WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Boomer Anthems: Dancing In the Street
byVanderleunonMay 29, 2018
Theme
Variations
Because? Because? Because?
Because it’s good to remember that there was a time when America’s black musicians actually contributed positive visions and emotions to music and the culture at large. And that time may come again.
Not related to this posting, but it appears the zman blog has been suspended.
I guess they are in a censorship frenzy now.
NoriMay 29, 2018, 3:42 PM
Imperator Rex/Vachel Lindsay as well today. ‘Ol Remus reported Vault-Co has shut down and had his archives wiped out.
The Circle of Filth is closing in on the truth-sayers.
As I grow yet older, I value Motown more. More even than the British invasion.
And just what did happen to our black brethren? When they were truly oppressed, they produced the Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Motown, and they covered the Standards (which we never hear anymore). Now they give us Rap is Crap. Was there a mutation? There are NO musical blacks anymore.
For that matter, aside from prancing around football fields and basketball courts, black contribute nothing to our culture.
madtntaxpayerMay 30, 2018, 7:06 AM
1964…dancing in the streets. 2018…shooting in the streets.
JackMay 30, 2018, 7:12 AM
I agree with Bob Sykes on black contributions to culture but I’ll extend it by adding, or any other thing in life. As far as their “music” goes, Noel Gallagher’s remarks on “jazz” are equally well applicable to anything beyond the Motown genres.
As a former resident of the Memphis area, and musician on Beale Street, I can tell you there are still quite a few black musicians in Memphis playing and singing the blues. Most of them spit on rap. In fact, on Facebook, one of them recently said “rap is dead; can someone please shoot it?”
DiogenesLampMay 30, 2018, 9:02 AM
Whatever was wrong with it yesterday, it seems to be working now. Yesterday it kept coming up with “this account has been suspended!”
AnonymousMay 30, 2018, 9:47 AM
“And just what did happen to our black brethren?”
===============
In the mid 60’s Lyndon Baines said, “I’ll have these nigga’s voting democrat for the next 1000 years.”, and then he signed into law a document that converted weak negro’s back into slaves. It’s been downhill ever since.
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
They will declare: Every journey has been taken.
You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.
They will insist: Everything has been spoken.
You shall reply: I have not had my say.
They will tell you: Everything has been done.
You shall reply: My way is not complete.
You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.
Fear not. You are the gate – you, the gatekeeper.
And you shall go through and on . . .
—Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, THIRD WISH
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
from The Painter by Neil Young
The painter stood Before her work She looked around every where She saw the pictures and she painted them She picked the colors from the air Green to green Red to red Yellow to yellow In the light Black to black When the evening comes Blue to blue In the night
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
Contemplation of the Sword
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
from Preludes
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
from Canto CXV BY EZRA POUND
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Ferreya
ARTIST: GIBSON
Edwin Deakin, American
Hillegas
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
Cool song. Memories . . . kinda made me sad.
Not related to this posting, but it appears the zman blog has been suspended.
I guess they are in a censorship frenzy now.
Imperator Rex/Vachel Lindsay as well today. ‘Ol Remus reported Vault-Co has shut down and had his archives wiped out.
The Circle of Filth is closing in on the truth-sayers.
Are you sure about Z man? I was just there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4jnaznUoQ
I was at zman just now. the straight url thezman.com issues a redirect to http://thezman.com/wordpress/
As I grow yet older, I value Motown more. More even than the British invasion.
And just what did happen to our black brethren? When they were truly oppressed, they produced the Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Motown, and they covered the Standards (which we never hear anymore). Now they give us Rap is Crap. Was there a mutation? There are NO musical blacks anymore.
For that matter, aside from prancing around football fields and basketball courts, black contribute nothing to our culture.
1964…dancing in the streets. 2018…shooting in the streets.
I agree with Bob Sykes on black contributions to culture but I’ll extend it by adding, or any other thing in life. As far as their “music” goes, Noel Gallagher’s remarks on “jazz” are equally well applicable to anything beyond the Motown genres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOJHt_2IPc
As a former resident of the Memphis area, and musician on Beale Street, I can tell you there are still quite a few black musicians in Memphis playing and singing the blues. Most of them spit on rap. In fact, on Facebook, one of them recently said “rap is dead; can someone please shoot it?”
Whatever was wrong with it yesterday, it seems to be working now. Yesterday it kept coming up with “this account has been suspended!”
“And just what did happen to our black brethren?”
===============
In the mid 60’s Lyndon Baines said, “I’ll have these nigga’s voting democrat for the next 1000 years.”, and then he signed into law a document that converted weak negro’s back into slaves. It’s been downhill ever since.