Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Memphis Jug Band performing their old-time blues classic Harry Smith Anthology-worthy, K.C. Moan.
CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 2, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues volume 2 compilation reflects all of those trends from the Memphis Jug Band’s K.C. Moan to Blue Lemon Jefferson’s Jack O’Diamond Blues To Golden Harris’ I Lead A Christian Life. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
Showing posts with label be bop nights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label be bop nights. Show all posts
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American football on Thanksgiving. I knew when I Googled this search old Wikipedia would not let me down.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964, comment:
Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hamilton Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival, Adamsville High School, in 1963. (Yes, that above-mentioned street for the forgetful is the one that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. The place where every self-respecting be-bop high school guy “filled up,” his “boss” car, or his father’s on Friday or Saturday night, cheaply, so that he had enough dough to “spurge” at the end of that “hot date” night for burgers, fries and tonic, you remember soda, at Adventure Car Hop down on the Southern Artery.)
This ancient 1963 time, for the younger reader, was a time before they built what is apparently an addition, including a newer gym and cafeteria, modeled on the office buildings across the street from the school behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. But this could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks,” except for the names, to what is up today at Thanksgiving football rally time as well:
Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It was also starless, as the weather report had projected rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is a little rain, and a little mud, could prove to be a great equalizer.
This after all was class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A Adamsville against Class B North Adamsville and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler alphabetic designations worked just find.)
Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing was (is) any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class back in the day, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, I guess) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. But enough of paid by the word stuff to add color to this sketch. The important thing was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.
This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to his heavy dose of school patriotism and wishful wishing that he had been just a little stronger, faster or agile to have made the team, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities. And every unattached red-blooded girl student was searching for that certain he (and maybe wishing that just that moment the one she was interested in has been just a little stronger, faster or agile so she could bask in his reflected glory). Don’t tell me, boy or girl, agile or not, you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance.
Among this throng of peekers, half-peekers and wannabe peekers were a couple of fervent not fast enough, strong enough, agile enough quasi-jock male students, one of them is writing this entry, the other the great long distance track man, Josh Breslin, was busy getting in his glances. Both were (are) members of the Class of 1964 who with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross town rival, and also, in the interest of full disclosure, are deeply emerged in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects. (This led, on more than one occasion, including one “oh, damn” occasion, to have a very special she accuse me of perfidy, although she did not use that word, and dismissed me, words she did use, out of hand).
This was the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we had brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory…, well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, perfidious or not, and the like.
Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began, at first somewhat subdued due to the then very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, had tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors would not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Kelley, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.
Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had (has) anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer,” obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types, somebody’s girlfriend or some important alum’s daughter for all I knew. Certainly not in a league with the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy and not perfidious glances for one of them right then.
What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to get things moving though was the cheer-leading, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne Murphy ( who, if you can believe this, dismissed me out of hand, although not for perfidiousness( ouch), the spunky Josie McCarthy, and the plucky Linda Kelly. And when they hit center court they did not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one noted exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.
But this entire spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike. Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced by Coach Leahy. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Lee Munson, Paul Duchamp, Joe Zona, Don McNally, Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Stevie Chase, "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget to include him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.) and on and on.
Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle”, Bill Curran, a behemoth of a run-over fullback, even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the restless crowd needed an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964, comment:
Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hamilton Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival, Adamsville High School, in 1963. (Yes, that above-mentioned street for the forgetful is the one that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. The place where every self-respecting be-bop high school guy “filled up,” his “boss” car, or his father’s on Friday or Saturday night, cheaply, so that he had enough dough to “spurge” at the end of that “hot date” night for burgers, fries and tonic, you remember soda, at Adventure Car Hop down on the Southern Artery.)
This ancient 1963 time, for the younger reader, was a time before they built what is apparently an addition, including a newer gym and cafeteria, modeled on the office buildings across the street from the school behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. But this could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks,” except for the names, to what is up today at Thanksgiving football rally time as well:
Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It was also starless, as the weather report had projected rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is a little rain, and a little mud, could prove to be a great equalizer.
This after all was class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A Adamsville against Class B North Adamsville and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler alphabetic designations worked just find.)
Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing was (is) any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class back in the day, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, I guess) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. But enough of paid by the word stuff to add color to this sketch. The important thing was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.
This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to his heavy dose of school patriotism and wishful wishing that he had been just a little stronger, faster or agile to have made the team, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities. And every unattached red-blooded girl student was searching for that certain he (and maybe wishing that just that moment the one she was interested in has been just a little stronger, faster or agile so she could bask in his reflected glory). Don’t tell me, boy or girl, agile or not, you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance.
Among this throng of peekers, half-peekers and wannabe peekers were a couple of fervent not fast enough, strong enough, agile enough quasi-jock male students, one of them is writing this entry, the other the great long distance track man, Josh Breslin, was busy getting in his glances. Both were (are) members of the Class of 1964 who with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross town rival, and also, in the interest of full disclosure, are deeply emerged in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects. (This led, on more than one occasion, including one “oh, damn” occasion, to have a very special she accuse me of perfidy, although she did not use that word, and dismissed me, words she did use, out of hand).
This was the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we had brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory…, well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, perfidious or not, and the like.
Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began, at first somewhat subdued due to the then very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, had tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors would not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Kelley, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.
Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had (has) anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer,” obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types, somebody’s girlfriend or some important alum’s daughter for all I knew. Certainly not in a league with the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy and not perfidious glances for one of them right then.
What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to get things moving though was the cheer-leading, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne Murphy ( who, if you can believe this, dismissed me out of hand, although not for perfidiousness( ouch), the spunky Josie McCarthy, and the plucky Linda Kelly. And when they hit center court they did not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one noted exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.
But this entire spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike. Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced by Coach Leahy. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Lee Munson, Paul Duchamp, Joe Zona, Don McNally, Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Stevie Chase, "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget to include him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.) and on and on.
Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle”, Bill Curran, a behemoth of a run-over fullback, even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the restless crowd needed an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Out On The 50th Anniversary Hank Williams Midnight Highway Night- “Timeless” –A Hank Williams Tribute CD
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Hank Williams performing his classic Hey Good Lookin’. Hank Williams, more than most musicians, is less well-covered by other artists than his originals gems. Listen to this one as a case in point.
CD Review
Timeless, various artists, 2003
In a review of a Hank Williams anthology in this space (Hank Williams: Greatest Hits, 1991) I noted that I have been listening to a local weekend folk, rock and contemporary music interview show here in Boston for years. The format of the show is to interview, in depth, contemporary well know singers, songwriters and musicians as well as young unknowns looking to make their mark. One of the questions always asked of each interviewee is about formative influences on their musical development. Although I do not believe that I have ever heard what I would consider a country singer interviewed on the show the name Hank Williams as an influence has come up many more times than any other from young and old interviewee alike.
Here some of those well-known musicians pay tribute to his influence by covering his songs for a 50th Anniversary of his death edition. The likes of Bob Dylan, Johnnie Cash and Lyle Lovett do his memory honor with their own interpretations. I would note that, unlike a number of other artists such as the above-mentioned Dylan, cover versions of Hank’s songs do not usually measure up to the original. The great exception here is Lucinda Williams (no relation, as far as I know) whose rendition of Cold, Cold Heart captured all the pathos, and more, of that tune. Listen on.
CD Review
Timeless, various artists, 2003
In a review of a Hank Williams anthology in this space (Hank Williams: Greatest Hits, 1991) I noted that I have been listening to a local weekend folk, rock and contemporary music interview show here in Boston for years. The format of the show is to interview, in depth, contemporary well know singers, songwriters and musicians as well as young unknowns looking to make their mark. One of the questions always asked of each interviewee is about formative influences on their musical development. Although I do not believe that I have ever heard what I would consider a country singer interviewed on the show the name Hank Williams as an influence has come up many more times than any other from young and old interviewee alike.
Here some of those well-known musicians pay tribute to his influence by covering his songs for a 50th Anniversary of his death edition. The likes of Bob Dylan, Johnnie Cash and Lyle Lovett do his memory honor with their own interpretations. I would note that, unlike a number of other artists such as the above-mentioned Dylan, cover versions of Hank’s songs do not usually measure up to the original. The great exception here is Lucinda Williams (no relation, as far as I know) whose rendition of Cold, Cold Heart captured all the pathos, and more, of that tune. Listen on.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- In The Time Of The High School Hop, Circa 1960
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Cadillacs performing She's So Fine.
Recently I have been in something of 1960s high school remembrance mode, mainly as a result of evaluating the influence of the “beats” (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, not Cassidy, and the usual suspects), on my youthful political (not much), social (a fair amount), and cultural (lots) development, but also as a result of re-watching George Lucas’ American Graffiti, a 1960s coming-of-age film that fits comfortably in my own high school mode. I have reviewed the film itself elsewhere in this space but I wish to make a special point about the high school dance segment of the film (SeeThe Baby-Boomer Birth Of The Search For The Blue-Pink American Western Night- “American Graffiti”-A Film Review, dated September, 8, 2010).
George Lucas’s inclusion of a local high school dance segment in this film was truly inspired. The segment is not central to the action of the film, such as it is, mainly the ins and outs of Friday or Saturday night (and in the summer almost any night except Monday “rest” day) cruising the local strip, the teen strip part, the only part that counted. However , it certainly is calculated to evoke almost universal nostalgia for anyone (meaning almost everyone these days) who has ever had to deal, in one way or another, with the question of this time-honored (if hoary) high school tradition. Each generation probably has its own take on what this experience was (or is) like, but most of the real action was behind the scenes. And in that sense the film caught the three high points. Women (ah, girls) can fill in own blanks in reverse, but here are some of them from a man’s (ah, boy’s) perspective.
First of all stag (but not singly, no way, with the guys, or not at all, although how many and who was always up for grabs, especially on the important “shotgun” question) or on a date (double-date, somebody’s left-out sister, your sister, anything to not be a wallflower, a sickly wallflower among the ‘losers’ to boot, as those dance moments ticked slowly, so slowly by). Many an ungodly hour was spent on that date question mulling over, no, not what you think, who to invite, no that was usually the easy part, but rather getting up enough nerve to make the call to make the invitation. And check this out, on more than one occasion, and I am sure the same was true for you, somehow your intelligence network had failed and it turns out that the certain she, your dreamy certain she, damn, her, had a “steady,” and true blue no way was she going anywhere in public with a not boyfriend. (Although, and on more than one occasion this actually happened , if the “boyfriend” was out of town, “in the service,” (military) or she was just mad at him for one of a possible seven hundred reasons, she might go with you. Just as friends of course.) Usually though, christ, what a waste of time.
Secondly, grooming preparations- I will propose here, in best scientific method form (or at least quasi-scientific form for that is all this tidbit will hold) that there was an inverse relationship to the amount of time that one spent on this work, you know, shower, shave (in those days you had to, if you could), comb always at the ready, a little something for the underarms and some men’s fragrance to give the smell of being the least bit civilized, and the answer to the stag/date question. In this sense the inverse is the extra time spent in order to attract that certain she (remember women just reverse the gender, or today everyone fill in your own preference experience) so when the next goddam dance or mixed social event came up you were dated up with that certain she and you could just throw a little fatal after-shave on and fly out the door.
Oh, by the way, I refuse, I totally refuse to go over the number of time that I cooled my heels while that occasional captured “she” made her grooming preparations, first date or any date, even if it was just to make preparations to go to the drugstore soda fountain. Mercifully, on that score I did not have a sister to scream at or else I might not be writing this screed today, at least this side of a cell block.
Thirdly, the gathering of the dough, the always short of dough problem that plagued our poor working class household and that I noticed did not seem to be any kind of problem in that California suburban valley locale of American Graffiti. Money for exotic appearing (hey, it was California, remember, even the fast food drive-ins had to be retro-fine) double-dip hamburgers (with fries), cherry cokes, for two, for two, my god, plus some gas money, plus, plus, plus, you know a guy has got expenses in this world. The real problem was whether to borrow from parents, or pick up some chattel slave job. Getting it from the parents always came with some awful terms, usually worthy of some international diplomatic accord, and more grief than it was worth, unless I was desperate, or girl-hungry. Oh ya, and you had to hear the obligatory “we do this and that to keep a roof over your head” along with the bucks. You know the drill, I am sure.
And while we are on the subject of parents the inevitable question comes up about what time one should be home by. They say X, and make that loan, that hard-scrabble hideous loan that has more conditions and enforcements than a loan shark, contingent on the observance of a “reasonable” (parent reasonable) hour. I say Y, because in the back of my mind I, if I get lucky (no further discussion necessary, right?) then I need plenty of time and can’t be worried about curfews, or reasonable times. Come to think of it, even fifty years later, I can recall on memory request my plaintive “come on Ma you be reasonable” (and it was always Ma on this one, on this time thing, in our old working class neighborhoods, and maybe yours too. Dad was brought in, if he was brought in at all, at this point in our lives only for the heavy artillery stuff like yes or no on the car or to dole out serious punishment. Enough said).
Once these preparations and battles have been settled then, and here is where American Graffiti is like from a dream, the question of transportation to the dance comes into play. Here I mean a car, and if you’ve read my review of American Graffiti you know I mean a “boss” car. You would have to go to an automobile museum to see such treasures these days. By the way don’t even utter the words public transportation for this occasion or I will think that you grew up in New York City or some such place like that and that you really have not been paying attention after all my paeans to the California endless highways and the search of the elusive blue-pink great American Western night. And cars were central to that exploration, east or west.
In any case, this car-less writer, this foot-sore, shoe leather-beaten, car-less writer, depended, sometimes cynically so, on cultivating friendships with guys who had such “boss” cars, particularly the renowned ’57 Chevy that still makes me quiver at the thought. Needless to say, in expectation at least, of the night’s successes a stop at the local gas station for a fill-up (a couple of bucks and done then) check the oil and water, kick the tires and so on preceded our big entrance at the dance.
Part of the charm of the American Graffiti segment on the local high school dance is, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors it could have been any place U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet any time U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance scene could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place to the ever-present gym bleachers to the dragooned teacher chaperones to the platform the local band covering the top hits of the day performed on was a perfect replica (a band that if it did not hit it big and breakout from local-ville would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other seminally important occasions).
Also perfect replica were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, its much to early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow!
Of course, perfect replica as well were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc.) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. Mercy. And I cannot finish up this part without saying perfect replica “hes” looking at certain “shes” (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) and also perfect replica wallflowers, as well.
Not filmed in American Graffiti, although a solo slow one highlighted the tensions between Steve and Laurie (Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) but ever present and certainly the subject of some comment in this space was that end of the night dance. I’ll just repeat what I have repeated elsewhere. This last dance was always one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one does learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
And after the dance? Well, I am the soul of discretion, and you should be too. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes I got home earlier than the Ma agreed time, but sometimes, not enough now that I think about it, I saw huge red suns rising up over the blue waters down by the ocean near my old home town. Either way, my friends, worth every blessed minute of anguish, right?
Recently I have been in something of 1960s high school remembrance mode, mainly as a result of evaluating the influence of the “beats” (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, not Cassidy, and the usual suspects), on my youthful political (not much), social (a fair amount), and cultural (lots) development, but also as a result of re-watching George Lucas’ American Graffiti, a 1960s coming-of-age film that fits comfortably in my own high school mode. I have reviewed the film itself elsewhere in this space but I wish to make a special point about the high school dance segment of the film (SeeThe Baby-Boomer Birth Of The Search For The Blue-Pink American Western Night- “American Graffiti”-A Film Review, dated September, 8, 2010).
George Lucas’s inclusion of a local high school dance segment in this film was truly inspired. The segment is not central to the action of the film, such as it is, mainly the ins and outs of Friday or Saturday night (and in the summer almost any night except Monday “rest” day) cruising the local strip, the teen strip part, the only part that counted. However , it certainly is calculated to evoke almost universal nostalgia for anyone (meaning almost everyone these days) who has ever had to deal, in one way or another, with the question of this time-honored (if hoary) high school tradition. Each generation probably has its own take on what this experience was (or is) like, but most of the real action was behind the scenes. And in that sense the film caught the three high points. Women (ah, girls) can fill in own blanks in reverse, but here are some of them from a man’s (ah, boy’s) perspective.
First of all stag (but not singly, no way, with the guys, or not at all, although how many and who was always up for grabs, especially on the important “shotgun” question) or on a date (double-date, somebody’s left-out sister, your sister, anything to not be a wallflower, a sickly wallflower among the ‘losers’ to boot, as those dance moments ticked slowly, so slowly by). Many an ungodly hour was spent on that date question mulling over, no, not what you think, who to invite, no that was usually the easy part, but rather getting up enough nerve to make the call to make the invitation. And check this out, on more than one occasion, and I am sure the same was true for you, somehow your intelligence network had failed and it turns out that the certain she, your dreamy certain she, damn, her, had a “steady,” and true blue no way was she going anywhere in public with a not boyfriend. (Although, and on more than one occasion this actually happened , if the “boyfriend” was out of town, “in the service,” (military) or she was just mad at him for one of a possible seven hundred reasons, she might go with you. Just as friends of course.) Usually though, christ, what a waste of time.
Secondly, grooming preparations- I will propose here, in best scientific method form (or at least quasi-scientific form for that is all this tidbit will hold) that there was an inverse relationship to the amount of time that one spent on this work, you know, shower, shave (in those days you had to, if you could), comb always at the ready, a little something for the underarms and some men’s fragrance to give the smell of being the least bit civilized, and the answer to the stag/date question. In this sense the inverse is the extra time spent in order to attract that certain she (remember women just reverse the gender, or today everyone fill in your own preference experience) so when the next goddam dance or mixed social event came up you were dated up with that certain she and you could just throw a little fatal after-shave on and fly out the door.
Oh, by the way, I refuse, I totally refuse to go over the number of time that I cooled my heels while that occasional captured “she” made her grooming preparations, first date or any date, even if it was just to make preparations to go to the drugstore soda fountain. Mercifully, on that score I did not have a sister to scream at or else I might not be writing this screed today, at least this side of a cell block.
Thirdly, the gathering of the dough, the always short of dough problem that plagued our poor working class household and that I noticed did not seem to be any kind of problem in that California suburban valley locale of American Graffiti. Money for exotic appearing (hey, it was California, remember, even the fast food drive-ins had to be retro-fine) double-dip hamburgers (with fries), cherry cokes, for two, for two, my god, plus some gas money, plus, plus, plus, you know a guy has got expenses in this world. The real problem was whether to borrow from parents, or pick up some chattel slave job. Getting it from the parents always came with some awful terms, usually worthy of some international diplomatic accord, and more grief than it was worth, unless I was desperate, or girl-hungry. Oh ya, and you had to hear the obligatory “we do this and that to keep a roof over your head” along with the bucks. You know the drill, I am sure.
And while we are on the subject of parents the inevitable question comes up about what time one should be home by. They say X, and make that loan, that hard-scrabble hideous loan that has more conditions and enforcements than a loan shark, contingent on the observance of a “reasonable” (parent reasonable) hour. I say Y, because in the back of my mind I, if I get lucky (no further discussion necessary, right?) then I need plenty of time and can’t be worried about curfews, or reasonable times. Come to think of it, even fifty years later, I can recall on memory request my plaintive “come on Ma you be reasonable” (and it was always Ma on this one, on this time thing, in our old working class neighborhoods, and maybe yours too. Dad was brought in, if he was brought in at all, at this point in our lives only for the heavy artillery stuff like yes or no on the car or to dole out serious punishment. Enough said).
Once these preparations and battles have been settled then, and here is where American Graffiti is like from a dream, the question of transportation to the dance comes into play. Here I mean a car, and if you’ve read my review of American Graffiti you know I mean a “boss” car. You would have to go to an automobile museum to see such treasures these days. By the way don’t even utter the words public transportation for this occasion or I will think that you grew up in New York City or some such place like that and that you really have not been paying attention after all my paeans to the California endless highways and the search of the elusive blue-pink great American Western night. And cars were central to that exploration, east or west.
In any case, this car-less writer, this foot-sore, shoe leather-beaten, car-less writer, depended, sometimes cynically so, on cultivating friendships with guys who had such “boss” cars, particularly the renowned ’57 Chevy that still makes me quiver at the thought. Needless to say, in expectation at least, of the night’s successes a stop at the local gas station for a fill-up (a couple of bucks and done then) check the oil and water, kick the tires and so on preceded our big entrance at the dance.
Part of the charm of the American Graffiti segment on the local high school dance is, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors it could have been any place U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet any time U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance scene could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place to the ever-present gym bleachers to the dragooned teacher chaperones to the platform the local band covering the top hits of the day performed on was a perfect replica (a band that if it did not hit it big and breakout from local-ville would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other seminally important occasions).
Also perfect replica were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, its much to early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow!
Of course, perfect replica as well were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc.) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. Mercy. And I cannot finish up this part without saying perfect replica “hes” looking at certain “shes” (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) and also perfect replica wallflowers, as well.
Not filmed in American Graffiti, although a solo slow one highlighted the tensions between Steve and Laurie (Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) but ever present and certainly the subject of some comment in this space was that end of the night dance. I’ll just repeat what I have repeated elsewhere. This last dance was always one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one does learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
And after the dance? Well, I am the soul of discretion, and you should be too. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes I got home earlier than the Ma agreed time, but sometimes, not enough now that I think about it, I saw huge red suns rising up over the blue waters down by the ocean near my old home town. Either way, my friends, worth every blessed minute of anguish, right?
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Out In The Bust-Up Southern Be-Bop Night- Hank Williams Rides The Lonesome Highway
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Hank Williams performing his classic angst song, Cold, Cold Heart
CD Review
Hank Williams: Greatest Hits, 2 CD set, Hank Williams and various back-up combinations, 1991
I have been listening to a local weekend folk, rock and contemporary music interview show here in Boston for years. The format of the show is to interview, in depth, contemporary well-known singers, songwriters and musicians as well as young unknowns looking to make their mark. One of the questions always asked of each interviewee is about formative influences on their musical development. Although I do not believe that I have ever heard what I would consider a country singer interviewed on the show the name Hank Williams has come up as an influence many more times than any other from young and old interviewee alike. When New Age- type musicians and old- time 1960s folk revival minute artists are going on and on about brother Williams you know something is up. And that is exactly the point. He has been a long gone daddy on that long lonesome highway for over fifty years yet those well thought out ballads and ‘jump’ country swing tunes still sound pretty damn good.
Sure that is easy for me to say now. Although I was raised in the North my father was from the South, a hillbilly. This is music that I unconsciously heard at my father’s knee. But such tunes as Cold, Cold Heart and You’re Cheating Heart that he sung to me as a child were his kind of music. It was not until fairly recently that I got the message. His was the collective music memory of his post-World War II red scare night angst and alienation. In any case this greatest hits compilation gives as good a cross section of Hank’s work as you are liable to get with a mix of heart-felt ballads, some crossover tunes and, as seemingly inevitably in greatest hits packages, some novelty songs that could have justly been left out. I would note that not all of the many Williams compilations are equal either technically or musically. Here the technical quality is more than adequate and the producers seen to have put the best back-up band versions of his material that they could find. So stop Honky-Tonking and listening to whippoorwills and get this CD album.
CD Review
Hank Williams: Greatest Hits, 2 CD set, Hank Williams and various back-up combinations, 1991
I have been listening to a local weekend folk, rock and contemporary music interview show here in Boston for years. The format of the show is to interview, in depth, contemporary well-known singers, songwriters and musicians as well as young unknowns looking to make their mark. One of the questions always asked of each interviewee is about formative influences on their musical development. Although I do not believe that I have ever heard what I would consider a country singer interviewed on the show the name Hank Williams has come up as an influence many more times than any other from young and old interviewee alike. When New Age- type musicians and old- time 1960s folk revival minute artists are going on and on about brother Williams you know something is up. And that is exactly the point. He has been a long gone daddy on that long lonesome highway for over fifty years yet those well thought out ballads and ‘jump’ country swing tunes still sound pretty damn good.
Sure that is easy for me to say now. Although I was raised in the North my father was from the South, a hillbilly. This is music that I unconsciously heard at my father’s knee. But such tunes as Cold, Cold Heart and You’re Cheating Heart that he sung to me as a child were his kind of music. It was not until fairly recently that I got the message. His was the collective music memory of his post-World War II red scare night angst and alienation. In any case this greatest hits compilation gives as good a cross section of Hank’s work as you are liable to get with a mix of heart-felt ballads, some crossover tunes and, as seemingly inevitably in greatest hits packages, some novelty songs that could have justly been left out. I would note that not all of the many Williams compilations are equal either technically or musically. Here the technical quality is more than adequate and the producers seen to have put the best back-up band versions of his material that they could find. So stop Honky-Tonking and listening to whippoorwills and get this CD album.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Folk Blues Revival Night- The 1963 American Folk Blues Festival- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of folk blues legend Lonnie Johnson performing It’s Too Late To Cry.
CD Review
American Folk Blues Festival, various artists, Optimism Records, 1981
Let’s go by the numbers, the musical year numbers for my generation, the generation of ’68. We all came of musical age, more or less with Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee in the mid-1950s when the music was hot, we were naïve (or worst), and just let it go from there. After a musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s where we put up with some awful Bobby Vee/Fabian/Johnny Somebody stuff we stepped right into the hard rock and roll of the Rolling Stones and later groups that based their early work on the blues, the American etched blues. Go figure.
Yes, go figure. Go figure that much of early rock and roll was derived from the blues, city blues mainly, Chicago mainly, but those self-same city blues were derived from you guessed it, the old country blues from down in the Delta, the North Carolina Piedmont and the hills and hollows of Appalachia where all the hip Chicago cats (Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Well, etc.,) came from. All of this is just around about way to pay tribute to the roots of our generational genre.
But more than that it was a question of revivals, here the American Folk Blues Festival of 1963, which was indirectly brought about by our generation of ’68’s search for roots to explain our angst and alienation, including the search for authentic roots music. See once rock and roll hit our brains like a, well like an atomic bomb we lose sight of where the music came from. More importantly what happened to those who created the music that once was the staple of hip music. Yes, the boys (mainly) were still around in places like Maxwell Street in Chicago or down picking cotton in the Delta or holed up in some skid row hotel just waiting to be “discovered”.
That may not be the exact genesis of the folk blues revival when that movement hit high stride in the Newport folk festivals of the early 1960s reintroducing a young audience to the likes of Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Son House but it will do here. And of course the artists on this CD-the likes of Muddy Waters, Lonnie Johnson, Victoria Spivey (a personal favorite on this CD) and legendary producer and writer Willie Dixon. This is history, maybe not world-shaking history but a very important slice of the people’s history. Listen up.
CD Review
American Folk Blues Festival, various artists, Optimism Records, 1981
Let’s go by the numbers, the musical year numbers for my generation, the generation of ’68. We all came of musical age, more or less with Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee in the mid-1950s when the music was hot, we were naïve (or worst), and just let it go from there. After a musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s where we put up with some awful Bobby Vee/Fabian/Johnny Somebody stuff we stepped right into the hard rock and roll of the Rolling Stones and later groups that based their early work on the blues, the American etched blues. Go figure.
Yes, go figure. Go figure that much of early rock and roll was derived from the blues, city blues mainly, Chicago mainly, but those self-same city blues were derived from you guessed it, the old country blues from down in the Delta, the North Carolina Piedmont and the hills and hollows of Appalachia where all the hip Chicago cats (Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Well, etc.,) came from. All of this is just around about way to pay tribute to the roots of our generational genre.
But more than that it was a question of revivals, here the American Folk Blues Festival of 1963, which was indirectly brought about by our generation of ’68’s search for roots to explain our angst and alienation, including the search for authentic roots music. See once rock and roll hit our brains like a, well like an atomic bomb we lose sight of where the music came from. More importantly what happened to those who created the music that once was the staple of hip music. Yes, the boys (mainly) were still around in places like Maxwell Street in Chicago or down picking cotton in the Delta or holed up in some skid row hotel just waiting to be “discovered”.
That may not be the exact genesis of the folk blues revival when that movement hit high stride in the Newport folk festivals of the early 1960s reintroducing a young audience to the likes of Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Son House but it will do here. And of course the artists on this CD-the likes of Muddy Waters, Lonnie Johnson, Victoria Spivey (a personal favorite on this CD) and legendary producer and writer Willie Dixon. This is history, maybe not world-shaking history but a very important slice of the people’s history. Listen up.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Non-Essential Elvis- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing the essential That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.
The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007
There are a thousand, thousand ways to package the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many dud, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period.
Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.
From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. Th rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby-boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got a hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin, Your Right She Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.
The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007
There are a thousand, thousand ways to package the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many dud, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period.
Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.
From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. Th rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby-boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got a hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin, Your Right She Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Back From Edge City
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the
Youngbloods performing the rock classic, Get Together.
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In yellow brick school bus, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muse if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
Youngbloods performing the rock classic, Get Together.
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In yellow brick school bus, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muse if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
In The Time Of Motorcycle Boy- S.E. Hinton’s “Rumblefish
DVD Review
Rumblefish, starring Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper with Tom Waits, 1983
“The Wild Ones”, “Easy Rider” those are movies that come readily to mind when one thinks about the freedom of the road- riding high on a motorcycle, and raising hell with the squares come what may. Those were films of desperate alienation and the search for meaning in an earlier, seemingly simpler America. The truth of that last comment may not hold up under closer examination but at least in the realm of motorcycle movies that appears to be true as least as compared with the angst of the film version of S.E. Hinton’s classic tale of teenage alienation, “Rumblefish”.
Here Rusty James (Matt Dillon) is trouble personified, he just rolls into it like magic as he tries to make his way in a world that he did not create and that he barely tolerates. Needless to say this attitude doesn’t stop as the story unfolds and big brother, Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) comes back to town. From beginning to end Rusty is adrift and it is not at all clear whether he will “learn his lessons” about life, limits and staying the hell out of trouble. It is Hinton’s super-realism that drives the plot but it is director Coppola whose tight shots (using virtually all black and white, a nice touch), and seemingly surreal footage makes this thing visually interesting as well.
In the interest of full disclosure when I was a kid, a somewhat troubled kid to boot, for a minute, I was very, very interested in being a bad motorcycle boy. However, as I have written elsewhere, it seemed to me to take too much effort affect that stance. Reading books was easier for a runt like me. However, during that minute of interest I ran into more than one Rusty James and more than one who, one way or another did not make it.
Note: for those who are interested in seeing the early work of the likes of Nick Cage, Diane Lane, Vincent Spano and others this film is packed with budding stars. Oh, and for the old fogies, motorcycle movies actor personified- Dennis Hopper- is present and accounted for.
************
Lyrics to Jersey Girl (Tom Waits version) :
got no time for the corner boys, down in the street makin' all that noise,
don't want no whores on eighth avenue, cause tonight i'm gonna be with you.
cause tonight i'm gonna take that ride, across the river to the jersey side,
take my baby to the carnival, and i'll take you on all the rides, sing sha la
la la la la sha la la la.
down the shore everything's alright, you with your baby on a saturday night,
don't you know that all my dreams come true, when i'm walkin' down the street
with you, sing sha la la la la la sha la la la.
you know she thrills me with all her charms, when i'm wrapped up in my
baby's arms, my little angel gives me everything, i know someday that she'll
wear my ring.
so don't bother me cause i got no time, i'm on my way to see that girl of
mine, nothin' else matters in this whole wide world, when you're in love with
a jersey girl, sing sha la la la la la la.
and i call your name, i can't sleep at night, sha la la la la la la.
Rumblefish, starring Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper with Tom Waits, 1983
“The Wild Ones”, “Easy Rider” those are movies that come readily to mind when one thinks about the freedom of the road- riding high on a motorcycle, and raising hell with the squares come what may. Those were films of desperate alienation and the search for meaning in an earlier, seemingly simpler America. The truth of that last comment may not hold up under closer examination but at least in the realm of motorcycle movies that appears to be true as least as compared with the angst of the film version of S.E. Hinton’s classic tale of teenage alienation, “Rumblefish”.
Here Rusty James (Matt Dillon) is trouble personified, he just rolls into it like magic as he tries to make his way in a world that he did not create and that he barely tolerates. Needless to say this attitude doesn’t stop as the story unfolds and big brother, Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) comes back to town. From beginning to end Rusty is adrift and it is not at all clear whether he will “learn his lessons” about life, limits and staying the hell out of trouble. It is Hinton’s super-realism that drives the plot but it is director Coppola whose tight shots (using virtually all black and white, a nice touch), and seemingly surreal footage makes this thing visually interesting as well.
In the interest of full disclosure when I was a kid, a somewhat troubled kid to boot, for a minute, I was very, very interested in being a bad motorcycle boy. However, as I have written elsewhere, it seemed to me to take too much effort affect that stance. Reading books was easier for a runt like me. However, during that minute of interest I ran into more than one Rusty James and more than one who, one way or another did not make it.
Note: for those who are interested in seeing the early work of the likes of Nick Cage, Diane Lane, Vincent Spano and others this film is packed with budding stars. Oh, and for the old fogies, motorcycle movies actor personified- Dennis Hopper- is present and accounted for.
************
Lyrics to Jersey Girl (Tom Waits version) :
got no time for the corner boys, down in the street makin' all that noise,
don't want no whores on eighth avenue, cause tonight i'm gonna be with you.
cause tonight i'm gonna take that ride, across the river to the jersey side,
take my baby to the carnival, and i'll take you on all the rides, sing sha la
la la la la sha la la la.
down the shore everything's alright, you with your baby on a saturday night,
don't you know that all my dreams come true, when i'm walkin' down the street
with you, sing sha la la la la la sha la la la.
you know she thrills me with all her charms, when i'm wrapped up in my
baby's arms, my little angel gives me everything, i know someday that she'll
wear my ring.
so don't bother me cause i got no time, i'm on my way to see that girl of
mine, nothin' else matters in this whole wide world, when you're in love with
a jersey girl, sing sha la la la la la la.
and i call your name, i can't sleep at night, sha la la la la la la.
Poet’s Corner- Weary Blues, Indeed- The Poetry Of Langston Hughes
Book Review
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes, drawings by E. McKnight Kauffer, Alfred F. Knopf, New York, 1977
Do you want to hear the blues? Do you want to know what the blues are? Then listen to the songs of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Charley Patton, Son House and that whole crowd that gave us the classic plantation country-driven blues back in the days. And, read the poetry of the artist under review here, Langston Hughes. Oh sure, Brother Hughes has prettified the expressions and the form (although he has also mastered the double-entente, especially in sexual matters, that the previously mentioned artists provided in plenty) for a more upscale, literary audience, but he KNOWS the blues. Just check out the section of poems here under the title “Shadow Of The Blues”.
Unquestionably, old Langston had his ear to the ground for any and all rumbles coming out of the black community during, roughly, the middle third of the 20th century. From the fearsome, no existence Jim Crow South that blacks were leaving in droves to the semi-Jim Crow North where the complexities of modern life still left the black man and woman down at the bottom of the heap Hughes gives voice to their frustrations and dreams, deferred or otherwise. Despair, luck, no luck, hoping for any luck, once in a while luck. Life on the edge, life for a minute on top, life filled with bumps and bruises. It is all there in this little sampler of his word.
Of course, not all is unrelenting struggle. And Hughes has a high old time with the doings, nothing doings, the to-ing and fro-ing of a Harlem Saturday night (and Sunday morning)…leading to those old Monday blues as developed in the section entitled “After Hours”. Here one can hear the post-World War II change in tempo, as well, with the shift in voice from those old time country-driven blues to the be-bop jazz sound of the 1950s.
That, in the end, well almost the end, is the great sense that Hughes possessed and why he still speaks to those of us who are interested in that period of American life, life as led by the working classes and the black working class in particular. But this reviewer, whose book reviews in this space tend to have some political edge to them, would be remiss if he didn’t point out here, as he has in the past, his favorite image of Langston Hughes. That was of a photograph of him taken as the editor, during the Spanish Civil War, of the newspaper of the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade, that band of “premature anti-fascists”, organized by the Communist International, who volunteered to fight for the Republican side in Spain. That picture tells more than anything tells the why of the strong effect of Langston Hughes’ poetry on me and why he is rightly honored every February during Black History Month.
**********
The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes, drawings by E. McKnight Kauffer, Alfred F. Knopf, New York, 1977
Do you want to hear the blues? Do you want to know what the blues are? Then listen to the songs of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Charley Patton, Son House and that whole crowd that gave us the classic plantation country-driven blues back in the days. And, read the poetry of the artist under review here, Langston Hughes. Oh sure, Brother Hughes has prettified the expressions and the form (although he has also mastered the double-entente, especially in sexual matters, that the previously mentioned artists provided in plenty) for a more upscale, literary audience, but he KNOWS the blues. Just check out the section of poems here under the title “Shadow Of The Blues”.
Unquestionably, old Langston had his ear to the ground for any and all rumbles coming out of the black community during, roughly, the middle third of the 20th century. From the fearsome, no existence Jim Crow South that blacks were leaving in droves to the semi-Jim Crow North where the complexities of modern life still left the black man and woman down at the bottom of the heap Hughes gives voice to their frustrations and dreams, deferred or otherwise. Despair, luck, no luck, hoping for any luck, once in a while luck. Life on the edge, life for a minute on top, life filled with bumps and bruises. It is all there in this little sampler of his word.
Of course, not all is unrelenting struggle. And Hughes has a high old time with the doings, nothing doings, the to-ing and fro-ing of a Harlem Saturday night (and Sunday morning)…leading to those old Monday blues as developed in the section entitled “After Hours”. Here one can hear the post-World War II change in tempo, as well, with the shift in voice from those old time country-driven blues to the be-bop jazz sound of the 1950s.
That, in the end, well almost the end, is the great sense that Hughes possessed and why he still speaks to those of us who are interested in that period of American life, life as led by the working classes and the black working class in particular. But this reviewer, whose book reviews in this space tend to have some political edge to them, would be remiss if he didn’t point out here, as he has in the past, his favorite image of Langston Hughes. That was of a photograph of him taken as the editor, during the Spanish Civil War, of the newspaper of the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade, that band of “premature anti-fascists”, organized by the Communist International, who volunteered to fight for the Republican side in Spain. That picture tells more than anything tells the why of the strong effect of Langston Hughes’ poetry on me and why he is rightly honored every February during Black History Month.
**********
The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Non-Essential Elvis- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing the essential That’s When Your Heartache Begins.
The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007
There are a thousand, thousand ways to package, Elvis Presley the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many duds, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period). Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.
From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. The rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartache Begins, Your Right She’s Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.
The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007
There are a thousand, thousand ways to package, Elvis Presley the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many duds, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period). Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.
From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. The rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartache Begins, Your Right She’s Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
In Search Of Lost Time- Short Course…
....with apologies to the great early 20th century modernist French writer Marcel Proust whose most famous (and massive) work I am stealing the title from in this little sketch. Apparently I will steal any literary tidbit, from any source and from any time, just to round out some little word trifle of mine. I had also better explain, and explain right now, before some besotted, hare-brained, blue pencil-at-the-ever-ready school of novel deconstruction devotee, probably tragically childhood’d, post-modern literary-type jumps on me I know, and I know damn well, that an alternative translation for the title of Proust's six volume work is Remembrances Of Things Past. But isn't this In Search Of Lost Time a better title for the needs of this space. For wondering where it went and why this or that did or did not occur when we had the chance to do sometime, some big and courageous about it, or just do the right thing. In any case I promise not to go on and on about French pastry at teatime (which, by the way, brother Proust did do, for about sixty pages in the volume Swann’s Way, so there is the trade-off, the short course trade off. Okay?).
*********
As I, clumsily, pick up, or try to pick up some precious dirt to rub between my fingers from the oval in front of the old high school, blessed and beatified, not beat beatified but ancient memory beatified, North Adamsville High, on this bedraggled, prickly frigid, knife-like wind- gusting in my face, not fit for man nor beast, kind of a winter’s day as the shortly-setting sun begins it descent into night, I really do wonder what demons, what cast-out-of-the-inner-sanctums-of-hell demons, have driven me here, here to this worn-out patch of an oval, after so many years of statutory neglect. Not legally culpable neglect, maybe, but memory neglect, proper memory neglect.
Moreover, here I stand picking up dirt from an oval that I have not walked on, much less picked up gravel from, in over forty-five years, although I have logged many a mile around a larger version (I believe) of this oval either practicing during track or cross country season, or, and this may jog demographic brethren reader memory, running the 600 yard dash as part of the old time President’s National Physical Fitness Test. Something out of the Eisenhower red scare, cold war be-bop echo night. Yes, I thought mention of that event might bring ring a bell, a bell of anguish for some, as they puffed and chortled their way to the finish line in their tennis shoes, or whatever knee-busting sneakers we wore in those days, in order to be cool. Maybe even Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s black of course. Was the any other color? Kind of like today.
In any case, here I stand, and now you know, or have a pretty good idea where I am. What you do not know, at least do not know yet, is that I am not here, rubbing some funky old town dirt through my fingers on a cold winter’s day just for the joy of it. For raider red oneness, either. Or some such old man’s quirks. Rather, I am here, and you can start calling 911 right now if you like, to evoke, evoke mind you so there is no fooling around about it, the spirit, the long past spirit of days gone by at the high school. The spirit of the time of my time. Probably not since old Tommy Wollaston went looking for a suitable site for his maypole debaucheries, and stumbled on Merrymount has this town seen such a land grab, in a manner of speaking. See, what I am thinking is that some dirt-rubbing, a little kabala-like, or druid-like, or keltic-like, or Navajo-like, or something-like, dirt-rubbing will give me a jump start on this “voyage”.
I will confess to this much , as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that hard-crusted, family history-rooted, novena-saying, stations of the cross walking, ceremonial high mass incense-driven, mortal sin-fearing, you’ll-get-your-reward in-the-next-life-so-don’t-expect-it-here, buster, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to North Adamsville High School did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years before my mother, Doris Margaret Markin (nee Riley), Class of 1943, had passed away.
For a good part of her life my mother lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Adamsville. To my, and her, roots. In part, at least, for the feel of roots, but also to figure out, or try to figure out for the 584th time, what went wrong in our old, broken down, couldn't catch a break, working poor, North Adamsville family. As part of that attempted figuring out, as I walked up Main Street from Chestnut Street (the site of the old, woe-begotten, seen better days, ram-shackled homestead still, barely, standing guard above part of the Newport Avenue by-pass) and swung down East Street I passed by, intentionally passed by, the old high school. And here I stand, oval-stuck, dirty-handed, bundled up not to well against the day’s winds, or against the fickle, shifting winds of time either, to tell my tale.
Now I will also confess, but without the long strung-out stuff that I threw in above about my Catholic upbringing, that in figuring out why ill winds blew across my family’s fate I was unsuccessful. Why, after all, should the 584th time bring some sense of enlightenment, or of inner peace, when the other five hundred, more or less, did not do so. What this sojourn did do, however, was rekindle, and rekindle strongly, memories of sittings, without number, on the steps of the high school in the old days, in the high school days, and think about the future, if there was going to be a future.
I tried to write this story, or a part of it, a couple of years ago so a little background is in order so the thing makes some sense to others. That now seemingly benighted story, originally simply titled,A Walk Down “Dream” Street, started life by merely asking an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 about whether their high school dreams had come true or not, as least for those who had thought about the issue, on the class website. I had “discovered” the site that year after having been pushed and pulled in ways that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Bradley. I posed the question this way there:
“Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row, of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes, of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless. I hope, I fervently hope, that they were the former."
Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for me to pose it that way, because those old, “real”, august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.
Especially in summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo ,ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, rockin’ daddy, max daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in ignition-turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Adamsville Beach night. Do I need to draw you the big picture, I think not.
Or for the faint-hearted, or the merely good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, no million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, I would not have been choosy), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” of ours, Bill and me, mainly consisted.
Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Adamsville -sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing (small or large take your pick on dream size), even breathe-stealing, North Adamsville. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).
We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember some of the more personal aspects of the content of Bill's dreams. If you want the “skinny” on Bill’s dreams he’s around, ask him. However, a lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.
And, maybe, on my part, I also expressed some sketchily-drawn utopian social dreams, some fellaheen justice dreams. Oh, you don’t know that word, "fellaheen," perhaps. To have oneness justice for the "wanters" of the world; for the “no got”, not the other kind, the greed-driven kind, want; fear-driven, fear to go left or right or to put two feet in front of you want; for the misjudgment-making from having too little of this world's goods want; for all the cramp-spaced in this great big planet want; for the too many people to a room, one disheveled sink, one stinking toilet want: for the bleary-eyed pee-smelled, dawn bus station paper bag holding all your possessions want; for the two and three decker house no space, asphalted, no green between want; for the reduced to looking through rubbish barrels, or worst, want; for the K-Mart, Wal-mart, Adamsville Square Bargain-Center basement outfitted out of fashion, no fashionsista, no way, want,; for the got to have some Woolworth’s five and dime trinket to make a small brightness want; for the lottery, keno, bingo, bango, mega-bongo waiting for the ship to come in pay-out want; for the whiskey soaked, wine-dabbled, or name your poison, want; for the buddy, can you spare a dime want; for the cop hey you, keeping moving you can’t stay here, want; for the cigarette butt strewn pick-up streets want; for fixing, or fixings, to die want; and, for just plain, ordinary, everyday, non-descript want, the want from whence I, and, maybe, you came.
This is the sing-song of the fellaheen, the life-cycle of the fellaheen, the red masque dance of the fellaheen; the dance of the working, or not so working, poor, the day time dance. The dance that I will dance, at least it looks that way, until I draw my last breathe. For the night time, the "takers", stealth thief, jack-roller, pimp daddy, sweet-dark covering abandoned back alley streets, watch out behind you (and in front too), sweated, be-fogged, lumpen fellaheen night, the no justice wanted or given night, you will have to look to the French writers Genet, Celine, or one of those rough boys, the takers have no need of my breathe, or my tears. I have had my say now, and it was worth standing, as the night devours the sun, at this damn wintry oval to say it, alright.
*********
As I, clumsily, pick up, or try to pick up some precious dirt to rub between my fingers from the oval in front of the old high school, blessed and beatified, not beat beatified but ancient memory beatified, North Adamsville High, on this bedraggled, prickly frigid, knife-like wind- gusting in my face, not fit for man nor beast, kind of a winter’s day as the shortly-setting sun begins it descent into night, I really do wonder what demons, what cast-out-of-the-inner-sanctums-of-hell demons, have driven me here, here to this worn-out patch of an oval, after so many years of statutory neglect. Not legally culpable neglect, maybe, but memory neglect, proper memory neglect.
Moreover, here I stand picking up dirt from an oval that I have not walked on, much less picked up gravel from, in over forty-five years, although I have logged many a mile around a larger version (I believe) of this oval either practicing during track or cross country season, or, and this may jog demographic brethren reader memory, running the 600 yard dash as part of the old time President’s National Physical Fitness Test. Something out of the Eisenhower red scare, cold war be-bop echo night. Yes, I thought mention of that event might bring ring a bell, a bell of anguish for some, as they puffed and chortled their way to the finish line in their tennis shoes, or whatever knee-busting sneakers we wore in those days, in order to be cool. Maybe even Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s black of course. Was the any other color? Kind of like today.
In any case, here I stand, and now you know, or have a pretty good idea where I am. What you do not know, at least do not know yet, is that I am not here, rubbing some funky old town dirt through my fingers on a cold winter’s day just for the joy of it. For raider red oneness, either. Or some such old man’s quirks. Rather, I am here, and you can start calling 911 right now if you like, to evoke, evoke mind you so there is no fooling around about it, the spirit, the long past spirit of days gone by at the high school. The spirit of the time of my time. Probably not since old Tommy Wollaston went looking for a suitable site for his maypole debaucheries, and stumbled on Merrymount has this town seen such a land grab, in a manner of speaking. See, what I am thinking is that some dirt-rubbing, a little kabala-like, or druid-like, or keltic-like, or Navajo-like, or something-like, dirt-rubbing will give me a jump start on this “voyage”.
I will confess to this much , as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that hard-crusted, family history-rooted, novena-saying, stations of the cross walking, ceremonial high mass incense-driven, mortal sin-fearing, you’ll-get-your-reward in-the-next-life-so-don’t-expect-it-here, buster, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to North Adamsville High School did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of years before my mother, Doris Margaret Markin (nee Riley), Class of 1943, had passed away.
For a good part of her life my mother lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Adamsville. To my, and her, roots. In part, at least, for the feel of roots, but also to figure out, or try to figure out for the 584th time, what went wrong in our old, broken down, couldn't catch a break, working poor, North Adamsville family. As part of that attempted figuring out, as I walked up Main Street from Chestnut Street (the site of the old, woe-begotten, seen better days, ram-shackled homestead still, barely, standing guard above part of the Newport Avenue by-pass) and swung down East Street I passed by, intentionally passed by, the old high school. And here I stand, oval-stuck, dirty-handed, bundled up not to well against the day’s winds, or against the fickle, shifting winds of time either, to tell my tale.
Now I will also confess, but without the long strung-out stuff that I threw in above about my Catholic upbringing, that in figuring out why ill winds blew across my family’s fate I was unsuccessful. Why, after all, should the 584th time bring some sense of enlightenment, or of inner peace, when the other five hundred, more or less, did not do so. What this sojourn did do, however, was rekindle, and rekindle strongly, memories of sittings, without number, on the steps of the high school in the old days, in the high school days, and think about the future, if there was going to be a future.
I tried to write this story, or a part of it, a couple of years ago so a little background is in order so the thing makes some sense to others. That now seemingly benighted story, originally simply titled,A Walk Down “Dream” Street, started life by merely asking an equally simple question posed to fellow classmates in the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 about whether their high school dreams had come true or not, as least for those who had thought about the issue, on the class website. I had “discovered” the site that year after having been pushed and pulled in ways that drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Bradley. I posed the question this way there:
“Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row, of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes, of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless. I hope, I fervently hope, that they were the former."
Naturally, the question was posed in its particular form, or so it seemed natural at the time for me to pose it that way, because those old, “real”, august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.
Especially in summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo ,ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, rockin’ daddy, max daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in ignition-turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Adamsville Beach night. Do I need to draw you the big picture, I think not.
Or for the faint-hearted, or the merely good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-in, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, no million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, I would not have been choosy), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” of ours, Bill and me, mainly consisted.
Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Adamsville -sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing (small or large take your pick on dream size), even breathe-stealing, North Adamsville. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).
We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember some of the more personal aspects of the content of Bill's dreams. If you want the “skinny” on Bill’s dreams he’s around, ask him. However, a lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.
And, maybe, on my part, I also expressed some sketchily-drawn utopian social dreams, some fellaheen justice dreams. Oh, you don’t know that word, "fellaheen," perhaps. To have oneness justice for the "wanters" of the world; for the “no got”, not the other kind, the greed-driven kind, want; fear-driven, fear to go left or right or to put two feet in front of you want; for the misjudgment-making from having too little of this world's goods want; for all the cramp-spaced in this great big planet want; for the too many people to a room, one disheveled sink, one stinking toilet want: for the bleary-eyed pee-smelled, dawn bus station paper bag holding all your possessions want; for the two and three decker house no space, asphalted, no green between want; for the reduced to looking through rubbish barrels, or worst, want; for the K-Mart, Wal-mart, Adamsville Square Bargain-Center basement outfitted out of fashion, no fashionsista, no way, want,; for the got to have some Woolworth’s five and dime trinket to make a small brightness want; for the lottery, keno, bingo, bango, mega-bongo waiting for the ship to come in pay-out want; for the whiskey soaked, wine-dabbled, or name your poison, want; for the buddy, can you spare a dime want; for the cop hey you, keeping moving you can’t stay here, want; for the cigarette butt strewn pick-up streets want; for fixing, or fixings, to die want; and, for just plain, ordinary, everyday, non-descript want, the want from whence I, and, maybe, you came.
This is the sing-song of the fellaheen, the life-cycle of the fellaheen, the red masque dance of the fellaheen; the dance of the working, or not so working, poor, the day time dance. The dance that I will dance, at least it looks that way, until I draw my last breathe. For the night time, the "takers", stealth thief, jack-roller, pimp daddy, sweet-dark covering abandoned back alley streets, watch out behind you (and in front too), sweated, be-fogged, lumpen fellaheen night, the no justice wanted or given night, you will have to look to the French writers Genet, Celine, or one of those rough boys, the takers have no need of my breathe, or my tears. I have had my say now, and it was worth standing, as the night devours the sun, at this damn wintry oval to say it, alright.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Back From Edge City
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Youngbloods performing the rock classic, Get Together.
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muses if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
HIPPIES, be bop nights, Generation of '68,
Classic Rock : 1969: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Doors/Youngbloods stripped down, just slightly behind the note, waiting to explode, band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.
Everybody had a million stories about Captain Crunch (real name, Steven Stein, Columbia Class of 1958). Ya, Captain Crunch the “owner” of the merry prankster, magical mystery tour, yellow brick road bus that you were “on” or “off” from early 1966 to now, the summer of 1969 now. One story, not the story that I am going to tell you but another story, had it that the Captain had gotten the dough for the bus from his "take" in some ghost of Pancho Villa drug deal down Sonora, Mexico way and that when his friend Ken Kesey, the author, outfitted his Further In, the Captain decided to do the same. He named his bus, the one that I am sitting in right now The Sphinx. Nice name, right, just like the Captain, except he was a guy everybody went to, and I mean everybody including me, when you needed to try to figure something out. Like how to figure the universe and your place in it, or how to open a can of beans. Everything except how to run the Sphinx, which was strictly Ramrod Ricks’ job and nobody messed with him when the Sphinx was involved.
Oh ya, and except when the name Mustang Sally came up (real name Susan Sharpe, Michigan, 1959) the Captain’s "main squeeze" girlfriend. Except when she wanted to be squeezed by someone else. Then the Captain saw red, or some hot color but that is not what I want to talk about because almost every guy, including me, has had a blind spot for some woman since about the time old-time Adam and Eve were playing house.
So this story is not going to be about dames, or about guys getting hung up hard on them since that is not a subject the Captain handled too well. What he did handle well, and nobody questioned that, was helping you figure your place in the non-girl obsessed universe. And his most famous success, although he might not call it that, was with Jimmy Morse, you know, the lead vocalist for the Blood Brotherhood. And although it didn’t have anything to with girls, women I mean, a woman was involved at the start, Mustang Sally, of course.
Sally had a thing for young musicians so once the Captain organized the bus back in ’66 and Sally was the first who came on board she was always, Captain grinding his teeth, on the look-out for such guys. So down in the desert, the high desert just east of Joshua Tree, she “found” Jimmy living among the rocks with some Indians, some renegade tribal warrior band of Hopis, complete with their own shamanic medicine man.
See, Jimmy knew he had the music down, the beat, the rock beat like a million other guys who came of age with Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck in that blazing 1950s be-bop rock night. What he was missing, knew he was missing, knew he wanted to be not missing was that cosmic karma thing that separated you out from some so-so- joe be-bopper. Ya, Jimmy had it bad, star-lust bad. So there he was among the rocks. Sally, and I know this because she told me one night when we talking about past lovers and were cutting up old torches in general, went for Jimmy real quickly. But it was also over really quickly she said, like some fade-out burning ember charcoal thing.
But that is where the Captain took over. The Captain, as much as he hated Sally’s hankerings, was a serious musical guy. Music was hanging over the bus all the time. So while Sally wanted their bodies the Captain wanted their muses, or to be their muses if a guy can be such a thing. So when Jimmy came on the bus, and he stayed for about six months, a time before I got on the bus, the Captain kept pushing him to find his inner spirit. And that inner spirit was found, I guess, through many acid trips. But not just that though. See the Captain kept pushing Jimmy toward that shamanic medicine-man-cure-the-wounded-earth-thing that he had started to get into with the Hopis. So when you see Jimmy whirling dervish, trance-like, evoking strange (strange to us) sounds just remember who “taught” him that.
HIPPIES, be bop nights, Generation of '68,
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Not Ready For Prime Time AARP Songs- The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:
Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles
When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine
If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Beatles, Class of 1964, counterculture, generation of '68, Rock and Roll, The Rolling Stones
88888888888
Ancient dreams, dreamed.
Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.
Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment project hang your hat dwelling, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that older brother, goes off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time of his time, in this cold war dust particles in air night.
A cloudless day, a cloudless Korean War day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too have been to foreign places, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.
Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb unnamed shelter blast fears, named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hatred stalinite jews killed they killed our catholic lord and what did they do anyway fears against the glass glistening flag-pole rattling dark school yard night, alone, and, and, alone avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in barely marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards.
Endless walks, endless sea street seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat to make hard the making way for the uptown drug store, Rexall’s drug store, heist stolen valentine, ribbon and bow valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet.
Walks, endless waiting bus stop non-stop walks, up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one lane snow-drift hassles, pass trees are green, coded, endless trees are green secret-coded waiting, waiting against infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times gone now, for one look one look that would elude him, elude him forever such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school, man), handy man, breatheless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name brunette. That will come, that will come.
City square standing, hunched, hated, low-head hated, waiting, standing, going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dream make no more sense that this bodily theft.
A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifters petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, hard against the named seas, against those changes that kind of hit one side ways all at once like some mack the knife devilish thing
Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later though, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pasty crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-boring but not for me, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path
Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Who would have figured that one.
Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets . Diana, blonde Diana cashmere-sweatered,tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of coded submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than dream walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no know even forty years later. Wow.
Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small filtered, natch, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.
Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then. Who could have know that tet, lyndon, bobby, Hubert, trickey dick war-circus then.
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.
The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not ancient robert frost to guide you.. Just look at blooded Kent State, or better blooded Jackson State. Christ.
Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.
Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam trickey dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.
He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.
Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.
A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right against the oil-beggered time, right.
White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.
Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.
One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed tea party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:
Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles
When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine
If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Beatles, Class of 1964, counterculture, generation of '68, Rock and Roll, The Rolling Stones
88888888888
Ancient dreams, dreamed.
Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.
Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment project hang your hat dwelling, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that older brother, goes off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time of his time, in this cold war dust particles in air night.
A cloudless day, a cloudless Korean War day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too have been to foreign places, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.
Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb unnamed shelter blast fears, named Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hatred stalinite jews killed they killed our catholic lord and what did they do anyway fears against the glass glistening flag-pole rattling dark school yard night, alone, and, and, alone avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in barely marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards.
Endless walks, endless sea street seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat to make hard the making way for the uptown drug store, Rexall’s drug store, heist stolen valentine, ribbon and bow valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet.
Walks, endless waiting bus stop non-stop walks, up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one lane snow-drift hassles, pass trees are green, coded, endless trees are green secret-coded waiting, waiting against infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times gone now, for one look one look that would elude him, elude him forever such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school, man), handy man, breatheless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name brunette. That will come, that will come.
City square standing, hunched, hated, low-head hated, waiting, standing, going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dream make no more sense that this bodily theft.
A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifters petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, hard against the named seas, against those changes that kind of hit one side ways all at once like some mack the knife devilish thing
Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later though, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pasty crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-boring but not for me, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path
Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Who would have figured that one.
Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets . Diana, blonde Diana cashmere-sweatered,tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of coded submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than dream walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no know even forty years later. Wow.
Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small filtered, natch, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.
Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then. Who could have know that tet, lyndon, bobby, Hubert, trickey dick war-circus then.
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.
The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not ancient robert frost to guide you.. Just look at blooded Kent State, or better blooded Jackson State. Christ.
Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.
Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam trickey dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.
He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.
Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.
A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right against the oil-beggered time, right.
White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.
Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.
One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed tea party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
As The 2012 Anti-War Season Gets Under Way- A Vietnam War Flashback Moment-
Markin comment:
Private First Class, United States Army (RA), Jimmy Jacks would have been sixty-seven, or perhaps, sixty-eight years old this fall. You do not see the point of bringing up this unknown stranger’s name? Well, here is another clue Jimmy J. (his local moniker), a few years older than I am, was the first kid from my growing-up working class neighborhood to see service in Vietnam. Still not enough? Then take a little trip down to Washington, D.C. and you will find his “fame” listed on that surreally and serenely beautiful black stone work dedicated to the fallen of that war. Yes, I thought that might get your attention. This is Jimmy J’s story, but is also my story around the edges, and come to think of it, yours too, if you want end these damn imperial military adventures that the American state insists on dragging its youth, and in disproportionate numbers its working-class and minority youth, into.
My first dozen years or so of life were spend in a public housing project (“the projects” that every self-respecting mother warned their sons and daughters drifting down into if they didn’t shape up like a previous generation spoke of “the county farm,” the place of dreamless dreams), a place where the desperately poor of the day, or the otherwise displaced and forgotten of the go-go American economy of the 1950s were shunted off to. So you can say I knew Jimmy Jacks all my life, really, although I did not physically meet him until we moved across town to my coming-of-age working class neighborhood, a neighborhood whose ethos was in no way superior to “the projects” except that, unlike the four to a box project, the tiny houses were, for the most part, single dwellings. And I really only knew Jimmy through my older brother, Prescott (street name, The Gat Kid, ya real original I know) which is to say not very well at all as I was, okay, just a wet-behind-the-ears kid. And Jimmy was the king hellion of the neighborhood and dragged my brother, and the brothers of others, in tow. So this ain’t going to be a story of moral uplift, which is for sure.
See Jimmy, when he was around the old neighborhood, was the very large target, that is to say the number one target, of the “shawlies.” Shawlies? In our mainly Irish working-class neighborhood, although I confess I only heard it used by more recent immigrants just off the boat (or plane) from the old country or older ones who refused to become vanilla Americans, it signified that circle, council if you will, unofficial of course, of mothers, young and old, who set the moral tone, at least the public moral tone, of the place. In short, the gossips, old hags, and rumor-mongers (I am being polite here) who had their own devious grapevine, and more importantly, were a constant source of information about you to your own mother. Usually nothing good either.
And what conduct of Jimmy’s would bring him to the notice of that august body, other than the obvious one of corrupting the morals of the youth? Hey, as you will see this guy was no Socrates. Jimmy, it seems, or it seems to me now, was spoon-fed on old time gangster movies (and The Gat Kid too). No, not the George Raft-Jimmy Cagney-Edward G. Robinson vehicles of the 1930s in which the bad guy pepper-sprayed every one with his trusty machine-gun, everyone except dear old Ma (whom he would not touch a hair of the head of, and you better not either if you know what’s good for you). No, Jimmy was into being a proto-typical "wild one" a la Marlon Brando or the bad guys in Rebel Without A Cause. The ones who tried to cut James Dean up, cut him up bad. Without putting too fine a spin on it, he played out some kind of existential anti-hero. Something Jean Genet might have worked out character sketch on for one of his sullen plays.
So who was this Jimmy? No a bad looking guy with slicked-back black hair, long sideburns (even after they were early 1960s fashion-faded), sh-t kicking engineer boots, dungarees (before they were fashionista), tied together by a thick leather belt (which did service for other purposes, other better left unsaid purposes), tee-shirt in season (and out). Always smoking a cigarette (or getting ready too, and always unfiltered, natch, maybe Camels or Luckies, I really don’t remember), always carrying himself with a little swagger and lot of attitude. Oh ya, he was a tenth-grade high school drop-out (not really that unusual in those days in that neighborhood, drop-outs were a dime a dozen, including my own brother). And here is the draw, the final draw that drew slightly younger guys to him (and older girls, as well) he always had wheels, great wheels, wheels to die for, and kept them up to the nth degree. Employment (in order to get and keep those wheels, jesus, don't you guys know nothing): unknown
That last point is really the start of this story about how the ethos of the working poor and the demands of the American military linked up. Jimmy (and his associates, including my drop-out brother, and for a minute my younger brother, called “Stup” by Jimmy and The Gat Kid too, as look-out) was constantly the subject of local police attention. Every known offense, real or made-up, wound up at his door. Some of it rightly so, as it turned out. I might add that the irate shawlies had plenty to do with this police activity. And also plenty to do with setting up Jimmy as the prime example of what not to emulate. Well, as anyone, including me, in own my very small-bore, short-lived criminal career can testify to when you tempt the fates long enough those damn sisters will come out and get you. Get you bad. The long and short of it is was that eventually Jimmy’s luck ran out. The year that his luck ran out was 1963, not a good year to be nineteen and have your luck run out if there ever is one.
Nowadays we talk, and rightly so, about an “economic draft” that forces many working class and minority youth to sign up for military service even in ill-fated war time because they are up against the wall in their personal lives and the military offers some security. I want to talk about this “economic draft” in a different sense although I know that the same thing probably still goes on today. I just don’t have the data or anecdotal evidence to present on the issue. Jimmy, however, was a prima facie case of what I am talking about. When Jimmy’s luck ran out (and my brother’s as well) he faced several counts of armed robbery, and other assorted minor crimes. When he went to court he thus faced many years (I don’t remember his total, my brother’s was nine, I think). The judge, in his infinite mercy offered this deal- Cedar Junction (not the name then, but the state prison nevertheless) or the Army. Jimmy, fatefully, opted for the Army (as did my brother).
Here is the part that is important to understand though. Jimmy (and to a lesser extent, my brother), the minute that he opted for military service went from being “bum-of-the-month” in shawlie circles to a fine, if misunderstood and slightly errant, boy. Even the oldest hags had twinkles in their eyes for old Jimmy. Of course, his mother also came into high regard for raising such a fine boy committed to serve his country (and his god, and just so you understand that was a very Catholic god, don’t forget that part). Once in uniform, an airborne ranger’s uniform, and more importantly, once he had orders for Vietnam, then an exotic if dangerous place and a name little understood other than the United States was committed to its defense against the atheistic communists, his stock rose even further. I was not around the old neighborhood when the news of his death was announced in 1965 but my parents told me later than his funeral was treated something like a state function. The shawlies, weeping and moaning like their own sons were lost, in any case were out in force. Jimmy J, a belated R.I.P.
Private First Class, United States Army (RA), Jimmy Jacks would have been sixty-seven, or perhaps, sixty-eight years old this fall. You do not see the point of bringing up this unknown stranger’s name? Well, here is another clue Jimmy J. (his local moniker), a few years older than I am, was the first kid from my growing-up working class neighborhood to see service in Vietnam. Still not enough? Then take a little trip down to Washington, D.C. and you will find his “fame” listed on that surreally and serenely beautiful black stone work dedicated to the fallen of that war. Yes, I thought that might get your attention. This is Jimmy J’s story, but is also my story around the edges, and come to think of it, yours too, if you want end these damn imperial military adventures that the American state insists on dragging its youth, and in disproportionate numbers its working-class and minority youth, into.
My first dozen years or so of life were spend in a public housing project (“the projects” that every self-respecting mother warned their sons and daughters drifting down into if they didn’t shape up like a previous generation spoke of “the county farm,” the place of dreamless dreams), a place where the desperately poor of the day, or the otherwise displaced and forgotten of the go-go American economy of the 1950s were shunted off to. So you can say I knew Jimmy Jacks all my life, really, although I did not physically meet him until we moved across town to my coming-of-age working class neighborhood, a neighborhood whose ethos was in no way superior to “the projects” except that, unlike the four to a box project, the tiny houses were, for the most part, single dwellings. And I really only knew Jimmy through my older brother, Prescott (street name, The Gat Kid, ya real original I know) which is to say not very well at all as I was, okay, just a wet-behind-the-ears kid. And Jimmy was the king hellion of the neighborhood and dragged my brother, and the brothers of others, in tow. So this ain’t going to be a story of moral uplift, which is for sure.
See Jimmy, when he was around the old neighborhood, was the very large target, that is to say the number one target, of the “shawlies.” Shawlies? In our mainly Irish working-class neighborhood, although I confess I only heard it used by more recent immigrants just off the boat (or plane) from the old country or older ones who refused to become vanilla Americans, it signified that circle, council if you will, unofficial of course, of mothers, young and old, who set the moral tone, at least the public moral tone, of the place. In short, the gossips, old hags, and rumor-mongers (I am being polite here) who had their own devious grapevine, and more importantly, were a constant source of information about you to your own mother. Usually nothing good either.
And what conduct of Jimmy’s would bring him to the notice of that august body, other than the obvious one of corrupting the morals of the youth? Hey, as you will see this guy was no Socrates. Jimmy, it seems, or it seems to me now, was spoon-fed on old time gangster movies (and The Gat Kid too). No, not the George Raft-Jimmy Cagney-Edward G. Robinson vehicles of the 1930s in which the bad guy pepper-sprayed every one with his trusty machine-gun, everyone except dear old Ma (whom he would not touch a hair of the head of, and you better not either if you know what’s good for you). No, Jimmy was into being a proto-typical "wild one" a la Marlon Brando or the bad guys in Rebel Without A Cause. The ones who tried to cut James Dean up, cut him up bad. Without putting too fine a spin on it, he played out some kind of existential anti-hero. Something Jean Genet might have worked out character sketch on for one of his sullen plays.
So who was this Jimmy? No a bad looking guy with slicked-back black hair, long sideburns (even after they were early 1960s fashion-faded), sh-t kicking engineer boots, dungarees (before they were fashionista), tied together by a thick leather belt (which did service for other purposes, other better left unsaid purposes), tee-shirt in season (and out). Always smoking a cigarette (or getting ready too, and always unfiltered, natch, maybe Camels or Luckies, I really don’t remember), always carrying himself with a little swagger and lot of attitude. Oh ya, he was a tenth-grade high school drop-out (not really that unusual in those days in that neighborhood, drop-outs were a dime a dozen, including my own brother). And here is the draw, the final draw that drew slightly younger guys to him (and older girls, as well) he always had wheels, great wheels, wheels to die for, and kept them up to the nth degree. Employment (in order to get and keep those wheels, jesus, don't you guys know nothing): unknown
That last point is really the start of this story about how the ethos of the working poor and the demands of the American military linked up. Jimmy (and his associates, including my drop-out brother, and for a minute my younger brother, called “Stup” by Jimmy and The Gat Kid too, as look-out) was constantly the subject of local police attention. Every known offense, real or made-up, wound up at his door. Some of it rightly so, as it turned out. I might add that the irate shawlies had plenty to do with this police activity. And also plenty to do with setting up Jimmy as the prime example of what not to emulate. Well, as anyone, including me, in own my very small-bore, short-lived criminal career can testify to when you tempt the fates long enough those damn sisters will come out and get you. Get you bad. The long and short of it is was that eventually Jimmy’s luck ran out. The year that his luck ran out was 1963, not a good year to be nineteen and have your luck run out if there ever is one.
Nowadays we talk, and rightly so, about an “economic draft” that forces many working class and minority youth to sign up for military service even in ill-fated war time because they are up against the wall in their personal lives and the military offers some security. I want to talk about this “economic draft” in a different sense although I know that the same thing probably still goes on today. I just don’t have the data or anecdotal evidence to present on the issue. Jimmy, however, was a prima facie case of what I am talking about. When Jimmy’s luck ran out (and my brother’s as well) he faced several counts of armed robbery, and other assorted minor crimes. When he went to court he thus faced many years (I don’t remember his total, my brother’s was nine, I think). The judge, in his infinite mercy offered this deal- Cedar Junction (not the name then, but the state prison nevertheless) or the Army. Jimmy, fatefully, opted for the Army (as did my brother).
Here is the part that is important to understand though. Jimmy (and to a lesser extent, my brother), the minute that he opted for military service went from being “bum-of-the-month” in shawlie circles to a fine, if misunderstood and slightly errant, boy. Even the oldest hags had twinkles in their eyes for old Jimmy. Of course, his mother also came into high regard for raising such a fine boy committed to serve his country (and his god, and just so you understand that was a very Catholic god, don’t forget that part). Once in uniform, an airborne ranger’s uniform, and more importantly, once he had orders for Vietnam, then an exotic if dangerous place and a name little understood other than the United States was committed to its defense against the atheistic communists, his stock rose even further. I was not around the old neighborhood when the news of his death was announced in 1965 but my parents told me later than his funeral was treated something like a state function. The shawlies, weeping and moaning like their own sons were lost, in any case were out in force. Jimmy J, a belated R.I.P.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop Crime Noir 1940s Night- “Dark Passage”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Dark Passage.
DVD Review
Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers, 1947
No question that grizzled beaten-up Humphrey Bogart and a young coyly beautiful Lauren Bacall heated up the 1940s screen, heated it up as much as two people could and keep their clothes on, in their first film pairing, William Faulkner’s screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not (only loosely based on that short novel by the way). They also played together in the Raymond Chandler Phillip Marlowe detective noir classic, The Big Sleep and in Key Largo. In this Dark Passage pairing though, while still in thrall with each other off-screen, the steam is fading, fading fast. But not, perhaps, because of their familiarity to movie-goers as much as the plot line they had to perform under.
Let me explain a little. Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) is in stir up at Quentin for the foul murder of his wife. But, see, like they all say, he didn’t do it so he lams out of Q on his own to see if he can get out from under the life sentence he has received. So naturally when the cops are on his trail up shows come hither Irene Jansen (played by Bacall) to help him out. Seems that, for reasons of her own, she followed Vincent’s trial closely and is convinced that he might be innocent. So she hid him out at her place for a while until things got too hot. But getting out from under this life sentence is going to be harder than you would think. So while riding in a cab to another hide-out he is picked up by a friendly, very friendly cabbie who just happens to know a back alley plastic surgeon who will change Vincent’s face enough so that he can work without notoriety. Simple right.
Well the long and short of it is that while the facelift might have seemed like the answer to his problems everybody and their brother is on to him in the end. And as to finding the real murderer. Well she inconveniently falls out the window of her high rise apartment. While Vincent is there trying to talk sense into her. So, knowing he can’t win, new face and all, he lams it for parts south, way south.
You can see what I mean by the awkwardness of the main plot line. And what makes said plot lines even worst is that Irene has a big crush on Vincent, under either old or new face. Except, and here is the real crime, we do not see either face until fairly late in the film and by then any sense of the magic of To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep has dissolved into the be-bop 1940s crime noir night. Too bad.
DVD Review
Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers, 1947
No question that grizzled beaten-up Humphrey Bogart and a young coyly beautiful Lauren Bacall heated up the 1940s screen, heated it up as much as two people could and keep their clothes on, in their first film pairing, William Faulkner’s screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not (only loosely based on that short novel by the way). They also played together in the Raymond Chandler Phillip Marlowe detective noir classic, The Big Sleep and in Key Largo. In this Dark Passage pairing though, while still in thrall with each other off-screen, the steam is fading, fading fast. But not, perhaps, because of their familiarity to movie-goers as much as the plot line they had to perform under.
Let me explain a little. Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) is in stir up at Quentin for the foul murder of his wife. But, see, like they all say, he didn’t do it so he lams out of Q on his own to see if he can get out from under the life sentence he has received. So naturally when the cops are on his trail up shows come hither Irene Jansen (played by Bacall) to help him out. Seems that, for reasons of her own, she followed Vincent’s trial closely and is convinced that he might be innocent. So she hid him out at her place for a while until things got too hot. But getting out from under this life sentence is going to be harder than you would think. So while riding in a cab to another hide-out he is picked up by a friendly, very friendly cabbie who just happens to know a back alley plastic surgeon who will change Vincent’s face enough so that he can work without notoriety. Simple right.
Well the long and short of it is that while the facelift might have seemed like the answer to his problems everybody and their brother is on to him in the end. And as to finding the real murderer. Well she inconveniently falls out the window of her high rise apartment. While Vincent is there trying to talk sense into her. So, knowing he can’t win, new face and all, he lams it for parts south, way south.
You can see what I mean by the awkwardness of the main plot line. And what makes said plot lines even worst is that Irene has a big crush on Vincent, under either old or new face. Except, and here is the real crime, we do not see either face until fairly late in the film and by then any sense of the magic of To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep has dissolved into the be-bop 1940s crime noir night. Too bad.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-When “Stewball” Stu Ruled The Highways
Click on to the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Danny and The Juniors performing Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay to set the mood for this sketch.
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; The Follow-Up Hits, various artists, Ace Records, 1991
Scene: Brought to mind by the be-bop cover photograph of a “boss” two-toned 1950s Oldsmobile sitting in front of a car dealership just waiting to be driven off in the “golden age of the automobile” night.
“Stewball” Stu loved cars, loved 1950s classic “boss” cars, period. And on the very top of that heap was his cherry red ’57 Chevy. The flamed-out king hell dragon of the Mainiac highways, especially those back roads around his, our, hometown, Olde Saco, close by the sea. Not for him the new stuff, the new “boss” Mustang, Mustang Sally ride I am crazy for, or would be crazy for if, (1) I was older than my current no-driver, no legal driver fifteen, and (2) I had any kind of dough except the few bucks I grab doing this and that, mainly that.
And how do I know about Stewball’s preferences, prejudices if you want to put it that way? Well I, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, have been riding “shot-gun” to Stewball’s driver for the past several months, ever since I proved my metal, my Stu-worthy metal, when I “scrammed” a while back when Stu moved in on me and a hot date I had with a local Lolita and three was a crowd.
Ya, Stu and me are tight, tight as a nineteen year guy who is the king of the roads around here can be with a fifteen year old guy with no dough, no drivers’ license, no sister for him to drool over, and zero, maybe minus zero, mechanical skills to back him up. So you see me flaking out on that Lolita thing meant a lot to Stewball, although he is not a guy that you can figure something on, not easy figuring anyhow. [Hey, by the way, by the very big way, that Stewball moniker is strictly between you and me. Some of the guys that hung around his garage (really his bent out of shape trailer home rigged up with all kinds of automobile-fixing stuff all over the place) started to call him Stewball among ourselves after we observed, observed for the sixty-fifth time, Stu loaded before noon on some rotgut Southern Comfort that he swore kept him sober, unlike whiskey. Like I say don’t spread that around because Stu in one tough hombre. I once saw him chain-whip a guy just for kind of eyeing a Lolita (not the one I butted out on) that was sitting next to him in that cherry red Chevy at Jimmy Joe’s Diner, the one down on Route One, not the one over on Atlantic Avenue. Enough said, okay.]
Let me tell you about one time a few months back when Stu proved, for the umpteenth time (although my first time, first really seeing him in action glory time), why no one can come close to him as king of these roads around here, and maybe any. It was a Friday night, an October Friday night, just starting to get to be defroster or car heater time so it had to be then. Stu, who lives over on Tobacco Road (I won’t tell you his real address because, like he says, what people don’t know is just fine with him and the girls all know where he is anyway. Ya, that’s a real Stu-ism) picked me up at my house on Albemarle Street (got that girls, Albemarle) like he always does, sometime between seven and eight, also as usual.
We then make the loop. First down Atlantic passed the Colonial Donut Shoppe (they serve other stuff there too) to see if there was a stray clover (A Stu-ism for a girl, origin unknown) or two looking to erase the gloomy, lonely night coming on. (I hoped two, two girls that is, because while I am glad, glad as hell, that I did right by Stu with that "hot" Lolita (and she was hot, maybe too hot for me then, not now) I don’t want to make a habit of it, being Stu’s “shot-gun,” or not. No dice. So off to Lanny’s Bowl-World over on Sea Street. Guess it is kind of early because no dice there either. Well, it’s off to “headquarters,” Jimmy Joe’s Diner on Main Street (really Route One but everybody local calls it Main).
Now Jimmy Joe’s has been Stu’s headquarters for so long that he has a “reserved” spot there. Yes, right in front just to the left on the entrance so that he can “scope” (Stu-ism) the scene (read: girls, Josh-ism). Jimmy Joe, the owner, felt that Stu was so good for business, Friday night hot teenage girls crowding the place looking for fast-driving guys and fast, or slow, driving guys, ready to, well you know I don’t have to draw you a diagram, business so he had no problem with the arrangement. Except this Friday night, this October Friday night, Stu’s reserved spot is occupied, occupied by a two-toned, low-riding 1956 Oldsmobile that even I can see had been worked on, worked hard on to create maximum horse-power in the minimum time. And inside that Oldsmobile sat one Duke McKay, a guy some of us had heard of, from down in Kittery near the New Hampshire border. So maybe Duke, not knowing the local rules, parked in that spot by accident. Ya that seems like the right answer.
No way though. Why? Because sitting right next old Duke, actually almost on top of him is that Lolita that I made way for to help Stu. Said Lolita (not her real name because she was, and is, as I write, uh, not “of age” so Lolita is a good enough moniker) looking very fine, very fine indeed, as Stu goes over to the Oldsmobile to give Duke the what for. I can almost hear the chains coming out.
But Stu must have had some kind of jinx on him, or Lolita put one on him, because all he did was make Duke a proposition. Beat Stu in a “chicken run” and the parking spot, Lolita, and the unofficial king of the road title were his. Lose, and he was gone (without chain-whipping I hoped) from Olde Saco, permanently, minus Lolita. Now I can see where this Lolita is worth getting a little steamed up about. But take it from me Stu, until just this minute, was strictly a love them or leave them guy (leave them to me, please). Duke, with eight million pounds of bravado, answered quickly like any true road-warrior does when challenged and just uttered, “On.” And we are off, although not before Lolita gives Stu some madness femme fatale look. A look, a pout really, which you couldn’t tell if she was in Stu’s corner or wanted to see him in hell. Girls, damn.
A chicken race, for the squares, is nothing but a race between two cars (usually two), two fast teenager-driven cars, done late at night or early in the morning out on some desolate road, sometimes straight, sometimes not. The idea is to get a fast start and keep the accelerator on the floor as long as possible before some flame-out. For Olde Saco runs they use the beach down at the Squaw Rock end since it is long, flat, and wide even at high tide, and the loser either winds up in the dunes or the ocean, usually the latter, ruining a perfectly good car but that is the way it is. Most importantly it is out of sight of the cops until too late.
So about two in the morning one could see a ’57 cherry red Chevy lining up, with me as a “second,” against a ’56 Oldsmobile, with Lolita as Duke’s “second.” Jimmy Joe’s son, Billy, acted as starter as usual. And they are off. Duke got an extremely fast start and was maybe thirty yards ahead of us and it looked like we done for when Stu opened up from somewhere and flat out “smoked” the side of Duke Olds sending his vehicle off into the ocean, soon to sputter in the roaring waves, and oblivion. Stu stopped the Chevy, backed up the several hundred yards to the vicinity of the distressed Oldsmobile, opened up the passenger side door and escorted Lolita, as nice as you please, to his king hell Chevy. And she was smiling, smiling very, well let’s put it this way, Stu’s got a big treat coming. And Josh? Well, Stu yells over “Hey, Josh, hope you find a ride home tonight.” But do you see what I mean about Stewball Stu being the king of the roads around here. What a guy.
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; The Follow-Up Hits, various artists, Ace Records, 1991
Scene: Brought to mind by the be-bop cover photograph of a “boss” two-toned 1950s Oldsmobile sitting in front of a car dealership just waiting to be driven off in the “golden age of the automobile” night.
“Stewball” Stu loved cars, loved 1950s classic “boss” cars, period. And on the very top of that heap was his cherry red ’57 Chevy. The flamed-out king hell dragon of the Mainiac highways, especially those back roads around his, our, hometown, Olde Saco, close by the sea. Not for him the new stuff, the new “boss” Mustang, Mustang Sally ride I am crazy for, or would be crazy for if, (1) I was older than my current no-driver, no legal driver fifteen, and (2) I had any kind of dough except the few bucks I grab doing this and that, mainly that.
And how do I know about Stewball’s preferences, prejudices if you want to put it that way? Well I, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, have been riding “shot-gun” to Stewball’s driver for the past several months, ever since I proved my metal, my Stu-worthy metal, when I “scrammed” a while back when Stu moved in on me and a hot date I had with a local Lolita and three was a crowd.
Ya, Stu and me are tight, tight as a nineteen year guy who is the king of the roads around here can be with a fifteen year old guy with no dough, no drivers’ license, no sister for him to drool over, and zero, maybe minus zero, mechanical skills to back him up. So you see me flaking out on that Lolita thing meant a lot to Stewball, although he is not a guy that you can figure something on, not easy figuring anyhow. [Hey, by the way, by the very big way, that Stewball moniker is strictly between you and me. Some of the guys that hung around his garage (really his bent out of shape trailer home rigged up with all kinds of automobile-fixing stuff all over the place) started to call him Stewball among ourselves after we observed, observed for the sixty-fifth time, Stu loaded before noon on some rotgut Southern Comfort that he swore kept him sober, unlike whiskey. Like I say don’t spread that around because Stu in one tough hombre. I once saw him chain-whip a guy just for kind of eyeing a Lolita (not the one I butted out on) that was sitting next to him in that cherry red Chevy at Jimmy Joe’s Diner, the one down on Route One, not the one over on Atlantic Avenue. Enough said, okay.]
Let me tell you about one time a few months back when Stu proved, for the umpteenth time (although my first time, first really seeing him in action glory time), why no one can come close to him as king of these roads around here, and maybe any. It was a Friday night, an October Friday night, just starting to get to be defroster or car heater time so it had to be then. Stu, who lives over on Tobacco Road (I won’t tell you his real address because, like he says, what people don’t know is just fine with him and the girls all know where he is anyway. Ya, that’s a real Stu-ism) picked me up at my house on Albemarle Street (got that girls, Albemarle) like he always does, sometime between seven and eight, also as usual.
We then make the loop. First down Atlantic passed the Colonial Donut Shoppe (they serve other stuff there too) to see if there was a stray clover (A Stu-ism for a girl, origin unknown) or two looking to erase the gloomy, lonely night coming on. (I hoped two, two girls that is, because while I am glad, glad as hell, that I did right by Stu with that "hot" Lolita (and she was hot, maybe too hot for me then, not now) I don’t want to make a habit of it, being Stu’s “shot-gun,” or not. No dice. So off to Lanny’s Bowl-World over on Sea Street. Guess it is kind of early because no dice there either. Well, it’s off to “headquarters,” Jimmy Joe’s Diner on Main Street (really Route One but everybody local calls it Main).
Now Jimmy Joe’s has been Stu’s headquarters for so long that he has a “reserved” spot there. Yes, right in front just to the left on the entrance so that he can “scope” (Stu-ism) the scene (read: girls, Josh-ism). Jimmy Joe, the owner, felt that Stu was so good for business, Friday night hot teenage girls crowding the place looking for fast-driving guys and fast, or slow, driving guys, ready to, well you know I don’t have to draw you a diagram, business so he had no problem with the arrangement. Except this Friday night, this October Friday night, Stu’s reserved spot is occupied, occupied by a two-toned, low-riding 1956 Oldsmobile that even I can see had been worked on, worked hard on to create maximum horse-power in the minimum time. And inside that Oldsmobile sat one Duke McKay, a guy some of us had heard of, from down in Kittery near the New Hampshire border. So maybe Duke, not knowing the local rules, parked in that spot by accident. Ya that seems like the right answer.
No way though. Why? Because sitting right next old Duke, actually almost on top of him is that Lolita that I made way for to help Stu. Said Lolita (not her real name because she was, and is, as I write, uh, not “of age” so Lolita is a good enough moniker) looking very fine, very fine indeed, as Stu goes over to the Oldsmobile to give Duke the what for. I can almost hear the chains coming out.
But Stu must have had some kind of jinx on him, or Lolita put one on him, because all he did was make Duke a proposition. Beat Stu in a “chicken run” and the parking spot, Lolita, and the unofficial king of the road title were his. Lose, and he was gone (without chain-whipping I hoped) from Olde Saco, permanently, minus Lolita. Now I can see where this Lolita is worth getting a little steamed up about. But take it from me Stu, until just this minute, was strictly a love them or leave them guy (leave them to me, please). Duke, with eight million pounds of bravado, answered quickly like any true road-warrior does when challenged and just uttered, “On.” And we are off, although not before Lolita gives Stu some madness femme fatale look. A look, a pout really, which you couldn’t tell if she was in Stu’s corner or wanted to see him in hell. Girls, damn.
A chicken race, for the squares, is nothing but a race between two cars (usually two), two fast teenager-driven cars, done late at night or early in the morning out on some desolate road, sometimes straight, sometimes not. The idea is to get a fast start and keep the accelerator on the floor as long as possible before some flame-out. For Olde Saco runs they use the beach down at the Squaw Rock end since it is long, flat, and wide even at high tide, and the loser either winds up in the dunes or the ocean, usually the latter, ruining a perfectly good car but that is the way it is. Most importantly it is out of sight of the cops until too late.
So about two in the morning one could see a ’57 cherry red Chevy lining up, with me as a “second,” against a ’56 Oldsmobile, with Lolita as Duke’s “second.” Jimmy Joe’s son, Billy, acted as starter as usual. And they are off. Duke got an extremely fast start and was maybe thirty yards ahead of us and it looked like we done for when Stu opened up from somewhere and flat out “smoked” the side of Duke Olds sending his vehicle off into the ocean, soon to sputter in the roaring waves, and oblivion. Stu stopped the Chevy, backed up the several hundred yards to the vicinity of the distressed Oldsmobile, opened up the passenger side door and escorted Lolita, as nice as you please, to his king hell Chevy. And she was smiling, smiling very, well let’s put it this way, Stu’s got a big treat coming. And Josh? Well, Stu yells over “Hey, Josh, hope you find a ride home tonight.” But do you see what I mean about Stewball Stu being the king of the roads around here. What a guy.
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