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Libra Nation
Entry 6 of 20 | show all | print this entry |
Libra Nation
(420 Café, Amsterdam, October 10, 2006)-It's October 10th, the birthday of Thelonious Monk, a Holy Day of Obligation in this writer's faith and let's start off this report with a birthday poem from the book of monk:
#9
"off minor"
("what now")
for nkenge zola
monk's birth certificate
calls him `thelius'
& puts him here on earth
in 1917. some time later
monk enters our lives
as thelonious sphere monk
with 3 years lopped
off his age. the symmetry
must have been irresistable
to the young master
of rhythm & rhyme-
10, 10, 20, or
one & one is two
with those 3 round zeros
marching across the page
off minor like that
-oak park, mi
may 30, 1984
I'd also like to send birthday greetings to my beloved friend and mentor, the great American poet Amiri Baraka, born October 8th and he's about 800 years old now. And to the late lamented John Lennon, born October 9, 1940. And to my several close friends whose birthdays fall within the Nation of Libra, including my host here in Amsterdam, Andrew Jones; Octavio Carrasco; Dr. Charles Moore, born October 6, 1940; Dr. Wendell Harrison, born October 1, 1942; and born on my birthday in 1953, the ini-istic Mark Fisher. I know there are more I should remember, but that's a good start.
I celebrated my own birthday October 2nd with an episode of the John Sinclair Show cut with Henk Botwinik at the Sugar Factory in Amsterdam. Smokey Johnson starts things off with "It Ain't My Fault," and then after a few comments we present the Jeff Jones recording of my concert with the Motor City Blues Scholars & Dr. Dorothy Goodman at the Detroit International Jazz Festival on Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 2006.
We played on the big stage at the north end of the festival area, right in the middle of downtown Detroit on Woodward Avenue facing the Detroit River, and we had Jeff "Baby" Grand on guitar, Phil Hale on keyboards, Little Tino Gross on drums, Showtime Johnny Evans on tenor saxophone and Vicky Alexander on baritone sax, with Dr. Goodman on vocals for a suite of three elegies for departed friends Stevenson Palfi, Big Red (Ron Gulyas) and Lee Bridges, the Cannabis Poet. Here's the link to the show at www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com:
John Sinclair Show #106 at the Sugar Factory (.mp3)
The recent release of the film U.S. vs. John Lennon has put your correspondent into the public prints for a change, since the sad fact is that the F.B.I. was drawn to pursue brother Lennon after he came to my aid and helped spring me from prison in December 1971.
This provocative film review in the New York Times last month has a pretty hip angle: "Lennon as Superior to Nixon." Well, duh....
MOVIE REVIEW: 'THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON'
Lennon as Superior to Nixon
By A. O. SCOTT
September 15, 2006
John Lennon and Yoko Ono in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," a documentary written and directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld.
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon," a new talking-head and archival-video documentary better suited for VH1 (which helped to produce it) than for the big screen, makes the case that, in just about every way that counted, Lennon was a better person than Richard M. Nixon.
That very few people are likely to need persuading on this point is something of a problem. Lennon's status as one of the most beloved popular musicians of recent memory, and one of the best-known cultural figures of the past half-century, leaves the movie with little to do but add its sometimes sanctimonious voice to the chorus of praise and admiration.
Luckily, even 26 years after his death, Lennon is a lively enough presence to keep the sentimentality somewhat in check. A great songwriter and a nimble exploiter of his own celebrity, he was also a pretty terrific television talk show guest: witty, engaged and passionate about his beliefs without being pompous about it.
The same cannot be said of all the people called upon to give testimony, decades later, about Lennon's involvement with the antiwar movement in the late 1960's and early 70's. It is, for example, odd to see New Left stalwarts like Angela Davis and Tariq Ali gustily proclaiming Lennon's radical commitment accompanied by the strains of "Revolution," his highly ambivalent, explicitly critical assessment of the fashionable militancy of the time.
But such nuances were hard to sustain then, and they are perhaps difficult to recall now, as the era and its passions have become encrusted with hazy mythology. When it is not burnishing the myths and checking in with Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Bobby Seale, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," which was written and directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, does engage in some interesting historical spadework.
It is aided in this by Jon Wiener, a University of California history professor who has written extensively about Lennon's run-ins with the F.B.I. and the Nixon administration. Several operatives assigned to investigate Lennon - some repentant, some, like the eventual Watergate jailbird G. Gordon Liddy, decidedly not - recount their versions of the case, which culminated in the government's attempt to rescind Lennon's visa and send him back to Britain.
When it concentrates on the particulars of Lennon's activism and on Nixon's apparent obsession with him, the film offers its clearest window on the past. The view also takes in some of the era's characteristic excesses and oddities, as well as its pieties and unexamined assumptions. John Sinclair, who became a cause célèbre and the subject of a Lennon protest song after he was imprisoned for giving marijuana to an undercover officer, shows up to offer some wry hindsight.
"We were proselytizing in favor of the legalization of marijuana, and also smoking large quantities of it," he says. The wisdom that comes with age has now convinced him that "you probably shouldn't be doing both things at once if you want to do either one well." Good advice.
What distinguished Lennon and Yoko Ono from many of their contemporaries was their ability to capture and make use of the absurdities of their fame. They come across as canny self-satirists in earnest devotion to a cause, and their combination of humor and guilelessness still has the power to disarm.
The "bed-ins" they conducted in Amsterdam and Montreal were impish plays for attention that seemed at once sweetly naïve and cunning, and they raised an interesting question of tactics in an age of mass media. Can famous people, just by doing odd things or singing beautiful songs, compel attention to important issues?
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" doesn't really answer this question, beyond restating the notion, which can neither be proven nor dismissed, that musicians and artists can change the world. They can also, it is clear, drive presidents and other people in power crazy, in part because the impact of popular culture can be so hard to measure or to predict.
Nixon and Lennon discovered this in different ways. "Give Peace a Chance" became a protest-rally anthem, but it could hardly prevent the Republican landslide of 1972. Nixon may have overreacted wildly in believing that singers and movie stars could pose a threat to his legitimacy, but his paranoia was probably based on the sense that he could not compete with their influence and prestige. On the evidence of this movie, Nixon was right.
THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON
Opens today in New York and Los Angeles. Written, produced and directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld; director of photography, James Mathers; edited by Peter S. Lynch II; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 99 minutes.
Here's the film review from the nation's capitol, thanks to Andy Adkins:
By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006
One of the weirdest episodes in American history is engagingly chronicled in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's revelatory documentary about the American government's surveillance of the former Beatle in the 1970s.
And readers tempted to write that episode off as yet another paranoid fantasy of The Left should take heed: "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" includes the firsthand testimony of the spies themselves, from apostate FBI agents to the unapologetic G. Gordon Liddy. It's all there on the record, for the benefit of those who care enough about history not to repeat it. And at a time when the country is engaged in fresh debates about the fragile relationship between privacy and national security, this particular chapter seems worth revisiting.
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" opens in 1971, when Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, appeared at a fundraising concert for John Sinclair, best known to most music fans as the radical impresario behind the Detroit punk band the MC5. That appearance succeeded in getting Sinclair -- who was serving a 10-year sentence for handing undercover narcotics agents two marijuana joints -- released from jail. But it also brought Lennon straight into the cross hairs of Richard Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and, eventually, their fellows at the Immigration and Naturalization Service who for more than three years tried to have Lennon deported.
Leaf and Scheinfeld deftly set the stage for Lennon's odyssey through the dark mirror of U.S. political life, looking back to 1966 when the singer-songwriter suggested that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus in Great Britain -- a comment that quickly traveled 'round the world to become one of the most misquoted and misunderstood observations of an increasingly contentious era. It was the focus of high dudgeon in the American South, where disc jockeys and clergymen encouraged their followers to boycott Beatles records and burn the ones they already owned.
That was an early shot across the bow at a time of breathtaking cultural and political ferment, to which the brilliant, cheekily self-aware Lennon was singularly well-attuned -- and which is brought to vivid life in the archival material the filmmakers have collected. As opposition to the Vietnam War grew in the late 1960s, Lennon and Ono became increasingly outspoken in championing nonviolence, even turning their honeymoon in 1969 into a "bed-in," during which they personalized the political in an alternatively hilarious and earnest plea for peace.
Such agitprop, as recorded by the press, made Lennon and Ono fodder for ridicule, marginalization and dismissal. (There's a fabulous scene of a patronizing New York Times reporter, Gloria Emerson, calling Lennon "my dear boy" as his verbal darts sail right over her head.) But "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" makes a persuasive case that, far from being trivial, Lennon's political performances, protest anthems and talk-show appearances with Yippies and Black Panthers were shining examples of a star manipulating his own myth and expertly exploiting the fame-obsessed media. And because this was Lennon -- unlike so many pop stars with their jeremiads today -- those views were always conveyed with an extra satiric wink or understated semantic flourish.
Leaf and Scheinfeld have enlisted a crowded cast of commentators -- from George McGovern and Mario Cuomo to Bobby Seale and Angela Davis -- who recall Lennon's personal and artistic power, as well as the threat that power posed to the enemy-obsessed Nixon. (As one observer notes, Lennon's was "a frightening voice to people who want to hear 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' over and over again.")
It's chilling to hear those FBI agents reminisce about pursuing Lennon (not to mention Liddy actually blaming the student victims at Kent State for daring to exercise their First Amendment rights in front of a jittery National Guard). It's infuriating to hear how, after Nixon was safely reinstalled, the FBI backed off only to have the INS start hounding the singer out of the country, under the watchful eye of Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. And it's moving to the point of tears to watch a romantic montage set to Lennon's beatific call to un-arms, "Imagine."
That montage -- mostly composed of images of Lennon and Ono pursuing one of the world's great love affairs -- provides a lyrical reminder of what the world lost when Lennon was assassinated in 1980. Not just the Beatle or the wily provocateur or the activist or even the famous Mr. Mom, but a man who dared to grow and change in public, and thereby to suggest that the public could grow and change, too. It was that contagious audacity that made Lennon so threatening. All he was saying was give peace a chance but, as this smart, deeply affecting film reminds us, in some quarters that's saying way too much.
The U.S. vs. John Lennon (99 minutes) is rated PG-13 for some strong profanity, violent images and drug references.
For those who have followed the progress of my own documentary, 20 TO LIFE: The Life & Times of John Sinclair, a film by Steve Gebhardt, you'll be happy to learn that the licensing of the soundtrack is finally proceeding apace but not so happy, like the rest of us, to know that we may have to do some serious revision of the soundtrack before the film can be released-hopefully in conjunction with the publication of the new edition of GUITAR ARMY by Feral House Press in Los Angeles, now set for 4/20/2007 in Los Angeles.
Since it's actually the soundtrack to my life, Steve Gebhardt gave me the privilege of constructing the music track for 20 TO LIFE and if some of the music has to be replaced due to cost limitations, I will want to propose the substitute tracks, and Gebhardt and Tom Hayes will have the nightmare of re-editing the film to different music tracks. I'll report here as things happen with the film.
In the good news department, Mark Ritsema and I, through the good offices of our friend Vito Laterza, have been invited back to Italy next month for concerts in Foggia and Milano. In Foggia we will perform at the Premio Matteo Salvatore where I have been selected to receive the Targa Matteo Salvatore "for the artistic merits and the social significance of your work."
The events for the Premio will take place on 18 and 19 November (Saturday and Sunday), with a performance in occasion of the opening night and the award of the prizes, and then probably another performance in a local club, as part of the collateral events organised for the Premio Matteo Salvatore.
There will also be a presentation of my book Va Tutto Bene / It's All Good in what Vito calls "a cosy central square. There's not really any big bookshop in Foggia. In any case, the book will be well advertised even in the press releases connected to the events. As I have said before, some of the organisers involved in the Premio Matteo Salvatore are also long-time collaborators of Stampa Alternativa."
Vito has also arranged a performance for us in Milano on the 17th November at a place called Bloom, www.bloomnet.org. He says, "It's a kind of historic place in the Milan underground circuit, started in 1987 and a number of cult bands have played there (among which, Nirvana and Sepultura, for instance). Now it has evolved into a cultural centre where all kinds of artistic and political activities are carried out. Bloom is part of that radical left circuit which is known in Italy as 'antagonisti' (connected to C.S.O.A.s and similar scenes). Your concert will be part of an initiative they are promoting called Women of Jenin. I think your performance fits well with the history of Bloom and the events they are currently organising."
The following information concerning Matteo Salvatore is excerpted from Vito Laterza's radio show, Who Do You Think You Are? heard at:
Who Do You Think You Are? Radio Show on Southern Italian Music
MATTEO SALVATORE
Born in 1925 in the small town of Apricena (at the border between Gargano and the Foggia province plain, the 'Tavoliere' area), Matteo Salvatore occupies a very special place in the history of Apulian and Italian music.
His work is not directly related to any particular tradition and does not consist of re-interpretations of traditional songs. He couldn't read and write, and yet he is a natural poet. He composed all his songs, from the music to the lyrics. He is the precursor of the glorious tradition of Italian singer-songwriters.
His simple and gentle words, often in local dialect, together with the lyrical intensity of his voice, make him by far the greatest musician Apulia has ever given birth to. In a great loss for Apulian and Italian music, Matteo died 27th August last year.
His songs are the harsh and factual commentary of what life was like in the forgotten lands of Southern Italy before the economic boom. There is nothing bucolic about the life narrated by Matteo. Many of Salvatore's ballads are sad representations of the classic social structure of Gargano villages where a very small class of landowners lived at the expense of the exploited and resigned peasantry.
In the 1950s, the material conditions and the level of social exploitation were simply appalling. It was still common practice for the 'padroni' (the masters) to treat the male workers' wives as their own personal property. Sick children were brought to the local witch and many never reached the hospital to receive proper medical assistance until it was already too late.
The creativity of this man who through an amazing mix of genius and expediency made it up from street singer to internationally renowned performer, the existentialism and serene pessimism that resonate through his lyrics, the natural and unconventionally trained musical touch, these are all elements that have touched me in a unique way.
Here's news of the event in Milano, where I also look forward to reuniting with my friends at COX 18:
DONNE DI JENIN
WOMEN OF JENIN
THE PROJECT is a fund-raising campaign promoted by Women in Black to support Palestinian women in the refugee camp at Jenin, Lebanon. Unemployment and poverty plague the camp and this project wants to improve commercial and agricultural activities helping most of all women, often the only support of a family.
OBJECTIVES include increasing incomes of the poorest women, offering them a chance to commercialize agricultural products and handicrafts, and training women in management skills.
FUNDS RAISED will help defray rental costs for necessary premises, pay the costs for training courses, and grant loans to women who are starting productive or commercial activities.
SPONSORS: Women In Black, Women's Studies Center, Women's Union, Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (PMRC).
DONNE DI JENIN 2006: BLOOM REVIEW
Recent political events in the Middle East have further upset an already fragile balance. That's why we decided to continue to support solidarity projects.
Thus we present again DONNE DI JENIN 2006-a solidarity, information and sensibilization review that will take place in Bloom in November, in partnership with Mezzago town council, Provincia di Milano and local volunteer's associations.
This 4th edition will develop a number of events (music, cinema, food, meetings, theatre) around the traditional bazaar. Since September we have been collecting used objects, clothing, books, CDs, toys etc. which are given for free and then sold at popular prices in a sort of flea market whose income will be forwarded to the following projects:
DONNE DI JENIN fund-raising campaign, to support with microfinance formula Palestinian women in refugee camps who want to start an agricultural or handicraft activity.
OVER THE WALL ADOPTION CAMPAIGN, promoted by Fiom Cgil, an Italian trade union, to contribute medical and school expenses to families who live in the village of Mas'ha, by the wall, and because of the wall have lost fields, jobs, the possibility to reach school or the workplace.
Past editions were successful, with hard impact on territory and great participation of people, giving and sorting goods, working as volunteers at the bazaar, following meetings and cultural events. All this allowed us to give about 7500,00 euros in 3 years for DONNE DI JENIN and 1000,00 euros in 2 years to adopt a family in Mas'ha.
That's all to report for right now. Next I'll return to the Summer 2006 Travelogue and try to catch up some of those reports from my US tour. Next one in that series will be called Honeymoon in Manhattan (June 27-30, 2006).
Finally, I read the transcript of the great speech by Hugo Chavez to the United Nations last month and was so knocked out by it that I tried to set it into verse (with a little editing):
SMELLS LIKE SULFUR HERE
Hugo Chavez,
President of Venezuela,
addresses the United Nations
in September 2006, with a speech titled
Rise Up Against the Empire:
"The hegemonic pretensions
of the American empire
are placing at risk
the very survival
of the human species. The devil
is right at home. The devil,
the devil himself,
is right in the house. And the devil
came here yesterday. Yesterday
the devil came here.
Right here.
[crosses himself] And it smells
of sulfur
still today. Yesterday,
ladies and gentlemen,
from this rostrum,
the president of the United States,
the gentleman
to whom I refer
as the devil,
came here,
talking as if he owned the world.
Truly. As the owner
of the world. Full
of this imperial hypocrisy
from the need they have
to control everything.
What type of democracy
do you impose
with marines and bombs?
The imperialists
see extremists everywhere. It's not
that we are extremists. It's that the world
is waking up. It's waking
up all over. And people are standing up.
You can call us extremists,
but we are rising up
against the empire,
against the model
of domination. The imperium
calls us extremists,
but they are the extremists. The U.S.
has already planned,
financed
and set in motion
a coup in Venezuela,
and it continues
to support coup attempts
in Venezuela
and elsewhere. President Michelle Bachelet
reminded us
just a moment ago
of the horrendous assassination
of the former foreign minister,
Orlando Letelier. Those
who perpetrated this crime
are free. They were CIA killers,
terrorists. And we must recall
in this room
that in just a few days
there will be another anniversary. 30 years
will have passed
from this horrendous terrorist attack
on the Cubana de Aviacion airliner
where 73 innocents died. And where
is the biggest terrorist
of this continent
who took the responsibility
for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years
in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA
and then government officials,
he was allowed to escape,
and he lives here
in this country,
protected by the government.
And he was convicted. He has confessed
to his crime. But the U.S. government
has double standards.
It protects terrorism
when it wants to. Luis Posada Carriles
is the name of that terrorist
who is protected here. And other
tremendously corrupt people
who escaped from Venezuela
are also living here
under protection: a group
that bombed various embassies,
that assassinated people
during the coup. They kidnapped me
and they were going to kill me,
but I think God reached down
and our people came out
into the streets
and the army was too,
and so I'm here today.
Over and above all of this,
I think there are reasons
to be optimistic. A poet would have said
"helplessly optimistic," because
over and above the wars
and the bombs
and the aggressive
and the "preventive war"
and the destruction
of entire peoples, one can see
that a new era is dawning. As Silvio Rodriguez says,
the era
is giving birth
to a heart.
There are alternative ways of thinking.
There are young people
who think differently. And this has already been seen
within the space of a mere decade. It was shown
that the end of history
was a totally false assumption,
What we now have to do
is define the future
of the world. Dawn
is breaking out all over. You can see it
in Africa
and Europe
and Latin America
and Oceanea. I want
to emphasize
that optimistic vision.
We have to strengthen ourselves,
our will
to do battle,
our awareness. We have to build
a new and better world.
We want ideas
to save our planet,
to save the planet
from the imperialist threat. And hopefully
in this very century,
in not too long a time,
we will see this,
we will see this new era,
and for our children
and our grandchildren
a world of peace
based on the fundamental principles
of the United Nations,
but a renewed United Nations
[without] another abuse of power
on the part of the Devil.
It smells of sulfur here,
but God is with us
and I embrace you all. May God
bless us all. Good day to you."
-Edited & arranged by John Sinclair
Amsterdam, September 23-27, 2006
Latest Comments (2)
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Happy 65th Birthday--it is indeed all good (reply)
Oct 12, 2006 01:05 EST by joebryak
Great rap on Monk side, and sweet reworking of Chavez' 'antiamerican rant.' I sure hope these get wide distribution. Yr verse on being a brokedick wandering bard is terminally mellow. Yeh. Go 'head with your bad self, John, and Maintain -- Joe Bryak
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Just hangin' (reply)
Oct 11, 2006 07:22 EST by captain
Yeah man!
Greetings from downtown Orleans Parish where
the color of Dawn resonates
dances in Glory of possibilities
Dawn is always ready for Love
come Rain... come Shine
She, like many of us has a hunger
fully aware that Soul awaits her
here Soul don't wait too late
I actually learn Patience from her
hear - it's all in the wind
the water
... show all
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