyle without a murmur when the tide ebbed).  Not good which was also noted by Zack James (who got the information from oldest brother Alex another veteran of 1967  who while on a business trip to San Francisco this spring stepped back into that halcyon past at a Summer of Love exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park) and which I used as a counter-argument to Markin’s wisp-of-the will attitude about desperate people flocking to the coast a photograph taken at a police station where one whole wall was filled with photographs from desperate parents looking for their runaway children. No so much the runaway part, all of those who flee west that year and the years after to break out of the nine to five, marriage, little white house syndrome were actually doing that, but the need to do so just then against the wishes, in defiance of those same parents who were looking for their Johnny and Janie. Who know what happened to them.

Frank Jackman, another writer in this space, basing himself on his friendship with Josh Breslin and the latter’s with Scribe spent some time a few years back taking a hint from the gonzo writer Doctor Hunter Thompson trying to figure out when that high tide crested and then ebbed.  The Scribe as far as I know the story himself a classic case of those who started with high ideals and breath of fresh air attitudes who wound up getting killed down in Mexico after a busted cocaine deal in the days after he became a coke head and was dealing and who now sleeps in a potter’s field grave down in Sonora) Year like 1968, 1969, 1971 came up as did events like the Chicago Democratic Convention in the summer of 1968, the disastrous Stones concert at Altamont in 1969, and May Day, 1971 in Washington when they tried to bring down the government if it would not stop the damn Vietnam War and got nothing but massive arrests, tear gas and police batons for their efforts. Those things and the start of a full-bore counter-revolution, mainly political and cultural which Frank said they have been fighting a rear-guard action against ever since. 

Whatever the year or event, whatever happened to individuals like Scribe and those forlorn kids in that police station photograph, there was an ebb, a time and place when all that promise from the high tide of 1967 to as Scribe would say seek a “newer world,” to “turn the world upside down” as Frank likes to say when recounting his youthful days out west and in New York City when he was starting out as a writer and make it fit for the young to live came crashing down, began to turn on itself. A time when lots of people who maybe started out figuring the new world was a-borning turned in on themselves as well. My very strong feeling after having had a small personal bout with cocaine when that was the drug of choice and you could hardly go anywhere socially without somebody bringing out a mirror, a razor and rolling a dollar and daring you not to snort just to be friendly maybe it was the drugs, too many drugs. Maybe too it was the turnover as those who started the movements headed back home, back to school and back to the old world defeated and left those who had nowhere to go behind (those photographs on that forlorn wall in that anonymous police station a vivid reminded that not everybody was “on the bus” as Markin mentioned was a term used frequently to distinguish the winners from the losers in those days).           

And as if to put paid to that ebb tide there were all the revelations that something had desperately gone wrong when cult figure and madman leader of a forsaken desert tribe of the forgotten and broken Charles Manson who died the other day after spending decades in prison had been exposed for all the horrible crimes he had committed or had had his followers commit. Markin, Frank,  Josh, Sam and I am sure Scribe if were around would write that off as an aberration, a fluke. Still sobering thoughts for those guys like Frank and Josh who are still trying to push that rock up the hill toward that “newer world” that animated their youth.  

Art As The Highest Accumulation Of Human Culture-With George Clooney’s “The Monument Men” (2014) In Mind

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Monument Men, starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murry,  Cate Blanchett, 2014     

My old friend from back in the “from hunger” North Adamsville neighborhood days, the late James Jackson, was crazy for art, was crazy to see works of art in art museums large and small right up until his somewhat recent passing, a passing which left the world shorter by a lot more than a single individual passing. James (nobody ever called him Jim or Jimmy he was not that kind of guy) from very early on was fascinated by works of art probably at least from the time when in 5^th grade, maybe 6^th, grade we have her for two years, Miss Winot brought in photographs she had taken during summer vacation on a trip to Egypt to see the Pyramids and all of that.

One Saturday he and his brother Kenny took the bus over to Boston and spent the day at the Museum of Fine Arts looking at the extension collection of Pharaonic artifacts which several teams of Harvard University archeologists had uncovered. More importantly he went crazy for the Impressionists like Monet, the Renaissance artists like Bellini and such. (Kenny just went along because their mother would not have let James go alone at that age and James did not want to hassle with her over that and so Kenny tagged along although more than once when James would go on and on about some work of art “discovered” that day Kenny would say he “didn’t give a fuck about any of it.”

Here is the surprising part about James though. In those days he, along with the late Pete Markin, was knee-deep in every kind of scam, con, or midnight creep (you can figure out where that creep led) to make dough to survive on since he was (we were) not likely to get anything extra from hard-pressed parents. I asked him one time, a time when a Van Gogh had been sold at auction for several million dollars (yes, it was a long time ago at that price which seemed astronomical then) whether he would consider stealing a work of art to sell. Jesus did he rear up on his high horse and practically punch me for saying such a blasphemous thing. He said, and I paraphrase here, art, all of it from ancient drawing on caves to Pop Art (then emerging as the next big turn in the already saturated art world) represented the collective accumulation of human culture, something to gauge how far we have come from the slime and the caves. The next day I vividly recall he and Markin went into a department store and “clipped” a record player, two radios, a television, a set of golf clubs and a couple of  other items to sell to a “fence.” Yes, James had those build-in contradictions, hey, Markin too come to think of it although his thing was literature not art.                    

All of this as foreplay as to my purpose for grabbing a review of this film, Monument Men, from Alden Riley who would normally draw this assignment. These “monument men,” played by George Clooney, John Goodman, Matt Damon, Bill Murry and a couple of other guys were all professional artists or architects who were assigned, as soldiers during the later stages of World War II, the momentous task of retrieving the vast array of art treasures that Hitler and his minions vandalized and stole from every source in their Occupied European domains. Stole it from hapless Jewish private collector and other such collectors and whatever public museums they could loot. This to the ever larcenous James Jackson would have been unbelievable and cause enough if he had been alive then to have volunteered to run the rails right into Berlin to retrieve those ill-gotten gains. Moreover he would have gone apoplectic if he had known that the German’s as they were losing the war, as the Russians were coming from the East and the Allies from the West, had a scorched earth policy about all the art that they could not take with them. Burned, vandalized, and committed every other travesty to who knows how many great art works of European history. Moreover the Nazis were known, in fact made a public spectacle out of, destroying in those public places all “degenerate art” meaning almost all modern art during their regime.  Yes, James would have been chomping at the bit to get on the road to Germany to tell those bastards what was what.         

To their credit in dicey retreat and burn times while serious military actions were going on around them the Monument Men were able to save an extraordinary amount of art through perseverance, through pluck, through help from the French Resistance and through capturing some German officers who were charged with transporting and/or destroying those works. As in all wars though they were not able to escape casualties and deaths during the mission. So this was no cakewalk, especially when from high places in Washington to field commanders in Europe there was concern that military men should not be sacrificed for works of art no matter how valuable.      

James Jackson would have had a no holds bar answer to those parties- “art, all of it from ancient drawing on caves to modern masters represented the collective accumulation of human culture, something to gauge how far we have come from the slime and the caves.” I think after watching this film I finally agree with him.

“Put Out The Fire In Your Head”- With Patti Griffin’s Not Alone In Mind 

By Bradley Fox, Junior

[Sometimes this generational divide between parent and child that occurs naturally once the younger generation comes of age and begins to make its own way, make its own mistakes, and have its own problems grappling with day to day life in a hectic, dangerous world can only be deciphered by someone from that generation. That is the case here with the story of Sam Lowell’s youngest son, Justin. Sam told me his side of the story, really his take on Justin’s story since Sam had had little directly to do with what got Justin into his difficulties. I tried to write it up as a cautionary tale of sorts to help inform Sam’s, my generation, the generation that the late Peter Paul Markin, forever known as the Scribe as our mutual friend who passed on under mysterious circumstances down in Mexico after the 1960s had ebbed and we had lost the cultural battles, called the Generation of ’68 about what was troubling our children. I failed in that effort.

I told my son, Bradley, Junior (with Sam’s permission), who knew Justin when they were younger, the details to see if he could write something that would make sense to Sam and me about what makes their generation tick. As for the grandkids, forget it between the Internet and its subset social media and the trials and tribulations they confront in an extremely dangerous world going forward it would take, as young Bradley told me, the minds of Freud, Einstein, and Rapper Rocco combined to even know what subliminal language they were speaking. Here’s my Bradley’s take on the whole mess [BF, Senior]:     

**********

Justin Lowell had been a late love child of Sam and his third wife since divorced, Rebecca, and as such, with eight years between him and the next youngest child, Brenda, and hence eight years of being the only child at home after she left for college, was pampered by Rebecca her, cocooned Sam said.  And frankly had been by Sam as well although the number one thing all of his children from his three failed marriages said of him was that he was a good and generous father but he that was a distant figure always off doing some lawyerly business and not around enough to get rid of that foggy picture of him. But enough of Sam Lowell’s failings since this is about how Justin navigated the world not Sam. 

Of course Justin had all the advantages that accrued to a financially successful small town lawyer’s son from living in a nice large house with his own room (and later own rooms since he took over Brenda’s as well), a good if not great college education (good since Justin was not a particularly studious type like myself and was unlike sister Brenda who gained entrance to Harvard with no problem), and all the diversions that leafy suburban life in Riverdale could bring. All through high school at Riverdale High we were very close buddies so I knew a lot about his make-up, knew too that he resented his mother’s overweening attentions (and as already mentioned Sam’ distance which Justin called indifference unlike my father who went out of his way to be attentive and was a reason why we would spent much more time at my house than his). Many nights out with hot dates we would go wherever we went together, tried out and failed to make the championship Riverdale High School football team, things like that. Mostly though we talked serious stuff about dreams and what we would do when we flew the coop, when we had what Sam and my father always called when they got together and regaled us with their stories the “great jail-break.”         

Naturally after high school, members in good standing of the Riverdale High Class of 1992, when Justin went to State U and I went to NYU since I was desperate to live in New York City and breath the air there as part of my becoming a commercial artist we drew apart. Maybe we would call, see each other at Vinny’s Pizza in town and cut up old touches. That was mainly freshman year when everything was new and we were “free.” Then Justin kind of fell off my map as I got involved in some school projects and Justin from what he told me one time at Vinny’s got involved in the furious social life that dominates lots of school out in the boondocks and where kids are away from  home for the first time. That was when Justin, who had hated even the idea of liquor when we were in high school and wouldn’t speak me for a while after l got Kathy Callahan drunk (and horny you can figure the rest out yourselves) on a double date, started doing drugs.

Started first I had heard on easy stuff marijuana to be sociable (Justin, me too, as much as we got along with girls were both kind of shy and inward at times which is probably why we gravitated toward each other beyond our fathers knowing each other since their youth) and bennies to stay up and study for those finals at the last moment. Later senior year I heard from Jack Jamison who had gone to high school with us and was also at State U Justin had graduated to cocaine, serious cocaine, serious enough to have to begin to do some small time dealing to keep up. He did graduate but it was a close thing, very close.        

After college Justin moved to Boston to take a job in a bank, work his way up in the banking industry to make lots of money. In any case in Boston is where he met Melissa, Melissa I won’t give her last name because now she is a big deal in the college administration of an Ivy League college. He met Melissa at the Wild Rose nightclub, the one just outside of Kenmore Square. Met her and quickly came under her spell (a lot of guys had, did, would do that before she was through). Melissa, not a beauty but fetching was one of those women who loved kicks, loved the attention her desire for kicks brought. Her kick at that time was heroin which some previous lover had turned her on to. She, something of a manic-depressive as it turned out, said grass, coke, pills didn’t do it for her, didn’t put out the fire in her head, the feeling that she could never get close to anybody. (Later it also turned out that she had been sexually abused by her drunken father and had had plenty of reason to want to put the fire out in her head.) She turned a very willing Justin to smack (it goes by several names, H, snow, the lid, sweet baby, and the like we will just call it smack). See he had been having trouble adjusting to having to actually work his ass off to get ahead in the banking industry and he too needed something to put out the fire in his head.

Melissa, as far as anybody ever knew, never got seriously addicted to the smack, maybe cut it enough to keep from going to junkie heaven. Justin of course got himself a jones, a big sleep on his shoulders. He before too long got fired from his job, went on the bum, started muling down to sunny Mexico for the hard boys to maintain his habit, went back on the bum and finally got picked up by the cops on Commonwealth Avenue trying to break and enter some Mayfair swell condo. All he would tell them beside his name was that he “had to put the fire out in his head,” needed to get well or he was going to jump into the Charles River. At that point, Sam, who was clueless about his son’s drug problems as most parents are until some tripwire turns the lights on had to come into the action, had to defend his youngest son on a damn B&E charge. Got him into a “detox” program too. Did what he could without recrimination, or just a little other than bewilderment that his son would succumb to drugs.                       

Well I wish that I could say that Justin turned it around after that first “detox,” effort but that was not the case. He went through programs for five years before he sobered up for good, or what Sam and Rebecca thought was for good. One night I was home to see my father and to attend our twentieth anniversary class reunion when I ran into Justin on the street who said he would rather not go to the reunion since he would have to explain too many things about his life. He suggested we go into Vinny’s a few blocks up the street and have a couple of slices of pizza and a soda for old times’ sake. We did so and while we were munching away Justin explained as best he could what had happened to him. He reminded me of that night senior year when we were sitting down by the river and he had told me how much he hated his father, hated Sam, since he was such a pious bastard, was almost non-existent in his life, yet tried to be cool about his own bogus jailbreak youth like they had changed the world, like his youthful coolness made everything alright. I had forgotten about that night, had had my own small (compared to him) troubles adjusting to my own father’s whims. Then Justin said he had spent all that time since that night trying to put out the fire in his head.          

Here comes the sad part, about a year later Justin met a woman, Selina, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where he went to live to get a fresh start. They fell in love, planned to be married, and had made all the arrangements, the church, reception and all. The night before the wedding when he was out with some guys celebrating he went off the bus. Somehow he had made a connection, and before the night was over he was sitting in Prescott Park by himself as the cops came by responding to a neighbor’s disturbance call yelling “I‘ve got to put the fire in my head out, I’ve got to put the fire in my head out.”                

The Gold-Digger Of 1934- Jean Harlow’s “The Girl From Missouri”-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

The Girl From Missouri, starring Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, from a story by Anita Loos, 1934

You know sometimes it is refreshing when a story-line tells it like it is, tells exactly what the main character, or one of the main characters, is up to. Take the lead character in the film under review, The Girl From Missouri, Eadie played by very blonde in an age, maybe every age when very blonde got you many things a brunette, red-head, or black-haired beauty could only dream of Jean Harlow as she came up the Hollywood blonde ranks in the early 1930s. Once Eadie blows the “Show Me” state off after trying to hold off every guy who passed her by in her step-father and her mother’s dime-a-dance clip joint she is single-mindedly determined to marry some rich guy, any rich guy, and get off from hunger and cheap streets. She heads to the capital of the capitalists in New York City, a place she thinks should be easy picking for her to see what is what in that department.  

Practically from day one in the city with seven million stories (I know there are eight now but then, 1934, only seven and that may be on the high side) she is ready, willing and able to throw herself at any off-hand millionaire, bankers and stockbrokers a specialty, who looks her way for more than a few seconds. But a rookie gold-digger has to figure that she will strike out for a while before the next best thing comes along. And Eadie does strike out, does in the face of an intransigent old codger she tries to hook, one T.R. Paige, a high end banker played by Lionel Barrymore of the august acting dynasty last seen in this space holding off the likes of gangster Johnny Rocco down in Key Largo just as a “big blow” is coming through.

Never say the kid for Missouri wasn’t up for trying as she followed that old codger down to his digs in Palm Beach, then as now the wintering water hole of those with the serious kale and with its own set of mores and exclusions. Which no way Eadie fits into. This Paige, this up by the bootstraps Paige, has blonde as can be Eadie down as a tramp, as a fallen women, as a tart, well, as a gold-digger and makes that plain as day even when she tells whoever will listen that she is saving herself for marriage-for the golden apple marriage of her dreams.

Enter young Tom Paige, T.R.’s son, played by Franchot Tone who while he was the cat’s meow to movie audience women back in the day nevertheless has not been reviewed in this space by me. He makes a big play for Eadie and she has eyes for him but before they can tie that marriage knot she has been dreaming about the old man tries about six ways from Sunday to give her the heave-ho and Tom the kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth buys the old man’s story for a while. Goes back and forth before finding she is for him even if she hasn’t got three quarters to rub together. The thing that I learned from this little flick, a thing I probably knew but had kind of forgotten about of late, was that very blonde busty young women are going to get taken care of one way or another, going to have a soft landing in life. Make of that what you will.           

Dancing Cheek To Cheek- Again-Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire’s “Top Hat” (1935)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Top Hat, starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, music by Irving Berlin, 1935

No, I will not start this review of what even to me seems like a never-ending series of dance films by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire reminding me of the never-ending Bob Dylan concert tours (and bootleg CD volumes) or the William Powell and Myrna Loy Nick and Nora Charles The Thin Man series going on and on about the superiority of Mr. Astaire’s dancing and grace compared to Mr. Gene Kelly based on the latter’s performance in the Gershwin-etched An American In Paris. Doing so would be merely overkill since once again in this film Mr. Astaire shows what grace, style and athleticism (the one attribute in which Mr. Kelly has an edge over Mr. Astaire) combined looks like when the hammer goes down. My understanding is the film under review Top Hat was one of the ten that this well-known dance pair did together although it seems like I did many more reviews than that already rather large number.

Since the real deal in these Astaire-Rogers pairings is the dancing this review can be mercifully short and sweet. After all nobody has ever accused the screenwriters of these frilly things of writing Oscar-worthy material to back up the dancing and the music by the likes of Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Cole Porter or as here Irving Berlin. Here is the “skinny,” very skinny as my old friend and colleague Sam Lowell is fond of saying. Top Broadway musical showman Jerry, Fred Astaire’s role, is in London to bail out some producer’s musical when along the way he meets, well who else, Dale, played by Ginger Rogers, who seems to be some kind of model for an upscale high society Italian fashion designer. Naturally Jerry goes bug-eyed when he spies Dale and makes his big play. She somewhat guardedly is intrigued by him (after out of nowhere doing a serious pair dance with him out in the park which either meant something was in the water or that the dance indicated in an unspoken way that they were kindred spirits-you figure it out).

   

All well and good although this would be an extremely short film with basically nothing else but dancing and singing if it was left to that. What keeps the thing moving along a bit is a case of mistaken identity. Dale is led to believe that Jerry is the producer who just so happens to be married and therefore nothing but a cad and ne’er-do-well even if he can dance up a storm. Moreover, supposedly married to a good friend of hers. This miscue business takes them eventually to Italy where the thing gets played out and resolved in Jerry’s favor after a few more songs and a few more dances. The dancing by Astaire making obvious that he was the one you could not keep your eyes off of with his moves and not Ms. Rogers. End of story as they go dancing into that good night. See this one mainly for the great dance scene when they go Dancing Cheek to Cheek.

The 100^th Anniversary of the Moon Pie-A Slice Of Americana  

Click below to link to an NPR Weekend Edition story in praise of said treat on its 100^th anniversary

 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/25/565725694/even-after-100-years-people-are-still-reaching-for-the-moon-pie

By Acting Site Administrator Greg Green

If anybody takes a glance at the archives of this blog, American Left History you will find plenty of serious history pieces, ditto politics, music, film, books and other arcana. But not everything posted on this site must of necessity be of some world historic importance. The standard is basically that whatever posted reflects some aspect of the American (and because despite the deniers this is an immigrant country, a country which gets reflected in the cultural mix brought forth by those very immigrants and which defies, and has defies vanilla-ization if there is such a word) international experiences.

Hence this bon mot for our old friend the moon pie of blessed childhood memory. You know you had one, maybe more, of if not you wanted one when you went to some bakery and clamored to your mother under penalty of tantrum to get you one-or else. I will confess that Grandmother Riley, as good a baker as she was couldn’t top the ones bought at the store. The only surprise to me in this story was how much of a regional treat this was, mainly Southern, since I got mine in the very Northern Rockland, Maine childhood growing up hometown.        

Once Again, The Voice of The Generation Of '68?- Bob Dylan Unplugged

A YouTube's film clip of Bob Dylan performing "Blowin' In The Wind" in 1963.


CD REVIEW


The Times They Are A-Changing, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1963


In this selection we have some outright folk classics that will endure for the ages like those of his early hero Woody Guthrie have endured. "The Times They are A-Changing" still sounds good today although the generational tensions and the alienation from authorities highlighted there is markedly less now than than in those days-not a good thing, by the way. "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a powerful tale out of John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" about the plight of an up against the wall family farmer out on the then hardscrabble prairies (and it has only gotten worst since and Dylan made one of his periodic 'comebacks' doing this song at a Farm Aid concert in the 1980's).

"With God On Our Side" like "Masters of War" is a powerful anti-war song although some of the tensions of the Cold War period in which it was written have gone (only to replaced today by the fears generated by the `war on terrorism'). "Only A Pawn In Their Game" was a powerful expression of rage after the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers. The "Hattie Carroll" song shows Dylan's range by dealing with injustice from a different perspective (and a different class) than "Only A Pawn In Their Game". But with no let up in highlighting blatant discrimination and animus in either case. Finally, in reviewing these early Dylan albums (and some of the later ones, as well) I have noticed that they are not complete without at least one song about lost love, longing or perfidy. Here, there is no exception to that rule with the haunting, pleading voice of "Boots of Spanish Leather".

posted by markin at 10:49 AM

7 Comments:
Kim said...
The problem is that Dylan himself clearly states that Masters of War is not an anti-war song:

Q: Give me an example of a song that has been widely
misinterpreted.

A: Take "Masters Of War." Every time I sing it, someone writes
that it's an antiwar song. But there's no antiwar sentiment in
that song. I'm not a pacifist. I don't think I've ever been one.
If you look closely at the song, it's about what Eisenhower was
saying about the dangers of the military-industrial complex in
this country. I believe strongly in everyone's right to defend
themselves by every means necessary... you are affected as a
writer and a person by the culture and spirit of the times. I was
tuned into it then, I'm tuned into it now. None of us are immune
to the spirit of the age. It affects us whether we know it or
whether we like it or not.

from http://expectingrain.com/dok/int/2003tour.html

And I think to say that "With God on Our Side" is an anti-war song is reducing the song to something topical. The idea that it is simply an anti-war song really ignores the last verse in the piece regarding Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot fought in no war, so then, if this is an anti-war song why is he even in the picture?
I believe it is far less an anti-war song and far more a song about asking the question: what does it mean to believe in God? To me, it's more about asking the question: shouldn't we be on God's side and not He on ours?

THIS question then throws into the spotlight the idea that God is on the side of America and that she is always right. Dylan, it seems to me, is not quite buying into that. None of us should. But he's not an either/or kind of a guy. He's not an "America is all bad or all good" kind. Hattie Carroll bites into two groups, and both come out severly wounded: the racists and their racist application of "justice" AND the liberals who decry injustice but do nothing about it.

7:10 PM
markin said...
When I used the term ‘anti-war’ in relationship to Bob Dylan’s song Masters of War I meant that in a generic sense rather than giving it some specific political or pacific meaning. According to the Dylan quote that Kim cited in her comment there is a tendency, including by Dylan, to equate the terms ‘anti-war’ and ‘pacifist’. I would not give such a narrow meaning to the term ‘anti-war’. In Dylan’s context it is essentially anti-militarism, especially the dramatically American militarism of the time by the Brecht-like phrases that he uses. That concept does not preclude the concept of just wars against the escalation of such militarism. Leftists except probably Quakers, as a rule, subscribe to some form of just war theory. Certainly in my youth the concept of just war meant supporting the struggle of the Vietnamese against the American presence.

One need not go back that far for an example, though. Much closer in time is the current ‘struggle’ by Iraqi forces against the American presence there. Although the situation is definitely murkier than in Vietnam, to the extent that any one is fighting directly against the American presence (as opposed to indiscriminately bombing everything that moves), theirs is an example of just war. Hell, in 2003 the simple act of the Iraqis, with or without Sadaam, defending themselves against the American invasion was an example of a just war. So Kim, you see that ‘anti-war’ is a pretty elastic term and that brother Dylan and I are, after all, not so far away in our idea that everyone has a right to defend themselves. It is a question of whose right to such defense is supported at any given point that is at issue.

After the above rather abstract discussion, let us cut to the chase about whether Masters of War is an ‘anti-war’ song. During the Vietnam War I was involved with a group of active duty anti-Vietnam War G.I.s (Army soldiers, in this case) who faced court-martial for disobeying lawful orders. Those orders being refused were orders to go to Vietnam, a rather serious offense for a soldier. As part of their defense at the court-martial a few of them, when they got on the stand to make statements, started reciting Master of War in order to have it placed in the transcript of trial. The colonels and majors who made up the court-martial board tried to, red-faced with anger, stop them. Those officers, at least, knew what ‘anti-war’ lyrics were when they heard them. Enough said, I think.

11:01 AM
markin said...
The question of whether “With God On Our Side” is an anti-war song is a little more problematic than that of “Masters of War”. I would only comment that one should not get hung up on the ‘god’ part as I consider this more a common political convention of the time in order to get a hearing for your song (a not unimportant consideration, by the way) that a universalistic appeal to for America to get “on the right side of god”. In the 1960’s, an age wedded to existential concepts, references to god could be as directed to the void as they could to some religious supreme being. Later, as Dylan entertained more religious feelings in his life and in his work that argument might make more sense but certainly not in the early 1960’s. If one did not have a sense of irony then, one was ‘lost’. That ironic sense is why we listened to Dylan and others. They expressed in song things about the world that disturbed us at the time.

What really interests me today about Dylan’s lyrics on this song is how passive they are in relationship to the task that he has presented. In those days, the threat of nuclear annihilation was palpable as things like the Cold War –driven nuclear arms race and the Cuban Missile Crisis made plain. Dylan was apparently entirely willing to let some ultimately ‘just’ god pull the chestnuts out of the fire for us. Alternately, in those days a number of us preferred to take to the streets to organize the fight for nuclear disarmament. “God” could come along if he/she wanted to-no questions asked. Hell, we were so desperate for recruits that Judas Iscariot was welcome if he wanted to turn over a new leaf.

11:12 AM
markin said...
Here are the lyrics to Masters of War and you can make your own judgment about whether it is an anti-war song or not. I have given my opinion above. Markin

Masters Of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

7:31 AM
markin said...
A Voice Of His Generation

Nod To Bob: An Artists’ Tribute To Bob Dylan on his Sixtieth Birthday, various artists, Red House Records, 2001

A musical performer knows that he or she has arrived when they have accumulated enough laurels and created enough songs to be worthy, at least in some record producer eyes, to warrant a tribune album. When they are also alive to accept the accolades as two out of the four of the artists under review are, which is only proper, that is all to the good (this is part of a larger review of tributes to Greg Brown, Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt and Hank Williams). That said, not all tribute albums are created equally. Some are full of star-studded covers, others with lesser lights who have been influenced by the artist that they are paying tribute to. As a general proposition though I find it a fairly rare occurrence, as I noted in a review of the "Timeless" tribute album to Hank Williams, that the cover artist outdoes the work of the original recording artist. With that point in mind I will give my "skinny" on the cover artists here.


It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a few songs and cover artists on this 60th birthday album. Overall this Red House Records (a well-known alternate folk tradition recording outfit) production is a true folkies’ tribute to old Bob where the artists while well-known in the folk field probably as not as familiar to the general listener. Nevertheless several covers stick out: John Gorka’s rendition of the longing that pervades “Girl Of The North Country" is fine, as is the desperate longing of Martin Simpson’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather”. Greg Brown does a rousing version of “Pledging My Time” and the long time folk singer Rosalie Sorrels does a beautifully measured version of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”. The finale is appropriately done by old time folkie, and early day Dylan companion on the folk scene Ramblin’ Jack Elliot with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” Solid work here. Kudos.

3:32 PM
markin said...
In the interest of completeness concerning my earleir evaluation of the Dylan songs "Masters Of War" and "With Good On Our Side" on his early albums here are the lyrics to the latter song.

Interestingly, except for changing the Cold War theme against the Russians then to the so-called War On Terror now against seemingly every Moslem that any American presidential administration can get it hands on (Bush in Iraq and Afgahnistan) and Obama (same and, maybe, Pakistan) these lyrics "speak" to me today. The word they speak is hubris, American hubris, that the rest of the world has had reason to fear, and rightly so. What do they "speak" to you?

"With God On Our Side"

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns on their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

11:32 AM
markin said...
Guest Commentary

I have mentioned in my review of Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home; The Legacy Of Bob Dylan" (see archives) that Dylan's protest/social commentary lyrics dovetailed with my, and others of my generation's, struggle to make sense of world at war (cold or otherwise)and filled with injustices and constricting values. Here are the lyrics of three songs-"Blowin' In The Wind", "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Like A Rolling Stone" that can serve as examples of why we responded to his messages the way we did. Kudos Bob.


The Times They Are A-Changin'

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; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Blowin' In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Copyright ©1962; renewed 1990 Special Rider Music


Like A Rolling Stone

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Copyright ©1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music

“We’ll Meet Again Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When”-Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon’s “Mrs. Miniver (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Mrs. Miniver, starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Dame May Whitty, Teresa Wright,  Richard Ney, 1942

They say that Dame Vera Lynn’s (at least I think she is a Dame now if she is still alive and a quick look at Wikipedia confirms that she is at 100 having been born during World War I and hence having seen many, many wars over the past century)  song We’ll Meet Again got England, you know the stiff upper lip British, through the night of the long knives when that country was basically alone fighting against the Nazi night-takers after Hitler and his minions stepped over most of Europe and the destruction of the British Isles by a massive bombing campaign was beating down as a last step in that act. This before Pearl Harbor put American boots on European soil. (The Americans having their own get through the war song Til We Meet Again to keep up morale as the soldiers, sailors, marines and flyboys were leaving these shores for an uncertain fate many laying their heads down on those foreign shores.) If that was the case then the film under review, the award-winning Mrs. Miniver, was the cinematic complement to that song as a combination straight story about civilian wartime struggles in the modern age when such populations have unfortunately become front and center in military warfare planning and none too veiled propaganda for the British government’s war effort. (Such things are hard to gauge but as eminent a spokesman for British war efforts as war-time leader Winton Churchill said the film (and the book it was based on) was invaluable to keep British morale high.) 

Some seventy-five years on and too many brutal wars to count, including atrocities which come close to those of World War II, it is hard to say whether such a film did or did not lift morale although especially with the minister’s sermon that ended the film urging all Britons to keep the faith and keep pushing on it must have had some impact. For now though let me give the reader the “skinny” as I like to do and you can figure how much of a propaganda vehicle it was against the storyline of how a ordinary middle class British family dealt with the hard realities of war on its doorstep.    

  

Obviously the key figure here is the ordinary citizen housewife Mrs. Miniver, played by Greer Garson who won an Oscar for her performance, as she tries to keep her family together through those trying times. This although her husband, Clem, played by Oscar-nominated Walter Pidgeon who was too old for military service but who took his civilian war service seriously (including participating in the evacuation at Dunkirk in the darkest days of the war as Germany was marching to the seas) was at home. And despite her worry over her oldest son joining the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot at a time when Germany essentially ruled the skies over Britain. The most important thing that Mrs. Miniver does, aside from keeping the faith that her country will survive this big hit, is to keep cool, keep that notorious stiff upper lip as least for public consumption and therefore becomes a model for her fellow villagers. That becomes increasingly necessary as the air war begins to take a serious toll since there is an RAF base close by which the nasty Germans are very interested in putting out of commission. (One gardener set on winning an annual flower competition which went on as usual named his rose selection after her as tribute to her low key steadfastness).     

Along the way Mrs. Miniver faces a number of trials which only steel her against the plotting of the night-takers including coolly capturing a downed German pilot, constant worries over her son’s fate up in the skies and as the German juggernaut hones in on that airbase protecting her two younger children as the Germans lay waste to her homestead (seeing that destruction which I think would have made most women, and men, flip out she merely carries on with what is left of the house and Clem does to in his own understated way). Added in is a little romance aside from the warm regard that she and Clem have for each in their marital relationship. That RAF son, played by Richard Ney, meets the granddaughter, played by Oscar-winning Teresa Wright, of the local leader of the gentry in those parts, played by Dame May Whitty, and they fall in love, get married and plan for an uncertain future despite that Lady’s objections. In the end that romance is shattered but not in the way one would expect. Mrs. Miniver’s now daughter-in law is killed during a German air attack as they were exposed in the open rather than her son up in the skies. As the film ends that previously mentioned minister’s sermon speaks of the new ways of war, the need to fight a people’s war against the night-takers. (Although the British were none too keen, not at all, when their “colonials” got all uppity in places like India after the war working for their liberation through that same basic strategy.)  Like I said it is hard to see what effect this film had on morale at the time but it certainly was a very powerful if in spots melodramatic film showing the modern realities of warfare.