I had never heard this album when I bought it soon after release. In fact, I had never heard of Mott The Hoople. I bought it because I liked the cover. AND The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" was listed among the tracks. I was impressed from the first needle drop - an instrumental version with a sonic rage that surpassed even the original. It wasn't the only cover version on the album, but these covers were... well, different. Different dynamics - different vocal approach - delivered in epic proportions. And that's just the first three songs. Who'd have thunk that an album could begin with three cover tunes by artists as diverse as The Kinks, Doug Sahm, and Sonny Bono and still sound so cohesive? But it was the last song on the first side (an original) that REALLY grabbed my attention. I read every review of the album that followed. Much was made of the similarity in Ian Hunter's voice to Bob Dylan (some taking a positive position, some negative). They were all misdirected. On "Backsliding Fearlessly" Hunter sounded even more ancient a sage than Dylan, pulling from medieval times.
"Come all ye faithful and slaughter your lambs/ Your minds have been whipped by experienced hands." Man, did that speak to me. But more than being thought provoking, Mott The Hoople (the album) would be the gift that kept on giving. No more so than when I heard a lecture by John Trudell in the mid-90s that offered some degree of forgiveness for the white people who savaged the Native population. Click here for John Trudell It was coming from the same thought process. Things came full circle in 2012 when Hunter recorded "Ta Shunka Witco (Crazy Horse)". Ian Hunter continues to write great music and tour with vigor. And he's OLDER than Bob Dylan. Just sayin... (Bill Glahn)
I’m retiring from a warehouse job soon. It’s time to toss those boxes aside and pick up a pencil again. Looking forward to picking up where I left off, I was searching for an appropriate title for a column title more relevant to the times. Looking backwards, I found it.
When Jeffrey St. Clair and Alex Cockburn introduced me to the Counterpunch audience all those years ago they used the term “jihad.” That makes sense. For some people money is just “god” spelled backwards. And in that respect, huge (and sometimes not so huge) corporations, and the people who run them, wage holy war.
The owner class has a different perspective on finances than the working class that toils underfoot. Some personal examples? I once worked as the managing editor for a startup weekly “alternative” magazine. Concerned with their ability to clear payroll, I inquired, “Where’s the money coming from? You hardly have any advertising.” What I learned was that the basic operating funds came from dividends paid on a butt-load of USA Today stock that the publisher had inherited. Another example? We were doing a story on a proposed new power plant that meant a significant rate hike, both for residents and businesses. A local business owner of some stature asked, “Why don’t you just buy some city utility bonds to offset the cost?” Not on my salary.
When it came to waging financial jihad on the music fans, no one was more vociferous, or out of step, than the major label’s lobbying association, RIAA. They fought every technology advancement to come down the pike. To the point of rendering themselves obsolete. As one major label exec now puts it, “I shouldn’t have sued Napster. I should have bought stock.”
Fast forward to an era where music streaming has replaced p2p file sharing as the optimum form of music distribution. Not about to make the same mistake twice, the remaining 3 major labels bought into Spotify, with the largest being Sony Music Entertainment. When Spotify’s IPO was dropped on April 3rd, Sony couldn’t wait to crow about it in a press release.
“At the time of the public listing, Sony Music Entertainment (“SME”)… owned 5.707% of Spotify’s shares, and on the same day, SME sold 17.2% of such shares owned by SME. Due to this public listing and the sale, Sony expects to record an unrealized valuation gain (net)* for the shares SME continues to hold and a realized gain for the shares sold (net)... Based on the NYSE closing price on April 3, 2018 and the sale price, the sum of the unrealized valuation gain (net) and the gain on the sale of shares (net) to be recorded for the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019 would be approximately 105 billion yen in total. Because the market value of Spotify’s stock following the public listing may be volatile, Sony expects such unrealized valuation gain could fluctuate during the period that SME continues to hold the shares, including during the first quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019.”
That’s a lot of Yen! But it pails compared to Spotify’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek’s, 400 billion yen in holdings. Simple math shows that Ek, as an individual, owns four times as much stock as the whole SME corporation. But will Ek follow the same path of jihad as the major record labels did under the RIAA cartel? Capitalist history is a good indicator. Current events are as well. In Europe, where there is still some semblance of artists’ moral rights, Spotify and 5 other streaming services have formed a lobbying organization called Digital Music Europe. Mission? “To showcase and promote the success of the European digital music industry, it will serve as a resource for policy-makers, media and the digital music industry, and will advocate for policies that shape a favorable business environment for digital music”. (November 2017) Sound familiar?
It’s probably been 15 years since I did my last RIAA Watch column for Counterpunch. Probably 10 since I last looked at the RIAA website. There just hasn’t been a whole lot to report. But sometimes you get curious.
Fascist propaganda from the RIAA
So what’s new and what isn’t? Well, for starters, they’ve got a spiffy new layout, long on page size photos and short on words. Perfect. They’ve adapted to a model that is Instagram friendly. And what are they pitching on the home page? The 60-year history of their Gold and Platinum Awards ™. Notice they’ve dropped the “Records” part of the award. They seem to be catching up to the late 20th century in that regard.
For those born, say, before 1985, you might remember these. They were really nice wall-hangings of gold or silver colored 45s or albums that were made available (at a cost) to artists, managers, song writers, music publishing companies, corporate music magazines, radio stations, etc. Or to the publisher of a small bootleg review publication that ran rants about the RIAA in every issue if he happened to be at the right charity auction.
They came with an official RIAA hologram and a plaque presented to the applicable person/organization. They made great publicity photos for artists way back when.
I kind of wondered what a gold or platinum MP3 download would look like. But only for about 10 seconds. I scrolled down. The next item came under a caption of big block letters that proclaimed “WE ARE MUSIC.” All caps. If you shout it loud enough maybe somebody will believe you. I don’t. The RIAA has never recorded a piece of music in their entire history.
So I clicked on “MORE ABOUT WHAT WE DO” (all caps again, but smaller). They seem to be lowering the tone a bit. But, jeezus, it’s still kind of rude to shout.
After the same old bullshit about protecting the artists’ interests and representing some of “some of the most iconic record labels” I click to the next page. But not without thinking, “none of the labels mentioned are iconic to me, just gargantuan.”
There it was – the most honest thing ever to appear on the RIAA propaganda site. “The Recording Industry Association of America® (RIAA) is the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the major music companies.” The vitality part might be a stretch but at least “iconic” has been changed to “major.”
And who’s running the show? It seems Cary Sherman has failed his way to the top. (Chairman & CEO) You may remember Sherman as the enforcer who carried on Hillary Rosen’s program of suing fans for illegal downloads. He did it with such zeal that he earned the nickname Cary Sue Sherman (first use by veteran music journalist Keith A. Gordon, I believe.) That name cropped up in so many publications (including ours) and so many websites that many think, to this day, that he is a she.
Good lord. Maybe I’ll check back again if Spotify ever becomes a member. (Bill Glahn)
Bonus views: Those bootlegs that the RIAA fought so hard to suppress for so many years are now part of mainstream distribution.
Grant Peeples & the Peeples Republik: Settling Scores Vol. II
(review by Bill Glahn)
The title track of Grant Peeples last album, “A Congress of Treasons” was a spoken word piece that appeared last on the album. “Ever since I was a kid, all I really wanted to be when I grew up was a traitor – a spy for the other sides,” starts Peeples. He continues with a narrative about a plan to sabotage the “shopping carts of oppression” and recognizes that revealing those intentions have consequences. Yet “here I go again…” It’s a good starting off point for Settling Scores Vol. II.
What’s this plural use of “sides”? We live in an era that, by design, only recognizes two sides. A two-party system. A left-right divide where it’s “imperative” to adopt the views of one side or another or suffer the consequences.
Peeples describes himself as a “leftneck.” There are two syllables in that neologism, neither one necessarily geographic in nature. It’s too simple to look at Peeples’ origins and current home, the Florida panhandle, and generalize this as a “victory” by either side. For those adhering to the “one or the other” mentality, Grant Peeples is no confederate.
Peeples elaborates, “I’m a socialist, but not politically. But rather socially, in a sort of Old Testament kind of way. In that first book of the Bible we are given the litmus test for being a human being: ‘ARE you your brother’s keeper?’ This is a metaphor, of course. But it’s not a rhetorical question; it’s a black-and-white question. And everybody should have to answer it, on the record. And the answer should go right there on your driver’s license, right below the place that tells whether you are an organ donor or not, or need glasses to drive.”
But, certainly, the Old Testament is treacherous territory when accepted as a whole. Artistically, Peeples claims a different lineage. On his website he describes his early years as “linear.” Until when? When asked to elaborate further, he responds, ”My first mentor was the ball’s-out, Tallahassee artist Jimmy Roche. A fearless sonofabitch who I think was the first environmentalist artist. Years ago I heard Jimmy tell a group of his students: ‘When I look at an art object, the first thing I try to evaluate is: what is this thing’s relevance to the culture?’ I think that when you look at those 40,000 year-old cave paintings from Spain and France, that that’s what you have to ask yourself. What do these paintings tell me about the culture, the times, the values, the world views of these people? You think those guys back then crawled through hundreds of meters off narrow tunnels just so they could find an open cavern where they could paint some animals on the wall? Nope. I just want to be a descendant of that tradition.”
Peeples credits Roche with introducing him to the songs of Bob Dylan, first and foremost “Desolation Row” played on a Fender guitar. That plays big in understanding Settling Scores Vol. II. “Desolation Row” appeared on the album, Highway 61 Revisited - the first album by Dylan to feature electric instrumentation. As for it’s reputation for being “liberal,” many in the Folk community greeted Dylan with the “traitor” tag. The “Judas shout” was well-documented on bootlegs for years and is now permanently embedded as a commercial release as well (The Bootleg Series Vol. 4).
But Folk conservatism didn’t end there. As Folk “evolved” into its present state, a peculiar whiteness has developed. For all its lip-service to social causes, songs addressing race issues are lacking. Acoustic instrumentation by white artists is acceptable, but artists like Otis Taylor get tossed in the Blues bin of Internet streaming. Peeples stands out as an exception, with songs like “Nigger Lover” on Prior Convictions, “Pitchforks & Torches” on Settling Scores Vol. II, and even on the epic “New Brownsville Girl” where he states, “A lot of songs have been written about the state of Texas,/ but me, I never cared much for it/ it was stolen outright and soaked in Indian blood.”
About “More For Us, Less For Them” a key track on Settling Scores Vol II, Peeples states, “Years ago, folk music got adulterated by a bunch of Yankees with guitars who learned a few Union songs and then took their hands off the wheel of the culture and started writing and singing about their feelings. Its Carol King music, but with two capos and drop D tuning. The intro, or the pre-song of ‘More For Us, Less For Them,’ is the chorus of my song ‘My People Come From The Dirt,’ and Gurf Morlix, who is singing it, invoked an even more traditional sound here than we had on the original recording. Our intent was the stark juxtaposition of hip-hop and mountain sounds in the telling of what is, essentially, the same story. I think Eminem and Macklemore have written some great folk songs.”
If there seems to be some cultural chauvinism to that first sentence, consider this one. Peeples on gun control: “I have a concealed permit. I legally carry a gun. This isn’t a philosophy. Just like abortion isn’t a philosophy. It’s just a choice. Like abortion is a choice. I have solid reasons that are the foundation of that choice. One day I hope that I may choose differently. Meanwhile, I prefer soft-handed suburbanites who have never pulled a tick off their balls---or shot dope, or seen the inside of a jail or a woman get pistol whipped in a parking lot---to not think they know if it’s right or wrong for me to carry a gun.”
When Jimi Hendrix dropped “Are You Experienced?” on the world, people assumed it was a song about drugs. But it wasn’t a rhetorical question any more than “Are you your brother’s keeper?” Buried in the mix, the last five words may be the least noticed in the whole song. You don’t get to Jimi on the first Experience record without Jimi on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Peeples may have taken a different highway, but with Settling Scores Vol. II he’s entering similar territory.
The first time I heard Bob Frank on the radio was in 1972, while travelling from Biloxi, Mississippi to Pine Bluff, Arkansas in a ’64 Chevy Impala SS– a journey with dubious motives. I loved that car and I loved the sounds coming out over KAAY’s Beaker Street program (Little Rock, AR). Back in New Jersey, a few month’s later, while I lay in a drug or alcohol induced stupor, a future in-law “borrowed” my keys to drive a mutual friend home. He hit four parked cars before he got to the end of the block, continued at high-speed from the scene of the crime, hitting a telephone pole about a mile further on. Fortunately, no one was hurt beyond a broken arm to the passenger. But that Chevy was toast.
In the March 2000 (final) issue of Live! Music Review, I wrote a story for our Roll The Tapes column about a recording of Bob Frank that had been passed to me by a Little Rock collector of rare tapes. Recorded at the Old Quarter in Houston circa 1973, the tape featured only one or two songs from the Vanguard album I had heard on Beaker Street plus a whole slew of unreleased ones – songs like “Cane Break,” “Bugs,” “Chipmunk,” & “Spring Fever” – songs focused on love and nature. Somewhere in that article I expressed that there was a gnawing, queasy feeling of “whatever happened to Bob Frank?”
What happened is this. Bob’s career on Vanguard met the same fate as that Chevy car. And at about the same time.
Bob explained it to me in a 2002 interview. “Vanguard wanted me to go on a tour. I said, not right now. Here’s how complicated the human mind is - what I really wanted to do was, jump right up and go on tour. That’s what I really wanted to do. But the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘No, not yet. I have a newborn baby, I have a garden.’ And what I was thinking at that time was, ‘Fuck these guys. They didn’t do what I wanted when I wanted it, so I won’t do what they want when they want it.’ I am not a very intelligent person. Never have been. Here’s what I thought. ‘Now that I have this album out, I will be famous overnight. Once people hear this album, they will come and buy it, and tell their friends and their friends will buy it, and whether I go on a tour or not, this album will sell itself, just because I am that fucking good!’
“Well, I knew nothing about distribution or promotion. Nothing about how to sell an album, how it works. How you have to advertise it. You have to promote it. You have to convince the public that this is the album they want. I had no clue about all of this. So, later on, I told ‘em, okay, I’m ready to go on tour now. And they said, not so fast. First you have to prove yourself. We’ll set up a gig at Max’s Kansas City, you play there. If we think you’re ready, then we’ll set up the tour. So, once again, I figure, Fuck these guys. (I used to love to say that. Fuck these guys. Made me feel independent.)
“So, I proceeded to fuck ‘em. I got up there and played every song I could think of except the songs that were on the album. When they requested ‘em, I said ‘If you want to hear songs from the album, go buy the album.’ (Manager) Cletus Haegert tells me I said this, I didn’t remember saying it but when he told me, it came back to me in a vague sort of way.
“I played all these song I’d just written about my garden and my baby. I stupidly thought these sophisticated New Yorkers were ready for this. I was ready for it. I thought the songs on the album were old hat already. I thought I was forging ahead. Blazing new trails. Heading off into uncharted territory. The trouble was, nobody wanted to go there but me. If I had played the songs off that album, I probably would have become famous overnight, because that was THE club back then.
“All the press was there. All the gossip mongers, the word would have been out. And they would have loved those songs at that time, because that’s about exactly where those folks were at. The glorification of alcohol and dope. (Songs like Wino, Return To Skid Row Joe, Memphis Jail, and Judas Iscariot in which Jesus and his Disciples were wine guzzlers and hash smokers.) Degeneracy at its most enticing. They would have ate it up.
“But here’s the story. I was stubborn. And I was drunk. I was stoned. And I was a romantic. I was living in a dream world.”
There are other reasons, of course. All you have to do is look at Buffy St. Marie’s Vanguard albums from the same period. Vanguard wasn’t Folkways. Although they had a reputation as an artist’s label with a social conscience, they also had a close eye on the popular charts. As with those Buffy albums, session musicians were often brought in at Vanguard’s “request.” Bob Frank’s self-titled album was no different. Frank hated Eric Weisberg’s overdub on “Judas Iscariot.” (the version appearing above was a re-recorded version from Keep On Burning.)
“Weisberg’s guitar was played with a pick, very strongly and very clearly, and also, alas, very boringly. He uses no dynamic fluctuation. Same force all the way through. Ruined it.” And Vanguard followed trends. The Summer of Love only lasted one summer and that was 5 years past. They didn’t want love songs. They wanted edgy. But not too edgy. Witness the other extreme, Patrick Sky. When presented with the satirical “Songs That Made America Famous” he got the boot as well.
So, if Bob Frank’s musical career came crashing to an end, life didn’t. Frank forged one with a different set of rewards – a union job, four children, a Buddhist faith, with the same wife that he traveled around with all those years ago – and he never stopped writing songs. As he began to approach retirement in 2002, he started releasing albums again.
There have been some great ones – Keep On Burning (produced by Jim Dickinson and featuring members of the North Mississippi All-Stars), an acoustic collection of labor songs - Pledge of Allegiance, a collection of murder ballads with fellow southerner John Murry – World Without End,, and a splashing of near-great ones along the way. But other than one or two of the songs on that Old Quarter tape Frank has not gone back to those love and nature songs he used as a weapon against Vanguard.
But with life comes death. His wife, Deirdre, passed in 2014. By the Light of the Lamp contains those love and nature songs she fell in love with all those years ago. This is his tribute album to her - recorded the way he wanted to record them. And released at a time when love, again, is on the minds of a new generation. This time, Bob Frank got the timing right.
The doors of St. Hyacinths were always open. According to diocese regulation, they were to be locked from dusk until dawn, but St. Hyacinths’ material assets had been looted years ago. “Through the back door,” Father John liked to say.
One morning, he found a wino sleeping in a back pew. Another time it was a homeless family enjoying a little shelter from the elements. Once, a criminal with a conscience was waiting for the confessional to open. Often, there'd be a drug addict crashing to earth.
This morning, the church was empty except for an elderly man sitting in one of the center pews. Not next to the aisle as most people did. No. This man had left some room between himself and the aisle, as if expecting company.
On the other side of the man sat a dog. Not just any dog. This dog was massive – some kind of giant breed reminiscent of the kind you might see in woodcarvings from centuries ago. A large head with ears that hung down in a relaxed position. Tall and big boned, no excess fat.
The man sat tall and straight. “Well fit and exercised,” thought Father John. “Not usual for a man his age around here.” The dog also sat tall and straight, butt on the bench in human fashion with back legs tucked under its torso, front legs stretched all the way to the floor. Both man and dog sat motionless, eyes fixed forward, as if watching the closing credits roll on a particularly fine movie.
As Father John approached, neither the dog nor man turned. Father John moved into the open space next to the man and sat down. The dog and man continued to look forward.
“Seeing-eye dog?” It was the best conversation starter the priest could come up with.
The man turned his head to face Father John. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”
“My name is Father John. I’m the pastor here at St. Hyacinth.”
“I know. I’ve lived a couple blocks from here since long before you arrived. Folks around here call me Billy.” He didn’t offer his hand. “I was an altar boy here almost seventy years ago. Haven’t been in the building much since.” He nodded toward the dog. “My friend is named Bonnie. At least that’s what I’ve called her.”
“Well, welcome back, Billy,” offered the priest. Billy made no response. Bonnie continued to look straight ahead.
Father John decided to make a pitch. “We’re having a Mass in a few hours to honor our newest saint, Mother Teresa. Would you care to stay for that?”
“Can’t say that I would. She’s no saint to me.”
The priest was well aware that there were some objections to the canonization of Mother Teresa.
“I understand your position. I have to believe that Mother Teresa was following her faith in her approach to comforting the poor and sick in Calcutta. I, myself, often struggle with knowing which is the correct path – often wondering if my own actions are causing harm in this community. In the end, I have to follow my own instincts and my faith in God.”
“And when you are approaching death,” Billy answered, “will you still maintain your faith that heaven awaits? Or will you do as Mother Teresa did and trot the globe looking for medical relief?”
“I have to believe that I will follow my faith,” answered the priest.
Billy eyed the priest. “You know, John… Humans are the only species on earth that can lie to themselves. Except maybe the occasional horse in the rain."
The priest waited.
"Some horses will stand out there, still as a picket fence, convinced that if they don’t run for shelter, the rain will stop any minute. Until the rain kills them. But only fenced horses do that. They learned it from humans.”
The priest thought before responding. “So you hold it against Mother Teresa that she was human?”
Billy delivered his response with the words of a battle-hardened shop steward, but with the soothing calmness of a man at peace with the world. “No, I don’t hold that against her. What I hold against that whore is that she went into a society that believed all animals have souls and contaminated it with her belief that they don’t.”
For the first time, Bonnie turned to look at the priest. Eyeball to eyeball.
Father John didn’t feel physically threatened by the dog. But he squirmed nonetheless.
**
Liam Sanchez, the son of a Puerto Rican father and a mother of Irish descent, earned the nickname “Billy the Kid” from his reputation as a union and neighborhood activist. That reputation was one of being “quick on the draw.” Over time, “The Kid” would become a passing legacy. Now it was just “Billy.”
Billy’s family had been among the first to take advantage of The Fair Housing Act of 1968, infiltrating a neighborhood previously elevated to “white” status by Polish immigrants.
Billy’s mother hadn’t wanted to attend Sunday Mass in “Polak Town.” She’d preferred the Irish parish where she’d grown up. Liam’s father said no: “We are part of this community now and we will attend church at St. Hyacinths.” Thus, the seeds of Billy’s activism were sown.
After families like the Sanchezes moved in, white people moved out, and the banks, stores, and factories along with them. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be a blending of culture, the great American melting pot. But the neighborhood fell apart, and in his middle years, Billy rarely ventured out of the house his father had bought so many years ago. His one remaining pleasure was sitting on his front porch during the rains that provided some relief from the blistering heat of late August. It was a lonesome and isolated pleasure at best.
On just such a day, Billy was watching the steam rise from the asphalt, when through the mist strode a giant four-legged beast.
It walked steadily past Pulaski Park -- now commonly referred to as “Needle Park” -- and on down several blocks, seeming to grow even larger as it passed St. Hyacinths. Head up, it sniffed the air, not the ground.
“Poor creature,” Billy thought, “doesn’t know where home is.” Tom Waits’ “Rain Dogs” played in his head.
The dog reached Billy’s house and made its first diversion. It turned up the steps onto Billy’s front porch, where it shook the rainwater from its fur, spraying everything, including Billy. Billy laughed in delight, his first real laugh in years. Then the dog, tired from its journey, lay down and went to sleep, placing its chin on Billy’s left foot.
“Well, Girl, I guess you deserve some rest.”
**
It had been a week since Girl had wondered onto Billy’s porch. Despite putting up flyers all around the neighborhood, Billy had received not one call about this majestic “found dog.” He was quickly becoming attached and close to giving her a name besides “Girl.”
A visit to the vet followed where Billy was given the advice, “This is a very old dog. Daily walks will keep her from stoving up. They would probably do you some good too.” Billy had found a reason to leave the house. And anyway -- Girl had been doing her own urging.
“Bonnieeeeee!”
Billy looked up from the park bench while Girl stood, excited, then bolted for the young lady, dressed in a fast-food uniform, with deep circles under her eyes. Billy had seen eyes like these before, premature aging from the necessity of working more than one job. The woman crossed the street from the bus stop and ran toward the dog.
Girl acted as though she had just come across a close friend, one not seen in years. Tail wagging, giving “doggie kisses,” she rubbed her coat against the young woman’s legs as she circled around her.
Billy’s heart sank a little, at the thought that Girl had been found. But if that was the way it would be, it was only right.
“Hi, my name is Lucy,” said the woman as she reached out to shake Billy’s hand.
“Folks call me Billy. You seem to know this pooch. Is she yours?”
“No,” she answered, as Girl fawned around her, “but my grandfather had a dog that looked exactly like her.”
“Well she seems to know you, and she’s a stray. Maybe she’s the same dog?”
“She couldn’t be. My grandfather died ten years ago. Bonnie went missing the same day. But Bonnie was old then. She was the greatest dog - a stray when my grandpa found her. A super companion for him in the last years of his life.”
“Sure this isn’t the same dog?”
“It isn’t possible. But I’ll admit she sure acts like Bonnie.” Dog and woman looked into each other’s eyes. “Do you bring her here a lot? I work every day but Sunday, but I’d like to stop by and visit. Maybe bring my kids.”
“Sure. I’d like that. And in honor of your grandpa and his dog, I’ll name her Bonnie.”
**
“So, if you haven’t come for mass, what brings you to St Hyacinths? You don’t look like one of our early morning customers.”
“I’m going to die,” replied Billy.
The priest weighed the words for a moment.
“We’re all going to die. What is it you seek? Perhaps a moment in the confessional?”
“No. Can’t say that I would welcome that.”
“Last Rites are usually given near the final moments. Are you that close? Is it cancer?”
“Very close, or so Bonnie tells me. You’ve been chosen as Bonnie’s next companion.”
The priest went silent again as he collected his thoughts. Mental illness was something he encountered on an almost daily basis. But this was different.
“You’ve chosen me to take care of your dog? Certainly you can’t be serious. I have a flock to administer to. There are plenty of rescue dog operations that could find Bonnie a good home.”
“Oh, I didn’t choose you,” said Billy. “Bonnie did.”
Bonnie turned toward the priest for a second time.
“I’ve put some dog food, Bonnie’s favorite blanket, and a list of instructions in her bag.”
With that, Billy kissed Bonnie goodbye, got up, and walked out of Father John’s church for the last time. Bonnie remained seated next to the priest.
Father John opened the bag and took out a three-page, detailed list. Among the instructions were the following…
“Take Bonnie to the park daily. Relax on a park bench for a spell. Wear your civies. A priest’s collar reflects authority, the people you seek to help fear that. Folks will approach you and tell their stories. Listen, don’t preach.”
And the final instruction?
“Trust Bonnie.”
Father John decided to keep Bonnie while he sought out a good home for her. For the first few days, Bonnie followed Father John around like a shadow. She slept near the front door of the rectory, occasionally venturing to an open window to sniff the night air. On the third night, she sniffed, let out a slight whimper, and proceeded to Father John’s bedroom. She jumped onto the foot of his bed and went to sleep with her chin resting on his feet.
**
Father John entered the unlocked doors of St. Hyacinth, now a community center, with his faithful canine companion at his side.
Sleeping in a back pew, still under the influence, was a new face. The dog walked up to the woman and started to lick her weary face. Awakening to what she believed to be a hallucination, the woman, in a voice just barely audible, asked “Bonnie?”
The dog slipped into the pew, lying down at the woman’s feet, and rested with her.
Father John knew his time on the planet was nearing an end.
[Thanks go out to Daniel Wolfe who kindly served as editor, keeping me focused, and offering encouragement throughout the writing process. Also to Peter Lewis for writing a song that has stuck with me for almost a half-century. And to Sally G, my constant companion. She's got soul. BG]
[Previously published several times, first on the Holler If You Hear Me blog, and subsequently on the Chicago Labor and Arts Festival blog and the Bigo magazine website (Singapore). I haven't rolled it out in awhile, so here it is again. (Bill Glahn)]
Ray Davies and Charles Dickens are both British. Both tell stories entrenched in the landscape of the British working class. Both are great writers who draw their audience in with the richness of their characters. Both celebrate the spirit of humans and the working class in particular.
“Yes, and both have surnames that start with D,” some stuffy Dickens scholar might scoff. But put academic prejudice aside, and the case could be made - with some notable differences.
Dickens’ influence on Davies shouldn’t come as any great surprise considering Dickens’ status in the world of British literature (second only to Shakespeare). Any British author who chooses to address the issues of class would almost have to be influenced by him to some degree. Davies’ body of work bears more than a casual resemblance.
But to say that Davies is simply putting a new tread on an old tire would be a huge misconception. The reasons are no more apparent than two short stories set in the Christmas season - A Christmas Carol and the Kinks’ “Father Christmas.” In the Dickens story, Scrooge is redeemed. In the Kinks holiday single, the antagonist is not.
The philosophy in Dickens’ Christmas Carol is more black and white - the ruling class is redeemed when confronted by an outside manager or controlling force - a holy trinity of ghosts. In the Kinks’ song, there is no outside manager and the antagonist is motivated by real life events - his father is out of work. In Dickens’ moralistic world, Davies would be a schoolboy in disgrace. In Davies’ pragmatic one, Dickens would be a used car spiv.
I’ve always found Davies’ body of work to be the more complicated to decipher - more shades of gray. More unanswered questions. At first glance, it’s a darker world where it seems everybody has an agenda. And that agenda usually involves control of the working class.
Unionists tell you when to strike. Generals tell you when to fight. Preachers teach you wrong from right. They feed you when you’re born. And use you all your life. - Uncle Son
The workers told the unions who blamed it on the government The politicians blamed it on the strikers and the militants And everybody’s guilty and everybody’s innocent Nobody gives because nobody gives a damn anymore - Nobody Gives
That’s some pretty cynical stuff. Or is it? There’s just too much in the Davies canon to suggest otherwise. Dickens’ work is rooted in moral failures that transcend class boundaries. Davies’ work targets systemic problems in our society.
To be fair, A Christmas Carol was written very early by Dickens (1843), while Father Christmas was written by Davies several years (1976) after his most notable commentary on class issues - The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968) through Preservation (1973).
Father Christmas is more like a coda where Christmas Carol is far less mature in nature. By the time Dickens gets around to writing Hard Times (1854), much of his criticisms fall in line with Davies’. A school system that stifles creativity in the name of economic progress. (Dickens gets the nod for creative names with Mr. McChoakumchild). An uncaring upper class who justify their importance with myths (industrialist and banker Josiah Bounderby). A perverse thought process that makes pollution a healthy commodity.
But in the end, as with all of Dickens’ work, he hangs on doggedly to morality as if were synonymous with salvation. Bounderby dies of a fit. His cohort, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, is saved by renouncing his “just the facts” obsession and replacing it with a code of faith, hope, and charity. All’s well that ends well.
In 1856, British novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wrote, “The thing for mankind to know is not what are the motives and influences which the moralist thinks ought to act on the labourer or the artisan, but what are the motives and influences which do act on him.” She goes on to criticize Dickens, “if he could give us their psychological character… with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies.”
Father Christmas is not the first time Davies utilizes dark humor to illustrate a truth. In Muswell Hillbillies’ “Complicated Life”, he hits the bullseye with the story of an ill worker who is told by his doctor that he needs to slow down or face death. “Cut out the struggle and strife.” So the guy quits the rat race and finds
Like old Mother Hubbard I got nothing in my cupboard I got no dinner and I got no supper I got holes in my shoes I got holes in my socks I can’t go to work cause I can’t get a job I can’t go to work cause I can’t get a job
When it comes to quality of life for the working class, capitalism is a deadly calamity. As for psychological evaluation - on Muswell Hillbillies, Davies introduces the idea of mental illness as purposefully inflicted on workers by the ruling class (Acute Schizophrenia Blues). It’s a reoccurring theme in Davies’ writing, including his “autobiography,” X-Ray - a book written in 1994 but culminating in his personal history at Preservation.
On Preservation, Davies restrains from preaching (the domain of moralists). He, instead, looks both backwards and forwards in a pragmatic way and correctly predicts a more totalitarian existence should social change be directed by ideologues and moralists.
At the beginning of X-Ray, Davies proclaims “I was born a king.” His most affecting song opens with the words “Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star” Despite its title (Celluloid Heroes) and story line, it is not simply a song about Hollywood stars and starlets. It is a song about struggle. And it recognizes that, while struggle is not always successful, neither is it futile. We are not born cogs in a corporate reality. That is learned behavior. That is mental disease.
Not too many people would call Dickens’ feel-good endings to Christmas Carol and Hard Times cynical. But which is cynical? The idea that we are forever bound by a class system not of our making or that we are all born kings?
Unlike Dickens’ morality, Davies’ work offers no cure-alls for society. In fact, he often sounds as confused as the rest of us. But he does offer a starting point. Here’s to the birth of kings. (Bill Glahn)
