The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In Jukebox Night-With Ben E. King's Spanish Harlem In Mind

Spanish Harlem

Song by The Drifters, Ben E. King

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
It is the special one, it's never seen the sun
It only comes out when the moon is on the run
And all the stars are gleaming
It's growing in the street
Right up through the concrete
But soft and sweet and dreaming

There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem
With eyes as black as coal
That looks down in my soul
And starts a fire there and then I lose control
I have to beg your pardon
I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden

I'm going to pick that rose
And watch her as she grows in my garden

La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)
La la la, la la la, la la la la
(There is a rose in Spanish Harlem)

*******

Sometimes it is hard to figure out why a certain memory draws certain other memories out although today, musically, which is what I want to talk about, just flipping to YouTube and its cross-references makes that statement more explicable since one is almost automatically bombarded with about seven million songs with some memory meaning. Meaning maybe a memory of that first record hop at school, elementary school in the 1950s, just by the reference. Or that first time you noticed that girls were, well, kind of interesting or at least approachable at some basement family room “petting” party. (The first “private” time when adults may be hovering around unseen but when they are persona non grata with the confines of the party room and a time when lights low or out the first “feels” occurred however innocent or bewildering for either sex. That basement family room also serving as fall-out shelter, fully-stocked, if the Russkies decided to blow one by us.) Better just a little time later, although time seemed then to drag infinitely by and you tried to hurry it up then, when you started dreaming about that brunette on television (you can fill in your own color preference) swaying back and forth provocatively, provocatively in your mind anyway, just for you after rushing home after school to watch American Bandstand. Or later when the hormones really kicked in that first night time junior high school dance with her, the her with the faraway eyes whose bubble soap (or maybe some “stolen” scent from the top of mother’s dresser) drove you crazy. Yeah, I like the latter better since that scenario would mean that she was provocatively trying to drive you crazy with her amateur womanly wiles. Moving on to that first double-date night down by the seashore watching the “submarine races” and you copped a “feel” (for those who did not have a seashore to go down to in order to look for those locally famous submarines at midnight, sorry, but okay so maybe at a drive-in movie, or that spot out by the dam or up in the foreboding hills known strictly as a lovers’ lane). Then before you know it you had graduated high school and the memories got fonder but faded with time until you got to the 2000s night and you woke up in a sweat thinking about that girl with the faraway eyes and that damn bubble soap smell that filled your nostrils (and wondering, wondering did she really have the cunning to steal that mother’s scent right off the top of her dresser). 

Recently I have, seemingly endlessly, gone back to my early musical roots, my memory roots, in reviewing various commercial compilations of classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. That classic rock designation signifying the “golden age of rock,” the time of some Les Paul guitar zip rocket 88 Ike Turner, zap finger-snapping the big man flapping shake, rattle and roll Big Joe Turner, from long side-burned, sexy-eyed (yeah guys can say that now about guys without blushing), sneering one night of sin hunger Elvis, from sweet little sixteen Mister’s girl hunger telling Beethoven his time had passed Chuck Berry, from the back of a flatbed truck  double girl hunger high school confidential Jerry Lee, the time of the original jail break-out and not the smoother later patched-up stuff-ouch!. While time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes (and lesser singers like blueberry hill Fats and he/she good golly Little Richard) it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

We had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about such notable phenomena as the pre-chain convenience store mom and pop corner variety store corner boy hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (naturally unfiltered, not some “faggy” (yeah, that’s what we said then and what did we know about such things, such same-sex things that were whispered then and are now laughingly out in the open, anyway) Kents, Winstons or Marboros but real coffin nails Luckies, Camels, or Pall Malls) hanging from the sullen lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. Complete with foxy tight cashmere-sweaterd girls hanging off every bump and grind of that twisted machine. And, of course, about the pizza parlor, you name it House of Pizza, Marios’s, Mama Mia’s,  juke-box coin-devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions on that order please as I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl coming in the door thing. Another of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, please. Ditto for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing (and where Mister Ben E. King at some point was “walking with the king” to get us close on his la la la’s in Spanish Harlem.

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores, pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and as had been shown in the cover art on one of that rock and roll series CDs I reviewed also at the daytime beach. While boy or girl watching. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on that daytime beach scene, for example, showed a dreamy girl waiting for her platters (vinyl records, okay, check on it) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. And tee-shirted sullen guy (could have been you, right?) just hanging around the machine waiting for just such a well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days, and still do if anybody is asking), maybe chatting idly was worth at least a date or, more often, a telephone number to call. Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Jesus. But lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in, and where that white-tee-shirted guy on the cover seemed to be clueless. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of about a dozen slang words for girl in our old working-class neighborhood usually made up by or learned from corner boy leader Frankie Riley who had a thing for old time detective novels and films where he would pick them up) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking, usually to girlfriends, as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

Then you made your move-“Have you heard Spanish Harlem. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to... for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the following songs. Here’s the list and there are some stick-outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” just mentioned above on tough nights):

1)   My Boyfriend's Back-The Angels: it seemed that every good-looking girl had some hidden boyfriend stashed away for just that occasion when you got too close and she sprung the hurting news on you without grace, worse scorned you for thinking that you had a chance beyond “being friends” when everybody, everybody who counted, knew she had been going with Joe College from State U who had graduated from high school a couple of years before forever. Although if you thought about it for a minute the real problem had been the break-down in your “intelligence” network, you know, your Monday morning before school boys’ lav info session where you gathered the scoop on the weekend doing and discreetly asked around about that Laura something, the one who you had been eyeing in study for about a week before you made your big move and got your hopes up.  Or at least had gotten “the word” from one of your corner boys, maybe Josh, maybe Frankie, who were sworn to not leave you in the lurch on such matters and make you the laughing stock of subsequent Monday morning boys’ lav talkfests about the weekend doings. No, you had to jump in with both feet, hell, both feet and both hands, on the basis of a furtive glance that she threw you way in the corridor one day. Hadn’t you learned by then that those subtle furtive glances were thrown at every guy with anything going for him by the Lauras of this wicken old teen world. Join the club brother, join the club.     

  2)Nadine (Is It You?)-Chuck Berry: anything by Chuck by definition in the theme and tenor of his lyric, or by the various hot licks he laid down on his guitar spoke of sex, back seat of the car sex which was just fine then when you were young and agile. Young and agile and if the moment was right and you had some Chuck playing on the car radio permanently tuned to WMEX down by the seashore (or wherever that local lovers’ lane was far from prying adult eyes and far from children glares) and you needed every inch and ounce of young and agile in that damn crowded backseat that somebody, some S.O.B car manufacturer though was saving profits by making as small as possible you still managed to do what you, and she (or he for she or whatever combinations pass these days in the love circle) started out to do because otherwise why were you down by that seaside far from prying eyes.    

 3)Spanish Harlem-Ben E. King: I have already pointed out the central importance of this song come late night school dance night when you want that she you were eyeing all evening to slow dance with you on that last chance to dance, and you were looking for that one moment when you could put your hands down her back toward her ass and she didn’t brush you off, didn’t seem to mind at all in that dark hall moment. Thanks, Brother King. 

 4) Come & Get These Memories-Martha and the Vandellas: well, it is not dancing in the streets but Martha and the girls had that Motown sound down. That sound that got everybody up and dancing just to be dancing, dancing close or dancing apart but just dancing. A big relief for bad dancers and semi-wallflower guys like me. The real full-time wallflowers that hugged the gym walls like they were a life-saver thrown in the sea just kept to their walls as they always did but the rest of us decided to live a little dangerously, and we survived.  

 5) Little Latin Lupe Lu- The Righteous Brothers: every guy, at least every guy I knew, wondered about that Latin girl thing from these guys like maybe we missed something, like maybe there was something to that Tia Taco thing, that high-blown Spanish blood lust thing. Problem, big problem around our way was that there was no way to verify or not verify that hot blood thing since there were zero, nada nunca nada, Latinos in our high school, hell, in the whole town. Needless to say no blacks either, none. The closest we came to dark-skinned ethnics was a girl from Lebanon who seemed very exotic. It would be a long time and a couple of thousand miles south in old Mexico before I got the message that those hermanos were laying down.         

6)It's Gonna Work Out Fine-Ike and Tina Turner: Yeah, we all know now, have had it knocked into our heads that Ike was not nature’s noble man but they rocked on this one with that drop dead guitar work of Ike’s and Tina’s on fire singing.

 7) When We Get Married- The Dreamlovers:  after a bunch of busted marriages, a few off-hand affairs that didn’t work out and a few things that did that kid’s rush to the blissfully wedded aisle with his ever-loving honey seems kind of wishful thinking now. And you know what in those days I had a lot of the same feelings although not directed to a specific person since the routine was finish high school, get a job or go on in school, get married, have two point three children, one white picket fence with whitewashed house attached, have a dog named Spot or Rover and bliss. Yeah, life turned out a little different, no, a lot different.

8)Dear Lady Twist –Gary U.S. Bonds: Brother Bonds saved more two-left feet guys in this universe than you could shake a stick with his twist mania where you could look pretty good all tangled up as long as everybody else was too. Except don’t watch this lad, me, too closely because his tangled up is off the beat even though his kindly partner was courteous enough to mention that, said he was a great dancer. Said it in such a way that they wound up sitting down by the seaside shifting sand before the night was over where she admitted that her tangling up was off too. Get this, and suggested we form a club, a two left- feet club, with two members. Well, okay.   

9) If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody –James Ray: the national anthem for guys who did not get to dance that last chance dance, damn, after eyeing her all evening until your eyeballs got sore. And you suddenly learned if you did not know already, and maybe you should have, maybe some boys’ locker room guy, come brethren corner boy, heck, your older brother, consulted wiser heads to find out that the good-looking women of the world, the Lauras mentioned above throw out those furtive glances just for kicks, just to see what sore eye-balled guys would do. And guess what 16 or 68 it does not get any better. Jesus.  

 10) I Count the Tears-The Drifters: a great backup song just in case Spanish Harlem had already been played and Loopy Lenny the DJ was not into taking requests or maybe the borrowed record was worn out from play or the guy running the record-player if not Loopy Lenny had absolutely no sense of what a high energy, high hormonal count teenage crowd wanted to hear late at night. Wanted to have a chance for that last dance.   

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Frankie Riley’s Theory- With Jody Reynolds' “Endless Sleep” In Mind –Take Two  

JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"

(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)

The night was black, rain fallin' down

Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around

Traced her footsteps down to the shore

‘fraid she's gone forever more

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“I took your baby from you away.

I heard a voice cryin' in the deep

“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?

Why did I leave her alone tonight?

That's why her footsteps ran into the sea

That's why my baby has gone from me.

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“I took your baby from you away.

I heard a voice cryin' in the deep

“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Ran in the water, heart full of fear

There in the breakers I saw her near

Reached for my darlin', held her to me

Stole her away from the angry sea

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“You took your baby from me away.

My heart cried out “she's mine to keep

I saved my baby from an endless sleep.

[Fade]

Endless sleep, endless sleep

**********

I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one, wrote these death-dealing lyrics above. Of course I would not touch a hair on the head of well-side-burned pretty boy Jody Reynolds since I may need to use his song sometime myself so I will reserve my fury for Delores Nance for leading Jody astray on this one. As far as getting her iPhone number and e-mail, well, okay since this song goes back a way I will give some choices just to show I am not a guy hung on being very, very up-to-date with the latest communications technology and don’t realize that not everybody has made their mark on the information superhighway. Hell I won’t be particular and will be old-fashioned enough to just request the landline number and street address of Ms. Nance. She, in any case should be made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be real justice in this case made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the morals of the youth of his time. Yeah, the more I think about the matter before us that latter choice seems most fitting.

Why all the hubbub? Why am I insisting on deep Socratic measures for some poor Tin Pan Alley denizen? Well read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics printed above for your perusal on Endless Sleep. Old Jesse Lee, let’s call him that, although as in most cases with these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things like Johnny Angel, teen angel, earth angel, be-bopper, him, her, she, he, they, etc. like giving names to angry anguished teens in the red scare cold war night was akin to aiding and abetting the Russkies or was some grave matter of kinky national security concerns, and his honey have had a spat, of unnamed origin so we never get to figure out who had justice on his or her side. Okay, so maybe it was a bigger one than usual but in the whole wide-world historic meaning of things still just a spat. Laura, high-strung Laura, again name made up although not the angst to give some personality to this sketch since we revealed Lee’s name and nothing much has happened to him as a result. Judging from her reaction thought whatever irked her was a world-historic dispute, and she just flat-out flipped out. Nothing new to that phenomenon as teenagers have been flipping out since they invented teenagers about a century maybe more ago although they have not always called what said teenagers did “flipping out.” And, as teenagers often will do in a moment of overreaction to some slight, Laura had gone down to the seaside to end it all. Throw her young body, whether it was shapely or not we never find out either but figure with a name like Laura she is, well, “hot,” high school hot or Jesse Lee and his big ass ’57 Chevy would have no truck with her to begin with, into the sea. Lee in desperation, once he heard from some inevitably unnamed third party, I say apparently unnamed although maybe it was from some more reliable source like Susie Darling, Laura’s best friend since elementary school, what Laura had done, frantically tried to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the churning “sea” is relentlessly, almost sexually cone hither calling out for him to join her. Jesus what a scene.

And that last part, the part where the sea, or Laura now acting as the ocean’s agent, practically begs for a joint teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged parents either, should, or should have, put his or her foot down and gone after the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines (although like I say not me, not me just in case that she I am eying right now might have a crush on Jody, or actually like such deathly lyrics). Yeah, I know old Jesse Lee saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers. Right?

Of course, from what I heard third-hand from a friend of a friend who claims to have scoped out what really happened, this quarrel that old Lee speaks of, and that Laura went ballistic over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Lee’s guy friends and their girls down at old Jack Slack’s bowling alleys or whatever the name of the bowling alleys were in there town to roll a few strings Saturday or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. (I have used Jack Slack’s bowling establishment here since that is where me and my corner boys hung out, hung out one night discussing the meaning of all of the acts in this very song so Jack Slack’s will do nicely to fill in a name for what ailed our beloved couple.) Jesse Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid despite his corner boy reputation and some things said about his style around town, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king. The king riding around in a big old car, some pink Caddy, dressed in some gaudy Hawaiian shirt and white beach pants attire, singing some lamo syrupy songs that in his Sun Records days when he was young and hungry and talking about one night of sin and jailbreak-out stuff he would have thrown out the studio door, having plenty of dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to help him spent that dough. Of such disputes the battle of the sexes abound, and occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that take on the dispute, which sounds reasonable to me, I think old Jesse Lee had much the best of it. And, also off of that same take I am not altogether sure I would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear, sweet Laura. Just kidding.

Okay, okay I know what everybody is going to say, or at least think now. What has this guy not at least given Laura her say, her day in court to explain he dramatic behavior. This information was harder to glean because I had to get it from a friend of Laura’s friend Susie Darling. Susie sworn on a stack of seven bibles or something that she would not reveal to anyone Laura’s motivation under penalty of death. Of course in the ethos of the times and age that swearing unto death business just meant telling only one other person, a girl person in this case, come Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest. So according to this hearsay what Laura was miffed about was that Jesse Lee had not been paying enough attention to her of late, had been almost every night out with his corner boys doing wheelers with his car or whatever guys do when their honeys are not on board. So the drive-in movie idea was to get Jesse Lee to pay more serious attention to her was not about the movie, not about Elvis although Laura, like every other girl in America had her dreams about how she could tame Elvis in a flash if she could just get close to him, but about “doing the do.” See Laura a few weeks before had let Jesse Lee have his way with her but since then-no go. And she wanted to do it. But here is the kicker the place where Laura went into the sea is exactly the place where they had first made love. Jesus.               

But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little having grown up so near it that I could roll down a hill and take a splash. Love the sea and its tranquility, of the effect that those waves, splashing waves too, have on my temperament. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anyone, anything, any object that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And Laura should have too, should have known on that dark rainy night the power of the sea. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should tempt the fates, and Lee’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.

The whole scenario once I thought about it reminded me, although I offer this observation in contrast, of the time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, out there near Point Magoo in California never having seen the ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had, all I knew or remembered about how to ride out a riptide to pull her out. To save her from the briny deep. And that Angelica error was out of sheer ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Teen Dance Club Night-Sonny James’ Young Love

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

They say for every boy and girl,
There's just one love in this old world,
And I, I kn-ow, I, I, I've found mine.
The heavenly touch of your embrace,
Tells me no one will take your place,
A, A, A, A, ever in my heart.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

Just one kiss from your sweet lips,
Will tell me that your love is real,
And I, I, I can fe-el that it's true.
We will vow to one another,
There will never be another,
Lo-ve for you, or for me.

Chorus:
Young love, first love,
Filled with true devotion,
Young love, our love,
We share with deep emotion.

********

I have always been intrigued by the different little social gatherings that dominated our teen-age lives back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To a certain extent every generation of teen-agers since they invented the category as enough kids in a family made it to that age and had enough free time on their hands to form a distinct segment of society has had some of the same institutions, you know school, sports, special day parties and periodic dances stuff like that. Although I am not as familiar with the inner workings of today’s millennial generation I do not believe that I have heard much about an institution that was mainstay while I was growing up, the teen dance club. The place where you were allowed to go and have fun and of which parents approved which should have made us suspect, and would have later but while we were dealing with trying to fit the fixture into our lives we looked forward to its weekly charms.    

The teen dance club memory just did not suddenly come up and hit me out of the blue but was a result of some work I have been doing of late that brought it to the fore. I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, tunes that our local jukeboxes devoured many a hard-earned father nickel and dime it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation. The generation of ’68, the generation that slogged through the red scare cold war night, survived and, for a minute, were ready to turn the world upside down in the mid to late 1960s before the wave ebbed and we wound up fighting something like a forty plus year rearguard action to maintain some semblance of dignity, and who had just started to tune into rock music as some sort of harbinger of things to come, that jailbreak previously mentioned.  

And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word, not the derogatory sense), we hardly wet-behind-the-ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who would now claim otherwise, claiming some form of amnesia about when that beat hit them square in the eyes, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, stuff parents did not have a handle on and stuff we saw as our way out of the box that was being fit around us. Kid’s stuff, sure, but still stuff like a friend of mine, my elementary school best friend “wild man” Billie who I will talk about more some other time, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he, all ten years old of him, was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night when Elvis (and us, us too) were young and hungry.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery- operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will and we owe a lot to whoever put that idea together especially for poor ass projects boys with too little space as it was) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll-never get-to-heaven-listening-to-that-devil's- music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yeah right, Ma, Pa like Patti Page or Bob Crosby and The Bobcats (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway. I would come to know that song more closely, too closely later but that is another story) were supposed to satisfy our jail-break cravings.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered, of course) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. And, of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them).

But the crème de la crème to beat all was the teen night club. Easy concept, and something that could only have been thought up by someone in cahoots with our parents (or maybe it was them alone, although could they have been that smart). Open a “ballroom” (in reality some old VFW, Knight of Columbus, Elks, etc. hall that was either going to waste or was ready for the demolition ball), bring in live music on Friday and Saturday night with some rocking band, ours the Ready Rockers who did good covers on all but Elvis since they lacked his implicit sexual energy  (but not too rocking, not Elvis swiveling at the hips to the gates of hell rocking, no way), serve the kids drinks…, oops, sodas (Coke Pepsi, Grape and Orange Nehi, Hires Root Beer, etc.), and have them out of there by midnight, no later, unscathed. All supervised, and make no mistake these things were supervised, by something like the equivalent of the elite troops of the 101st Airborne Rangers. Usually some maiden teachers dragged in to volunteer and keep an eye, a first name eye on things, or some refugees from the sporadic church-sponsored dances who some priest or minister dragooned into volunteering with heaven held out as a reward but eagle-eyed for any unauthorized hand-holding, dancing too close or off-hand kissing.    

And we bought it, and bought into it hard. And, if you had that set-up where you lived, you bought it too. And why? Come on now, have you been paying attention? Girls, tons of girls (or boys, as the case may be). See, even doubting Thomas-type parents gave their okay on this one because of that elite troops of the 101st Airborne factor. Those hardened surrogate parents with the beady eyes and tart tongues. So, some down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedo from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that he just painted to spec, was no going to blow into the joint and carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, never to be seen again. No way. That stuff happened, sure, but that was on the side. This is not what drove that scene for the few years while we were still getting wise to the ways of the world. The girls (and guys) were plentiful and friendly in that guarded, backed up by 101st Airborne way (damn it). And we had our …sodas (I won’t list the brands again, okay). But, and know this true, we blasted on the music. The music that was on the compilations I have reviewed, no question. And I will tell you some of the stick outs that made my pray for dance card:

Save The Last Dance For Me, The Drifters (oh, sweet baby, that I have had my eye on all night, please, please, James Brown, please save that last one for me, and on too few occasions she did, or her kindred did later when I had other roving eyes so I came out about even); Only The Lonely, Roy Orbison (for some reason the girls loved Ready Rockers’ covers of this one, especially one night, not a teen club night but a night the Rockers were playing a church hall teen dance Friday night when a certain she planted a big kiss on my face, well, on my lips after I sang, really more like lip-synched  that one along with the band. Unfortunately she soon had a boyfriend and I was strictly past history but the memory of that kiss lasted lots longer); Alley Oop, The Hollywood Argyles (a good goofy song to break up the sexual tension that always filled the air, early and late, at these things as the mating ritual worked its mysterious ways and despite prying prudent eyes hand-holding, dancing too close and off-hand kissing got done, got done much more than our parents would ever know); Handy Man, Jimmy Jones( a personal favorite which dove-tailed into my “style” then,  as I kept telling every girl, and maybe a few guys as well just to keep them away from the ones I was seriously eyeing, that I was that very handy man that those self-same gals had been waiting, waiting up on those lonely weekend nights for. Egad! Did I really use that line?); Stay, Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs (nice harmonics and good feeling, and excellent for dancing too close on); New Orleans, Joe Jones (great dance number as the twist and other exotic dances started to break into the early 1960s consciousness and great too because awkward self-conscious dancers like me could “fake it” with juke moves since we were basically dancing by ourselves on the fast ones); and, Let The Little Girl Dance, Billy Bland (yes, let her dance, hesitant, saying no at first mother, please, please, no I will not invoke James Brown on this one, please). Oh yeah, and Sonny James’ Young Love that got the girls all juiced and happy to dance close even with guys like me with sweaty hands and unsure feet.

So you can see where the combination of the dance club, the companionship, and that be-bop rock beat that we could not get enough of would carry us along for a while. Naturally the thing could not go on forever, our forever, once we got older, once we tasted cigarettes and liquor (okay, okay beer) and once parents took fright when too many down at the heels, tee-shirted, engineer- booted Jimmy or Johnny Speedos from the wrong side of the tracks, all boozed up and ready to “hot rod” with that ‘boss”’57 Chevy that they just painted to spec, started blowing into the joint to carry Mary Lou or Peggy Sue away, carry them away gladly never to be seen again.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Billy’s, Billy From The Old Neighborhood, View-Jody Reynolds’ Endless Sleep

 JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)

The night was black, rain fallin' down

Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around

Traced her footsteps down to the shore

‘fraid she's gone forever more

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“I took your baby from you away.

I heard a voice cryin' in the deep

“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?

Why did I leave her alone tonight?

That's why her footsteps ran into the sea

That's why my baby has gone from me.

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“I took your baby from you away.

I heard a voice cryin' in the deep

“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.

Ran in the water, heart full of fear

There in the breakers I saw her near

Reached for my darlin', held her to me

Stole her away from the angry sea

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say

“You took your baby from me away.

My heart cried out “she's mine to keep

I saved my baby from an endless sleep.

[Fade]

Endless sleep, endless sleep

This is another of my tongue-in-cheek commentaries, the back story if you like, in the occasional sketches going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billy, William James Bradley, the mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood down in Adamsville not far outside of Boston. The “projects” for those not in the know, those of you who came of age in the leafy suburbs that we “projects” boys fiercely dreamed about once we saw what they looked like on television (and the girls, “projects” girls too dreamed our dreams too although there wasn’t so much mixing of the two until later, until we, meaning we corner boys figured out that those sticks that used to annoy us as they got some shape seemed a lot more interesting that we had previously recognized)were usually poorly constructed multi-unit complexes (ours were four-unit complexes, with many, many such complexes) originally built to house house-hungry returning World War II G.I.s who needed a place to stay while they were waiting on the golden age of the American dream to hit them.

But enough of that for this sketch is not about growing up poor in the land of plenty but growing up in the golden age of rock and roll that we hungry kids and kids from the leafy suburbs could both relate to. In those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days when he lost his moorings, went off to a hard scrabble life of crime, every kid, including one of his best friends, Markin, Peter Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every song that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when my family had been at the beginning of the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billy orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was then in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase unlike previously being Billy’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billy, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billy I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

*****

Billy back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over at Snug Harbor Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family was going to move out of the projects and who has developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. You can usually depend on Markin to show up when there is some song he is not sure about blasts over the radio, or maybe when he wants to go mano y mano with me on those ill-advised times when he thinks he has an edge on me.

All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s electricity plug-in blaring living room radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still listening on the family radio, for Christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide pact theme. [See lyrics above.] Yah, like that silly pact to jump in the ocean is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will you. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynolds’ cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.

But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big-time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of a song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, where it speaks to some teen concern, at least in teeny-bopper society. Or maybe he has read some newspaper article where some highly-paid guy, a professor usually has spotted a trend and wants to warn every parent, cop and rat teacher of the consequences. Jesus. Yeah, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like, for example, one time when he was pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend who was waiting by the midnight phone after Eddie split for parts unknown for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or Markin had a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring that the boyfriend probably grabbed from a cracker-jacks box in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds, on the grounds that she should have dumped a guy long before if his foolish junk-box of a car got stuck on a forlorn railroad track).

Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind, I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls across the channel from us, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the “projects” beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.

You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Or maybe he didn’t was to satisfy her hormonal problem if you can believe that. Some guys are like that although I don’t know any, any that would pass that kind of thing up. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.

Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, was taunting said boyfriend, saying he was going to take boyfriend’s baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either, when one guy tries to horn in on another guy’s baby when he is not done with her, maybe even after too. Like I say those are fighting words around here.

And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in the ocean too long was forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too so no other frail could be with him. Just like a girl. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boyfriend was ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. He wasn’t done with her and so old man Neptune took a beating that night. Yah, he’s taking his baby, and taking her no questions asked, back from that nasty relentless sea. A little justice in this wicked old world. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billy, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin’s homeland sea mush be damned.

When The West Was The Best- With Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe’s Film Adaptation of Arthur Miller’s “The Misfits” In Mind  

By Sam Lowell, retired film critic

[Before I do this retro-review I would like to put my two cents worth in about the recent storm (what I called and still call “a tempest in teapot”) at this site that Lance Lawrence, young Alden Riley and what used to be called Senior Film Critic but now just film critic Sandy Salmon have written about recently. And about my role, so-called role, in bringing in a change of regime on this site with the bringing in of Greg Green from American Film Gazette to be the administrator of the site. About my role as well in according to Lance helping purge Allan Jackson the long-time administrator or according to Sandy helping  to put him out to pasture. If you have been following along you already know the details of the recent dispute and its aftermath. For those not in the know quickly over the past several years Jackson  had been bringing younger writers aboard to assist and broaden the workload but mainly with the idea of continuing to emphasis and write with a tilt toward the turbulent 1960s in which most of the older writers came of age and which was the touchstone for lots of thing for their, for our, generation, what Allan dubbed the “Generation of ’68,” For a variety of reasons the younger writers almost all who were either in swaddling  clothes or not born bristled at  that arguing when the deal went down recently that the world has moved on and that they had been high influenced by other sensibilities.

Strangely and the reason for my calling the whole thing “a tempest in a teapot” this issue came to a head over two 1960s iconic figures Bob Dylan as king of the folk scene and Sean Connery as the quintessential cinematic fictional MI6 agent Bond, James Bond. I won’t go into the details since the others already have but a meeting was called by Allan essentially I think if I know him, and I have since back in high school days in North Adamsville in the early 1960s, to confirm his leadership and put the younger writers on notice of who was in charge of assignments and what they would cover. In that meeting to make a long story short after a few hours of arguments which I will not bore the reader with a vote of confidence was called and Jackson lost. Lost because I sided with the young writers for the simple reason once I reviewed the archives way too much time, energy and money had been spent on extolling the virtues of the 1960s against the broader American social, cultural and political history before and after. It was high time to go back to the original ideas which animated the blog, animated us back in the day when we wanted to turn the world upside down.

Did I participate willingly in a purge of Allan as Lance Lawrence one of the younger writers has alluded to? Frankly yes and while it may have destroyed my relationship with Allan I think it had to be done or else we would lose good writers and/or become something of an old white man’s sect babbling on about the 1960s like nothing else happened in the world good, bad or indifferent. Let’s not go crazy with analogies Allan will not be put in the position of his hero Trotsky, at least I don’t think so and will be able to write what he wants to write about and submit for approval like anybody else. Look in the transition to a more democratic and plebian mores here like in the old neighborhood days I have shed my official Film Critic Emeritus designation and am merely a retired film critic. That’s progress, right.    

********

For those who came to this post because they were interested in my take on The Misfits and not the internal workings of a group of writers fretting over their places in the sun here goes. I have actually done a review of this film, this cast benighted film (Gable, Monroe, Montgomery all died within a relatively short period after shooting was over) back in those 1960s when I first started writing film reviews for the now long gone East Bay Other out in California and was a free-lancer before finally getting a regular staff job before like the 1960s it chronicled the paper folded so I just want to make a few points  here about the West (“the West is the best’’ of Jim Morrison’s The End lyrics meaning the Coast not really what I have in mind here although that  is hardly the worst part of the West but rather the rugged West of hardship pioneer grit, savvy or just run out of luck in the East) and the place of transitional figures like cowboy Gay, Gable’s role and  Perce, Clift’s role, along with pioneer-ish type women like rock steady Isabelle Steers, played by Thelma Ritter. Hell even a wildcatter like Guido played by Eli Wallach figures in the mix.         

It may not seem like it today in places like Taos, Sedona, Reno, hell, half the formerly hard-bitten towns that dotted the Old West and survived unto the new one but those were not tourist traps or suburban oases. The ones where the cattle roamed free, the mines  were not depleted and the ranches were run by hard-headed survivors who employed the cowboys and the law such as it was, those who could not stomach staying in one place or running anything but a tab at the local saloon. As Merle Haggard or Johnny Cash would say the Running Kind. In that sense Gay and Perce seem to represent the last vestiges of that Old West, the last chance saloon rear-guard who could not or would not adjust to the new mores and the new money which was following westward.

I was looking over that initial 1960s review draft (written by hand on yellow-lined paper and transferred to typewritten final copy from-okay-a typewriter so this is ancient to anybody not even born then) and I was amazed at how hung-up I was on the surface story line about two cowpokes of unknown quality, a good pilot, a wacky Reno native and an alluring divorcee and whether things would work out between Gay and city girl Roslyn, the role played by Monroe and whether those restless and vanishing mustangs would survive the human onslaught. I guess it took my own hard knocks in life, losing out as technology has made a hard copy writer almost like a dinosaur to appreciate how some guys who grew up in the last days of the Old West got all balled up when the rugged individual values were discarded or thrown on the scrap heap. That I think was Miller’s deeper message beyond the messiness of modern living and modern relationships which don’t give a person time to absorb everything, or anything.  

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part V-Pierce Brosnan’s “Die Another Day” (2002)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Die Another Day, starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry 2002      

I have been warned off, warned off complaining about the loss of my hard-fought for title of Associate Film Critic which was leading me with Sandy Salmon’s retirement to being the Senior Film Critic pretty soon. As anybody who has been paying attention to this space now knows there has been a just completed internal power struggle and the creation of a new regime under the leadership of site manager Greg Green. Greg, although fobbing off the decision officially on his rubber-stamp Editorial Board, has abolished titles under some obscure democratic theory that every writer, young or old, male or female, gay or straight, white or not, should just write under their God-given names (his term) and that alone.

That is one thing I have been warned off of talking about in this by-line. The other the current campaign to obliterate the name and the work of the former site manager Allan Jackson in the name of “leaving the past behind,” “moving on” or whatever the day’s excuse for creating non-persons is like this was the old-time Soviet Union and Allan, yes, Allan Jackson, was like his buddy, like some latter day Leon Trotsky knocked off his pedestal by an avenging angel Stalin (and his minions). I said in my last review, my review of beautiful James Bond worthy Pierce Brosnan’s The World Is Not Enough that while the amnesty Sam Lowell negotiated for pieces in the pipeline prior to the agreement lasted I would use this space as a bully pulpit to cry shame on those who want to liquidate the memory of Allan Jackson. (I have also mentioned that due to some crazy things Allan did to me, made me do, last year out of hubris there was no love lost when he went into exile rumored to be out in Utah somewhere after the purge so this is bigger than a personal issue, a lot bigger.)          

Here’s the funny part, not laughter funny either I was not warmed off by Greg Green. Greg wouldn’t do that he would have one of his lackeys on the Ed Board like Lenny Lynch or “Timid” Timmy Walton give the axe. No I was warned off by Sandy Salmon, warned off by none other than my old “boss” and fellow combative in this so-called titanic struggle between my sweet baby James Pierce Brosnan and his hoary old goat ready for assisted living quarters Sean Connery Bond, the guy who started the whole twenty-plus episodes back in 1949 or some time like that. Sandy, an old defender of Allan Jackson in the internal fight, apparently has gotten weepy Sean Connery-like now that Greg and the toadies have pulled the hammer down. Have implied you are either with us or against us and if you are against us then you will have fun reviewing re-runs of I Love Lucy or worse reviewing super-hero comic book figures made into films. Whatever, I will not bow until I am sure that the amnesty is over and I have to toe the line, or else. And maybe I will take the “or else” road.    

I will never forget that Sandy had taken my side on one of the immediate causes of the internal fight last year when Allan had gone over his head and ordered me to write a stinking review about a has-been blues singer, a girl from Texas, Janis Joplin, whom I had never heard of but who was supposed to be some mover and shaker in the 1960s when a lot of the older writers for this blog got their starts in life-and never forgot it or let us forget it. But this warning off business is way beyond his grade level-now. I won’t say more but it is rather indicative that Sandy’s bowing down to the powers that be now kind of puts paid to his devotion to the old tiger Sean as Bond, James Bond.

In any case I have review to do and I might as well get to it. Although both Sandy and I should be heartily fed-up with this by now pabulum Bond series since with the exception of a few name and bad guy organization changes, a few less dumb but beautiful young women who last read a book in about 1980 and more agent-like women, a sea-change number of high tech gizmos and a revolving door of male stars to carry the water in the role they are all the fucking same. The same no matter how much dough, moola, kale, they make for their production companies.     

Take this 2002, damn I almost forgot the name, Die Another Day, too bad they couldn’t fork up some script-writer dough for some real title better than grade school choices. That 2002 should ring a bell since that is post-9/11 axis of evil time with one of those axes being North Korea this time rather than the old tired out Soviet Union-China-SPECTRE bashing. Here a rogue Harvard-educated, that tells a lot, North Korean colonel named Moon with influence in high places is running a scam operation to deal with conflict diamonds in order to amass a ton of dough to act the rich spoiled boy wonder of the world. He is aided by his comrade the nefarious Zao. This pair is on Mister Bond’s hit list since they have had him captured, imprisoned and tortured to perdition for fourteen months. The big story here though is that Jimmy has been betrayed by somebody in MI6, been done in by one his own. He righteously seeks revenge and maybe stop the conflict diamond trade and save the known world in the bargain.

When that Colonel Moon and Zao disappear (you can see the film if you want to know how and why) after a losing fight with Jimbo they reappear in Cuba (always need to the get the commie, even if tame commie angle in these never forget the Cold War that spawned you sagas) with genetically altered faces, more Western less Asia faces, to start their activities to destroy Western Civilization as we know it. Of course these post-World War II days dinky shrunken British Empire secret agents don’t have that game to themselves. The NSA have their agent, beautiful, smart, resourceful and bed-worthy under the silky sheets Jinx, played by foxy Halle Berry on the case. (You don’t even have to ask whether James and Jinx hit the sheets nor do you have to ask whether his female adversary, he MI6 agent who betrayed him, who is helping the Colonel and Zao is to be found in his bed since our James is an equal opportunity bed-mate.)

The long and short of it is the Colonel and Zao (and their female playmate) all go down in the mud after a million fights, scrapes, collisions and those best laid plans of mice and men of Colonel Moon and his cadre go asunder. As James and Jinx go under. Here’s Pierce’s beauty. Who wouldn’t go crazy to have a secret agent who can surf, fly an airplane, or any flying object, a hovercraft, ski, leap tall buildings at a single bound, drive every kind of exotic car, hold his breathe forever under water, drink hard liquor, hit the sheets with smart and/or evil women and never put in an expense account. All for her majesty. Sean would go dizzy just thinking about that, except maybe to hit on that eye candy who hasn’t read a book since 1949.       

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part IV-Pierce Brosnan’s “The World Is Not Enough” (1999)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

The World Is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan, Sophie, Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards, 1999

A curtain is beginning to descend on the American Left History blog that I have been associated with (had been an associate film critic before such titles were eliminated without discussion by the head of the new regime Greg Green and his hand-picked minions). No, not the famous, or infamous as the case may be, one signaled by old-time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri in 1947 for the start of my parents’ generation’s Cold War which ultimately defrosted with the demise of the Soviet Union about quarter century ago but sinister enough. (By the way this whole latter day Bond series starting with he-man in a tight spot Pierce Brosnan, John Le Carre, and Tom Clancy must be eternally weeping real tears since they don’t have that behemoth to beat up on anymore as much they try like in the film under review here The World Is Not Enough with one of the villains being an ex-KGB agent.)

Sinister enough for comment here before my review of yet another James Bond film in the seemingly never-ending “mock heroic” battle with former Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon over who the fuck is the real James Bond. (Apparently in audience land nobody cares since the revenue stream is measured in the hundreds of millions.) And before I can no longer make such comment under the agreement that Sam Lowell made with Greg Green and rubber-stamped by the Editorial Board that will soon prohibit mention of the just concluded internal struggle over direction and personnel changes. More importantly the ban on mentioning by name the previous site manager Allan Jackson, his accomplishments, or his short-comings.

So while the amnesty lasts which only extended to the ten or fifteen pieces that were in the pipeline before the agreement was reached I will express my displeasure. First at the elimination of titles which I have mentioned before and which still rankles since I put in some great effort to get to that status and have now been thrown on the Everyman, Every-person now that we have good women writers coming along , scrapheap like everybody else. Secondly at that ominous trend of making non-persons out of people who were critical to the success and development of this blog (and in its previous hard copy iterations which Sam Lowell, a key figure in all of this, is writing a history of to close the curtain down tight) and who taught me a lot about social media survival. This worry by the way from a person, from THE person, if one person can be said to have started the furor over the demise of Allan Jackson one of the founding members. Me. Rumor has it that Allan is out in exile, exile after purge as Sam Lowell put the matter inelegantly but correctly, hustling the Mormons for newspaper subscriptions.

The truth I don’t know but that sounds weird about a guy who has skewered well-known Mormon honcho and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney about his white underwear and about his unjust abandonment of his great-grandfather and his polygamous five wives. Another truth, a known truth is that I am standing by my remarks about the descending curtain despite the fact that I hated Allan Jackson, hated the way the blog was heading and fought tooth and nail with the “Young Turks” to purge the bastard. The immediate reason which is all I will detail now and let Sam do his business is the time in 2017 that he went crazy over commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 and was assigning everybody who could walk, who could write, some silly assignment about that year.

My “mistake” is that he heard about my ignorance of Janis Joplin, a key rising blues singing star during that time, who made a big splash at the first Monterey Pops Festival that year which Sandy had written about and I had told him that I had never heard of her. Allan went wild and assigned me like some naughty schoolboy a biopic about her life. Yes, so no love lost here. But Allan was a larger than life personality and he should not be resigned to the dustbin of history like his buddy Leon Trotsky said about the old regime in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Trotsky, a guy, a larger than life personality, they, the Stalin supporters in the Soviet Union when there was a Soviet Union, tried might and main to make a non-person. It will not wash with me, it just will not.      

But now onto the real battle of today. The mismatch between one senile old goat Sandy Salmon, like Allan locked in a time capsule about 1965, hanging on to his lame excuse for a James Bond old fogy Sean Connery against me, against the king of the hill, and my favorite sporty handsome he-man full of prowess that Sean would buckle under, one Pierce Brosnan. For those following this life and death struggle the basic difference is that Pierce’s Bond, James Bond could run circles around the asthmatic Connery who should have been put in an old age home about that same 1965 that Sandy-and Allan- seems locked into.

Enough of that though. Let’s run the tale, let’s tell how many “kills” and “collateral damage” Pierce put on his scorecard while Sean was still walking down the garden path with some good-looking eye candy woman who last read a book about 1949. James is onto some craziness around the fate of that former KGB agent I mentioned earlier who has turned rogue, has made himself a big spot in the international terrorist hall of fame. The target a rich British oil man who is assassinated by that dastardly former KGB agent. A separate thread has this oil king’s daughter taking over the business after having been kidnapped and NOT released via ransom paid by but by stealth and sexual allure. That no ransom the very public stance of MI6 and of its leader M. It turned out that the terrorist and kidnap victim were murkily working together on a big caper. Drive the price of oil through the roof by “killing” the market. Killing the oil by blowing away oil sites and driving production low via some stolen high tech gizmos which wind up like the British Empite not working. Nice move.

Naturally James, an erstwhile agent of the British interests in cheap oil is the one the case. He has his suspicious about that oil man’s daughter although, as is always the case, when she does here come hither act on him he goes under the silky sheets just like any other guy. Along the way sweet baby James is helped by yet another secret agent perk, a shapely drop dead beautiful young women posing as a brainy oil doctor. Posing at the end after a zillion escapades which would have drained the life right out of pokey Sean Connery. Yeah sent those old guys out to pasture just like we did with Allan Jackson except maybe not Utah, maybe Siberia.