Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Ruth Brown holding forth in the be-bop 1950s R&B night.
CD Review
The Blues Masters: The Essential Blues Collection: Volume 11-More Jump Blues, various artists including Ruth Brown, Rhino Records, 1993
Recently in reviewing (sort of, this kind of review is not my forte) a Norman Blake CD, Whiskey Before Breakfast, I noted that as a kid I was very averse to listening to that mountain music stuff since it was my father’s hillbilly Appalachia home of hills and hollows music (after all I was growing up in “big time” city boy Olde Saco up in Maine). The other kind of music around my 1950s growing up absurd house was “their” music, my parents coming through the great depression of the1930s and surviving (and she waiting, waiting on pins and needles for his safe return) music, jump, jitterbug, R&B,call it what you may.
Not exactly the rock and roll that I was enthralled with. No Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Jerry Lee and the like to stir the blood. But every once in a while I would catch some riff that sounded like it might get to rock, but then faded just short. And the album under review, The Blues Masters: More Jump Blues, is filled with just such work. Of course, a little later when I caught the blues bug in the early 1960s all this music, this quintessential R&B, made great sense in in combination with rockabilly as the genesis of rock and roll. But back then it was just my parents’ music. You know, square.
So when somebody, anybody, asks you the question-“Who put the rock in rock and roll?”- you can automatically answer Bo Diddley (or your favorite choice). But if asked who put the bug in old Bo’s ear then just tell them that the likes of Louis Jordan, Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Big Maybell (who I actually first heard in the early 1960s late at night listening to “The Big Bopper Blues Blast” out of some dark of mega-watt radio station in Chicago), Lloyd Price and Wynonie Harris and the others compiled on this CD and you can be smart, very smart.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Songs to While Away The Time By- Big Joe Williams Has Got The Blues “Baby Please Don’t Go”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Big Joe Williams (out of the million guys who have covered the song, or pleaded) performing Baby Please Don’t Go.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
You know now that I am “officially” retired from the public prints I have plenty of time to write a little about things other than the latest war (or wars), the latest governmental abridgement of our civil rights, the latest poor boy kid framed up for something, or the latest environmental disaster brought to us courtesy of some anonymous thing “too big to fail.” Now I have time to write about things less pressing on the daily world calendar, things like old timey flames, coming to young manhood up in Olde Saco (that’s in Maine, folks), teenage boyhood worries about fitting in, not fitting or to use a generational term, my generation “be cool.” That’s what I have on my plate today-girls, long lost flame girls. And what they could do to a guy, could do to a guy six ways to Sunday, and still have him grinning, asking for more.
What got me jumped up on this subject was the other night I was talking, lazily half-joking, half-spinning wheels talking with my old friend, Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head) and he brought up some story about how he had snagged a date with some high school chick (read: term of art, term of love art, in the be-bop 1960s teen night to use Pee-Pee’s term for a young woman, me I called them frails) based solely on his ability to intelligently talk about every known Bob Dylan song and lyric of the day. Jesus, who was that poor frail?
That story though later got me to thinking about Loretta, Loretta D’Amboise, from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco back in that same 1960s day. Yes, Loretta was something else. Now while Pee-Pee and I were talking that night he mentioned, and I agreed, that lately we had been spending a hell of a lot of time talking about old time flames, our so-called conquests of said flames, and our, ah, ah, ultimate defeat at their hands. Call it old age with time of our hands, call it male vanity, once removed, call it evoking that one last chance for immortality, hell, call it acting like, ah, dirty old men, but there you have it. Pee-Pee’s Dylan date honey was wrapped up by some archaic Bob Dylan swish but Loretta, ancient mist Loretta, would never come within ten miles of that scene. She was strictly a jazzy blues breeze, just my type then.
Although Loretta had lived in the old neighborhood all through school (we had graduated together from Olde Saco High School in 1967) other than about sixteen million leers, unsuccessful leers, on my part she had not given me a tumble not even close. See she was full French-Canadian (F.A.) like most other people in Olde Saco who came down from Canada way back when to work the textile and paper mills. Unlike me, who was strictly half and half, and that difference I found out from later talk mattered in her family, and to her preference for be-bop F.A. guys (with fast cars, some dough, and a willingness to spent that dough on her).
So Loretta and I never met up until one night after I had gotten back home from summer of love San Francisco in late 1968 and I had run into her at Jimmy Jack’s Blues Club (don’t let the Jimmy Jack’s name fool you, the owner’s name was really Jean Jacques Dubois) over on Atlantic Avenue right across from Olde Saco Beach. Ran into her alone sitting all by herself at the bar putting coins into the jukebox and playing Big Joe Williams’ Baby Please Don’t Go about six times. Six times that I counted.
I’ll tell you the why in a minute but let me tell you first that she called me over, not a big hello, long time, no see, what have you been up to, come on over but a hey, I didn’t know you likes the blues, Josh, come on over. And well yes I did like the blues all the way back to the times in early high school when I would be up in my room around midnight and get The Big Bopper Blues Blast from some mega-station in Chicago on my transistor radio. So, of course, I used this arcane knowledge to make my big Loretta move. Naturally I tossed out Muddy’s, Howlin’ Wolf’s, Elmore James’, and about twelve other electric blues guys names to show I was for real. And just as naturally I knew that Big Joe Williams was performing this Baby Please Don’t Go number on his six, five, eleven or whatever number strings he used string guitar. That tidbit impressed her.
What I wanted to know, and if you have been paying attention you would too, was why she was sitting very alone in Jimmy Jack’s on that late summer Saturday night. Well, you know the old story, male or female, young or old. Her boyfriend, Jean-Paul LaCroix, a name I couldn’t place in the town’s scheme of things, but who worked in the MacAdams Textile Mills, made “good money,” had a “boss” 1964 Mustang, didn’t mind spending said “good money” on her and who also did not mind sitting a few nights a week in Jimmy Jack’s feeding the jukebox had dumped her. Dumped her for some red-headed low-down Irish girl from Kittery down the coast. Hence her solace in Big Joe’s song (and a sipped glass of white wine).
Needless to say I expressed my condolences but I also thought to myself that this Jean-Paul jerk had a screw loose. There are lots of reasons for a guy (or a gal for that matter) to dump a guy, who knows, the reasons are legion. But to dump Loretta D’Amboise, no way, no sane way. Like I said a screw loose. Now Loretta was not drop-dead beautiful, most F.A. girls aren’t. She was slender, long-brown hair and blue eyes, a decent shape, very nice legs and not afraid to show them, no real bosom like most F.A. girls. Nice, but not beautiful. But that isn’t what counted because she had this great smile and that look, that look that come hither fresh ocean breeze look, like a guy, a leering guy, young or old, would day dream, night dream, day-night dream, night-day dream about all day, every day.
And so, for a few weeks, that look held me in thrall, no, transfixed. But even from our first date (at Jimmy Jack’s the next week, me feeding the jukebox and her looking, well looking) I sensed she was elsewhere, probably Jean-Paul elsewhere, because those nickels, dimes and quarters I was feeding the machine kept coming up quite a bit on Baby Please Don’t Go and it was not me she was pleaded with to stay. So one night we decided, or maybe she decided and I agreed, that we would just be kiss-of-death friends.
A few weeks later I noticed, as I was sitting in Jimmy Jack’s Diner (ya, that Jimmy Jack, he owned the diner too), Loretta sitting very happy up on the front seat of a 1964 Mustang. So I put a nickel in the jukebox and played Baby Please Don’t Go for what might have been. And now almost fifty years later I am just now putting it on the old CD player. For what might have been.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
You know now that I am “officially” retired from the public prints I have plenty of time to write a little about things other than the latest war (or wars), the latest governmental abridgement of our civil rights, the latest poor boy kid framed up for something, or the latest environmental disaster brought to us courtesy of some anonymous thing “too big to fail.” Now I have time to write about things less pressing on the daily world calendar, things like old timey flames, coming to young manhood up in Olde Saco (that’s in Maine, folks), teenage boyhood worries about fitting in, not fitting or to use a generational term, my generation “be cool.” That’s what I have on my plate today-girls, long lost flame girls. And what they could do to a guy, could do to a guy six ways to Sunday, and still have him grinning, asking for more.
What got me jumped up on this subject was the other night I was talking, lazily half-joking, half-spinning wheels talking with my old friend, Peter Paul Markin (always known as Pee-Pee and not that odd-ball Peter Paul thing like some old time yankee Brahmin getting ready to crash on his damn Irish-driven head) and he brought up some story about how he had snagged a date with some high school chick (read: term of art, term of love art, in the be-bop 1960s teen night to use Pee-Pee’s term for a young woman, me I called them frails) based solely on his ability to intelligently talk about every known Bob Dylan song and lyric of the day. Jesus, who was that poor frail?
That story though later got me to thinking about Loretta, Loretta D’Amboise, from my old neighborhood up in Olde Saco back in that same 1960s day. Yes, Loretta was something else. Now while Pee-Pee and I were talking that night he mentioned, and I agreed, that lately we had been spending a hell of a lot of time talking about old time flames, our so-called conquests of said flames, and our, ah, ah, ultimate defeat at their hands. Call it old age with time of our hands, call it male vanity, once removed, call it evoking that one last chance for immortality, hell, call it acting like, ah, dirty old men, but there you have it. Pee-Pee’s Dylan date honey was wrapped up by some archaic Bob Dylan swish but Loretta, ancient mist Loretta, would never come within ten miles of that scene. She was strictly a jazzy blues breeze, just my type then.
Although Loretta had lived in the old neighborhood all through school (we had graduated together from Olde Saco High School in 1967) other than about sixteen million leers, unsuccessful leers, on my part she had not given me a tumble not even close. See she was full French-Canadian (F.A.) like most other people in Olde Saco who came down from Canada way back when to work the textile and paper mills. Unlike me, who was strictly half and half, and that difference I found out from later talk mattered in her family, and to her preference for be-bop F.A. guys (with fast cars, some dough, and a willingness to spent that dough on her).
So Loretta and I never met up until one night after I had gotten back home from summer of love San Francisco in late 1968 and I had run into her at Jimmy Jack’s Blues Club (don’t let the Jimmy Jack’s name fool you, the owner’s name was really Jean Jacques Dubois) over on Atlantic Avenue right across from Olde Saco Beach. Ran into her alone sitting all by herself at the bar putting coins into the jukebox and playing Big Joe Williams’ Baby Please Don’t Go about six times. Six times that I counted.
I’ll tell you the why in a minute but let me tell you first that she called me over, not a big hello, long time, no see, what have you been up to, come on over but a hey, I didn’t know you likes the blues, Josh, come on over. And well yes I did like the blues all the way back to the times in early high school when I would be up in my room around midnight and get The Big Bopper Blues Blast from some mega-station in Chicago on my transistor radio. So, of course, I used this arcane knowledge to make my big Loretta move. Naturally I tossed out Muddy’s, Howlin’ Wolf’s, Elmore James’, and about twelve other electric blues guys names to show I was for real. And just as naturally I knew that Big Joe Williams was performing this Baby Please Don’t Go number on his six, five, eleven or whatever number strings he used string guitar. That tidbit impressed her.
What I wanted to know, and if you have been paying attention you would too, was why she was sitting very alone in Jimmy Jack’s on that late summer Saturday night. Well, you know the old story, male or female, young or old. Her boyfriend, Jean-Paul LaCroix, a name I couldn’t place in the town’s scheme of things, but who worked in the MacAdams Textile Mills, made “good money,” had a “boss” 1964 Mustang, didn’t mind spending said “good money” on her and who also did not mind sitting a few nights a week in Jimmy Jack’s feeding the jukebox had dumped her. Dumped her for some red-headed low-down Irish girl from Kittery down the coast. Hence her solace in Big Joe’s song (and a sipped glass of white wine).
Needless to say I expressed my condolences but I also thought to myself that this Jean-Paul jerk had a screw loose. There are lots of reasons for a guy (or a gal for that matter) to dump a guy, who knows, the reasons are legion. But to dump Loretta D’Amboise, no way, no sane way. Like I said a screw loose. Now Loretta was not drop-dead beautiful, most F.A. girls aren’t. She was slender, long-brown hair and blue eyes, a decent shape, very nice legs and not afraid to show them, no real bosom like most F.A. girls. Nice, but not beautiful. But that isn’t what counted because she had this great smile and that look, that look that come hither fresh ocean breeze look, like a guy, a leering guy, young or old, would day dream, night dream, day-night dream, night-day dream about all day, every day.
And so, for a few weeks, that look held me in thrall, no, transfixed. But even from our first date (at Jimmy Jack’s the next week, me feeding the jukebox and her looking, well looking) I sensed she was elsewhere, probably Jean-Paul elsewhere, because those nickels, dimes and quarters I was feeding the machine kept coming up quite a bit on Baby Please Don’t Go and it was not me she was pleaded with to stay. So one night we decided, or maybe she decided and I agreed, that we would just be kiss-of-death friends.
A few weeks later I noticed, as I was sitting in Jimmy Jack’s Diner (ya, that Jimmy Jack, he owned the diner too), Loretta sitting very happy up on the front seat of a 1964 Mustang. So I put a nickel in the jukebox and played Baby Please Don’t Go for what might have been. And now almost fifty years later I am just now putting it on the old CD player. For what might have been.
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- A Tale To Sit Around The Soda Fountain By-Frankie Goes Wild
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Cry Baby Cry.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
Recently I did, as part of a rock 'n' roll be-bop night record review, a little vignette about soda fountain life in the early 1960s, featuring my boyhood best friend, Frankie Riley, Frankie from our down at the heels and not going to get better as America deindustrialized no more shipyard busy working class neighborhood. Frankie of one thousand stories, Frankie of one thousand treacheries, about twenty-three of them directed toward me, and Frankie of a one thousand kindnesses, including about ninety-eight directed toward me and hence the longevity of our friendship. Somehow it did not seem right to leave Frankie hanging around that old review soda fountain and rather than leave him to that fate I have decided to rewrite the story with the commercial CD review tag removed, although lots of the old story will filter through here anyway:
See, it really is a truism by now, by 2010 teen-age now, that every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century, maybe two centuries, ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. And moreover would trend very lightly, very lightly indeed, on that sacred ground.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 convenience stores came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market, if we could squeeze room around the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters who frequented those holy sites and worried about "turf" and our being within ten miles of it; the ever present heaven-sent smell pizza parlor (hold the onions on that slice, please, always hold the onions, in case I get lucky with that certain she tonight) with its jump jukebox where coin was king and we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters to hear our favorites of the day or minute; for some of the dweebs, or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, or thought you were doing somebody a favor to take his sister out, but only as a last resort, favor that is, the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with "hot" car hops who filled the night air with their cold sex, their faraway cold tip-driven sex, for more “expensive” dates (meaning take your eyes off the damn car hops, or else); and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain, especially in car-less teen times. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually-owned and operated drug store (Doc’s Drug Store, for real, that was the name) that used the soda fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those were for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
As part of that record review mentioned earlier I noted that the cover of the CD had an almost Edward Hooper Nighthawks At The Diner-like illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood, beaten down, or not) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one cone-shaped paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene could have been from any town USA then, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t although the local rock radio station was blasting away as we tapped out the beat at all hours), the booths with the vinyl-covered summer sweat-inducing seats and Formica top tables (dolled up with paper place settings, condiments, etc., just like home right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my corner boys, or rather, Frankie and his corner boys, including me) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come into the store (read: girls), and a Drink Coca-Cola-inscribed full length mirror just in case you missed a beat.
Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that's a New England thing, look it up), milkshakes, banana splits, ice cream floats, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well, of course, a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say anything about girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. What do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours to drink a Pepsi even in teen-land?
But enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. I already "hipped" you to the “his treacheries” and “kindnesses.” Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister, although now that I think of it she is really the "stooge" in this thing.
Now when we were juniors in high school in the early 1960s, Frankie (as king of the hill) and I (as his lord chamberlain) , mainly held court at the local pizza parlor, a pizza parlor which was in the pecking order of town teen social life way above the soda fountain rookie camp teen life scene. That soda foundation stuff was for kids and dweebs, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s Drug Store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” pizza parlor, which I will tell you about some other time because it plays no part in this heart-rendering tale, the old soda fountain side of that drug store (the other side had aisles of over-the-counter drugs and sundries, a couple of permanently in use enclosed telephone booths for those (read: teens) who had not telephone at home(like me much of the time) or didn’t want their business exposed on the “two-party” home line, and your regulation pharmacy area for the good legal doctor's note drug stuff) was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, in those days to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”) who connected the dots about who was who and what was what in the local scene (I do not have to tell you at this late point the focal point of that scene, right?). Moreover, later, after we found out about life a bit more (read: sex) the soda jerk acted as a “shill” for Doc for those teens looking for their first liquor (for medical purposes, of course) or, keep this quiet, okay, condoms. But the thing was, younger or older, that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead with that silly flap cap they wore.
So one night we are dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, Lorrie, talking up a storm, all dewy-eyed, over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And more than that this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more, hell and back red.
I can hear the yawns already, especially from every guy who had a goofy, off-hand younger sister just starting to feel her oats (or for that matter every gal who had such a younger brother, or any other such combinations). See, though, and maybe it’s hard to explain if you didn’t live in those misbegotten times, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he had only one serious frail (read: girl again, okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before when I did a thing on Roy "The Boy" Orbison). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male boy (and adult too, as we found out later) double standard of the age about boys being able to do whatever they wanted to but girls had to be true-blue or whatever color it was, but no messing around, especially in regard to his sister. But there you have it, and he was seeing that old red that meant no good, for somebody.
Now this sister, Lorrie, when I first meant her back in the days when I first met Frankie in middle school was nothing but a...sister, a Frankie, king of the hill, sister but still just a sister. Meaning I really never paid much attention to her. But this night I could see, dewy-eyed or not, that she has turned into not a bad looker, especially with that form-filling cashmere sweater all the girls were wearing those days and that I swear they were wearing so that guys would notice that form-filling part. And I could see that, while she took away from her "cool" in my eyes by the ubiquitous chewing of gum that made her seem about ten years old, that guys could go for her, eighteen or not, soda jerks or not. As to the soda jerk, Steve was his name as I found out later, who was not a bad looking guy and old Lorrie didn't need glasses to see that. He seemed like a lot of guys, a lot of Frankie and me guys, ready to chat up any skirt that would listen to him for two minutes, maybe less.
And see, as well, it is not like Frankie really had some old-fashioned medieval sense of honor, or some Catholic, which we and half the freaking town were then, or were trying to get away from then, hang-up about sex, teen-age or otherwise. So it was not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become "king of the hill" by “courting” Frankie’s, Francis X. Riley’s sister. See that's the way that he operated, and for all I know maybe had to operate, to stay king. Maybe he read about it someplace, like in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Frankie and I were crazy for that kind of book in those days, Christ we even read Marx’s Communist Manifesto just to be “cool”), and figured he had to do things that way.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted, and not bad–looking but no Steve McQueen, wrapping the girls up with his pseudo-beat patter Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked (with his black chinos, flannel shirt, work boot and midnight sunglass regulation faux beat look). So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away from him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting on the counter in a cup in front of a girl customer (a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bops, no be-bops, no be-bop bops one soda jerk, new or not, with it.
Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform, wearing about three kinds of ice cream (no, not what you think, some harlequin strawberry, vanilla, chocolate combo but frozen pudding, cherry vanilla, and mocha almond, hey, I really will have to check that girl out) on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business (not related) after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one that incident night, that same triple combo mentioned above, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her right then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie, one very foxy cashmere sweater-wearing Lorrie, sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s boss cherry red with full-chrome accessories 1959 Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
Recently I did, as part of a rock 'n' roll be-bop night record review, a little vignette about soda fountain life in the early 1960s, featuring my boyhood best friend, Frankie Riley, Frankie from our down at the heels and not going to get better as America deindustrialized no more shipyard busy working class neighborhood. Frankie of one thousand stories, Frankie of one thousand treacheries, about twenty-three of them directed toward me, and Frankie of a one thousand kindnesses, including about ninety-eight directed toward me and hence the longevity of our friendship. Somehow it did not seem right to leave Frankie hanging around that old review soda fountain and rather than leave him to that fate I have decided to rewrite the story with the commercial CD review tag removed, although lots of the old story will filter through here anyway:
See, it really is a truism by now, by 2010 teen-age now, that every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century, maybe two centuries, ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades and the ubiquitous Internet screen connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. And moreover would trend very lightly, very lightly indeed, on that sacred ground.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 convenience stores came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market, if we could squeeze room around the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters who frequented those holy sites and worried about "turf" and our being within ten miles of it; the ever present heaven-sent smell pizza parlor (hold the onions on that slice, please, always hold the onions, in case I get lucky with that certain she tonight) with its jump jukebox where coin was king and we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters to hear our favorites of the day or minute; for some of the dweebs, or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, or thought you were doing somebody a favor to take his sister out, but only as a last resort, favor that is, the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with "hot" car hops who filled the night air with their cold sex, their faraway cold tip-driven sex, for more “expensive” dates (meaning take your eyes off the damn car hops, or else); and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain, especially in car-less teen times. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually-owned and operated drug store (Doc’s Drug Store, for real, that was the name) that used the soda fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those were for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
As part of that record review mentioned earlier I noted that the cover of the CD had an almost Edward Hooper Nighthawks At The Diner-like illustration of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with three whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood, beaten down, or not) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one cone-shaped paper cup while a faux Fabian-type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene could have been from any town USA then, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t although the local rock radio station was blasting away as we tapped out the beat at all hours), the booths with the vinyl-covered summer sweat-inducing seats and Formica top tables (dolled up with paper place settings, condiments, etc., just like home right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my corner boys, or rather, Frankie and his corner boys, including me) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come into the store (read: girls), and a Drink Coca-Cola-inscribed full length mirror just in case you missed a beat.
Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that's a New England thing, look it up), milkshakes, banana splits, ice cream floats, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well, of course, a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say anything about girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. What do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour, an hour and a half, or even two hours to drink a Pepsi even in teen-land?
But enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. I already "hipped" you to the “his treacheries” and “kindnesses.” Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister, although now that I think of it she is really the "stooge" in this thing.
Now when we were juniors in high school in the early 1960s, Frankie (as king of the hill) and I (as his lord chamberlain) , mainly held court at the local pizza parlor, a pizza parlor which was in the pecking order of town teen social life way above the soda fountain rookie camp teen life scene. That soda foundation stuff was for kids and dweebs, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s Drug Store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” pizza parlor, which I will tell you about some other time because it plays no part in this heart-rendering tale, the old soda fountain side of that drug store (the other side had aisles of over-the-counter drugs and sundries, a couple of permanently in use enclosed telephone booths for those (read: teens) who had not telephone at home(like me much of the time) or didn’t want their business exposed on the “two-party” home line, and your regulation pharmacy area for the good legal doctor's note drug stuff) was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, in those days to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”) who connected the dots about who was who and what was what in the local scene (I do not have to tell you at this late point the focal point of that scene, right?). Moreover, later, after we found out about life a bit more (read: sex) the soda jerk acted as a “shill” for Doc for those teens looking for their first liquor (for medical purposes, of course) or, keep this quiet, okay, condoms. But the thing was, younger or older, that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead with that silly flap cap they wore.
So one night we are dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, Lorrie, talking up a storm, all dewy-eyed, over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And more than that this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more, hell and back red.
I can hear the yawns already, especially from every guy who had a goofy, off-hand younger sister just starting to feel her oats (or for that matter every gal who had such a younger brother, or any other such combinations). See, though, and maybe it’s hard to explain if you didn’t live in those misbegotten times, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he had only one serious frail (read: girl again, okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before when I did a thing on Roy "The Boy" Orbison). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male boy (and adult too, as we found out later) double standard of the age about boys being able to do whatever they wanted to but girls had to be true-blue or whatever color it was, but no messing around, especially in regard to his sister. But there you have it, and he was seeing that old red that meant no good, for somebody.
Now this sister, Lorrie, when I first meant her back in the days when I first met Frankie in middle school was nothing but a...sister, a Frankie, king of the hill, sister but still just a sister. Meaning I really never paid much attention to her. But this night I could see, dewy-eyed or not, that she has turned into not a bad looker, especially with that form-filling cashmere sweater all the girls were wearing those days and that I swear they were wearing so that guys would notice that form-filling part. And I could see that, while she took away from her "cool" in my eyes by the ubiquitous chewing of gum that made her seem about ten years old, that guys could go for her, eighteen or not, soda jerks or not. As to the soda jerk, Steve was his name as I found out later, who was not a bad looking guy and old Lorrie didn't need glasses to see that. He seemed like a lot of guys, a lot of Frankie and me guys, ready to chat up any skirt that would listen to him for two minutes, maybe less.
And see, as well, it is not like Frankie really had some old-fashioned medieval sense of honor, or some Catholic, which we and half the freaking town were then, or were trying to get away from then, hang-up about sex, teen-age or otherwise. So it was not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become "king of the hill" by “courting” Frankie’s, Francis X. Riley’s sister. See that's the way that he operated, and for all I know maybe had to operate, to stay king. Maybe he read about it someplace, like in Machiavelli’s The Prince (Frankie and I were crazy for that kind of book in those days, Christ we even read Marx’s Communist Manifesto just to be “cool”), and figured he had to do things that way.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted, and not bad–looking but no Steve McQueen, wrapping the girls up with his pseudo-beat patter Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked (with his black chinos, flannel shirt, work boot and midnight sunglass regulation faux beat look). So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away from him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting on the counter in a cup in front of a girl customer (a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bops, no be-bops, no be-bop bops one soda jerk, new or not, with it.
Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform, wearing about three kinds of ice cream (no, not what you think, some harlequin strawberry, vanilla, chocolate combo but frozen pudding, cherry vanilla, and mocha almond, hey, I really will have to check that girl out) on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business (not related) after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one that incident night, that same triple combo mentioned above, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her right then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie, one very foxy cashmere sweater-wearing Lorrie, sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s boss cherry red with full-chrome accessories 1959 Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- In the Beginning Of Rock- Bop- Once Again, From the Vaults Of Sun Records
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Carl Perkins performing Boppin' The Blues.
CD Review
The Sun Gods, 3-CD set, Dressed To Kill Records, 1999
One of the purposes of this space is to review various cultural trends that drove American popular culture in the 20th century. More specifically drove those trends in the post-World War II, the lifetimes of many of today’s baby boomers. A seminal point, musically at least, was the breakout of the mid-1950s fueled by a strange and sometimes contradictory mix of black-based rhythm and blues, Arkie, Okie, Appalachian “hillbilly” rock-a-billy and plain old jazz and vanilla show tune Tin Pan Alley. The mix of course we now know as rock ‘n’ roll, sadly for this aging reviewer now called the age of classic rock 'n' roll. No sadly that it does not exist except in CDs such as the one under review, The Sun Gods, but that frenetic fury to change the musical direction of popular culture seems to have lost steam along the aging process. But take heart. While we have all probably slowed down a step or seven we will always have Sun Records CD memories to carry us.
And there is no question, no question at all that, pound for pound, the music that came out of Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records for about a decade in the 1950s was central to the mix that created rock 'n' roll. Think Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry to name just three of the more famous singers to come out of that label. And as this CD demonstrates beyond doubt, highlighted by the work of Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith here, also a whole tribe of lesser lights, one- hit Johnnies and Janies, and those who never made it that formed the background milieu that drove the others forward and created this musical chemistry that can boggle the mind. If you want to find, in one spot, a CD set that rediscovers the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, especially the contributions from the rock-a-billy side well here you are.
I have highlighted some of the tracks on each disc.
Disc One: Carl Perkins performing Roll Over Beethoven, a song made famous by Chuck Berry (and that I went crazy over when I first heard it as a kid) which I think that he may actually do better than Chuck, if you can believe that. There are several Elvis interviews recorded here as part of the promotion of his records and/or concerts in the early days. I would say, thank god, that he had that great musical talent, that look and those hips swaying in the sex-fantasy driven night because off these innocuous, bland interviews he would have starved otherwise. Still these are good to hear from a time before the king became “the King.”
Disc Two: Red Hot by Billy Lee Riley, a rock-a-billy hard-driving classic that expresses just what the break-out was all about; We Wanna Boogie by Sonny Burgess (a definitely underrated force), Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache by Warren Smith (Bob Dylan covered this one in a tribute album); and, Crazy Women by Gene Simmons. This is one of those CDs that you have to listen to all the way through to get a real feel for this music, and you should.
Disc Three: Rock Boppin’ Baby by Edwin Brice; Let’s Bop by Jack Earls; Thinkin’ Of Me by Mickey Gilley; Rockhouse by Harold Jenkins; and, You Don’t Care by, Narvel Felts. Yes, I know, you probably have never heard of any of them. But if you listen to this CD you will see where Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck got their stuff from. And you know, successful or as failures, as I have mentioned before in reviewing Sun Record material, all these guys (and a few gals) all sound like they are happy to be rocking and rolling rather than whatever else they were slated to do in life.
CD Review
The Sun Gods, 3-CD set, Dressed To Kill Records, 1999
One of the purposes of this space is to review various cultural trends that drove American popular culture in the 20th century. More specifically drove those trends in the post-World War II, the lifetimes of many of today’s baby boomers. A seminal point, musically at least, was the breakout of the mid-1950s fueled by a strange and sometimes contradictory mix of black-based rhythm and blues, Arkie, Okie, Appalachian “hillbilly” rock-a-billy and plain old jazz and vanilla show tune Tin Pan Alley. The mix of course we now know as rock ‘n’ roll, sadly for this aging reviewer now called the age of classic rock 'n' roll. No sadly that it does not exist except in CDs such as the one under review, The Sun Gods, but that frenetic fury to change the musical direction of popular culture seems to have lost steam along the aging process. But take heart. While we have all probably slowed down a step or seven we will always have Sun Records CD memories to carry us.
And there is no question, no question at all that, pound for pound, the music that came out of Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records for about a decade in the 1950s was central to the mix that created rock 'n' roll. Think Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry to name just three of the more famous singers to come out of that label. And as this CD demonstrates beyond doubt, highlighted by the work of Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith here, also a whole tribe of lesser lights, one- hit Johnnies and Janies, and those who never made it that formed the background milieu that drove the others forward and created this musical chemistry that can boggle the mind. If you want to find, in one spot, a CD set that rediscovers the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, especially the contributions from the rock-a-billy side well here you are.
I have highlighted some of the tracks on each disc.
Disc One: Carl Perkins performing Roll Over Beethoven, a song made famous by Chuck Berry (and that I went crazy over when I first heard it as a kid) which I think that he may actually do better than Chuck, if you can believe that. There are several Elvis interviews recorded here as part of the promotion of his records and/or concerts in the early days. I would say, thank god, that he had that great musical talent, that look and those hips swaying in the sex-fantasy driven night because off these innocuous, bland interviews he would have starved otherwise. Still these are good to hear from a time before the king became “the King.”
Disc Two: Red Hot by Billy Lee Riley, a rock-a-billy hard-driving classic that expresses just what the break-out was all about; We Wanna Boogie by Sonny Burgess (a definitely underrated force), Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache by Warren Smith (Bob Dylan covered this one in a tribute album); and, Crazy Women by Gene Simmons. This is one of those CDs that you have to listen to all the way through to get a real feel for this music, and you should.
Disc Three: Rock Boppin’ Baby by Edwin Brice; Let’s Bop by Jack Earls; Thinkin’ Of Me by Mickey Gilley; Rockhouse by Harold Jenkins; and, You Don’t Care by, Narvel Felts. Yes, I know, you probably have never heard of any of them. But if you listen to this CD you will see where Elvis, Jerry Lee and Chuck got their stuff from. And you know, successful or as failures, as I have mentioned before in reviewing Sun Record material, all these guys (and a few gals) all sound like they are happy to be rocking and rolling rather than whatever else they were slated to do in life.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Songs To Sit At The Soda Fountain By- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Cry Baby Cry.
Every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades, and the ubiquitous Internet screen text mad connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. No way. Old geezers form a line to the rear, way in the rear.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market; the ever present pizza parlor with its jump jukebox where we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters; for some of the dweebs (or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, but only as a last resort ) the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with car hops for more “expensive” dates; and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually- owned drug store , Doc’s (no CVS, Osco madness with quick pitch in and out), that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those are for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
That last scene is what will drive this sketch, and for a simple reason. My mind just now has an illustration before it of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one paper cup while a faux beat -type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t), the booths with the red vinyl-covered seats and Formica top tables (with paper place settings, condiments, etc., right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my boys) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come in the store (read: girls). Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that a New England thing, look it up on “Wikipedia”), milkshakes, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. Still, what do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour or an hour and a half to drink a Pepsi even in slo-mo 1960s (or now) teen-land?
Enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister. Now when we were juniors in high school we mainly held court at the local pizza parlor which in the pecking order was way above the soda fountain. That was for kids, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s drug store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” the old soda fountain was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. Whatever. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”). But the thing is that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead wit that flap- cap they wore.
So one night we were dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, talking up a storm all dewy-eyed over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more.
See, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he has only one serious frail (read: girl again okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male double standard of the age, especially in regard to his sister. Not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become king of the hill by “courting” Frankie’s sister.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked. So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away with him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting in a cup in front of a young girl customer ( a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bopped, no be-bopped, no be-bop bopped one soda jerk, new or not, with it. Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, with hat on, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform wearing about three kinds of ice cream on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her just then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s 1959 boss cherry red Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Every “teenage nation” generation since they started to place teenage-hood as a distinct phase of life between childhood and young adulthood over a century ago has developed its own tribal rituals and institutions. Today’s teens seem to have cornered food courts at the mall, video arcades, and the ubiquitous Internet screen text mad connections through various look-at techno-gadgets although, frankly, I am not fully current on all their mores, customs and tribal language. No way. Old geezers form a line to the rear, way in the rear.
What I am familiar with, very familiar with, is the teen institutions of my generation, the generation of ’68, that came of teen age in the early 1960s. Our places of rendezvous were the corners in front of mom and pop variety stores in the days before franchise 7/11 came to dominate the quick stop one item shopping market; the ever present pizza parlor with its jump jukebox where we deposited more than a few nickels, dimes and quarters; for some of the dweebs (or if you wanted to get away with a “cheap” date, but only as a last resort ) the bowling alley; the open air drive-in restaurants complete with car hops for more “expensive” dates; and, for serious business, meaning serious girl and boy watching, the soda fountain. And not, in my case, just any soda fountain but the soda fountain at the local individually- owned drug store , Doc’s (no CVS, Osco madness with quick pitch in and out), that used the fountain to draw people (read, kids: what would we need prescription drugs for, those are for old people, we were invincible) into the store.
That last scene is what will drive this sketch, and for a simple reason. My mind just now has an illustration before it of just such a classic soda fountain, complete with whimsical teen-age frills (read girls, if you are not from my old working class neighborhood) all sipping their straws out of one, can you believe it, one paper cup while a faux beat -type looks on. Ah, be still my heart.
Needless to say this scene, complete with its own jukebox setup (although not every drug store had them, ours didn’t), the booths with the red vinyl-covered seats and Formica top tables (with paper place settings, condiments, etc., right), the soda fountain granite (maybe faux granite) counter, complete with swivel around stools that gave the odd boy or two (read: me and my boys) a better vantage point to watch the traffic come in the store (read: girls). Said counter also complete with glassed-encased pie (or donut) cases; the various utensils for making frappes (that a New England thing, look it up on “Wikipedia”), milkshakes, and cherry-flavored Cokes; a small grille for hamburgers, hot dogs and fries (or the odd boy grilled cheese sandwich with bacon); and, well a soda jerk (usually a guy) to whip up the orders. Oh, did I say girl and boy watching? Ya, I did. Still, what do you think we were all there for? The ice cream and soda? Come on. Does it really take an hour or an hour and a half to drink a Pepsi even in slo-mo 1960s (or now) teen-land?
Enough said about the décor because the mere mention of the term “soda jerk” brings to mind a Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood story, Frankie of a thousand stories and Frankie who was the king hill skirt-chaser (read: girl), and my best friend in middle school (a.k.a. junior high) and high school. Ya, that Frankie, or rather this time Frankie’s sister. Now when we were juniors in high school we mainly held court at the local pizza parlor which in the pecking order was way above the soda fountain. That was for kids, unless, of course, things were tough at the pizza joint (meaning girl-free) and we meandered up the street to Doc’s drug store soda fountain to check out the action there.
Of course, before we graduated to the “bigs” the old soda fountain was just fine. And it did no harm, no harm at all, to strike up friendships , or at least stay on the good side of the soda jerks so you could get an extra scoop of ice cream or a free refill on your Coke. Whatever. See, the soda jerk was usually the guy (and like I said before it was always guys, girls would probably be too distracted by every high energy teen guy, including dweeb-types, trying to be “cool”). But the thing is that the soda jerk also had some cache with the girls, I guess it must have been the uniform. Wow! Personally I wouldn’t have been caught dead wit that flap- cap they wore.
So one night we were dried up (read: no girls) at the pizza parlor and decided, as usual, to meander up the street to Doc’s. We had heard earlier in the day that Doc had a new jerk on and we wanted to check him out anyway. As we entered who do we see but Frankie’s sister, Lorrie, Frankie’s fourteen year old sister, talking up a storm all dewy-eyed over this new jerk, who must have been about eighteen. And this “cradle-robber” had his arm around, or kind of around, Lorrie. Old Frankie saw red, no double red, if not more.
See, Frankie was a guy who had more girls lined up that he could ever meet and be able to keep himself in one piece, although he has only one serious frail (read: girl again okay) that kept his interest over time (Joanne that I told you about before). So Frankie was no stranger to the old male double standard of the age, especially in regard to his sister. Not that he was really protective of her as much as he was insulted (so he told me later) by some new “jerk” trying to make moves to become king of the hill by “courting” Frankie’s sister.
And Frankie, old wiry, slender, quick-fisted Frankie was tough. Tougher than he looked. So naturally new boy “jerk” takes umbrage (nice word, right?) when Frankie starts to move “sis” away with him. Well the long and short of it was that Frankie and “jerk” started to beef a little but it is all over quickly and here is why. Frankie took an ice cream cone, a triple scoop, triple-flavored ice cream cone no less, that was sitting in a cup in front of a young girl customer ( a cute girl who I wound up checking out seriously later) and bopped, no be-bopped, no be-bop bopped one soda jerk, new or not, with it. Now if you have ever seen an eighteen year old guy, in uniform, with hat on, I don’t care if it is only a soda jerk’s uniform wearing about three kinds of ice cream on that uniform you know, you have to know that this guy’s persona non grata with the girls and “cool” guys in town forevermore.
Or so you would think. Frankie went out of town for a few days to do something on family business after this incident and one night near the edge of town as I was walking with that young girl customer whose ice cream Frankie scooped (I bought her another one, thank god I had a little cash on me, and that is why I was walking with her just then, thank you) when I saw one Lorrie sitting, sitting like the Queen of Sheba, in Mr. Soda Jerk’s 1959 boss cherry red Chevy listening to Cry Baby Cry by The Angels as “mood” music on the background car radio that I could faintly hear. Just don’t tell Frankie, okay.
Where Were You On May 10, 1963? - Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963- A CD Review (Of Sorts)
Click on the headline to link to a review of “Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963” so I can move on to the more “pressing” issue of answering the question posed in the above headline>
CD Review
Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, Bob Dylan, Sony Music, 2011
“Where were you on May 10, 1963?” bellowed a voice from the crowded back of the room of the conference, another one of those “save the world” gatherings that I was attending recently.
“Well, who is asking and why?” I replied, turning around to see who posed that odd-ball question.
Jesus, of course it was my compadre, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old- time radical journalist who has fouled up the left-wing and radical public prints of this country for the past forty years (until he recently, praise be, retired), a man who I met back in the summer of love, 1967 version. And a man who has asked me more silly questions like the one above than I can ever come close to recalling. So my answer to his question is a simple “I don’t’ know.”
Except old Josh (everybody calls him Josh, not that nonsensical Joshua Lawrence Breslin breeze publication by-line thing , except in that very brief summer of love night when he went, un-self-consciously, under the name The Prince of Love. But that is a story for another day.) had some ulterior motive, knowing my history, knowing where I was raised, knowing that I was just enough older than him to have been somewhere other than at home in 1963, and knowing that I had immersed myself in that Harvard Square-etched 1960s folk revival minute.
Of course he did have his motive, having recently purchased a copy of the elusive, rare, Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, and so he wanted the ‘skinny’ on my doings or not doings at the time. Needless to say he did not want, after him and then I listened to the thing later, to know what I thought of the CD. Frankly the material in the album recorded live in some fiendish college gym cum folk club was done in other early Dylan studio- produced albums much better at the time. No, what he wanted to know is why I was, or was not, at the concert (or really at the Brandeis Folk Festival) that weekend.
Well, number one, I was not just at that faux beat checked flannel shirt, black chino, chuck taylor sneaker (with genuine logo, thank you) midnight sunglasses high school moment familiar with the local folk scene beyond Back Bay and Harvard Square. Number two I had not the faintest notion where Brandeis was, or the city where it was located, Waltham, although it was only about seven or eight miles from Harvard Square. And as part of number two I had no way, no way in hell, to get there if I had known since being strictly from hunger over on the North Adamsville side of town I had no wheels, no prospects of getting wheels, and just then was in a dispute with Frankie Larkin, the one guy I knew who had wheels. And number three, well, let me explain number separately, okay?
Josh-jogged memory reveals that I knew exactly where I was on May 10, 1963 (or that weekend anyway). I was sitting at the Joy Street Coffee House on Beacon Hill in Boston (another budding, if less well-known, folk revival hang-out spot). And I was sitting with one, Diana Dubois, a fellow junior classmate of mine at North Adamsville High School trying to “convince” her that this new guy, Bob Dylan, was worth listening to if she wanted to get an idea of how we could get out of our fix. That fix being, we both agreed,
that we were growing up in a world that we had not created, had not been asked about, and had no apparent way of changing. Enter Bob Dylan (and others but everybody, including me, called him our muse).
See Diana and I had a "Problems in Democracy" class together and I, naturally, was all over the current events of the day and stuff like that. Sincerely, no question, but mainly acting “smart” to impress the girls, and to impress one Diana Dubois, in particular. And I did, did at least get her attention, after about two weeks of talks and walks and, finally, finally a date. Of course a no dough guy could go pretty far with a cheapo coffee house date. A little carfare from Podunk to Boston, a couple of bucks for coffee and cakes (she had tea, mint tea, I believe, but don’t quote me on that my memory is NOT that good). And a fist full of coins to play the jukebox at Joy Street. See the other beauty of the place, unlike the Harvard Square clubs was there was no “live” entertainment so there was no cover charge. Just a jukebox, juiced up with nothing but folky stuff. And the king pin max daddy of the box was one Bob Dylan with almost all his stuff on the playlist.
Naturally that playlist included “Masters Of War” that I played a few times for Diana, giving my interpretation as the lines flowed by. See, just then I was in the throes of a high anti-war dudgeon. No, not Vietnam like you might think, that was nothing on my radar except maybe we had to stop the commies, but nothing very deep. What was deep (and impressed the hell of Diana) was my opposition to nuclear weapons, especially as just a few months before we were on the edge, the deep edge, with the Russians. From there I worked my “magic” going on endlessly about the John Birch Society and its threat to democratic practices that Dylan lampooned in “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and then on to “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” I made her laugh like crazy when I parodied his voice on that one.
Now to the big moment. There was more calculation that I let on before about why I invited Diana out to this coffeehouse. See what I was really angling for was a date the next week-end to the North Adamsville High Spring Swing (name going back to some hokey, then hokey, Benny Goodman thing, when the school first opened I heard). It was a big junior bash and I had heard through my grapevine (finely-tuned to such intelligence, after all what was high school except to learn these social arts) that Diana was not dated up. So I asked her, and she said, she said, well, after this big build-up you know it was yes.
So you might as well say that Bob Dylan got me that date with Diana (and some more too but that is not part of this story). And so how do I know where I was on May 10, 1963? Well that Spring Swing was held on May 17, 1963. I have saved the ticket up in the attic. Do the math. Thanks, Bob.
CD Review
Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, Bob Dylan, Sony Music, 2011
“Where were you on May 10, 1963?” bellowed a voice from the crowded back of the room of the conference, another one of those “save the world” gatherings that I was attending recently.
“Well, who is asking and why?” I replied, turning around to see who posed that odd-ball question.
Jesus, of course it was my compadre, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old- time radical journalist who has fouled up the left-wing and radical public prints of this country for the past forty years (until he recently, praise be, retired), a man who I met back in the summer of love, 1967 version. And a man who has asked me more silly questions like the one above than I can ever come close to recalling. So my answer to his question is a simple “I don’t’ know.”
Except old Josh (everybody calls him Josh, not that nonsensical Joshua Lawrence Breslin breeze publication by-line thing , except in that very brief summer of love night when he went, un-self-consciously, under the name The Prince of Love. But that is a story for another day.) had some ulterior motive, knowing my history, knowing where I was raised, knowing that I was just enough older than him to have been somewhere other than at home in 1963, and knowing that I had immersed myself in that Harvard Square-etched 1960s folk revival minute.
Of course he did have his motive, having recently purchased a copy of the elusive, rare, Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis 1963, and so he wanted the ‘skinny’ on my doings or not doings at the time. Needless to say he did not want, after him and then I listened to the thing later, to know what I thought of the CD. Frankly the material in the album recorded live in some fiendish college gym cum folk club was done in other early Dylan studio- produced albums much better at the time. No, what he wanted to know is why I was, or was not, at the concert (or really at the Brandeis Folk Festival) that weekend.
Well, number one, I was not just at that faux beat checked flannel shirt, black chino, chuck taylor sneaker (with genuine logo, thank you) midnight sunglasses high school moment familiar with the local folk scene beyond Back Bay and Harvard Square. Number two I had not the faintest notion where Brandeis was, or the city where it was located, Waltham, although it was only about seven or eight miles from Harvard Square. And as part of number two I had no way, no way in hell, to get there if I had known since being strictly from hunger over on the North Adamsville side of town I had no wheels, no prospects of getting wheels, and just then was in a dispute with Frankie Larkin, the one guy I knew who had wheels. And number three, well, let me explain number separately, okay?
Josh-jogged memory reveals that I knew exactly where I was on May 10, 1963 (or that weekend anyway). I was sitting at the Joy Street Coffee House on Beacon Hill in Boston (another budding, if less well-known, folk revival hang-out spot). And I was sitting with one, Diana Dubois, a fellow junior classmate of mine at North Adamsville High School trying to “convince” her that this new guy, Bob Dylan, was worth listening to if she wanted to get an idea of how we could get out of our fix. That fix being, we both agreed,
that we were growing up in a world that we had not created, had not been asked about, and had no apparent way of changing. Enter Bob Dylan (and others but everybody, including me, called him our muse).
See Diana and I had a "Problems in Democracy" class together and I, naturally, was all over the current events of the day and stuff like that. Sincerely, no question, but mainly acting “smart” to impress the girls, and to impress one Diana Dubois, in particular. And I did, did at least get her attention, after about two weeks of talks and walks and, finally, finally a date. Of course a no dough guy could go pretty far with a cheapo coffee house date. A little carfare from Podunk to Boston, a couple of bucks for coffee and cakes (she had tea, mint tea, I believe, but don’t quote me on that my memory is NOT that good). And a fist full of coins to play the jukebox at Joy Street. See the other beauty of the place, unlike the Harvard Square clubs was there was no “live” entertainment so there was no cover charge. Just a jukebox, juiced up with nothing but folky stuff. And the king pin max daddy of the box was one Bob Dylan with almost all his stuff on the playlist.
Naturally that playlist included “Masters Of War” that I played a few times for Diana, giving my interpretation as the lines flowed by. See, just then I was in the throes of a high anti-war dudgeon. No, not Vietnam like you might think, that was nothing on my radar except maybe we had to stop the commies, but nothing very deep. What was deep (and impressed the hell of Diana) was my opposition to nuclear weapons, especially as just a few months before we were on the edge, the deep edge, with the Russians. From there I worked my “magic” going on endlessly about the John Birch Society and its threat to democratic practices that Dylan lampooned in “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and then on to “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” I made her laugh like crazy when I parodied his voice on that one.
Now to the big moment. There was more calculation that I let on before about why I invited Diana out to this coffeehouse. See what I was really angling for was a date the next week-end to the North Adamsville High Spring Swing (name going back to some hokey, then hokey, Benny Goodman thing, when the school first opened I heard). It was a big junior bash and I had heard through my grapevine (finely-tuned to such intelligence, after all what was high school except to learn these social arts) that Diana was not dated up. So I asked her, and she said, she said, well, after this big build-up you know it was yes.
So you might as well say that Bob Dylan got me that date with Diana (and some more too but that is not part of this story). And so how do I know where I was on May 10, 1963? Well that Spring Swing was held on May 17, 1963. I have saved the ticket up in the attic. Do the math. Thanks, Bob.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Out In Red Scare Cold War Night- Edward R. Murrow’s “ Good Night, And Good Luck”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Edward R. Murrow –featured “Good Night, And Good Luck.”
DVD Review
Good Night, And Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr. and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Warner, 2005
For those who lived in that death red scare cold war 1950s night, or who came of television age then the events depicted in this very well-done black and white documentary-like film, “Good Night, And Good Luck” (the signature sign-off line of Edward R. Murrow on his radio and television shows), should be very familiar. And a cause for reflection for those who howled with the wolves (the McCarthy, Nixon, Robert Welch wolves) calling for the blood of every, well, every speaker against that death night. For those who came after this should be a cautionary tale very appropriate for addressing the madnesses of the political and media howling wolves today.
The story line here is pretty straight-forward, the 1953-54 struggle of Edward R. Murrow, a well-respected and honest radio and television journalist, and the rabid anti-communist monger, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, including actual footage of his speeches and remarks. In that red scare cold war night few reporters, fewer liberals, and even fewer average American citizens were ready to take on the howling beasts who, mainly for their own political purposes, were ready to destroy infinite numbers of lives in order to “stop the red menace” from creeping through the door. As it turned out there were a handful of actual reds (or past reds, mainly) who may have been in the government. For that few these wolves were ready to bring the whole frail democratic experience on the American continent (what Lincoln called “the last, best hope”) toppling down.
Some guys, too few guys (or gals), like Murrow (and Fred Friendly played by George Clooney) stood up in their funny way (their cloud puff dreams of an informed, educated citizenry plugged into the world via technological promise of the global village of television seem rather ironic now) to their day’s monsters. And while we, Brother Murrow and I, may have been a million miles away from each other in age, in political and cultural sensibilities, and lifestyle I am always happy to salute a kindred spirit, an honest man seeking the truth. And I encourage all to see this film.
DVD Review
Good Night, And Good Luck, starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr. and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Warner, 2005
For those who lived in that death red scare cold war 1950s night, or who came of television age then the events depicted in this very well-done black and white documentary-like film, “Good Night, And Good Luck” (the signature sign-off line of Edward R. Murrow on his radio and television shows), should be very familiar. And a cause for reflection for those who howled with the wolves (the McCarthy, Nixon, Robert Welch wolves) calling for the blood of every, well, every speaker against that death night. For those who came after this should be a cautionary tale very appropriate for addressing the madnesses of the political and media howling wolves today.
The story line here is pretty straight-forward, the 1953-54 struggle of Edward R. Murrow, a well-respected and honest radio and television journalist, and the rabid anti-communist monger, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, including actual footage of his speeches and remarks. In that red scare cold war night few reporters, fewer liberals, and even fewer average American citizens were ready to take on the howling beasts who, mainly for their own political purposes, were ready to destroy infinite numbers of lives in order to “stop the red menace” from creeping through the door. As it turned out there were a handful of actual reds (or past reds, mainly) who may have been in the government. For that few these wolves were ready to bring the whole frail democratic experience on the American continent (what Lincoln called “the last, best hope”) toppling down.
Some guys, too few guys (or gals), like Murrow (and Fred Friendly played by George Clooney) stood up in their funny way (their cloud puff dreams of an informed, educated citizenry plugged into the world via technological promise of the global village of television seem rather ironic now) to their day’s monsters. And while we, Brother Murrow and I, may have been a million miles away from each other in age, in political and cultural sensibilities, and lifestyle I am always happy to salute a kindred spirit, an honest man seeking the truth. And I encourage all to see this film.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- What Brenda Lee Wanted - “I Want To Be Wanted”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Brenda Lee performing her classic heartache song, I Want To Be Wanted.
It’s hard to believe that fifty years later the tune to Brenda Lee’s 1960 classic tear-jerk song, I Want To Be Wanted, is running like some crazy escaped electrode through my head, incessantly through my head. The song’s premise is simple enough. A guy, if you can believe that a 1960s Mad Men in waiting guy could express such sentiments except through some woman fantasy of what a “sensitive” guy would feel when he is dumped (there is no other way to put in 1060. 1560, 2060, 2560), unceremoniously dumped by his sweetie (see I can be nice). So Brother Mopes is all bent out of shape and hardly knows that there is any real world outside his lost, and his pain. He has it so bad for this honey that he can’t even think about some future honey on the horizon taking that old sweetie’s place. Irreplaceable. So he will never be right again when some frail passes him by and gives her come hither smile. Poor guy.
Wait a minute not poor guy, no sap. And also the key to why I am still buzzing the tune through my head fifty years and five hundred come hither looks later (not all by shes, I did some of the come hithering, that is just the, appropriate, total combined). This was my story, hell, half the guys I knew had that same story (although the variety was in what would be missed, missed forever, and it was for the older guys a lot more than some errant kiss).
First to the sap part. There were a million chicks(excuse me, at the time we called dames, what we today with a lot more wisdom, respect and other evil eyes call women, chicks and they liked, some of them anyway, to be called that but that is for some social anthropologist to figure out) out there in the world. And there were at least a few of those millions that a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, hell, sixty year old boy could latch onto for company to keep away the cold after that theoretical “sweetie” showed him the door. Girls, women, who had many charms, good lips, and who could make my old heart pitter-patter just like the last chick, oops, girl. And unless some dangerous femme fatale, like Jane Greer in Out of The Past or Rita Hayworth in Gilda, has her claws into you bad , which excuses and explained every odd behavior on your part including that grin on your face when she cuts your heart open,
the world should be your oyster. So get over it.
Easy for me to say fifty years later and two years, maybe, smarter about women. But here is the “skinny.” I guess I really was that “sensitive” guy that old Brenda was describing because just about the time her song burst onto the scene, especially as a selection for the last dance of the school dance night I was in the throes of my first love affair (nice way to put it for a fourteen year old guy who wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers, flannel shirts, brown usually, black uncuffed chinos and sunglasses at midnight up in Podunk Maine (Olde Saco to be exact). Ya, heart- be-still as I say her name, Lucy D’Amboise, all of fourteen, had her non-femme fatale claws into me, into me bad after she showed me the door. And immediately took up with bad boy Jimmy LaCroix, Junior.
But time, a little, heals ten percent of all wounds, and so I got over sweet Lucy a while back. But here is the funny part although I found plenty of girl / woman companions that were better kissers, better “caressers,” less two-timing, and just as soft-voiced (although she had one of the softest, most demure voices around) they do not make me think back fifty years to some country torch song. I wonder what Lucy is doing this night.
It’s hard to believe that fifty years later the tune to Brenda Lee’s 1960 classic tear-jerk song, I Want To Be Wanted, is running like some crazy escaped electrode through my head, incessantly through my head. The song’s premise is simple enough. A guy, if you can believe that a 1960s Mad Men in waiting guy could express such sentiments except through some woman fantasy of what a “sensitive” guy would feel when he is dumped (there is no other way to put in 1060. 1560, 2060, 2560), unceremoniously dumped by his sweetie (see I can be nice). So Brother Mopes is all bent out of shape and hardly knows that there is any real world outside his lost, and his pain. He has it so bad for this honey that he can’t even think about some future honey on the horizon taking that old sweetie’s place. Irreplaceable. So he will never be right again when some frail passes him by and gives her come hither smile. Poor guy.
Wait a minute not poor guy, no sap. And also the key to why I am still buzzing the tune through my head fifty years and five hundred come hither looks later (not all by shes, I did some of the come hithering, that is just the, appropriate, total combined). This was my story, hell, half the guys I knew had that same story (although the variety was in what would be missed, missed forever, and it was for the older guys a lot more than some errant kiss).
First to the sap part. There were a million chicks(excuse me, at the time we called dames, what we today with a lot more wisdom, respect and other evil eyes call women, chicks and they liked, some of them anyway, to be called that but that is for some social anthropologist to figure out) out there in the world. And there were at least a few of those millions that a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, hell, sixty year old boy could latch onto for company to keep away the cold after that theoretical “sweetie” showed him the door. Girls, women, who had many charms, good lips, and who could make my old heart pitter-patter just like the last chick, oops, girl. And unless some dangerous femme fatale, like Jane Greer in Out of The Past or Rita Hayworth in Gilda, has her claws into you bad , which excuses and explained every odd behavior on your part including that grin on your face when she cuts your heart open,
the world should be your oyster. So get over it.
Easy for me to say fifty years later and two years, maybe, smarter about women. But here is the “skinny.” I guess I really was that “sensitive” guy that old Brenda was describing because just about the time her song burst onto the scene, especially as a selection for the last dance of the school dance night I was in the throes of my first love affair (nice way to put it for a fourteen year old guy who wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers, flannel shirts, brown usually, black uncuffed chinos and sunglasses at midnight up in Podunk Maine (Olde Saco to be exact). Ya, heart- be-still as I say her name, Lucy D’Amboise, all of fourteen, had her non-femme fatale claws into me, into me bad after she showed me the door. And immediately took up with bad boy Jimmy LaCroix, Junior.
But time, a little, heals ten percent of all wounds, and so I got over sweet Lucy a while back. But here is the funny part although I found plenty of girl / woman companions that were better kissers, better “caressers,” less two-timing, and just as soft-voiced (although she had one of the softest, most demure voices around) they do not make me think back fifty years to some country torch song. I wonder what Lucy is doing this night.
Ancient dreams, dreamed-Down On The Mean Streets Detour- Magical Realism 101
Endless tramp walked streets, waiting for the next fix. Waiting really for some god miracle, some murmured pray sacrilege and redemption seeking miracle. Waiting for all the accumulated messes of this world, this made world to seep into the gutter. Waiting for all past history, all past memoir better, all past sorrows, given and received, all pass two roads taken, wrong road chosen, all personal hurts, given and taken, all past vanities to break down in the means streets, and closure. No, not closure, relief. Waiting, ya, waiting but to no avail. And so all roads , chosen and unchosen closed, all forward turned back, all value devalued, all this ….
Five AM , dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times for a pillow used for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need. Ironic though, just that minute when I need to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Joyell saved (although I did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).
Long walk along the Charles, supermarket double brown bag for all worldly possessions. A tee shirt, maybe two, underwear, socks, a half rank pair of pants (no childhood concern about cuffed or uncuffed now, or color even), another shirt to match the one I am wearing, a comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.
Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. My street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream Pacific nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, I ‘m not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done.
Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rips). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, these days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not On The Road magic but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)
And minute 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. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.
Five AM , dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times for a pillow used for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need. Ironic though, just that minute when I need to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Joyell saved (although I did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).
Long walk along the Charles, supermarket double brown bag for all worldly possessions. A tee shirt, maybe two, underwear, socks, a half rank pair of pants (no childhood concern about cuffed or uncuffed now, or color even), another shirt to match the one I am wearing, a comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.
Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. My street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream Pacific nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, I ‘m not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done.
Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rips). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, these days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not On The Road magic but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)
And minute 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. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Great American West Night Ghost Dance- Magical Realism 101
Enough of muddy, rutted, always bum-busting rutted, country back roads, enough of breathless scenic vistas and cows, enough of trees dripping sap, rain, and bugs, strange bugs, not city bugs, that was for sure, but biting frenzy worthy anyway. Enough of all that to last a life-time, thank you. Enough too of Bunsen burners (last seen in some explosive chemical flash-out in high school chemistry class and, maybe, they have rebuilt the damn lab since then, maybe though they have left it “ as is” for an example), Coleman stoves (too small for big pots, stew worthy, simmering pots to feed hungry campers and hard, country hard, to light) wrapped blankets (getting ever mildewed ), second-hand sweated army sleeping bags (in desperate need of washing after a month of night exertions with those ever laughing hands), and minute (small, not speed in throwing up , especially when rains came pouring down and we were caught out without shelter from the storm, a metaphor maybe) pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated eastern mountain stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, and nature in the raw. Cities, please. Large Pacific-splashed roar of ocean cities with life in sheltered caverns and be quick about it.
Quebec City, Montreal, small catholic ile this and sainte that cities, towns really, in between passed in lightning speed, in 1972 lightning speed, deep into westward ho great blue-pink skied American west nights (splashed too). Onward, back to Estados Unidos entrances (studying quick-draw Spanish for the southern Mexican winter and hence use of quick-draw mex words instead of U.S. of A rock landing words). Through fossil-fueled Detroit and radical oasis Ann Arbors of the mind, quickly and then some Neola cornfields and Aunt Betty breakfasts, non-descript or rather same descript, cornfields that is, breakfasts worthy of the corn-fed. A time to ponder though, cornfield, and more cornfield, and aunt betty wisdom, totally foreign although not alien like we were in some other country, and not estatos unidos (better not say that in corn-fed Neola though you might get an argument, an argument in spades, from the normally give me your hand shake people. Yes, strange people, almost Amish except, of course, the gun-racked pick-up trucks and the odd sign or two about no six-shooters allowed). Then through to white out-eked Denver and Boulder rockymountainhighs and from there down dinosaur roads into the high desert thundering night. And to this dream.
*******
Damn, already I missed Joyell, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us roadside and campfire friends Joyell as I traveled across Interstate 10 onto the great high desert southwest American hitchhike road after we parted at the Phoenix bus station. She, heading home East, at least New York east, from the road on some pressing family emergency business, some stockholder stuff, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. (We are to meet up in some Pacific splash town, probably L.A., and from there head south, tex-mex south.)
I will tell you true, stockbroker yankee father Mafioso don or not I wished to high heaven she had not gone. See she had started to see thing s my way a little about white picket fence commitment once she knew I could be more companionable without such talk, and committed still in my own way. And glad as hell to reach my laughing hands out for her like the first snow-filled New Hampshire some high purpose anti-war conference night we met. (And she glad too, the road was our cement and our getting Boston city stinks blown off.) True too I did not relish driving alone, picking up vagrant hitchhikers and other kindred in the hot, arid, high desert sputter.
Right then though I sighted my first connection hitchhike ride heading out of Phoenix and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses, and lost loves names, ex-truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was heading to some motorcycle jamboree heading to Joshua Tree in California, my next destination (although he did not call it a jamboree and I had better not either unless I want to risk offending the entire Hell’s Angels universe at one stroke. Let’s call it tumble-rumble-stumble and be done with it. They’ll like that.).
All I wanted was company on the ride that day and unfettered thoughts of Joyell but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway, even if ex-trucker, to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such companionship. See, some guys, some trucker guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at some long ago (or it seemed like long ago, really only a couple of years) Steubenville truck stop on my way American south one time wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Ya, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts. Forlorn Joyell thoughts.
And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Me, I was thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola cornfields grandmotherly Aunt Betty (everybody called her Aunt Betty, even guys who were older than she was, after the name of her sweet Neola diner), said a month or so back when we pitched our tent for a few days in her backyard, we did some chores in kind, and she fed us, royal Midwest fed us, still rung in my ears. I was good for Joyell. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I knew inside. Joyell was good for me too.
But see the times were funny is a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into a Joyell. I was strung out, strung out hard, on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I meant. As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and chaste lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Joyell’s yankee goodheart number turned up, I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.
****
I have now put many a mile between me and Phoenix and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now into sweet winter high desert night California (still hot during the day, jesus, one hundred at Needles, although not humid, thank Christ) not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings on Joshua Tree reservation that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Joyell fealty oath. Buck has gone, and thanks, over to Twenty-nine Palms. (Marines watch out when Buck and his tribe come through.)
Sitting by this Joshua night camp fire casting weird ghost night-like shadows just makes my Joyell hunger worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies,” Jack (something out of a Pancho Villa recruitment poster and, in another age, the look of a good man to have beside you in a street fight) and Mattie (some Captain America easy rider poster boy brimming with all that old long gone Buck found ugly in his America although Mattie did two hard tours in ‘Nam), playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.
Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Joyell and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here after depositing Buck at his stop on this star –crossed night. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Ya, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Joyell plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Joyell hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the Pacific Ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about and I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well, let me get to it, the filling you in part.
After grabbing up and letting off that strange from blue streak talkin’ hard rider old Buck I did tell you about, I got here in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I (we, before Joyell high-tailed it back east), was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, here at Joshua for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. Jack and Mattie are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a borrowed car (from sweet pea Joyell) in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver, where they expected to stay for a while, later in the year.
My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when we arrived in late October at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Joshua Tree (the town) address for us to meet them at. We stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then we headed out on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix on the way to connect with them. And then my Joyell world fell apart, as you know.
And so here we were making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we, Jack Mattie and I (not Joyell though when I asked her about it one hell-bent night much later), all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-Along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.
Earlier today we had been over to Black Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely across the west not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads this now blazing camp fire night. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we had scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and the buttons had started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes).
So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I have ever seen the night sky in the citified East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Joyell I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.
And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I saw the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action, to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya...until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.
But then just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame went out, or went to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors were gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance and revenge. We, after regaining some strength, all decided that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.
Quebec City, Montreal, small catholic ile this and sainte that cities, towns really, in between passed in lightning speed, in 1972 lightning speed, deep into westward ho great blue-pink skied American west nights (splashed too). Onward, back to Estados Unidos entrances (studying quick-draw Spanish for the southern Mexican winter and hence use of quick-draw mex words instead of U.S. of A rock landing words). Through fossil-fueled Detroit and radical oasis Ann Arbors of the mind, quickly and then some Neola cornfields and Aunt Betty breakfasts, non-descript or rather same descript, cornfields that is, breakfasts worthy of the corn-fed. A time to ponder though, cornfield, and more cornfield, and aunt betty wisdom, totally foreign although not alien like we were in some other country, and not estatos unidos (better not say that in corn-fed Neola though you might get an argument, an argument in spades, from the normally give me your hand shake people. Yes, strange people, almost Amish except, of course, the gun-racked pick-up trucks and the odd sign or two about no six-shooters allowed). Then through to white out-eked Denver and Boulder rockymountainhighs and from there down dinosaur roads into the high desert thundering night. And to this dream.
*******
Damn, already I missed Joyell, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us roadside and campfire friends Joyell as I traveled across Interstate 10 onto the great high desert southwest American hitchhike road after we parted at the Phoenix bus station. She, heading home East, at least New York east, from the road on some pressing family emergency business, some stockholder stuff, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. (We are to meet up in some Pacific splash town, probably L.A., and from there head south, tex-mex south.)
I will tell you true, stockbroker yankee father Mafioso don or not I wished to high heaven she had not gone. See she had started to see thing s my way a little about white picket fence commitment once she knew I could be more companionable without such talk, and committed still in my own way. And glad as hell to reach my laughing hands out for her like the first snow-filled New Hampshire some high purpose anti-war conference night we met. (And she glad too, the road was our cement and our getting Boston city stinks blown off.) True too I did not relish driving alone, picking up vagrant hitchhikers and other kindred in the hot, arid, high desert sputter.
Right then though I sighted my first connection hitchhike ride heading out of Phoenix and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses, and lost loves names, ex-truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was heading to some motorcycle jamboree heading to Joshua Tree in California, my next destination (although he did not call it a jamboree and I had better not either unless I want to risk offending the entire Hell’s Angels universe at one stroke. Let’s call it tumble-rumble-stumble and be done with it. They’ll like that.).
All I wanted was company on the ride that day and unfettered thoughts of Joyell but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway, even if ex-trucker, to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such companionship. See, some guys, some trucker guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at some long ago (or it seemed like long ago, really only a couple of years) Steubenville truck stop on my way American south one time wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Ya, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts. Forlorn Joyell thoughts.
And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Me, I was thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola cornfields grandmotherly Aunt Betty (everybody called her Aunt Betty, even guys who were older than she was, after the name of her sweet Neola diner), said a month or so back when we pitched our tent for a few days in her backyard, we did some chores in kind, and she fed us, royal Midwest fed us, still rung in my ears. I was good for Joyell. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I knew inside. Joyell was good for me too.
But see the times were funny is a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into a Joyell. I was strung out, strung out hard, on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I meant. As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and chaste lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Joyell’s yankee goodheart number turned up, I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.
****
I have now put many a mile between me and Phoenix and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now into sweet winter high desert night California (still hot during the day, jesus, one hundred at Needles, although not humid, thank Christ) not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings on Joshua Tree reservation that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Joyell fealty oath. Buck has gone, and thanks, over to Twenty-nine Palms. (Marines watch out when Buck and his tribe come through.)
Sitting by this Joshua night camp fire casting weird ghost night-like shadows just makes my Joyell hunger worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies,” Jack (something out of a Pancho Villa recruitment poster and, in another age, the look of a good man to have beside you in a street fight) and Mattie (some Captain America easy rider poster boy brimming with all that old long gone Buck found ugly in his America although Mattie did two hard tours in ‘Nam), playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.
Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Joyell and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here after depositing Buck at his stop on this star –crossed night. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Ya, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Joyell plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Joyell hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the Pacific Ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about and I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well, let me get to it, the filling you in part.
After grabbing up and letting off that strange from blue streak talkin’ hard rider old Buck I did tell you about, I got here in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I (we, before Joyell high-tailed it back east), was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, here at Joshua for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. Jack and Mattie are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a borrowed car (from sweet pea Joyell) in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver, where they expected to stay for a while, later in the year.
My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when we arrived in late October at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Joshua Tree (the town) address for us to meet them at. We stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then we headed out on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix on the way to connect with them. And then my Joyell world fell apart, as you know.
And so here we were making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we, Jack Mattie and I (not Joyell though when I asked her about it one hell-bent night much later), all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-Along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.
Earlier today we had been over to Black Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely across the west not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads this now blazing camp fire night. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we had scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and the buttons had started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes).
So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I have ever seen the night sky in the citified East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Joyell I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.
And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I saw the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action, to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya...until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.
But then just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame went out, or went to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors were gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance and revenge. We, after regaining some strength, all decided that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Just One Year With You That Is All I Am Praying For- Elvis’ Break-Out 1956- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis performing “Shake, Rattle And Roll/
CD Review
Elvis 56, Elvis Presley (who else), RCA Records, 1956
I have beaten myself over the head, eaten humble pie, been flash-flayed, said ten acts of contrition, in short, confessed, confessed publicly, that when I was a know nothing pre-teenager in the 1950s be-bop, doo wop, red scare cold war rock and roll at the creation night I did not like Elvis. (Do I really need to say Presley among this crowd? Come on now there is only one Elvis when it comes right down to it). Now a lot of this was due to pure jealousy, pre-teen style, around the question of, ah, girls. Or maybe not so much girls as male vanity. No actually it was girls and my budding interest in them. And their very focused interest on Mr. Presley.
See I did not look, unlike my best friend Billy Bradley, remotely, like Elvis. I would have been very, very hard pressed, to imitate his side-burn driven hair style with my growing up blondish hair (moreover worn for saving household money sake buzz short). I would have been even more hard-pressed in my Podunk working poor neighborhood, alright, my projects neighborhood, to wear clothes even remotely as cool as Elvis’. Christ I was lucky to get cheapjack denim brothers hand-me-downs from the bargain center and off-color, off-cool color shirts. Worst, much worst when the deal came down in that first blush of school dance church dance last dance time held every once in a while to “keep us off the streets.” I was unable to swivel my hips like the “king.” And worst, although in that case not much worst, was my voice sounded like a frog from the local pond that graced one corner of our projects home.
Moreover I did not like Elvis because I did not like his songs, for the most part. See I was hung up on what I would now call that primordial Bo Diddley sound, that sound from some ancient mist dance around the fireplace to keep the wolves away and rock, rock to perdition time of our distant forbears. (I did know how to sway, hell, anybody could sway.) Even more moreover I was hung up on those black rhythm and blues guys like Big Joe Turner and Ike Turner. That was due to the fact that I was able to catch a midnight radio station, The Big Bopper Show, out of Chicago on the weekends on my transistor radio by some miracle and heard all kinds of stuff that drove me crazy. (For those too young, or those who have forgotten, look up that ancient communications transistor radio reference on Wikipedia. Basically though it was a small compact battery-driven unit that had the virtue, the very big virtue that it could be taken up into one’s bedroom, placed close to young ears and one’s parents would be blissfully unaware of the “subversion” until, well, until the big break-out came in 1956 and then they were caught flat-footed. At least at first.).
The best way to explain that musical taste difference is on the song “Shake, Rattle And Roll, Big Joe’s signature song covered by everybody, including Elvis here (and everybody since from Jerry Lee Lewis on). Elvis is just okay on that one even to fifty years later ears. Big Joe ruled and always will on that one. But here is where the “confession” part comes in and I grant Elvis his pardon. Several years ago I, by happenstance, watched Elvis in the break-out rock film (although the story line is so-so and predictable) “Jailhouse Rock.” I was mesmerized. By the gyrations, but more importantly, by the voice. Naturally, as is my wont, when I “get religion” I went out and gathered up every (early) Elvis compilation I could find, including this RCA break-out album. Big Joe might have been the max daddy of rhythm and blues but when Elvis swiveled for that little pre-military induction period in the mid-1950s, the time of my time, he was the king. Sorry for the delay, Mr. King.
CD Review
Elvis 56, Elvis Presley (who else), RCA Records, 1956
I have beaten myself over the head, eaten humble pie, been flash-flayed, said ten acts of contrition, in short, confessed, confessed publicly, that when I was a know nothing pre-teenager in the 1950s be-bop, doo wop, red scare cold war rock and roll at the creation night I did not like Elvis. (Do I really need to say Presley among this crowd? Come on now there is only one Elvis when it comes right down to it). Now a lot of this was due to pure jealousy, pre-teen style, around the question of, ah, girls. Or maybe not so much girls as male vanity. No actually it was girls and my budding interest in them. And their very focused interest on Mr. Presley.
See I did not look, unlike my best friend Billy Bradley, remotely, like Elvis. I would have been very, very hard pressed, to imitate his side-burn driven hair style with my growing up blondish hair (moreover worn for saving household money sake buzz short). I would have been even more hard-pressed in my Podunk working poor neighborhood, alright, my projects neighborhood, to wear clothes even remotely as cool as Elvis’. Christ I was lucky to get cheapjack denim brothers hand-me-downs from the bargain center and off-color, off-cool color shirts. Worst, much worst when the deal came down in that first blush of school dance church dance last dance time held every once in a while to “keep us off the streets.” I was unable to swivel my hips like the “king.” And worst, although in that case not much worst, was my voice sounded like a frog from the local pond that graced one corner of our projects home.
Moreover I did not like Elvis because I did not like his songs, for the most part. See I was hung up on what I would now call that primordial Bo Diddley sound, that sound from some ancient mist dance around the fireplace to keep the wolves away and rock, rock to perdition time of our distant forbears. (I did know how to sway, hell, anybody could sway.) Even more moreover I was hung up on those black rhythm and blues guys like Big Joe Turner and Ike Turner. That was due to the fact that I was able to catch a midnight radio station, The Big Bopper Show, out of Chicago on the weekends on my transistor radio by some miracle and heard all kinds of stuff that drove me crazy. (For those too young, or those who have forgotten, look up that ancient communications transistor radio reference on Wikipedia. Basically though it was a small compact battery-driven unit that had the virtue, the very big virtue that it could be taken up into one’s bedroom, placed close to young ears and one’s parents would be blissfully unaware of the “subversion” until, well, until the big break-out came in 1956 and then they were caught flat-footed. At least at first.).
The best way to explain that musical taste difference is on the song “Shake, Rattle And Roll, Big Joe’s signature song covered by everybody, including Elvis here (and everybody since from Jerry Lee Lewis on). Elvis is just okay on that one even to fifty years later ears. Big Joe ruled and always will on that one. But here is where the “confession” part comes in and I grant Elvis his pardon. Several years ago I, by happenstance, watched Elvis in the break-out rock film (although the story line is so-so and predictable) “Jailhouse Rock.” I was mesmerized. By the gyrations, but more importantly, by the voice. Naturally, as is my wont, when I “get religion” I went out and gathered up every (early) Elvis compilation I could find, including this RCA break-out album. Big Joe might have been the max daddy of rhythm and blues but when Elvis swiveled for that little pre-military induction period in the mid-1950s, the time of my time, he was the king. Sorry for the delay, Mr. King.
Monday, June 11, 2012
From Out In The Doo Wop Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Golden Age – A CD
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing the classic doo wop song, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004
Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why
(Background Music)
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy
Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)
Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.
Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.
All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004
Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics
Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why
(Background Music)
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?
Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!
Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy
Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)
Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.
Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.
All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Out in the 1950s Be-Bop Night- Bo Diddley- Who Put The Rock In Rock 'n’ Roll?
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bo Diddley performing his rock classic Bo Diddley.
DVD Review
Rock ‘n’ Rock All-Star Jam: Bo Diddley, Bob Diddley, Ron Woods, and other artists,1985
Well, there is no need to pussy foot around on this one. The question before the house is who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll. And here in this one hour all-star concert documentary, complete with background backstage footage, Bo Diddley unabashedly stakes his claim to the title that was featured in a song of his by the same name, except, except it starts out with the answer. Yes, Bo Diddley put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll. And off his performance here as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the tidal wave of rock that swept through the post-World War II teenage population in 1955 he has some “street cred” for that proposition.
Certainly there is no question that black music, in the early 1950s at least, previously confined to mainly black audiences down on the southern farms and small segregated towns and in the northern urban ghettos, centrally New York City, Chicago and Detroit, along with a ragtag coterie of “hip” whites (located in such urban oases as Greenwich Village, Harvard Square and North Beach out on the western blue-pink sky great American rim) is central to the mix that became classic 1950s rock ‘n’ roll. That is not to deny the other important thread commonly called rockabilly (although if you had scratched a rockabilly artist and asked him or her for a list of influences black gospel and rhythm and blues would be right at the top of their list, including Elvis’). But here let’s just go with the black influences. No question Ike Turner’s Rocket 88, Joe Turner’s Shake , Rattle and Roll and, I would add, Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall are nothing but examples of R&B starting to break to a faster, more nuanced rock beat.
Enter one Bo Diddley. Not only does he have the old country blues songbook down, and the post- World War II urbanization and electrification of those blues down, but he reaches back to the oldest traditions of black music, back before the American slavery plantations days, back to the Carib influences and even further back to earth mother African shores. In short, that “jungle music”, that “devil’s music” that every white mother and father (and not a few black ones as well), north and south, was worried, no, frantically worried would carry away their kids. Well, it did and we are none the worst for it.
Here is a little story from back in the 1950s days though that places old Bo’s claim in perspective and addresses the impact (and parental horror) that Bo and rock had on teenage (and late pre-teenage) kids, even all white “projects” kids like me and my beat down corner boys. In rock birth years, like 1955, ’56, ’57 every self-respecting teenage boy (or almost teenage boy), under the influence of omnipresent black and white television, tried, one way or another, to imitate Elvis. From his off-hand casual dress, to his sideburns, to swiveling hips, to sneer. Hell, I even bought a be-bop doo-wop comb to wear my hair like his. I should qualify this statement a little and say every self-respecting boy who was aware of girls tried the Elvis trick. And, additionally, became acutely aware that if you wanted to get any place with them, any place at all, you had better be something like the second coming of Elvis.
Enter now, one eleven year old William James Bradley, “Billie,” my bosom buddy in those old Adamsville South elementary school days. Billie was wild for girls way before I acknowledged their existence, or at least their charms. Billie decided, and rightly so I think, to try a different tack. Instead of forming up at the end of the line in the Elvis imitation department he decided to imitate Bo Diddley. At that time we were playing the song Bo Diddley and, I think, Who Do You Love? like crazy. Elvis bopped, no question. But Bo’s beat spoke to something more primordial, something connected, unconsciously to our way back ancestry. Even an clumsy white boy like me could sway to the beat.
Of course that last sentence is nothing but a now time explanation for what drove us to the music. Then we didn’t know the roots of rock, or probably care, except our parents didn’t like it, and were sometimes willing to put the stop to our listening. Praise be for transistor radios (younger readers look that up on Wikipedia) to get around their madness, their cold war night parental madness that enveloped us all.
But see, Billie also, just at that beginning break-out time, did not know what Bo looked like. Nor did I. So his idea of imitating Bo was to set himself up as a sort of a Buddy Holly look alike, complete with glasses and that single curled hair strand.
Billie, naturally, like I say, was nothing but a top-dog dancer, and wired into girl-dom like crazy. And they were starting to like him too. One night he showed up at a local church catholic, chaste, virginal priest-chaperoned dance with this faux-Buddy Holly look. Some older guy meaning maybe sixteen or seventeen, wise to the rock scene well beyond our experiences, asked Billy what he was trying to do. Billie said, innocently, that he was something like the seventh son of the seventh son of Bo Diddley. This older guy laughed, laughed a big laugh and drew everyone’s attention to himself and Billie. Then he yelled out, yelled out for all the girls to hear “Billie boy here wants to be Bo Diddley, he wants to be nothing but a jungle bunny music N----r boy”. All went quiet. Billie ran out of the hall, and I ran after him, out the back door. I couldn’t find him that night.
See, Billie and I were clueless about Bo’s race. We just thought it was all rock (read: white music) then and didn’t know much about the black part of it, or the south part, or the segregated part either. We did know though what the n----r part meant in our all white housing project. And here was the kicker. Next day Billie strutted into school looking like the seventh son of the seventh son of Elvis. But as he got to the end of the line I could see, and can see very clearly even now, that the steam had gone out of him. So when somebody asks you who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll know that old Bo’s claim was right on track, and he had to clear some very high racial and social hurdles to make that claim. Just ask Billie.
DVD Review
Rock ‘n’ Rock All-Star Jam: Bo Diddley, Bob Diddley, Ron Woods, and other artists,1985
Well, there is no need to pussy foot around on this one. The question before the house is who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll. And here in this one hour all-star concert documentary, complete with background backstage footage, Bo Diddley unabashedly stakes his claim to the title that was featured in a song of his by the same name, except, except it starts out with the answer. Yes, Bo Diddley put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll. And off his performance here as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the tidal wave of rock that swept through the post-World War II teenage population in 1955 he has some “street cred” for that proposition.
Certainly there is no question that black music, in the early 1950s at least, previously confined to mainly black audiences down on the southern farms and small segregated towns and in the northern urban ghettos, centrally New York City, Chicago and Detroit, along with a ragtag coterie of “hip” whites (located in such urban oases as Greenwich Village, Harvard Square and North Beach out on the western blue-pink sky great American rim) is central to the mix that became classic 1950s rock ‘n’ roll. That is not to deny the other important thread commonly called rockabilly (although if you had scratched a rockabilly artist and asked him or her for a list of influences black gospel and rhythm and blues would be right at the top of their list, including Elvis’). But here let’s just go with the black influences. No question Ike Turner’s Rocket 88, Joe Turner’s Shake , Rattle and Roll and, I would add, Elmore James’ Look Yonder Wall are nothing but examples of R&B starting to break to a faster, more nuanced rock beat.
Enter one Bo Diddley. Not only does he have the old country blues songbook down, and the post- World War II urbanization and electrification of those blues down, but he reaches back to the oldest traditions of black music, back before the American slavery plantations days, back to the Carib influences and even further back to earth mother African shores. In short, that “jungle music”, that “devil’s music” that every white mother and father (and not a few black ones as well), north and south, was worried, no, frantically worried would carry away their kids. Well, it did and we are none the worst for it.
Here is a little story from back in the 1950s days though that places old Bo’s claim in perspective and addresses the impact (and parental horror) that Bo and rock had on teenage (and late pre-teenage) kids, even all white “projects” kids like me and my beat down corner boys. In rock birth years, like 1955, ’56, ’57 every self-respecting teenage boy (or almost teenage boy), under the influence of omnipresent black and white television, tried, one way or another, to imitate Elvis. From his off-hand casual dress, to his sideburns, to swiveling hips, to sneer. Hell, I even bought a be-bop doo-wop comb to wear my hair like his. I should qualify this statement a little and say every self-respecting boy who was aware of girls tried the Elvis trick. And, additionally, became acutely aware that if you wanted to get any place with them, any place at all, you had better be something like the second coming of Elvis.
Enter now, one eleven year old William James Bradley, “Billie,” my bosom buddy in those old Adamsville South elementary school days. Billie was wild for girls way before I acknowledged their existence, or at least their charms. Billie decided, and rightly so I think, to try a different tack. Instead of forming up at the end of the line in the Elvis imitation department he decided to imitate Bo Diddley. At that time we were playing the song Bo Diddley and, I think, Who Do You Love? like crazy. Elvis bopped, no question. But Bo’s beat spoke to something more primordial, something connected, unconsciously to our way back ancestry. Even an clumsy white boy like me could sway to the beat.
Of course that last sentence is nothing but a now time explanation for what drove us to the music. Then we didn’t know the roots of rock, or probably care, except our parents didn’t like it, and were sometimes willing to put the stop to our listening. Praise be for transistor radios (younger readers look that up on Wikipedia) to get around their madness, their cold war night parental madness that enveloped us all.
But see, Billie also, just at that beginning break-out time, did not know what Bo looked like. Nor did I. So his idea of imitating Bo was to set himself up as a sort of a Buddy Holly look alike, complete with glasses and that single curled hair strand.
Billie, naturally, like I say, was nothing but a top-dog dancer, and wired into girl-dom like crazy. And they were starting to like him too. One night he showed up at a local church catholic, chaste, virginal priest-chaperoned dance with this faux-Buddy Holly look. Some older guy meaning maybe sixteen or seventeen, wise to the rock scene well beyond our experiences, asked Billy what he was trying to do. Billie said, innocently, that he was something like the seventh son of the seventh son of Bo Diddley. This older guy laughed, laughed a big laugh and drew everyone’s attention to himself and Billie. Then he yelled out, yelled out for all the girls to hear “Billie boy here wants to be Bo Diddley, he wants to be nothing but a jungle bunny music N----r boy”. All went quiet. Billie ran out of the hall, and I ran after him, out the back door. I couldn’t find him that night.
See, Billie and I were clueless about Bo’s race. We just thought it was all rock (read: white music) then and didn’t know much about the black part of it, or the south part, or the segregated part either. We did know though what the n----r part meant in our all white housing project. And here was the kicker. Next day Billie strutted into school looking like the seventh son of the seventh son of Elvis. But as he got to the end of the line I could see, and can see very clearly even now, that the steam had gone out of him. So when somebody asks you who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll know that old Bo’s claim was right on track, and he had to clear some very high racial and social hurdles to make that claim. Just ask Billie.
Reflections In The Dorchester Day Wind- From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
Click on the headline to link to the Dorchester Day Parade website.
As I stepped up the steps from the Morrissey Boulevard entrance to the Columbia MTA station in the “high Dorchester” section of old home town Boston that noontime June 3rd morning I was suddenly overcome with thoughts of how much this old transit/transfer section of town from my neighboring North Adamsville grow up home to downtown and points north had been part of my growing up life. Oops on that Columbia station reference, except maybe for old-time townies. I ‘forgot’ that the station had long ago been renamed from old housing project ghetto hellhole dump for Boston’s poor, black and white, but increasing black as time wore on and the whites fled to neighboring North Adamsville and points south, Columbia Point. Of course the stop is now named the JFK (no need to identify those Boston-etched initials, even to newcomers, although for how much longer I don’t know) UMass MBTA station reflecting its new designation as the site of the JFK Presidential Library and the ever-sprawling although still commuter-bound Boston branch of the state university system.
The reason that I am taking these steps, these now suddenly fraught with memories steps, is in order to take the old Redline subway down the line a few stops to the still same old name Ashmont station. From there to then walk a few blocks (actually about twenty but memory failed) further down Dorchester Avenue (hereafter “Dot” Avenue, we don’t have to be formal here, not in Dorchester, christ, not in Dorchester) to meet up with some ex-military veteran activists united in Veterans for Peace who are marching this day in the annual Dorchester Day parade and have invited me to march with them. I can hardly believe though that this is actually my first Dorchester Day parade under any pretext (held annually on the first Sunday in June for about a billion years now in order to celebrate the landing party that founded the place. It was not always part of Boston but had its own separate history back about half a billion years ago). So this will be a story about memory, yes, always memory these days, about how the peace message that these gutsy veterans bring with them in hard-hit working class and immigrant- heavy Dot, and about the twelve millionth reworking of the “what goes around comes around.” But let’s get started.
Okay, so I “safely” entered the JFK/UMass station and after successfully passing my new “Charlie” card through the scanner (there is a story here but I will let that pass) I head downstairs almost automatically to the waiting platform. Except, as a fairly infrequent user of the “T” of late, and of this stop almost beyond memory, I almost went to the wrong platform. Reason: this Redline station separates one branch going to old traditional Ashmont the other winding its way to North Adamsville and points south as the public transportation system has grown tentacles to all reaches of the Greater Boston area. But I right myself in time, walk right, and wait a few minutes for the old redeye to come into the station with much fanfare.
The trip was uneventful as a ride, no screaming kids, no drunks riding the rails to shake the shakes on the cheap, no petty larceny eyes waiting to pounce, but was filled with memory tips as we joggle alone parallel to the ever present triple-deckers adjacent to line. House after house stuck almost together like one with their three back porches showing laundry and storage, In the old days these triple-deckers represented that first trek (including by some of my more distant relatives, the close ones hail from hard Irish South Boston, “Southie”) out toward the southern old suburbs and more space. Now they represent, increasingly, the lasting abode of blacks, browns, and immigrants who did not survive the seemingly never-ending 2008 home-ownership bubble, or who never got that far. Next stop Savin Hill, same comment, and same stuck together three-deckers along the line (although farther from the din of the tracks, closer to the bay, better housing stock can be found).
Ah, then the curve turn to Fields Corner and I see a couple of hats doffed from old- time passengers, one seemingly ancient beyond description and time, while we pass the ancient Roman Catholic Church (Saint Anne’s, maybe?) seen from the curve. (In the old days, jesus, the whole train load would be men doffing hats or women crossing themselves, including hatless kid me, I think).
Of course Fields Corner memory was more than just train doffs and crosses but was filled with treks from North Adamsville. Why? Well, kid why. See the train sprawl to the suburbs mentioned earlier started after I left this part of town. Back in the day (nice, huh) no Redline went to North Adamsville and so to get to town (or beyond to mecca Harvard Square) you waited, waited endlessly for the clickety-clack privately-run Eastern Massachusetts bus or just walked. Me, I walked, kid walked, hey it was only a couple of miles, just a lark most days except meltdown dog days August. Just go over the North Adamsville Bridge walk up Neponset Avenue, cut up Adams Street and then presto, taken a token and take freedom (the why of freedom has been told before and need not detain us here) and hang-out Boston Common or Friday night/ early Saturday morning Harvard Square. Next.
Shawmut, seldom stopped at and known mainly for the white invasion into the area by young 1970s radicals (SDS remnants, Progressive Labor, all kinds of Maoists and Trotskyists beyond mention looking to immerse themselves in the tiny real Boston working class. Good luck, brothers and sisters). They mainly hovered around the Melville Street Victorians and big houses (simple math- divide up seven rooms among seven roommates and you could swing the rent, or in some cases afford the cheap mortgage). Somebody told me a while back , and I was amazed since most of those ancient minute warriors have long since gone to academia ghettos or at least the quiet, very quiet so as not to disturb their sleep, suburbs, that a few refugees still hold forth there and even make some noise on local issues. Hats off, if that is true. But time to move on.
Okay end of the line beautified Ashmont and walk. Ashmont of a thousand (maybe not that many, not as many as Southie anyway) Irish (Irish by bulk clientele and thus Irish) bars, ladies by invitation only, thus not invited, for manly bouts of whiskey straight up (and maybe, depending on dough and days, a beer chaser), furtive arguments about baseball or some misty sport or name, and a few busted ribs or noses. I knew the inside of a fair share of them, walking home, Dorchester home, not youth North Adamsville home, and was not welcome like the ladies in a couple of the rougher ones (“slumming” so it seemed ), no dough for carfare used for one last shot instead. And Ashmont of youth alternative to Field Corner home, sometimes when I had a pressing problem, a pressing kid problem, meaning, naturally, girls, or something like that, and the extra walk time down Gallivan Boulevard gave resolve to the question (hey, minute resolve on the girl thing, hell, even I knew, or suspected, eternity angst on that one)
Walk, human walk machine walk, since wee kid eternity down at the old Adamsville projects, and carless father, mostly carless father (or clunkers that meant carless in short order) , and too impatient to wait for another branch of that privately run Eastern Massachusetts bus, and so walk. And today I walk because in my planning I had assumed more time that I needed for random Sunday service trains and so I could old time walk to eat up time before the one o’clock step-off. And so walk, walk right in into that cluster of hard-bitten veterans (mainly now ancient times Vietnam era or older, jesus) getting ready to “show the colors” to do unequal “battle” once again against the American monster war machine. And we, they, do.
As I stepped up the steps from the Morrissey Boulevard entrance to the Columbia MTA station in the “high Dorchester” section of old home town Boston that noontime June 3rd morning I was suddenly overcome with thoughts of how much this old transit/transfer section of town from my neighboring North Adamsville grow up home to downtown and points north had been part of my growing up life. Oops on that Columbia station reference, except maybe for old-time townies. I ‘forgot’ that the station had long ago been renamed from old housing project ghetto hellhole dump for Boston’s poor, black and white, but increasing black as time wore on and the whites fled to neighboring North Adamsville and points south, Columbia Point. Of course the stop is now named the JFK (no need to identify those Boston-etched initials, even to newcomers, although for how much longer I don’t know) UMass MBTA station reflecting its new designation as the site of the JFK Presidential Library and the ever-sprawling although still commuter-bound Boston branch of the state university system.
The reason that I am taking these steps, these now suddenly fraught with memories steps, is in order to take the old Redline subway down the line a few stops to the still same old name Ashmont station. From there to then walk a few blocks (actually about twenty but memory failed) further down Dorchester Avenue (hereafter “Dot” Avenue, we don’t have to be formal here, not in Dorchester, christ, not in Dorchester) to meet up with some ex-military veteran activists united in Veterans for Peace who are marching this day in the annual Dorchester Day parade and have invited me to march with them. I can hardly believe though that this is actually my first Dorchester Day parade under any pretext (held annually on the first Sunday in June for about a billion years now in order to celebrate the landing party that founded the place. It was not always part of Boston but had its own separate history back about half a billion years ago). So this will be a story about memory, yes, always memory these days, about how the peace message that these gutsy veterans bring with them in hard-hit working class and immigrant- heavy Dot, and about the twelve millionth reworking of the “what goes around comes around.” But let’s get started.
Okay, so I “safely” entered the JFK/UMass station and after successfully passing my new “Charlie” card through the scanner (there is a story here but I will let that pass) I head downstairs almost automatically to the waiting platform. Except, as a fairly infrequent user of the “T” of late, and of this stop almost beyond memory, I almost went to the wrong platform. Reason: this Redline station separates one branch going to old traditional Ashmont the other winding its way to North Adamsville and points south as the public transportation system has grown tentacles to all reaches of the Greater Boston area. But I right myself in time, walk right, and wait a few minutes for the old redeye to come into the station with much fanfare.
The trip was uneventful as a ride, no screaming kids, no drunks riding the rails to shake the shakes on the cheap, no petty larceny eyes waiting to pounce, but was filled with memory tips as we joggle alone parallel to the ever present triple-deckers adjacent to line. House after house stuck almost together like one with their three back porches showing laundry and storage, In the old days these triple-deckers represented that first trek (including by some of my more distant relatives, the close ones hail from hard Irish South Boston, “Southie”) out toward the southern old suburbs and more space. Now they represent, increasingly, the lasting abode of blacks, browns, and immigrants who did not survive the seemingly never-ending 2008 home-ownership bubble, or who never got that far. Next stop Savin Hill, same comment, and same stuck together three-deckers along the line (although farther from the din of the tracks, closer to the bay, better housing stock can be found).
Ah, then the curve turn to Fields Corner and I see a couple of hats doffed from old- time passengers, one seemingly ancient beyond description and time, while we pass the ancient Roman Catholic Church (Saint Anne’s, maybe?) seen from the curve. (In the old days, jesus, the whole train load would be men doffing hats or women crossing themselves, including hatless kid me, I think).
Of course Fields Corner memory was more than just train doffs and crosses but was filled with treks from North Adamsville. Why? Well, kid why. See the train sprawl to the suburbs mentioned earlier started after I left this part of town. Back in the day (nice, huh) no Redline went to North Adamsville and so to get to town (or beyond to mecca Harvard Square) you waited, waited endlessly for the clickety-clack privately-run Eastern Massachusetts bus or just walked. Me, I walked, kid walked, hey it was only a couple of miles, just a lark most days except meltdown dog days August. Just go over the North Adamsville Bridge walk up Neponset Avenue, cut up Adams Street and then presto, taken a token and take freedom (the why of freedom has been told before and need not detain us here) and hang-out Boston Common or Friday night/ early Saturday morning Harvard Square. Next.
Shawmut, seldom stopped at and known mainly for the white invasion into the area by young 1970s radicals (SDS remnants, Progressive Labor, all kinds of Maoists and Trotskyists beyond mention looking to immerse themselves in the tiny real Boston working class. Good luck, brothers and sisters). They mainly hovered around the Melville Street Victorians and big houses (simple math- divide up seven rooms among seven roommates and you could swing the rent, or in some cases afford the cheap mortgage). Somebody told me a while back , and I was amazed since most of those ancient minute warriors have long since gone to academia ghettos or at least the quiet, very quiet so as not to disturb their sleep, suburbs, that a few refugees still hold forth there and even make some noise on local issues. Hats off, if that is true. But time to move on.
Okay end of the line beautified Ashmont and walk. Ashmont of a thousand (maybe not that many, not as many as Southie anyway) Irish (Irish by bulk clientele and thus Irish) bars, ladies by invitation only, thus not invited, for manly bouts of whiskey straight up (and maybe, depending on dough and days, a beer chaser), furtive arguments about baseball or some misty sport or name, and a few busted ribs or noses. I knew the inside of a fair share of them, walking home, Dorchester home, not youth North Adamsville home, and was not welcome like the ladies in a couple of the rougher ones (“slumming” so it seemed ), no dough for carfare used for one last shot instead. And Ashmont of youth alternative to Field Corner home, sometimes when I had a pressing problem, a pressing kid problem, meaning, naturally, girls, or something like that, and the extra walk time down Gallivan Boulevard gave resolve to the question (hey, minute resolve on the girl thing, hell, even I knew, or suspected, eternity angst on that one)
Walk, human walk machine walk, since wee kid eternity down at the old Adamsville projects, and carless father, mostly carless father (or clunkers that meant carless in short order) , and too impatient to wait for another branch of that privately run Eastern Massachusetts bus, and so walk. And today I walk because in my planning I had assumed more time that I needed for random Sunday service trains and so I could old time walk to eat up time before the one o’clock step-off. And so walk, walk right in into that cluster of hard-bitten veterans (mainly now ancient times Vietnam era or older, jesus) getting ready to “show the colors” to do unequal “battle” once again against the American monster war machine. And we, they, do.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- Saturday Night With “Roy The Boy”- Roy Orbison
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Roy Orbison performing Running Scared.
DVD Review
Roy Orbison: Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, various all-star musicians and backup singers including Bruce Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett, 1987
Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis come easily to mind when thinking about classic rock ‘n’ roll (ya, the early 1950s stuff not the my 1960s coming of age stuff, although that is good too, mostly). And about where you were, and who you were with, and what you were doing when you heard those voices on the radio, on the television, or when you were spinning platters (records, for the younger set, okay, nice expression, right?). The artist under review, Roy Orbison, although clearly a rock legend, and rightly so, does not evoke that same kind of memory for me. Oh sure, I listened to Blue Bayou, Pretty Woman, Running Scared, Sweet Dreams, Baby and many of the other songs that are performed on this great black and white concert footage. And backed up by the likes of T-Bone Burnett, who may be the top rhythm guitarist of the age (and who has also gotten well-deserved kudos for his work on Jeff Bridges’ Crazy Hearts), Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen. With vocal backups by k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt. All who gave energized performances and all who were deeply influenced by Roy’s music. That alone makes this worth viewing.
Still, I had this gnawing feeling about Roy’s voice after viewing this documentary and why it never really “spoke” to me like the others. Then it came to me, the part I mentioned above about where I was, and who I was with, and what I was doing when I heard Roy. Enter one mad monk teenage friend, Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood. Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, and, oh ya, Frankie, my bosom friend in high school.
See, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday, working class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway that was also conveniently near our high school too. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it sit for a while and no eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven. (People who know such things told me later that kind of cold is the way you are supposed to eat pizza anyway, and as an appetizer not as a meal.)
Moreover, this was the one where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination. Jesus, he could flip that thing.
One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio I think his name was, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie and the Roy question, alright.
So there nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eying in school until my eyes have become sore), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally bottled root beer, and, incessantly (and that incessantly allowed us to stay since we were “paying “ customers with all the rights and dignities that entailed, unless they needed our seats), dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.
Here is the part that might really explain things, though. Frankie has this girl friend (he always had a string of them, which what was cool about him, but this was his main squeeze, his main honey, his main twist, his main flame and about sixty-seven other names he had for them). The divine Joanne (his description, I could take or leave her, and I questioned the divine part, questioned it thoroughly, on more than one occasion). See though Frankie, old double standard, maybe triple standard Frankie, was crazy about her but was always worried, worried to perdition, that she was “seeing” someone else (she wasn’t). You know guys like that, guys that have all the angles, have some things going their way but need, desperately need, that always one more thing to “complete” them.
But sweet old clever “divine” Joanne used that Frankie fear as a wedge. She would always talk (and talk while I was there, just to kind of add to the trauma drama, Frankie’s drama) about all the guys that called up bothering her (personally I didn’t see it, she was cute, for sure, and with a nice figure but I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if she turned me down, others in those days yes, and gladly, but not her). This would get Frankie steaming, steaming so he couldn’t see straight. Once he actually couldn’t eat his pizza slice he was so upset and Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, ALWAYS ate his pizza. Even fatherly Tonio took notice.
Worst, was when old doll, old sweetheart, Joanne would drop coins in the jukebox to play… Roy Orbison’s Running Scared over and over. And make Frankie give her good coin, his good coin to boot. It got so bad that old Frankie, when Joanne wasn’t around, would play it on his own. With his own money, no less. So, I guess, I just got so sick of hearing that song and that trembling rising crescendo voice to increase the lyrical power that I couldn’t see straight. But, really, you can’t blame Roy for that, or shouldn’t. Watch this DVD. I did and just turned the old volume on the remote down when that song came on. And think of poor old lovesick Frankie and his divine Ms. Joanne. That’s the ticket.
**********
Running Scared- Roy Orbison, Joe Melson
Just running scared, each place we go
So afraid that he might show
Yeah, running scared, what would I do
If he came back and wanted you
Just running scared, feeling low
Running scared, you love him so
Yeah, running scared, afraid to lose
If he came back which one would you choose
Then all at once he was standing there
So sure of himself, his head in the air
And my heart was breaking, which one would it be
You turned around and walked away with me
DVD Review
Roy Orbison: Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, various all-star musicians and backup singers including Bruce Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett, 1987
Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis come easily to mind when thinking about classic rock ‘n’ roll (ya, the early 1950s stuff not the my 1960s coming of age stuff, although that is good too, mostly). And about where you were, and who you were with, and what you were doing when you heard those voices on the radio, on the television, or when you were spinning platters (records, for the younger set, okay, nice expression, right?). The artist under review, Roy Orbison, although clearly a rock legend, and rightly so, does not evoke that same kind of memory for me. Oh sure, I listened to Blue Bayou, Pretty Woman, Running Scared, Sweet Dreams, Baby and many of the other songs that are performed on this great black and white concert footage. And backed up by the likes of T-Bone Burnett, who may be the top rhythm guitarist of the age (and who has also gotten well-deserved kudos for his work on Jeff Bridges’ Crazy Hearts), Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen. With vocal backups by k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt. All who gave energized performances and all who were deeply influenced by Roy’s music. That alone makes this worth viewing.
Still, I had this gnawing feeling about Roy’s voice after viewing this documentary and why it never really “spoke” to me like the others. Then it came to me, the part I mentioned above about where I was, and who I was with, and what I was doing when I heard Roy. Enter one mad monk teenage friend, Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood. Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, and, oh ya, Frankie, my bosom friend in high school.
See, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday, working class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway that was also conveniently near our high school too. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it sit for a while and no eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven. (People who know such things told me later that kind of cold is the way you are supposed to eat pizza anyway, and as an appetizer not as a meal.)
Moreover, this was the one where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination. Jesus, he could flip that thing.
One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio I think his name was, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie and the Roy question, alright.
So there nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eying in school until my eyes have become sore), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally bottled root beer, and, incessantly (and that incessantly allowed us to stay since we were “paying “ customers with all the rights and dignities that entailed, unless they needed our seats), dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.
Here is the part that might really explain things, though. Frankie has this girl friend (he always had a string of them, which what was cool about him, but this was his main squeeze, his main honey, his main twist, his main flame and about sixty-seven other names he had for them). The divine Joanne (his description, I could take or leave her, and I questioned the divine part, questioned it thoroughly, on more than one occasion). See though Frankie, old double standard, maybe triple standard Frankie, was crazy about her but was always worried, worried to perdition, that she was “seeing” someone else (she wasn’t). You know guys like that, guys that have all the angles, have some things going their way but need, desperately need, that always one more thing to “complete” them.
But sweet old clever “divine” Joanne used that Frankie fear as a wedge. She would always talk (and talk while I was there, just to kind of add to the trauma drama, Frankie’s drama) about all the guys that called up bothering her (personally I didn’t see it, she was cute, for sure, and with a nice figure but I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if she turned me down, others in those days yes, and gladly, but not her). This would get Frankie steaming, steaming so he couldn’t see straight. Once he actually couldn’t eat his pizza slice he was so upset and Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, ALWAYS ate his pizza. Even fatherly Tonio took notice.
Worst, was when old doll, old sweetheart, Joanne would drop coins in the jukebox to play… Roy Orbison’s Running Scared over and over. And make Frankie give her good coin, his good coin to boot. It got so bad that old Frankie, when Joanne wasn’t around, would play it on his own. With his own money, no less. So, I guess, I just got so sick of hearing that song and that trembling rising crescendo voice to increase the lyrical power that I couldn’t see straight. But, really, you can’t blame Roy for that, or shouldn’t. Watch this DVD. I did and just turned the old volume on the remote down when that song came on. And think of poor old lovesick Frankie and his divine Ms. Joanne. That’s the ticket.
**********
Running Scared- Roy Orbison, Joe Melson
Just running scared, each place we go
So afraid that he might show
Yeah, running scared, what would I do
If he came back and wanted you
Just running scared, feeling low
Running scared, you love him so
Yeah, running scared, afraid to lose
If he came back which one would you choose
Then all at once he was standing there
So sure of himself, his head in the air
And my heart was breaking, which one would it be
You turned around and walked away with me
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Eddie Cochran’s “Sittin’ In The Balcony”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing “Sitting In The Balcony.”
SITTIN' IN THE BALCONY
By Johnny Dee
©1957 Cedarwood Publ.
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-watchin' a movie
Or maybe it's a symphony
I wouldn't know
Don't care about the symphonies
Those cymbales and tympanies
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
I hold your hand and I kiss you, too
The feature's over, but we're not through!
Mmmm, just a-sittin' in the balcony
Holdin' hands in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
We may stop lovin' to watch Bugs Bunny
But he can't take the place of my honey!
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-snootchin' in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
Just a-huggin' and a-kissin'
With my baby in the very last row
(source: Standard Songs Pop/ Country/ Blues/ Folk/ Instumentals/ Novelty, Acuff-Rose Publications Inc. 1956-1973)
Two un-star-crossed youth, or let’s hope they are un-star-crossed, one an emerging boy-man the other a girl-woman, emerging too, strictly junior high school kids, fresh from some morning chores are walking close together, although not touching. Jesus. Not touching in public. What if somebody had seen them? Jesus floats again in both their minds. He, having just finished cleaning his room to earn nickels and quarters to take in the weekly Saturday double- feature movie at the Strand. She, helping mother dear, to do the weekly laundry before heading out to that very same double feature at the Strand. No money changed hands between mother and daughter though.
They are walking, if not closely, together, one, because he, boy-man had gotten up the nerve after several weeks of hid and seek talk between them to ask her to the movies, a special place for him (and her too). And, she, as she told her girlfriends at the mandatory Monday morning before school girls’“lav” session where all the latest talk gathered, almost answered yes before he asked she was so impatient, and thrilled. And two, times are hard just then in old North Adamsville, and while he, boy-man, really likes her, girl-woman, he cannot swing bus fare, two movie tickets, AND popcorn on the nickels and quarters made from the half-ass way he cleaned his room. She understood she said and she LIKED to walk. Can you believe that, she liked to walk?
So they walked, walked not very closely, but walked and were jabbering like two blue-jays, the mile, or mile and one half, uptown to the Strand. They had started at noon to be sure to make the one o’clock start of the first show, "The Son Of Big Blob," a monster film (the other was a “romance,” kids-style, “Jenny Belinda"). But, truth, if anybody had bothered to notice the pair as he paid for two tickets at the ticket window (two children’s tickets, not adult’s, as the looking askance cashier questioned them about their ages, fortunately they looked, if they did not feel, under twelve), it could have been an old people’s Humphrey Bogart/Katherine Hepburn double feature. Especially as she was standing somewhat closer to him now that they had moved out of the public spotlight of the streets. So close he could smell, drive him crazy smell, the bath soap she had bathed in or perfume she had put on. Ya, drove him crazy.
Inside the theater two decisions needed pressing resolution, one, popcorn now, popcorn between the two films. Resolved: later. Two, down in the orchestra pit, or in the balcony. No big deal, right. Wrong, where have you been? Orchestra meant nothing but sitting and watching the movies, maybe holding sweating hands like goofs and old people did. The balcony meant, well, it meant the possibility of adventure, of, well, or more than holding hands. Jesus, where have you been, petting, heavy petting, okay. So he, boy-man gulped, and asked which place, and she, girl-woman answered, gulp, balcony. So they climbed the stairs, fought for a conveniently isolated spot and sat down waiting for the previews to start that would bring the lights down low. And they did. And I am willing to bet six-two-and even on two propositions. One, neither of them could, in twenty-five words or less, give the plots of either of the films. Two, she, girl-woman, would have plenty to mandatory tell come Monday pre-school girls’ “lav” session. Oh ya, and he will still be swimmingly intoxicated by that perfume (not bath soap, that’s kid’s stuff) she copped from her mother’s bureau and that wore just for him on Saturday. Growing up absurd in the 1950s, or anytime, maybe.
SITTIN' IN THE BALCONY
By Johnny Dee
©1957 Cedarwood Publ.
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-watchin' a movie
Or maybe it's a symphony
I wouldn't know
Don't care about the symphonies
Those cymbales and tympanies
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
I hold your hand and I kiss you, too
The feature's over, but we're not through!
Mmmm, just a-sittin' in the balcony
Holdin' hands in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
We may stop lovin' to watch Bugs Bunny
But he can't take the place of my honey!
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
Just a-snootchin' in the balcony
Just a-sittin' in the balcony
On the very last row
Just a-huggin' and a-kissin'
With my baby in the very last row
(source: Standard Songs Pop/ Country/ Blues/ Folk/ Instumentals/ Novelty, Acuff-Rose Publications Inc. 1956-1973)
Two un-star-crossed youth, or let’s hope they are un-star-crossed, one an emerging boy-man the other a girl-woman, emerging too, strictly junior high school kids, fresh from some morning chores are walking close together, although not touching. Jesus. Not touching in public. What if somebody had seen them? Jesus floats again in both their minds. He, having just finished cleaning his room to earn nickels and quarters to take in the weekly Saturday double- feature movie at the Strand. She, helping mother dear, to do the weekly laundry before heading out to that very same double feature at the Strand. No money changed hands between mother and daughter though.
They are walking, if not closely, together, one, because he, boy-man had gotten up the nerve after several weeks of hid and seek talk between them to ask her to the movies, a special place for him (and her too). And, she, as she told her girlfriends at the mandatory Monday morning before school girls’“lav” session where all the latest talk gathered, almost answered yes before he asked she was so impatient, and thrilled. And two, times are hard just then in old North Adamsville, and while he, boy-man, really likes her, girl-woman, he cannot swing bus fare, two movie tickets, AND popcorn on the nickels and quarters made from the half-ass way he cleaned his room. She understood she said and she LIKED to walk. Can you believe that, she liked to walk?
So they walked, walked not very closely, but walked and were jabbering like two blue-jays, the mile, or mile and one half, uptown to the Strand. They had started at noon to be sure to make the one o’clock start of the first show, "The Son Of Big Blob," a monster film (the other was a “romance,” kids-style, “Jenny Belinda"). But, truth, if anybody had bothered to notice the pair as he paid for two tickets at the ticket window (two children’s tickets, not adult’s, as the looking askance cashier questioned them about their ages, fortunately they looked, if they did not feel, under twelve), it could have been an old people’s Humphrey Bogart/Katherine Hepburn double feature. Especially as she was standing somewhat closer to him now that they had moved out of the public spotlight of the streets. So close he could smell, drive him crazy smell, the bath soap she had bathed in or perfume she had put on. Ya, drove him crazy.
Inside the theater two decisions needed pressing resolution, one, popcorn now, popcorn between the two films. Resolved: later. Two, down in the orchestra pit, or in the balcony. No big deal, right. Wrong, where have you been? Orchestra meant nothing but sitting and watching the movies, maybe holding sweating hands like goofs and old people did. The balcony meant, well, it meant the possibility of adventure, of, well, or more than holding hands. Jesus, where have you been, petting, heavy petting, okay. So he, boy-man gulped, and asked which place, and she, girl-woman answered, gulp, balcony. So they climbed the stairs, fought for a conveniently isolated spot and sat down waiting for the previews to start that would bring the lights down low. And they did. And I am willing to bet six-two-and even on two propositions. One, neither of them could, in twenty-five words or less, give the plots of either of the films. Two, she, girl-woman, would have plenty to mandatory tell come Monday pre-school girls’ “lav” session. Oh ya, and he will still be swimmingly intoxicated by that perfume (not bath soap, that’s kid’s stuff) she copped from her mother’s bureau and that wore just for him on Saturday. Growing up absurd in the 1950s, or anytime, maybe.
Out In The 1960s Psychedelic Night- The Byrds-Fifth Dimension - A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Byrds performing Eight Miles High.
CD Review
Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.
Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.
Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though
That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.
CD Review
Fifth Dimension, The Byrds, Warner Brothers, 1966
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own
Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for it’s sound
In places small faces unbound
Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone
Hari, hari, hari, rama, hari, hari came some hidden from view sound from the street, the street of street dreams and scores, or just the street outside Harvard Yard, just off Mount Auburn Street near Tommy’s Lunch, as music, stereo music, blared out from some fourth floor garret signaling the advent of the next day of the “new world.” Music, blaring night and day, and if anybody minded they kept it to themselves. More likely they craned their ears for a closer listen, listening until the notes meshed with their brains, and the slightest trance-like movement began to shake their bodies. Then the guitar sound high and shrill like no Bobby Darin flip or Percy Faith bong from a couple of years before when the music was s-q-u-a-r-e gave forth sounds that became you, man, became you. Dig it.
Just another mid-1960s Cambridge day, a day that had started fresh with a joint passed around by those fourth floor garret “squanders,” (not really, the guy whose name was on the lease was away in Europe for the summer trying to find himself and he had “sublet” the place to his hometown friend, some Cos Corner place in Connecticut, and that friend had multiplied his friends in his midnight crave wanderings around Cambridge Common), four refugees at this hour, jammed every which way on the floored mattresses that passed for sleeping quarters. Four refugees, two boys and two girls, trying to keep their heads attached, literally, against the hard war news, another seventy death casualties this week and no end in sight and one of the boys very, very draft ready.
Trying to keep their heads together, literally, against the crowding day, the do this and do that day, the day of work and more work for no real purpose in a world they did not make, and were scratching their heads to figure out. And not winning on that bet. Topped off, trying to keep their heads together, literally, against some hard drug news, hearing earlier that another comrade had been busted “for possession” down in death hole Texas. Adios amigo, there are not enough prisons for us though
That chant, that hidden from view chant, could only mean, that the Hari Krishnas, just then thick as thieves and growing in the incense, jingle-jangle bell, saffron, or whatever they called their silken sheet garb, in Harvard Square were getting ready to attend to their daily ministrations, meditations, and frankly irritating beggings. Then, like magic, The Byrds’ Eight Miles High started playing on the stereo. And another joint, or maybe just a bogart made the rounds and the four denizens of that new world started to, well, giggle, giggle that pretty soon they too would be eight miles high. And the daily bummers could wait a little longer to be figured out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)