The Secret History

The Last Rolling Stones Record

2010-09-23T07:25:00.003-05:00

Exile On Main Street

The Rolling Stones

cri·sis
1. a. A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point; ..from Greek krinein to decide.

One of the things that make the Rolling Stones album, Exile on Main Street, interesting, and why so many people invest it with significance in the story of the Rolling Stones, is that it is a product of crisis. When the Stones collected themselves to begin assembling their first album of the 1970s, they were faced with a dilemma that everyone who had invested any sort of hope in the recently passed events of the late ‘60s was also facing. Like early Christians in A.D. 100 finally conceding that the Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t arriving any time soon, the vanguard of the cultural revolution had to figure out what to do now that the revolution hadn’t come. Just a couple of years before, rock and roll bands had been hierarchs working their magic to effect the great turning of the age that almost everyone who had anything to do with the “counterculture” was in one form or another anticipating. But Exile was recorded on the world’s great morning after, when everyone awoke and found themselves in the 1970s. The curtains were torn open to let in the glare of daylight, and for the first time you could see how pasty, bloodshot and unwell everyone really looked.

And in that morning the Rolling Stones found themselves, like it or not, living out the question that the Beatles broke up rather than face—what meaning does mere rock and roll have when the energies that made you icons and avatars, that provided your music with half its meaning, have been turned off like a gas flame under a pot? How much of your greatness was your music, and how much was the moment? What is rock and roll supposed to do when it becomes merely music, and not a huge cultural signifier?

Read the rest at The Bluegrass Special.

This Week in the Secret History: The 4th of July's Pagan Roots

2010-06-22T06:54:00.023-05:00

Uncle Sam: Patriotic icon...

Or Gandalf in disguise?

Some of the best-documented examples of the survival of pagan ritual into the modern era are the traditional bonfires on June 23, small-scale descendants from the great Celtic Fire Festival of Midsummer’s Eve, celebrating the summer solstice. The midsummer festival lay exactly opposite the winter solstice in the cycle of the year, and the summer revelry was a mirror image of that in December, perhaps even more riotous in the more temperate weather. The focus of the festival was fire, used to bring the life-giving power of the sun god down to earth. There were huge bonfires on every hilltop. Some communities built a giant wooden wheel, wrapped it in tar-soaked rags, ignited it and set it rolling down the slope of the nearest hill. Men and women with blazing torches would run in huge clockwise circles around farm fields to ensure the health of the crop. After the fire rituals, the people would feast and drink long into the night.

Even after all of Britain was converted to Christianity, these customs survived. In rural communities, bonfires continued to be lit on Midsummer’s Eve. Later generations added fireworks to the festivities. According to historian Ronald Hutton, these customs have “a recorded history of almost two millennia, stretching back into the pagan past.”

Neolithic 4th of July

In 1751, Britain adopted the new Gregorian calendar, the standard modern calendar we still use. By that time, the old Julian calendar had fallen eleven days out of synch with the annual solar cycle, and most European countries were adopting the newer, more accurate calendar. Parliament passed an act in 1751 decreeing that the new calendar would go into effect on September 2 of the next year and that September 2, 1752 would be followed by September 14, with the intervening eleven days omitted. This did some violence to the old calendar customs of Britain: What had been Christmas was now January 6^th, with Christmas Eve on January 5^th; the new Gregorian Christmas had previously been December 14.

It was a little confusing, and in more isolated districts, it was sometimes simply ignored. In such communities, a residue of magic lingered on the old dates. January 5^th was known as Old Christmas Eve, and much of the magical and supernatural folklore associated with the solstice still clung to it.

The 18^th century in Britain was also the time of the great emigrations to America. In particular it saw the emigration of Scottish, northern English and northern Irish borderers to what was then the North American back country, settling in the hollows and hills of Appalachia, the great mountain chain that stretches along America’s eastern rim. These were an independent, hard-headed people who believed in doing things their own way, and their own way meant, as often as not, the old way, the way they’d always done things. This was especially the case with matters of the seasons and the calendar. Many of them had arrived in America before the calendar change, and many districts in the mountains clung stubbornly to Old Christmas and to the calendar that, for everyone else in the Western world, was now eleven days late.

Meanwhile, the American colonies fought a war of independence, and when they had won it, they thought it fitting to designate a national day of celebration. They chose the fourth day of July, to commemorate, so they said, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But was that the only reason for their choice?

Back up in the hills, Old Christmas still hung on like mist in a hollow. And if Old Christmas lingered, what about its opposite number, the other great feast of pagan Europe, Midsummer’s Eve? Just as we look eleven days past Christmas to find Old Christmas, we would look eleven days past June 23—current Midsummer’s Eve—to find Old Midsummer’s Eve. Is it there, buried beneath the Gregorian calendar? Find a calendar and count for yourself, eleven days past June 23^rd. You’ll land neatly and definitively on… the 4^th of July.

Two nights of fiery spectacle and festivity, layered right on top of each other. Is this coincidence? Or were the Founding Fathers a secret order of druids, dedicated to reviving the Old Religion in the New World? Was paganism a way to break free of the Church of England—a pillar of the English state-- just as constitutional democracy was a way to break free of the crown of England? Was Ben Franklin ever observed dancing around a bonfire with antlers on his head and a bellyful of mead? Was J.R.R. Tolkien trying to tell us something when he made Gandalf, the arch-Druid, the master of fireworks? We may never know, at least until the day that some historian unearths a hidden cache of correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and William Blake. But I have one idea. I think Old Midsummer’s Eve snuck into the American calendar via the mountains. Those old Celts up in the hills sent a lot of volunteers off to the Continental Army, and they provided the new nation with several presidents. When the federal government was casting about for suggestions vis a vis a national holiday, the representatives from the back country had just the thing. They knew that there were two great times for festivity in the year. One, Christmas, was already claimed by the church. But the other one was there for the taking. No-one had celebrated Old Midsummer’s Eve for centuries—maybe a millennium. No-one that is, except for the people of the mountains, who just might have slipped a rough shard of prehistoric Europe into the foundation of the republic.

Conspicuous by Their Absence: Do New Live Tapes Confirm the Legend of Moby Grape?

2010-06-09T07:13:00.006-05:00

"The national folk-memory of psychedelia today might be less limp, with fewer images of blissed-out ring-dancers and bongos in the dirt, had we been given more full metal meltdowns like 'Omaha'.”

Moby Grape Live
Moby Grape
(Sundazed)

"The monarchy's mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic," Walter Bagehot wrote in 1867. The same truth may be applied to great records.

As with all tales of unfulfilled promise, a wistful air of what-if clings to Moby Grape, as if there is still a Moby Grape-shaped hole in the ‘60s zeitgeist that they were intended to fill. Here, says the legend, was a band meant to color their era. A lot of people will tell you that their first album, Moby Grape, is the best album to come out of San Francisco, maybe all California, in the ‘60s. And indeed, had the group stayed vital for even a few more albums, they might have leant some snap and crackle to a San Francisco scene that quickly became groggy and burned-out. The national folk-memory of psychedelia today might be less limp, with fewer images of blissed-out ring-dancers and bongos in the dirt, had we been given more full metal meltdowns like “Omaha.”

Read the rest in The Bluegrass Special.

This Week in the Secrety History: Yeats, the Irish Prophet

2010-06-04T07:07:00.009-05:00

William Butler Yeats, one of the greatest poets in the English language in the 20th Century, was born June 13, 1865. He was a passionate Irish nationalist, but his version of liberation was just as much about freeing the ancient spirits of the Irish land as with political revolution. Probably he saw the two aims as part of one phenomenon. His poetry shaped the Irish perception of their own country, to the present day.

But let's let the Poetry do the talking...

The Song of Wandering Aengus I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Easter 1916 (After the brutal suppression by the English of the Easter Rising in Dublin)

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Any Given Sunday: The Moment of Paul Revere & the Raiders

2010-05-15T11:12:00.005-05:00

Hungry for Kicks: Singles & Choice Cuts 1965-69
Paul Revere & the Raiders
(Rev-Ola Import)

Let us not talk falsely now, as the Joker said to the Thief, so here’s a granular bit of truth from the 1960s that you might not get from the Revised Standard Rolling Stone Hall of Fame Canonical History of Rock & Roll. The distinctions that are made, in retrospect, between serious and lightweight music from that era, between high pop and low pop, between history-making art and disposable kitsch, were not nearly so obvious at the time as they seem now. The icons of the era, the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc., did not occupy the heights alone. In the interstices between their slots on the charts, lots of other music thrived. And—here’s the important fact—that other music was listened to, and dug, and taken “seriously” by the same people, the same kids, who put the Beatles/Stones/Dylan, etc. on the charts. Which brings us to Paul Revere and the Raiders.

The fact is that there were millions of real rockers who logged just as much time listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders between 1965 and 1967 as they did the Rolling Stones. That the kids who made “Like a Rolling Stone” a hit did the same with “Kicks” and “Good Thing.” That there was one point at which serious young men who might one day be rock critics could want to be both John Lennon and Mark Lindsay, the Raiders’ front man, at one and the same time.

Talking about the Raiders raises the larger topic of garage rock. Which runs the risk of turning the conversation serious, and if there’s one thing you shouldn’t be when talking about the Raiders, it’s serious...

Read the rest at The Bluegrassspecial.com.

This Week in the Secret History: Terrifying the Tots

2010-02-21T12:20:00.013-06:00

This week marks the birthdays of American illustrator Edward Gorey, and of pioneering German linguist and folklorist, Wilhelm Grimm, who, with his older brother Jacob, created the seminal folk and fairy tale collection, Kinder-und Hausmärchen, better known to us as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the source of such tales as "Rumpelstiltskin", "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty", "Rapunzel", "Cinderella", "Hansel and Gretel", and "The Frog Prince.”

Part of the revolutionary and romantic spirit of the early 19th Century was the notion that there could be wisdom and delight in the traditions of the rural poor, that such lore would tell you something you might not otherwise understand about your society, a knowledge that had heretofore been hidden from the literate urban elites.

No-one had previously conceived of these tales as being of any value. Now, for the first time, intellectuals sat and listened respectfully to old story-telling peasant women. It was people like the Grimms, in their generation, who began to open urban society’s eyes to the treasurehouse in the imagination of the poor.

Though more than a century separated the Grimm’s from Gorey, their work illustrates a shared insight—that childhood and terror go hand-in-hand.

In the Grimm Brothers stories characters regularly meet grotesquely awful fates. And the evil entities seem to have bubbled up out of some unhealthy Mitteleuropean nightmare, the id of the dank forests and the festering inbred little hamlets. The target of their frequently cannibalistic desires, are almost always children. The Grimms peasant informants knew that in the visionary realm, beauty and horror live close together.

But there’s a golden thread that runs through the darkness. Many of the stories in the Grimms' collection seem to resonate with some primal narrative that we were born knowing. Wilhelm Grimm said that the tales were “fragments of belief, dating back to most ancient times, in which spiritual things are expressed in a figurative manner. The mythic element resembles small pieces of a shattered jewel lying strewn on the ground all overgrown with grass and flowers, and can only be discovered by the most far-seeing eye…Their signification has been lost, but is still felt, and it imparts value to the story.”

And here’s a story you should know about the brothers Grimm:

In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to protest against the abolition of the liberal constitution of the state of Hanover by the reactionary King Ernest Augustus I. This group came to be known as The Göttingen Seven. The professors were fired from their university posts and three were deported, including Jacob. Jacob settled in Kassel, and Wilhelm joined him there. Their last years were spent in writing a definitive dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the first volume being published in 1854.

Edward Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following. Gorey became particularly well-known through his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! in 1980, as well as his designs for the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula, for which he won a Tony Award.

Gorey’s imaginative backdrop is woven out of themes from mystery and horror fiction of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras in England. Because of the settings and style of his work, many people have assumed Gorey was British; in fact, this person who made a life’s work out of channeling the elegantly perverse dream life of pre-WWI Britain never actually so much as visited the place. Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made most famous by Englishmen Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

Gorey has become an iconic figure in the Goth subculture. Events themed on his works and decorated in his characteristic style are common in the more Victorian-styled elements of the subculture, notably the Edwardian costume balls held annually in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which include performances based on his works.

This Week in the Secret History: The Strangest Day in Military History?

2010-01-20T07:22:00.013-06:00

Within the space of one day--January 22, 1879-- the British army, which had taken and held the largest empire in human history, suffered one of its most appalling defeats, and achieved, a few hours later, an astonishing triumph.

At Isandlwana in Zululand, South Africa, the British suffered the worst defeat ever inflicted on a colonial army by a native population. 950 British soldiers and 850 Basuto auxiliaries were wiped out by the army of the Zulu king, Cetsewayo.

A few hours later, and a few miles away at Rorke’s Drift, a temporary supply depot for the army’s invasion of Zululand, a force of about 80 British infantrymen, standing behind a low barrier made of hastily stacked grain-sacks, repelled continuous assaults, over the space of almost 12 hours, from a force of 4000 Zulu warriors. It is one of the freaks of military history—people are still trying to figure out how they did it.

The British had invaded Zululand to break up the Zulu nation, and in particular to destroy its huge (40,000-strong) army, eliminating what they perceived to be a threat to European settlers in Natal Colony, which bordered the Zulu kingdom. The British, looking diligently for a casus belli, had blown a few border incidents out of proportion, and responded with a series of ultimatums to Cetsewayo, with which they knew he would not or could not comply (e.g., disbanding the army, which formed the framework of the Zulu state). When Cetsewayo rejected the ultimatums, the British declared war.

The Zulus had never shown any intention of mounting a general assault on British colonists in Natal. On the other hand, the Zulus had a long established history of ferocious aggression against their tribal neighbors in South Africa, many of whom had been displaced by Zulu expansion and who understandably feared and despised them. It was from these that the British recruited some of the native auxiliaries who accompanied them in their incursion.

So the British invasion force crossed the Buffalo River into Zululand. The force was split into three columns, in order to converge in a pincers movement on the Zulu capital at Ulundi. The central column, under Lord Chelmsford, moved at an agonizing crawl, hampered by its huge supply train of hundreds of oxen-drive wagons which could only make a few miles each day. After several days marching, they made camp under the hill of Isandlwana (the Place of the Lion) a dramatic rocky outcropping with a sphinx-like profile, overlooking a broad plain bordered on the immediate north by the nQutu plateau.

The hill of Isandlwana that anchored the British left, shortly after the battle

On the morning of January 22, Lord Chelmsford divided his force in two and set off with half the central column to hunt for the main Zulu army to the west. He left behind about 950 Europeans, including regular British troops, wagoneers and sutlers, and colonial volunteers; and 850 Africans, mostly of the Basuto tribe, of the Natal Native Contingent.

The half of the column left at Isandlwana made breakfast and sent out scouts. One party of mounted scouts rode up on to the nQutu Plateau. There they saw some Zulu boys herding cattle. The scouts gave chase. They saw the Zulu boys disappear into what they assumed was a minor dip in the terrain. They rode up to the edge.

It wasn’t a dip. It was a long, wide gully. And in it were Zulus. Tens of thousands of them, covering the landscape to the horizon. Squatting on their haunches, tensely awating their orders, taking the stimulant/hallucinogenic snuff they used to prepare for battle. At the sight of the British riders, the Zulu host rose and started to run--the deadly, loping run that characterized all Zulu battlefield movement; the run that always surprised their enemies, as it surprised the British this very day, with how fast a mass of men could cover the South African grasslands; running toward the dumbfounded scouts, and then the British camp.

It was not necessarily criminally stupid of Lord Chelmsford to split his forces in the vicinity of the enemy. The British knew from previous experience, and from the experience of other nations' colonial armies, that a formation of modern European infantry could hold off many times their number of indigenous warriors. This was the result of British infantry drill (at which they were the acknowledged masters in Europe)--specifically the discipline of volley fire; and most lethal of all, volley fire by rank. If you have seen the movie Zulu, volley fire by rank is how the outnumbered British soldiers repel the final Zulu attack. It means that you have multiple lines of soldiers—two, three, four—one lined up closely behind the other, who fire in sequence, starting with the front rank. As the other ranks take their turn, the front rank reloads and prepares to fire again. So on through the succeeding ranks. In this way, fire is continuous and massive, an unbroken sheet of lead, and the effect hideously, astonishingly lethal. The Gatling Gun, and later the machine gun, were attempts to mechanically reproduce the effect of volley fire by rank.

In this way a relatively small number of disciplined riflemen could kill a remarkable number of native fighters, as long as those natives did not possess good rifles and European training.

The Boers, the Dutch settlers of South Africa, had learned one other vital lesson in their many years of fighting with the Zulus, one theystrongly recommended to the British: Every time a Boer force made camp, they put their wagons into laager—in the argot of the American West, they circled their wagons. This gave them both protection, and more important, some kind of defensible perimeter.

These things did not happen at Isandlwana. The British force encamped there was wiped out, almost to the man. Why? What happened to volley fire? The answer lies, for the most part, with the behavior of Lieutenant Colonels Athony Durnford and Henry Pulleine, who Chelmsford had left in command of the camp. Durnford had gone with a troop of local volunteer horse, on a reckless sorty out across the plain and toward the Zulus. Pulleine, who had never commanded a force of this size and never been in combat, inexplicably ordered about 600 British regulars, the core of his force, to take up position in an arc about a mile long, well in front of the camp where their supplies and ammunition lay stacked. The individual soldiers were in one thin rank, not multiple ranks, and they were yards apart from each other. Meanwhile, Durford’s excursion had left the right end of the British line dangling in the air, just waiting for the Zulu left horn to race around it.

The classic Zulu attack, created by the great King Shaka who had founded the Zulu nation, took it’s symbolic shape from the charging bull buffalo. The center of the Zulu force was the chest of the buffalo—they made an al-out massed frontal rush trying to come to grips with the enemy center. With the enemy center engaged and distracted, the two horns of the buffalo, left and right, raced around the flanks of the enemy to attack the position from behind. The loins of the buffalo were the reserves behind the chest, who were thrown in to support the chest once it had become fully engaged, to add the final pressure that would overwhelm the enemy.

The Zulu "horns" envelop the British position at Isandlwana

Even thin as it was, the British firing line apparently held off the Zulu chest for about an hour. Then something happened to slow their rate of fire. The majority opinion among historians is that the flow of ammunition from the camp to the front line slowed. The slackening of the rate of fire was just enough to let the bravest of the Zulu warriors finally cross the killing ground and come to grips with the soldiers. In colonial warfare, this was the nightmare, the situation to be avoided at all costs. When tribal warriors actually closed with European troops, when it got to hand-to-hand, the end was near. As the individual soldiers struggled with the attackers,, the rest of the men of the chest swarmed between the wide gaps in the line, turned and attacked the line from behind.

That was that.

To put a cosmic seal on the mayhem below, the sun was eclipsed that afternoon over Isandlwana.

At that point, one wing of the huge Zulu impi, about 4000 to 4500 strong, who had been held in reserve and did not see any fighting, got a wild hair. With their honor at stake, because they had not gotten to “wash their spears” in the blood of the enemy, they decided to go after the next closest group of British soldiers, even though King Cetsewayo had expressly forbidden to army to cross the river into Natal Colony. Nevertheless, there the British were, at the supply dump for the invasion force, using a commandeered two-building mission station called Rorke’s Drift.

Terrified refugees had brought news of the disaster at Isnadlwana to the force at Rorke’s Drift throughout the afternoon. The soldiers at the depot, B Company of the 24^th Foot consisted of about 140 men. Of these, 35 were in the hospital. Excluding cooks, orderlies and teamsters, there were about 80 actual riflemen fit for duty. But they had been reinforced by about 200 colonial horsemen, and around 100 of the Natal Native Contingent. Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard, an officer of the Royal Engineers with very limited combat experience, had been left in charge by the camp’s commanding officer that morning. Chard had only recently arrived at the post to build a pontoon bridge acriss the Buffalo River.

Chard ordered that a defensive perimeter be built linking the storehouse and the hospital with piles of hundred pound grain sacks and biscuit boxes. He judged that with about 450 rifles lined up behind even a token bit of shelter, they stood a chance.

The Defence of Rorke's Drift
by Alphonse de Neuville

That was until the sentries Chard had placed on the surrounding hills came racing down to report the imminent arrival of the Zulus. At that point, with the enemy on top of them, both the colonial horse and the native levies broke, and disappeared down the road into Natal. One the of 24^th shot and killed one of the native’s European officers as he ran with his troops.

At the last possible moment, the defending force had been reduced from around 450 to about 80 men. Quickly Chard ordered that another biscuit box wall be built, cutting their perimeter in roughly half. Then the Zulus appeared.

For the next eight to ten hours, the fighting went on without a significant pause. But Chard had done three things that the commanders at Isandlwana had not. He created a fortified, albeit haphazard perimeter to protect his men. When the colonial volunteers and the native troops left him, he made provisions for shrinking the perimeter and concentrating his fire; and he made sure that the men had a steady and adequate flow of ammunition.

The sun of January 23, 1879 rose on a scene of terrible carnage. There were fifteen dead Englishmen, and hundreds of dead Zulus, piled everywhere around Rorke’s Drift. Around 7 am, a huge line of Zulus appeared on the hills around Rorke’s Drift. The defenders braced for the end. But the Zulus has been marching and fighting for days without rest or food. And they knew they were going to face the wrath of their king for disobeying his orders. The Zulus disappeared. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was over, an event without real parallel in military history. The Western way of war had suffered one of its great rebukes, and one of it’s most astonishing affirmations, in one terrible day under the African sky.

The most readable narrative of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, its causes and its aftermath, remains Donald Morris' classic, The Washing of the Spears. Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture incorporates the most recent research into his chapter on Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift as part of his larger analysis of war and culture.

All Hell Breaks Loose: The Jim Jones Revue Shows Them How It's Done

2010-01-08T13:28:00.007-06:00

Most first year anthropology students learn about something called "cargo cults," a phenomenon observed during and after World War II among the remote Melanesian populations of the South Pacific islands. As Wikipedia tells us:

During the war, large amounts of food and goods were flown in by the Japanese and American combatants, and this was observed by the natives of the islands. When the war ended, the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them.

Go downtown this weekend to wherever the music clubs are. Odds are you won't have to stop in to more than two or three before you find a genuine 21st century cargo cult in action. Up there on the stage, whether it's a national touring act or someone from your local indie-alt-post-rock scene, you'll see the same hopeless ritual being enacted. There's the two-guitar, bass and drums configuration that hasn't changed since the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Maybe there's a quirky frontman acting out his angst in front of his band. Obeying an inchoate impulse from the pop unconscious, they apparently feel that by arranging the externals the same way they once were when people experienced the collective ecstasy of rock and roll, the power may be induced to descend again and flow through them. But that's just a hope, only half conscious. Most of the time, like those Pacific Islanders, they seem to be going through motions that they don't really understand, their guitars as harmless as rifles made of sticks.

And then, every once in an epoch, a real plane lands again.

Read the rest at TheBlueGrassSpecial.com.

In the New Old Fashioned Way

2009-12-07T16:41:00.005-06:00

If On a Winter’s Night…
Sting
Deutsche Grammophon

Through the Bitter Frost and Snow
Susan McKeown & Lindsey Horner
50-50 Music

Over the years, the seasonal mood has been shotgunned into unions, more or less unnatural, with every known variety of popular music. You might think you’ve got to pretty much work yourself into contortions to do something distinct with a Christmas album at this point in time. But not necessarily. All you really need is the merest hint of feeling for the season, a dash of concept, and a few decent players willing to throw themselves into the spirit of things, and--able as you are to ride the momentum of centuries of sentiment and celebration--you can do pretty well without an especially visionary take on the season. And then every once in a while, an artist happens down the Xmas trail through whose senses we can feel the season freshly; combine that with those aforementioned centuries of festive associations, and you can really have something.

Read the rest at the BlueGrassSpecial.com.

Gilding the Lily: The Remastered Beatles

2009-11-07T16:19:00.003-06:00

As with every mystery, literal and metaphorical camps battle over the interpretation of the Beatles. The literalists want there to be a literal, comprehensible, even if awful, solution to the mystery of the Beatles. The search for the pseudonymous bootleg, the lost killer outtake, the “Carnival of Light,” the Masked Marauders, the clues to the death of Paul, even, down at the abyssal end of the chain, the Manson family’s Helter-Skelter delirium--these are all at one end or the other of the literalist quest.

But just as scriptures are richest when read metaphorically, so too with the Beatles.

Don’t look outside the work for miraculous validation, says the metaphorical view. Look deeper into it. The miracles are buried layer on layer in the work. Understand the puzzling, suggestive, evocative elements not as mysteries with a literal solution like a detective story, but metaphors designed to produce, as Owen Barfield said about poetry, “a felt change of consciousness.”

With its implied suggestion of a definitive revelation, of long-buried gold coming to the surface, the remastered Beatles catalog released this fall is in one sense a classic literalist project. The CDs come with a lot of fanfare and some inevitably excited expectations. “You’re going to be knocked…out,” my CD-store guy—normally cool as a cucumber in the face of hype—breathlessly assured me.

To get a manageable handle on the remastered catalog, I’ve taken two albums, one from the early ‘60s beginnings—With the Beatles--and one late ‘60s high point—Revolver. I then picked a “good part” from each song—a hook, a chorus, a riff, a bass line, a drum fill, a noise, a shout, the bits of gratuitous inspiration that great performances throw off. At these isolated high water marks, I’ve compared the remastered version with the previous CD version. Here are the results.

Read the rest at BlueGrassSpecial.com

This Week in the Secret History: The Gothic Novel Alters Western Consciousness

2009-10-18T06:58:00.005-05:00

Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, the beauty and the beast, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, and the Wandering Jew.

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole. Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals.

This Week in the Secret History: The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (September 29)

2009-09-29T07:24:00.024-05:00

"Autumn is poignant. It belongs to the angel who carries a point, the Archangel Michael, who wields sword and spear for the people of God against the powers of darkness. The point of Michael’s spear is the poignancy of autumn that pierces our hearts and wakes us from drowsy summer, calling us away from our summer home with a sharp longing for something else.

We humans see the spiritual beauty of a thing most clearly when its time is passing or past. Nothing becomes sacred or legendary until it dies. In autumn, nature’s time is passing. The world is at its most beautiful and poetic because it is passing away. The natural world lingers for a moment on the brink of this transformation into legend or holiness. It has the bittersweet beauty of something that we are losing. The light turns from the clear, practical white light of summer into the mellow gold that we call antique—like the yellowed pages of an old book, the sepia of old photographs or tarnished brass. Old light; legends of the fall; Indian summer. Nature has one foot over the threshold of eternity and glows with a slant of light from the other side of the door.

Michael is the angel of this transition from time to eternity. The point of his spear is the point where eternity breaks into time and transforms it—both “now, and at the hour of our death,” as the Rosary says. The death of the year, beginning at Michaelmas, acts out this transformation sacramentally.

At the same time, there’s a new kind of life in the air. As dead leaves and withered plants shrivel back toward the ground, it’s as if their summer life is transformed into the tingling energy of the fall air. This combination of the beautifully dying and the bracingly awake is the unmistakable spiritual atmosphere of autumn. Michael is the patron of the process. The flaming trees say it all. They are a last flare up of gorgeousness before death and, at the same time, a signal fire, a wake-up call to the soul. Michael, whose feast is celebrated one week after the autumnal equinox, is the lord of autumn, the angel of the flaming trees.
" Michael presides over the equinox, the time of the equal night and day, when things hang in the balance. Medieval art often shows Michael holding a pair of balancing scales—just like the Egyptian god Anubis, another lord of transitions and guide of the dead. Those balancing scales are the astrological sign of Libra, which begins a week before Michaelmas."

from Holidays and Holy Nights
by Christopher Hill
copyright 2003

This Week in the Secret History: Carter Files Report of UFO Sighting

2009-09-18T12:03:00.003-05:00

On September 18, 1973, future President Jimmy Carter files a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.

During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called "the darndest thing I’ve ever seen" in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as "very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon." Carter reported that "the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance." He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.

During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter promised that, if elected president, he would encourage the government release "every piece of information" about UFOs available to the public and to scientists. After winning the presidency, though, Carter backed away from this pledge, saying that the release of some information might have "defense implications" and pose a threat to national security.

from www.History.com

This Week in the Secret History: Ken Kesey, the Indiana Jones of Consciousness

2009-09-18T11:33:00.006-05:00

September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001

Farmer, wrestler, author, Intrepid Traveler

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”

“The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”

This Week in the Secret History: The Still-Smoking Gun

2009-09-07T08:23:00.019-05:00

Richard Helms, Director of the CIA

Richard Nixon, President of the United States

Excerpts from the Nixon White House Tape dated June 23, 1972, subsequently known as "The Smoking Gun Tape" in which Nixon and his aide John Haldeman discussed blacmkailing the CIA into intervening in the FBI investigation of laundered Nixon campaign funds. Richard Nixon resigned the presidency within four days of this tape being made public in August 1974.

Haldeman: ... they'll stop if we could, if we take this other step.

Nixon: All right. Fine.

Haldeman: And, and they seem to feel the thing to do is get them to stop?

Nixon: Right, fine.

Haldeman: They say the only way to do that is from White House instructions....

Nixon: All right, fine.

Haldeman: and say, ah...

Nixon: How do you call him in? I mean you just, well, we protected [CIA Director Richard] Helms from one hell of a lot of things.

Of course, this is a, this is a hunt, you will--that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt [E. Howard Hunt, ex-CIA and Cuban exile case officer], and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.

**********

Nixon: When you get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "The President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!

Haldeman: OK

Nixon: That's the way to put it, do it straight (Unintelligible)

In 1978, Haldeman published The Ends of Power , in which he explained Nixon's statement that Watergate could "open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing". Haldeman said that "Bay of Pigs" (the failed 1960 attempt by CIA-backed exiles to topple Castro) was Nixon's code for CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, as well as the CIA's general sponsorship of violent, ultra-right wing, heavily armed and virulently anti-Kennedy Cuban exile groups in the southern United States. The CIA had not revealed any of this to the Warren Commission, the commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination. Haldeman eventually speculated that the "Bay of Pigs" was Nixon's way of referring obliquely to the Kennedy assassination itself.

When Haldeman did as his boss had ordered, and told CIA Director Helms that "the Bay of Pigs may be blown," according to Haldeman the reaction was galvanic. "Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.' " Recalls Haldeman: "I was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. Again I wondered, what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story?"

In the wake of this meeting, CIA officials did, in fact, ask Acting FBI Director Pat Gray to slow the FBI's money tracing.

The tape was damning for Nixon because it was clear evidence of the president ordering the obstruction of the government's Watergate investigation. But it was apparently considered a matter of secondary importance to pursue the question of just exactly what Nixon was talking about. And, after Gerald Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon, no-one would ever be able to question the president under oath. And so the matter rests to this day, with Nixon in his grave.

The Watergate Burglars

Bernard L. Barker - Former Central Intelligence Agency operative. Said to have been involved in Cuban exile paramilitary action.
Virgilio R. Gonzales - Involved in Cuban exile politics.
James W. McCord - Former CIA agent.
Eugenio R. Martinez - CIA contract agent. Worked with militant anti-Castro Cuban groups
Frank A. Sturgis - Former CIA contract agent working with anti-Castro exile groups.
Howard Hunt - Former CIA case officer for the most radical Cuban exile paramilitary groups

In Music: Lords of the Highway

2009-09-04T13:01:00.007-05:00

Lost Highways: American Road Songs 1920's to 1950's

Various Artists

Viper

In Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the Kid, played by Kris Kristofferson, is preparing to leave the Lincoln County Jail, having just disposed of two of Pat Garret's deputies assigned to guard him. In his leg irons he's shuffling around the second story room where he's been held, gathering up guns, ammo and blankets. He starts to hum, then sing, a little tuneless song, a list of places he's been. The list grows, the song lengthens, getting louder as the Kid piles on towns, landmarks, rivers. People in the street outside stop to listen; and when Billy realizes it, he starts to shout his silly tuneless song out at them, until he's gathered a silent, watchful audience and we've temporarily left the land of narrative realism for the country of folklore and ritual. Billy the Kid's Song of the Open Road is an American incantation. Call it singing the travels-it is a stock device that American storytellers can use to touch base with the roots of their subject, highway being to American story what the sea is to Homer's.

Read the rest at The Bluegrassspecial.com.

This Week in the Secret History: Do the Horn Dance

2009-09-03T05:42:00.013-05:00

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is generally accepted as the oldest continuously performed folk ritual in Britain, and one of the oldest in all of Europe. Six dancers in Elizabethan dress each carry on their shoulders an enormous set of reindeer antlers. Three of the sets are painted white; three are painted brown. They are accompanied by the Hobby Horse (a man with a small effigy of a horse resting around his waist, so he seems to be galloping); Maid Marian, a young man in women's clothing, and a traditional Fool. Musicians generally bring up the rear, in recent years being an accordion player and a young boy chiming in on the triangle. The dance involves the hornsmen weaving in and out of each other in a figure eight pattern. They then split into two opposing lines --white vs brown-- and do mock battle with each other.

There is documentary evidence that the Horn Dance goes back to the 16th Century--it was observed by contemporary diarists. But Abbot's Bromley locals have always said it was older than that. They were right. Chemical dating in the 1980's put the horns firmly on the heads of domesticated reindeer that lived in the 11th Century. So that the 21st Century marks at least the one thousandth birthday of the Horn Dance. (To make things more mysterious, reindeer were extinct in England at that time.) But there's some indication that these were not the original set of Horns used in the rite. Which, if the "old horns" were in use anything like as long as the "new" ones, sends us spinning back into the days of the Roman Invasion of Britain.

Or, as Nigel Tufnel put it, "The Druids...who were they...and...what did they do?"

The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following Wakes Sunday, which is the first Sunday after September 4. In practice, this means that it is the Monday between between September 6 and September 12. It was originally a ritual of the Christmas season, but the date was shifted to autumn in the 18th Century.

Without further ado, England's longest running performance...

And here's the original Horn Dance tune...

This Week in the Secret History: British Rockers & the Dream of Childhood; or Tragedy at Pooh Corner

2009-08-20T05:47:00.022-05:00

"The true subject of English psychedelia was neither love nor drugs but nostalgia for the innocent vision of the child. ...Pop's late-60's preoccupation with the lost domain of childhood [was]... initiated by Lennon and McCartney with the single, 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane'.

"The revolutionary spirit then abroad in America and Europe was never reciprocated in Albion, where tradition, nature and the childlike view were the things that sprang most readily to the LSD-heightened Anglo-Saxon mind." Ian MacDonald Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties

From Pink Floyd's references to Wind in the Willows, to John Lennon's unending fascination with Lewis Carroll, to the Small faces stoned-out fairy tale, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, British rockers were obsessed for a time with the vision of childhood. "Show me that I'm everywhere/Then get me home for tea," George Harrison sang. Most evocative of all were the Incredible String Band, for whom the eyes of a child were a lens for viewing the hidden beauty and strangeness of the world.

Many of the great creators of English children's literature were people who felt themselves seriously, sometimes desperately out of place in their world. It's why they could create golden alternate worlds, tinged with palpable magic. The best of their work--like Wind in the Willows or the Mary Poppins books-- aren't just works of the imagination--they're works of vision. When psychedelia hit Britain, it was as natural a source for artists to look to as the Anthology of American Folk Music was for American musicians.

Cotchford farm in Sussex is where Christopher Robin Milne grew up-- the Christopher Robin, the inspiration and model for the central character in the Winnie the Pooh stories, which his father, A. A. Milne, wrote. The woods that stretch backward from the house are the 40 Acre Woods. The Enchanted Place on Top of the Forest is there. The bridge where Pooh and Eeyore invent Pooh Sticks is there. The garden of the house is maintained as a shrine to childhood, with rights of access granted in perpetuity to the Winnie-the-Pooh Society, and so to all Pooh- lovers.

It was here that Brian Jones, the most debauched and dangerous of the Rolling Stones and the band's founder, came in 1969 to try to pull his life back together, away from the mad Saturnalia that was pop star life in "Swinging London."

It was here that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came to tell Brian he was no longer a Rolling Stone. The Stones wanted and needed to tour the United States, where they had not made a live appearance for several years. Brian, in his drug and booze raddled shape, could not possibly undertake the rigors of extended touring. He could barely play in the recording studio. Plus his two drug busts would effectively bar his entry to the States.

This was the Stones tour that ended in the debacle at Altamont. Things were turning dark all over as the 60s began switching off the lights.

Friends began to remark to each other that the benevolent atmosphere of Cotchford Farm was doing Brian good. Brian would allow no drugs in the house, (though he apparently still drank heavily from time to time). He talked about starting a roots rock band, what we would now call Americana--and was listening endlessly to Creedence. His housekeeper, Mary Hallett, who had worked at Cotchford Farm for decades, grew increasingly fond of him. She though he was a lost boy who needed a stable home. Sometimes, something in the way his hair fell over his forehead made her think of another golden-haired boy who had lived there long ago. Brian had wonderful, instinctive good manners that he could call on when needed and his relation with those younger and older than he were often very tender. It was with his peers, and himself, that the problems lay.

On the night of Wednesday, July 2, 1969, Brian had a few friends around--a girl friend, the contractor who had been doing repairs at Cotchford, his girlfriend. Maybe one or two others. They were sitting around the pool at the back of the house. Late in the evening, Brian announed he was going for a swim. He went inside to change, came back out, and dove in. As it was getting dark, and cooling off, the rest of the group went inside. A moment later, one of the women went back outside to get Brian. She found him lying face down on the bottom of the pool.

Brian was asthmatic. He was in terrible shape. He was probably drunk, and may have taken some sedative medication. There's nothing terribly mysterious about his death. Yet dark speculation--some of it verifiable--has swirled around the events ever since. There was some kind of bad blood between Brian and the contractors. Frank Thorogood, the head contractor, had apparently been trying to collect a debt from Brian for some time. He was the last person to see Brian alive. And someone was burning something in several small fires, in the small hours of that night, at Cotchford.

Something called to Brian Jones from Cotchford Farm, as the world of childhood, remembered or imagined, called to British rock and rollers toward the end of the 60s. Many of them would visit that country. Few of them paid so high a price.

"By-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest..."

In Music: Rhett Miller Bares His Heart to Someone

2009-08-08T08:56:00.002-05:00

RHETT MILLER
Rhett Miller
Shout Factory

"Indie" as a label for a band should be used in a strictly limited sense to refer to a band unaffiliated with the major labels. Used to suggest a sensibility, or a sound, the word is layered with unfortunate associations.

For instance, it's easy to say that Rhett Miller's band, the Old 97's of Dallas, Texas, have, for over a decade, been a beloved indie/alt-country fixture. And that's a shame.

Because the Old 97's aren't an indie/alt-anything band, but rather a near great rock & roll band within the broad river of tradition that flows from the Byrds. They practice certain lost arts, like the high-energy hook, that few know anymore They come on with a buzz and a whack and gorgeous melodic fillip. They command power chords and distortion as well as really from-the-heart sweet melodies and consistently diverting songwriting from frontman Rhett Miller--Miller, wearing his bleeding heart on his sleeve, love-obsessed, gangly, held together by twining strands of heartbreak and pugnacity. And there seems to be no reason for them not to sell large quantities of records. Except that their leader still seems to be a prisoner of the indie mind.

Indie cults are based on the myth of the beautiful loser, often personified in the pale ruined boy who fronts the band. As a band, the Old 97's don't seem interested in being beautiful losers. But Miller? If his new solo album is an indication, he sounds prepared to milk the personae of pale ruined boy for all it's worth.

Read the rest in the BlueGrassSpecial.com.

Secret History Readers: Choose Your Free One-of-a-Kind CD

2009-08-06T06:30:00.004-05:00

These one-of- a-kind cd's are custom programmed, full of rarities and other artfully selected tracks, with original cover art. They are available only through the Secret History. Starting today, the first four readers to post comments on any story, current or archived, in the Secret History, will win the cd of their choice.

The first four readers who respond to any comments will also receive their choice of cd.
And finally the next four readers to sign up as followers will get a cd.

Take Your Choice...

Happy Birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley!

2009-08-04T22:08:00.003-05:00

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

Percy Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)

This Week in the Secret History: The Secrets of the Green Dragon Tavern

2009-07-30T22:34:00.016-05:00

Almost since the events themselves, people of a certain cast of mind have insisted that crucial events of the American and French Revolutions were guided, planned, instigated by occult orders who practiced advanced forms of spirituality not accessible to the masses. Depending on which side of the Revolution you were on, this was either a good thing--the spiritually advanced sharing their gifts to lift humanity to new levels of freedom and dignity--or a bad thing--hidden radical elites wielding a dangerous level of influence over the ignorant masses to tear down divinely ordained hierarchy. Both sides were sure that the Order in question was the Freemasons. It used to be a given that the Freemason's were active on the side of American freedom--a disproportionate number of Masons signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Some of the most important revolutionary leaders were Masons, including George Washington, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams and possibly Thomas Jefferson. About half of the officer corps of Washington's army were Masons. But modern materialist historians, allergic to anything that smells of mystery, had to eradicate the notion that the Mason's were helping to act out a scenario for the spiritual development of the world. To which the only answer, it seems to me, is that if they weren't, they certainly thought they were.

Which brings us to the door of the Green Dragon.

Boston's Green Dragon Tavern was one of the oldest tavern's in the city,having been in operation since the 1670's. In 1736, it was purchased by the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons to serve as their headquarters.

Not coincidentally, it came to be known as the "Headquarters of the Revolution." In its cozy confines, the Freemasons played host to most of the radical revolutionary groups of the time, including the Sons of Liberty and the Committee of Correspondence.

A group of men dressed as Indians set out from the Green Dragon to dump tea from British ships into Boston Harbor. The British advance towards Lexington and Concord was monitored from the Green Dragon. Paul Revere set out on his ride from the Green Dragon.

Here's how the Masons see it...

"...it can easily be shown that in many ways the revolutionary ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy were espoused by the Masonic fraternity long before the American colonies began to complain about
the injustices of British taxation. The revolutionary ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of Thomas Paine, were ideals that had come to fruition over a century before in the early speculative Masonic lodges of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where men sat as equals, governed themselves by a Constitution, and elected their own leaders from their midst. In many ways, the self-governing Masonic lodges of the previous centuries had been learning laboratories for the concept of self-government"(The Masonic Trowel)

On September 18, 1793, President George Washington, dressed in his Masonic apron, leveled the cornerstone of the United States Capitol with the traditional Masonic ceremony. Historian Stephen Bullock in his book Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, notes the historic and symbolic significance of that ceremony. "The Masonic brethren, dressed in their fraternal regalia, had assembled in grand procession, and were formed for that occasion as representative of Freemasonry's new found place of honor in an independent American society. At that moment, the occasion of the laying of the new Republic's foundations, Freemasons assumed the mantles of 'high priests' of that 'first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people,' and they '“helped form the symbolic foundations of what the Great Seal called ‘the new order for the ages’.”

This Week in the Secret History: The Avenging Angel of California

2009-07-25T08:49:00.014-05:00

Joaquin Murrieta (1829–ca. 1853), also called the Mexican Robin Hood, was a semi- legendary figure in California during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. He was either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot, depending on one's point of view. Murrietta was partly the inspiration for the fictional character of Zorro. His name has, for some political activists, symbolized resistance against Anglo-American economic and cultural domination in California.

There is little historical evidence for the tale of Joaquin Murrieta. The only written source is a highly romanticized biography written a year or two after his death. The book says that Murrieta and his family went to California in 1850 to seek their fortune in the California Gold Rush. Instead of opportunity, he encountered racism and discrimination.

In the same year as their arrival, a Foreign Miners Tax was imposed in California and their Anglo-Saxon neighbors tried to run them off by telling them that it was illegal for Mexicans to hold a claim. Reportedly, the Murrieta brothers tried to ignore the threats as long as they could until they were finally forced off their claim. While mining for gold, he and his wife supposedly were attacked by American miners jealous of his success. They allegedly raped Murrieta's wife, flogged him, and killed his brother.

Angry and unable to find work, Joaquin turned to a life of crime, along with other disposed foreign miners, who began to prey upon those who had forced them from their claims.

In the novel, Murrieta sought justice through the legal system but was informed by a friend who was also a constable that there was no way to prosecute the crime because of a California law that prohibited Mexicans from testifying against Anglos. To avenge this injustice, Murrieta formed a gang from his family and friends to hunt down those that attacked his family. They killed at least six, and as they were then outlaws, they turned to a life of organized crime, stealing and using the money to help Californio's (Native Californians.)

On May 11, 1853, Governor of California John Bigler signed a legislative act creating the "California State Rangers," led by Captain Harry Love (a former Texas Ranger). Their mission was to capture Murrieta and his gang. The California Rangers stood a chance to share a $5000 reward for the capture of Joaquin Murrieta. On July 25, 1853, a group of Rangers encountered a band of armed Mexican men near Panoche Pass in San Benito County, 50 miles from Monterey. A confrontation took place, and two of the Mexicans were killed. One was claimed to be Murrieta.

The Rangers severed the alleged Murrieta's head as proof of their deaths and preserved it in a jar of brandy. The jar was displayed throughout California; spectators could pay $1 see the remains. Seventeen people, including a Catholic priest, signed affidavits identifying the remains as Murrieta's, and Love and his Rangers accordingly received the reward money. The preserved head was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

A plaque (California Historical Landmark #344) near the intersection of State Routes 33 and 198 now marks the approximate site of Murrieta's headquarters in Arroyo de Cantua, where he was presumably killed.

For more on Joaquin Murrieta, see...

The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta, Famous Outlaw of California's Age of Gold by Walter Noble Burns

Searching for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta and History in California by Bruce Thornton

Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge

When Cowboys Get the Blues

2009-07-19T18:39:00.006-05:00

Townes

Steve Earle

New West Records

"My wife and I were listening to the folk music show on our local public radio station the other Sunday night when we could no longer take one more brawny chanty about plying the Great Lakes on the grand old steamships. So I plugged in my iPod and started to play one of my British folk music playlists. It did the job clearing the air of all the heave-away-haul-away with its astringent northerness. The last song was a majestic and mournful pipe duet called "Kintail" from the great Scottish pipe band the Tannahill Weavers, which sounded like watching your true love pass over the horizon on a ship bound for Amerikay, or Frodo leaving Middle Earth at the Grey Havens. About halfway into it, my wife said, "They're always so sad." She meant all of it, all the songs we had just been listening to, all "folk" music. She was right. The folks that folk music comes from, way back when, were by and large people who didn't have much buffer, if any, between them and life. And that also means, of course, between them and death. Folk music is sad all over the world.

As country music grew from its poor mountain roots, moved into the city and started getting a steady paycheck, and a dry summer didn't necessarily mean immediate destitution, country singers, if they were after greatness, still had to invite the ghost to the party. It's not an accident that the greatest country singer of all, Hank Williams, is among the most notably mournful.

The ghost became the blues. The blues were the old hard times, internalized."

Read the full review at the bluegrassspecial.com.

This Week in the Secret History: Eisenhower Proposes Interstate Highway System

2009-07-16T04:47:00.011-05:00

There were rivers and paths in America that once seemed to be the gate to all good adventure. The Mississippi River, Route 66, all the blacktop two-lanes that led into the groves of America.

After the dolorous stroke in Dealey Plaza, such arteries of possibility dried up. The men to whom fear and money were everything laid over the land a vast grid of concrete in the name of national security, whose purpose was to turn all the places into no-place, so that people no longer knew where they were or where they came from.

These concrete sluices drained the life off half the nation, created an unthinkable continent of ghost towns, and sure enough the ghosts come forth to disturb our sleep. Now the withered spirits blow up and down old Route 66, Timothy McVeigh and the patriots, they own that road.

The act of Dealey Plaza led to this America where the dry souls are stacked like kindling.

The land was given over to the mundane light and the dry electric fever. “Save us from... the fever that strikes at mid-day” the psalmist prays. This was the same mundane light that fell on Dealey Plaza at noon that Friday.

“It will be cool under the underpass”, Jackie thinks as the black car rolls with dreadful slowness down Elm Street. In fact it never got cool again.

That mundane light of Dallas which to the spiritual eye is dreadful darkness, the dunnest smoke of hell. The light on Dealey Plaza is the light of Sunbelt gangsters, is the light on the parking lot of an Arizona savings & loan, is the light of Las Vegas that burns off the top of people’s heads to desiccate the moist brain inside, is the light that evaporates the pools of mystery, the light that shone all over America and burned out every shadow, that makes every photograph from the 50’s black and white, the light that says you’re seeing all there is to see, which is the great lie, the lie of Hitler’s open hand.

This Week in the Secret History: Bastille Falls; Stones Play First Gig

2009-07-13T18:51:00.005-05:00

July 14, 1789 The hated Bastille Prison, symbol of royal despotism, falls to the Paris mob.

A shout out to all you French Freemasons--nice work. Good to win one once in a while.

"It is very hard today to feel that the French Revolution was as fresh as it really was. The Marseillaise is played today at diplomatic dinner-parties, where smiling monarchs meet beaming millionaires, and is rather less revolutionary than "Home Sweet Home." The Marseillaise once sounded like the human voice of the volcano or the dance-tune of the earthquake, and the kings of the earth trembled; some fearing that the heavens might fall; some fearing far more that justice might be done."

- GK Chesterton

July 12, 1962 The Rolling Stones play their first gig

Yes, my name is called Disturbance.

I’ll shout, I’ll scream, I’ll kill the king,

I’ll rail at all his servants.

2009-07-13T12:02:00.015-05:00

July 12, 1942 Happy Birthday Roger McGuinn

With his famous granny glasses

and his immortal 12-string Rickenbacker...

...with which he made a sound more glorious than people had ever expected from pop music. A distinctly American noise, that seemed to be saying that it was a much more interesting country than you'd been led to believe.

"A little bit of courage is all we lack/ So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back..."

This Week in the Secret History: Paul and John Meet

2009-07-07T04:22:00.002-05:00

There are some moments when it's clear that a new world has begun. At St. Peter's Parish Fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, a rather sloppy group of kids calling themselves the Quarrymen has just finished their set. A strangely confident, baby-faced 15 year old kid introduces himself to their leader. The band's leader, a year older, says something snide. Unfazed, the younger boy proceeds to show him the chords to Eddie Cochran's"Twenty Flight Rock." The older boy is snide no longer.

And so it begins.

Asymmetrical Warfare, cont.

2009-07-06T05:41:00.021-05:00

To move the Arab Revolt north into the political hot zones would require a port to supply the Revolt. The place

Aqaba today. Note mountains behind town.

was obvious--the Ottoman port of Aqaba, at the tip of the Red Sea Gulf of Aqaba, at the extreme south of what is now Jordan. The problem was two-fold--Aqaba was in Turkish hands, and it was, in a sense, impregnable. The Arabs could request the Royal Navy to land an assault force at Aqaba, and they could probably have taken it. But again, the problem was two-fold. The British had no geopolitical vision of the Arab Revolt extending to the north of the Arabian Peninsula. And more practically, the lone track that led over the mountains and into the inland from Aqaba was heavily fortified, much more of a tactical challenge than the town of Aqaba itself, and liable to exact prohibitively high casualties from anyone who tried to force the way. After the apocalypse of Gallipoli, the English people has no more taste for attacking Turks in fortified positions, especially in the name of some exotic sideshow like the Arab Revolt.

But Lawrence and Feisal had just been given something better than the British Navy, if they played their cards right. For into Feisal's camp at Wejh had just ridden Auda abu Tayi, sheik of the Howeitat bedouin. Auda, in Lawrence's estimate, was "the greatest fighting man in Northern Arabia." The Howeitat were known wide and far for their belligerence, deriving much of their tribal wealth from raiding their neighbors. Auda was placing himself and his tribe at the service of the Revolt.

Now Lawrence happened to have seen some recently shot aerial photography taken by British reconnaisance planes, that included views of Wadi Itm, the mountain pass that led inland from Aqaba. From it, Lawrence could see that the Turkish fortifications in the pass were much more vulnerable to a force going down the pass from the inland, rather than one ascending it from the sea. Especially if said force could materialize by more or less complete surprise at the top, inland mouth of the pass.

And where could one typically find the black tents and the home pastures of the Howeitat? Why, in southern "Transjordania" as the British called it--a few day's ride, as it happened, from the mouth of Wadi Itm. But where were the Howeitat now?

The Howeitat were somewhere in Wadi Sirhan, the great dry watercourse that connects the northern Arabian Desert with the arable lands of the coast, the pasage from the nomadic to the settled. Reaching the Howeitat in Wadi Sirhan involved crossing some of the least hospitable country in northern Arabia, cutting through an outlier of the Great Nefud desert, and making it across something the Arabs called el Houl, the Terror. All told, it was a desert journey of abot 600 miles -- a huge loop from their current base on the Hejaz coast deep into the Arabian desert, and then back around again down to the sea at Aqaba.
They set off in May, 1917, with Auda, Lawrence, Sherif Nasir, the official Hashemite leader appointed by Feisal, and about forty bodyguards. The crossing was terrible, especially for an Englishman unused to Bedouin life. But they arrived intact at the tents of the Howeitat in their summer pasture in Wadi Sirhan. Auda succeeded in raising the Howeitat for the great raid, and they ultimately left the camp for Aqaba with about 500 of the most avid desert raiders in Arabia. After a string of diversionary raids and manouevers, they entered Wadi Itm, and found the Turkish fortifications falling like plums into their hands. No Turkish planner had anticipated a force of this size or organization to arise out of the disorganized, undisciplined Bedouin in their rear, who only made war on each other. One fort, at Abba el Lissan, held out until Auda, in a fit of pique, ordered an all-out, old-style camel charge. Lawrence, excitedly joining in, accidentally shot his camel through the head, and was sent hurtling head over heels into the sand. When he came to, the Turks had surrendered. The force then headed unopposed down the pass, through a driving sandstorm and entered Aqaba on July 6, 1917.

Hashemite/Howeitat forces entering Aqaba

From then on, the Arabs became a factor in the calculus of the great powers as they planned for the post-War East. And Lawrence's theories about the potential of the Arab Revolt became more than the fevered musings of one lone English eccentric in a black tent.

Happy 55th Birthday, Rock & Roll

2009-07-05T17:24:00.008-05:00

July 5, 1954 Elvis records his first single, "That's All Right, Mama"

"The music was new black polished chrome and it came across the summer like liquid night."

Jim Morrison

This Week in the Secret History: Arab Revolt Seizes Turkish Port of Aqaba; Age of "Asymmetric Warfare" Begins

2009-07-05T06:32:00.038-05:00

Triumphant Bedouin race through Aqaba to the sea in scene from Lawrence of Arabia

Auda abu Tayi, sheikh of the Howeitat Bedouin

Captain Lawrence, AWOL

One of the most significant developments in the politics and history of the post-colonial world took place in December 1916 inside a hot, darkened tent pitched in a desert gully in the Hejaz region of what is now western Saudi Arabia, where a young Englishman lay in misery for a week sweating off a bout of dysentery. He was a British soldier, but he had no combat or command experience; his previous experience in the army had been interrogating prisoners and making maps. His current status was irregular--at the time, nobody exactly had a name for the position he had gotten himself into, and nobody has a really good one now. We might see him as some unlikely combination of diplomatic envoy and Delta Force operator. Until the war he had never had any kind of military experience. He had in fact been a scholar, an archeologist, and it's what he wanted to get back to as soon as the war was over. He was slight, small (5'6"), fair in coloring, soft-spoken, a hyper-literate Oxonian aesthete. All in all, there was something a little absurd about him being where he was.

Where he was was in the middle of a rebellion against the 500-year domination of the Arabian Peninsula by the Ottoman Empire, a rebellion consisting of a small and very loose confederation of some western Arabian bedouin tribes owing an informal sort of allegiance to Kng Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca, the head of the ancient and aristocratic Hashemite clan. It was World War I, the Ottoman Turks had entered on Germany's side, and had threatened to call for a jihad against Britain in all the Muslim bits of the British Empire. Which made perfect sense. The British response was to try to find a Muslim religious authority of their own who could counter the call for jihad. And so they lighted on the elderly Sherif Hussein of Mecca, hereditary guardian of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Hussein had long had an itch to be master in the province of the Hijaz, which contains the Holy Cities. The British casually promised him self-determination if he would issue a call for revolt against the Turks. It was all supposed to be very local and low-key and 19th century--grizzled tribesmen taking potshots at Turkish columns, and after the hostilities maybe one barren and strategically marginal province would change hands. The British had a lot of experience balancing one obscure ethnicity against another in remote corners of the world while never letting it shake the Pax Britannica. But this was the 20th Century, and new forces were loose. There was a generation of educated, cosmopolitan Arabs who did not take the British, the French or the Ottoman Empires as unchallengeable assumptions. The American president was talking about the end of colonialism. In any hopeless cranny of the imperial globe these days, something or someone could come forth with an assertion, a demand, an idea, that could shake the calculus of power.

Right now one of those people was sweating in that airless tent in the Hijaz. But he was also doing something else. He was occupying his enforced leisure by thinking. He had been watching the little Hejaz adventure fall apart, as any confrontation between a modern, disciplined, mechanized imperial army against a motley crowd of nomads whose style of fighting--the quick raid, with antiquated weapons, on unsuspecting tribal enemies, followed by disapearance into the desert, with a low tolerance, if any, for casualties, orders, or organization--has not changed in generations. No, there was no possible way for the bedouin to contest the Turks for control of the territory. They could not aim to occupy and hold strategic ground, much less come to grips with and destroy significant units of the enemy army. They had tried that in a frontal camel charge against Medina, and been torn to pieces by Turkish artillery. But the 26-year old inside the tent had had no training that would have caused him to give undue weight to established military principles. What did begin to dawn on him in the dark was how vastly outnumbered, outgunned and out-organized partisans might have unsuspected advantages that in the end could conceivably make the continued occupation of their land by conventional forces too costly and too agonizing for them to continue. It was the first glimmering of the practice of what our geopoliticians today call asymmetric warfare, and it has been applied with remarkably consistent success from the first post-WWII and Cold War colonial risings and wars of national liberation, to Vietnam, to the very moment I write this, during which Western forces are engaged on two fronts in classic asymmetric wars. In each one of these, the insurgents, the revolutionaries, the terrorists--take your pick--have either read T.E. Lawrence (for that is the name of the man in the tent) or understood the principles instinctively. And the occupiers, the strangers in the land, have had to read him eventually.

Back to the tent. In a flash of insight, Lawrence saw that it was madness to try to take the city of Medina, the Turkish stronghold in the Hejaz. This was the the British military orthodoxy--you seek out the forces of the enemy, engage and destroy him. Lawrence saw that the Turks in Medina, isolated in the middle of a desert, hundreds of miles from their own territory, were effectively prisoners. 99% of the Hejaz already lay in Arab hands. The Turks' only supply line was the Hejaz railway which ran undefended through a thousand miles of desert dominated by Bedouin tribes, at whose mercy the railroad lay. The power, in this case--here's the asymmetric part--lay with the conventionally weaker force, who could, at will, keep the railway running to whatever extent they chose.

The remains of the vulnerable Hejaz Railway

With that realization, the war in the Hejaz was won, though no-one but Lawrence knew it yet. Now what? If the Arabs were going to have a modern state that meant anything, it meant Arab rule in the Turkish provinces along the Mediterranean--Palestine, the Levant, Syria. No European nation that had made promises to King Hussein has dreamed of such a thing. But Prince Feisal, son of Hussein, whose advisor Lawrence officially was, was a genuine modern nationalist, unlike his father, and he and Lawrence both dreamed of

it.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

This Week in the Secret History: Custer's Karma

2009-06-26T06:36:00.012-05:00

What a flamboyant, outrageous figure. What a sense of himself he had. He must have considered himself immortal, at least when his hair was long, as invincible as Beowulf or Siegried or Harold Greatheart. He sprang from that race of blue-eyed, long-nosed devils, who once upon a time trotted arrogantly through cold black forests with the North Sea in their veins; and being who he was, he must have felt their eyes on him as he galloped across the American prairie, strawberry curls flowing in the wind. Even his weapons – Remington sporting rifle with octagonal barrel, two self-cocking ivory-handled Webley Bulldog pistols, a hunting knife in a beaded scabbard—everything about him contributed to the image. General George Armstrong Custer! His name reverberates like the clang of a sword.

Evan Connell

Son of the Morning Star

To understand the events that culminated at Little Big Horn, you have to factor in the way the Indians interpreted it. In their eyes, it was a religious or spiritual process. To 19th Century Plains Indians, as in most pre-industrial societies, there was no separate secular realm of life. All activities had spiritual implications.

There is something stange about the Black Hills of South Dakota. They rise, an enclosed island of incongruous mountains, from the middle of flat oceans of grassland around them, made even more distinct by their dark wooded slopes in a land where they are no trees for miles. Hence their designation as “Black” Hills, or Paha Sapa in the language of the Lakota Sioux. American Indians have inhabited the area since at least 7000 BCE.

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie confirmed the Lakota ownership of the mountain range. The Sioux and Cheyenne claimed rights to the land saying that in their culture it was considered the sacred center of the world.

Rumors of gold in the Black Hills had circulated in North America for decades. In 1874 Brevet Major General Custer led the 7th Cavalry on a military/
mineralogical expedition into the Black Hills. They discovered gold in French Creek in the Southern Black Hills. An official announcement of the presence of gold was made to the nation through newspaper reporters who accompanied the expedition.

Within a year the gold rush began. Thousands of miners went to the Black Hills; by 1880, the area was the most densely populated part of Dakota Territory. Cities, towns, villages, and scores of gold camps sprang up. Railroads were already reaching the previously remote area.

An early cartographer's map of the Black Hills

Less than a year after Custer’s expedition, prominent Lakota leaders were brought to Washington to meet with President Grant in an effort to persuade them to give up the Black Hills. The attempt failed. That fall, a commission was sent to each of the Indian agencies to hold huge councils with the Lakota, hoping to convince the population and thereby pressuring Lakota leaders into signing a new treaty. Again, the government's attempt to secure the Black Hills failed. Within a few months the Grant administration began to discuss military action against the non-treaty bands of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne who had refused to come in to the Indian agencies.

While the Black Hills was at the center of the growing crisis, resentment was also growing over expanding American interests in other portions of Lakota territory, including the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad that would cross through the last of the great buffalo hunting grounds, the straight line of American westward expansion crossing and breaking the immemorial circle of the Indian’s hunting patterns.

Concerned about the public perception of launching a war against the Lakota without provocation, it was decided to send out a demand to the non-treaty tribes to turn themselves in at the reservations by January 31 of that year, knowing that in the depths of winter Lakota bands did not attempt any long range movement. When the deadline passed, the military was ordered into action. Sitting Bull, chief of the Lakota Sioux, who was both war leader and tribal holy man, was the foremost chief of the non-treaty bands, and was the most influential and determined opponent of the reservation system. His responsibilities as a holy man included understanding the complex religious rituals and beliefs of the Sioux, and also learning about natural phenomena that were related to the Sioux beliefs. Sitting Bull had, according to his biographer Robert M. Utley in The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, an "intense spirituality that pervaded his entire being in his adult years and that fueled a constant quest for an understanding of the universe and of the ways in which he personally could bring its infinite powers to the benefit of his people."

The Lakota’s decision to disregard the command to come inhto the reservation was inextricably bound up with the fate of Paha Sapa. Sitting Bull’s example in staying off the reservation carried great weight with the other bands and even extended to the Cherokee. Little by little, during the first half of 1876, Siting Bull’s group attracted more and more of the independent tribes, until by summer he had gathered around him the largest assembly of Plains Indians in history. Together they decided to open their last struggle for their way if life and their religious system by holding the largest Sundance, their most sacred rite, ever This is what the U.S. Cavalry columns met that summer—one unimaginably huge Sioux and Cheyenne spiritual festival.

Custer’s Indian scouts told, him that afternnonn in June that the the largest Indian village they had ever seen was on the opposite shore of the Little Big Horn River. Custer could not or would not hear them. To the Sioux and the Cheyenne, it was no accident that the man and the soldiers they wiped ot that afternoon, in the greatest of Plains Indian victories,were the ones who had spearheaded the violation of their holy land. As Jack Crabb, the narrator of the novel Little Big Man says of the Cheyenne and the Lakota as he witnesses Custer’s situation deteriorate on the afternoon of June 25, 1876, “They was the Human Beings, and they was at the center of the world” – for one last time. For a moment, the balance was struck, the circle restored.

Consistent military pressure eventually broke up Sitting Bull’s coalition. Sitting Bull and his own band escaped to Canada, but accepted U.S. terms when they faced starvation. There were 186 of them when they returned to the United Sates and the the reservations. With Sitting Bull’s surrender, the last serious Indian resistance to white domination came to an end.

On July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest — nearly $106 million — be paid. The Lakota refused the settlement, as they wanted the return of the Black Hills instead. The money remains in an interest-bearing account which now amounts to over $757 million, but the Lakota still refuse to take the money on principle that doing so would validate the theft of their most sacred land.

Happy Midsummer's Eve

2009-06-23T05:11:00.010-05:00

Conditions: Clear

Moon: Waxing crescent, app. 26 hours old at 12 pm. High levels of super-

natural

activity forecast for the hours between sunset and dawn.

See you in the woods

Theseus: And as imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen/Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name./Such tricks hath strong imagination .

Queen Hyppolita: But all the story of the night told over,/And all their minds transfigured so together,/More witnesseth than fancy's images/And grows to something of great constancy;/howsoever strange and admirable.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 5, Scene 1

This Week in the Secret History: Viva Las Vegas? Non, Gracias

2009-06-21T05:43:00.013-05:00

On June 20, 1947, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the man who brought organized crime to the West Coast, was shot and killed at his mistress Virginia Hill's home in Beverly Hills, California. Three bullets were fired through the window and into his head, killing him instantly.

In 1945, Siegel had a brilliant idea. Just hours away from Los Angeles sat the sleepy desert town of Las Vegas, Nevada. It had nothing going for it except for a compliant local government and legal gambling. Siegel decided to build the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of the desert with $6,000,000, a large piece of which came from the New York syndicate.

In their 2002 book, The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold On America, investigative reporters Sally Denton and Roger Morris chronicle how for half a century, Las Vegas has been the cutting edge of the corruption of American business and public institutions. They describe how Las Vegas emerged in the last years of the 20th century as America's fastest-growing city, and in the process, a family-entertainment and cultural center. But underlying that Las Vegas is an older, decidedly less friendly city, one shaped by an "alliance of gamblers, gangsters, and government" to cater to every kind of human weakness.

At the same time Las Vegas’ ethos of greed and artifice became a wholesale American model. Few presidents elected in the last century did not come calling on the desert city to secure funds and favors. Failed 1950s reform movements allowed for the ascendance of organized crime, fortified by huge "skim" profits from casinos. Operation Underworld, a WWII collaboration between government and "Syndicate" forces, forged extensive relationships between federal agencies, corrupted police and gangsters that proved central to Las Vegas's economic boom. The profits radiated corruption outward.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Denton and Morris:

Q: Why did you write the book?

A: Denton: In almost 25 years as an investigative reporter and writer I have been constantly fascinated by the fact that almost every important story I ever came across—from New Mexico to Kentucky to Washington, DC, from organized crime, to drug trafficking and gun running, to political corruption at every level—sooner or later traced a trail back to Las Vegas. As a child growing up near Lake Mead on the outskirts of the city (I’m a native Nevadan), and especially with parents in the political process, I knew that Las Vegas was a great story -- its growth, its glamour, the endlessly intriguing people who came to it, some of them to our home. But it wasn’t until I wrote this book that I understood what the city really was and its absolutely central importance in America and the world.

A: Morris: In my experience in the White House and on the National Security Council, and certainly in my research as a presidential biographer and historian, there always seemed to be something missing in the traditional approach to American politics. The phantom, of course, was the largely unexplored, unacknowledged dark side of American politics, what Daniel Boorstin calls our "hidden history" that Las Vegas epitomizes so starkly. That darkness, those secrets, are not just an aberration. They are often at the heart of the American experience, though historians, like everyone else, are uncomfortable with that reality. I believe that seeing it and confronting it is the only way to make our history whole. I certainly wrote this book because Sally brought me to a deeper understanding of what the city was and is. But I also wrote it very much as part of a larger effort to show what America was and is.

Q: How and when was the Las Vegas Strip founded?

A: Denton The Strip was founded by Meyer Lansky and a truly multi-ethnic criminal consortium of underworld and legitimate business with most of the capital coming from the international drug trade, Mormon-dominated banks, and other financial institutions, insurance companies, Wall Street and other ostensibly legitimate interests.

Q: How and why did Vegas come to be ruled by such a national, multi-ethnic syndicate?

A: Morris: As the book shows again and again, Las Vegas was and is ruled by the same forces that did and do rule the rest of America. The corruption of America’s government, economy, and society nationwide in the 1920s and ’30s traced principally to that multi-ethnic force, of which the popular Mafia caricature was only a fragment. Our book shows that from the beginning in the 1940s and ’50s the city became a national, and soon global, money laundering capital of underworld profits from every conceivable pursuit—from petty vice in dozens of American cities and rural areas to international arms trafficking to the Middle East and Central America.

Q: Why was criminal activity rampant for so long? Why did no one put a stop to it? Who is to blame?

A: Denton: In a sense it is misleading in Las Vegas, and even in much of America, to draw that old distinction between criminal and legal. The system we are describing in the nation and the city is so profoundly and inextricably enmeshed, the old criminal ethic of exploitation and greed is so much the ethic of corporate "legal" America, that the distinctions are difficult to make when it comes to understanding power, the way things really work in America. The short answer is that a practically and/or ethically criminal system survived and survives in Las Vegas and elsewhere because it’s in essence inseparable from the ruling regime.

Q: What was the most startling revelation that you came upon while writing/researching this book?

A: Denton: I was most intrigued by the sheer depth and breadth of all of the machinations around Cuba and Las Vegas in the 1960s, the underlying corruptions of an era in which my own political idealism was formed. The reach of the government-criminal collusions in the assassination attempts of Fidel Castro and the ensuing and abiding compromises that shaped so much of the America and world we live in, the unholy alliances that would become the prototype for decades of covert foreign policy.

A: Morris: Though I worked for two presidents and wrote a biography of one of them and a study of yet another, I have to say rather shamefacedly that as a historian and a journalist I was unprepared for the sheer continuity and depth of the root corruption in American politics and society that so dominates the last 75 years of the 20th century and has so determined the country we are. I especially loved the story of Senator Estes Kefauver, including his corruption hearings in 1950. He deserves a major biography. In a way, his experience says it all.

Q: Would you consider the growth and development of Las Vegas an American success story?

A: Morris: By the accepted statistical standards, Las Vegas may be the greatest single business success story in American business history. No city has grown faster from an obscure desert crossroads, attracted more visitors, generated more wealth and profits for its size, than Las Vegas. It was, and is, the last of the great American boomtowns, where a lot of people made a lot of money more freely and more rapidly than perhaps anyplace else in America. Las Vegas was indeed a place of the new start and the quick buck for thousands of people. That’s the way Las Vegas, and obviously much of America, likes to see itself. But the dark side of that success and the tragedy for the city and the nation is that it has always been dominated by an oligopoly and it brought the ethics and values of a corrupt company town to the rest of the nation. The price of success was and has been terrible.

Q: What has America learned (if anything) from the rise of Las Vegas?

A: Denton: Most of America has learned the wrong lessons, if any. Most of the country is still content to see Las Vegas as a distant aberration, a fun place in the desert that has little to do with the reality of their own lives even if casino gambling and the political power of the industry is dominant in their own home states. But as the book makes plain, to come to grips with the reality of Las Vegas is not to understand some pariah city, but rather to confront the underlying reality of America’s worship of money and all its materialism and the devastation of our democracy and economy by that obsession.

Happy Birthday, Paul!

2009-06-18T06:29:00.003-05:00

“Anyone unlucky enough not to have been aged between 14 and 30 during 1966-67 will never know the excitement of those years in popular culture. A sunny optimism permeated everything and possibilities seemed limitless. With its vision of ‘blue suburban skies’ and boundlessly confident vigor, Penny Lane distils the spirit of that time more perfectly than any other creative product of the mid-60s. Couched in the primary colors of a picture book, yet observed with the slyness of a gang of kids straggling home from school, Penny Lane is both naïve and knowing-but above all, thrilled to be alive…

"…[The] song is every bit as subversively hallucinatory as Strawberry Fields. Despite its seeming innocence, there are few more LSD redolent phrases in the Beatles’ output than the line (sung with an ecstatic shiver of grace notes) in which the nurse 'feels as if she’s in a play'…and 'is anyway.’”

Ian MacDonald Revolution in the Head

This Week in the Secret History: The most radical presidential speech of our time?

2009-06-13T01:21:00.012-05:00

How two pacifists and their president cut out the Joint Chiefs of Staff and crafted a revolutionary foreign policy statement

"If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."

It is likely that JFK, with his keen sense of the absurd, smelled out the ritualized game aspect of the whole Cold War scenario as soon as he got within sniffing distance of where the levers were pulled. And of course he would have known, at the same time, that it was a rigged game, like all of them ultimately are. Only this was rigged for destruction, rigged by the defense and national security apparatuses of the two countries, a rigged and demoniac game. At first he accepted it because he couldn't see a way around it. But Kennedy had had possibly the most existential moment of any 20th Century American. He (and Nikita Kruschev) had actually looked down the nuclear barrel, into the literally unthinkable blackness at the bottom. After that, no-one could tell him he had to keep the game in play. So he decided to tell his country that we were going to stop playing.

The origins of the speech lay in Pope John XXIII's recruitment of Norman Cousins, a lifelong peace activist and Unitarian, as an informal link between the Vatican, the Kremlin and the White House. Cousins spent some time with Kruschev; he then came home to talk with Kennedy. It became clear to Cousins and Kennedy that Kennedy and Kruschev were in symmetrical positions in their two power structures: "Kruschev would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from the hard-line crowd, who see every move in that direction as appeasement. I've got similar problems," Kennedy said.

David Talbot picks up the story in his book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years:

"When Cousins sugested that Kennedy blast through the impasse with 'a breathtaking new approach, calling for an end to the Cold War and a fresh start in American-Russian relationships,' Kennedy was intrigued. He asked Cousines to confer on the speech with Ted Sorensen [JFK's speech writer] a fellow Unitarian with whom Cousins was friendly.

"The idea of two anti-war Unitarians working on a presidential speech to re-define U.S.-Soviet relations would surely have been deeply disturbing to national security apparatchiks, as Kennedy knew. The president directed Sorensen to keep his working draft under tight wraps, and not to circulate it as usual to the Pentagon, CIA and State Department for comments."

Americans had been indoctrinated for years with the idea that the Soviet Union represented all that was abhorrent to American ideals, that they were fanatically bound to their goal of exterminating us, that confrontation was inevitable, that we could not share the planet with them. To which JFK said, sure we can. No person with a mind and a soul wants this. And so let's begin with our minds and souls, and worry less about theirs. Because the moral onus is as much on us as on them. Because peace, not victory, is the highest good.

Not many heard or absorbed the speech, then or now. A week later it had brought 896 letters into the White House in response. A bill on the cost of freight shipping brought in 28,000.

"Please read it. It's one of the great documents of the 20th Century."
- Robert McNamara

Read the American University speech here.

Watch it here.

This Week in the Secret History: Some Sobering Thoughts for D-Day

2009-06-07T14:05:00.012-05:00

Nobody will ever say that it didn't take supreme courage and selfless dedication to step off a landing
Red Army tank units liberate Bucharest

craft heading in to Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. What a lot of historians will say now that the Soviet Union is not a mortal threat, is that certain common assumptions in Britain and America--for instance, that D-Day was the crucial turning point of the war--are having to be re-evaluated and in many cases abandoned as we learn more about the German-Soviet War, the Eastern Front. Just about any statistic you care to cite about the Eastern Front truly dwarfs most activities by the Western Allies (I'll tell you some in a minute). The accepted interpretation among most historians today (which they'll tell you if they're unafraid of a few letters from cranky alums) is that the plain facts show that the Soviet Union destroyed and defeated Nazi Germany, with some assistance from their allies who were fighting a much smaller scale sort of war. They didn't do it, and perhaps couldn't do it, singlehandedly, but that's closer to the truth than a lot of the "history" we were brought up with.

What the heck am I talking about? Well, here's a statistic: 9 out of 10 of all German soldiers killed in the entire war, in all theaters, were killed on the Eastern Front. 90
per cent.

9 out of 10 of all German soldiers killed in the entire war, in all theaters,
were killed on the Eastern Front. 90 per cent.

All by itself, that tells you most of what you need to know. The Red Army, by any reasonable interpretation, destroyed the Wehrmacht. And with it Hitler's ability to fight any kind of war.

But here's another:

Of all the Allies, the Soviet Union sustained 65 per cent of the total Allied casualties. The next highest is China with 23 percent. The United States and Great Britain -- 2 percent each. Joined there by Yugoslavia.

Combined, German and Soviet Eastern Front military deaths (as opposed to the unimaginable numbers of civilian dead) account for over 2/3 of all military deaths for all combatants on all sides, worldwide.

Germany at no time had less than 55% of its divisions committed to the Eastern Front.

There was simply no campaign or theater of war in WWII that came anywhere close to it, in size or strategic significance.

These facts are still being overlooked by Anglo-American mythmakers. As careful of a researcher s Ken Burns is, he barely mentioned the Eastern Front in his recent documentary, the War. His focus on the U.S. gave the impression we pretty well took care of things single-handed.

This is kind of a hard pill to swallow for us Anglo-Americans. It's one of those realizations that makes the ground feel like it's shifting under your feet. Among other things, think how the Cold War era might have been different had we had a better understanding of what Russia both endured and accomplished during the war.

As is the case most of the time, it's better to know the truth.

Red Army infantry in winter combat

This Week in the Secret History: The Magickal Roots of "Swinging England"

2009-06-06T06:42:00.012-05:00

Christine Keeler and the Famous Chair

The Profumo Affair...There has always been something about this story that begged the discovery, or invention, of an array of subtexts.

In 1963, British Secretary of War John Profumo and his wife, a retired movie actress, were very much at the center of "swinging London" society . One night in July 1961, Profumo was at the Cliveden estate of Lord "Bill" Astor when he was first introduced to 19-year-old Christine Keeler, frolicking naked by the Cliveden pool. Keeler was at Cliveden as a guest of Dr. Stephen Ward, a society osteopath who rented a cottage at the estate from his friend Lord Astor. Keeler, from an indigent background, was working as a showgirl at a London nightclub. Ward had taken Keeler under his wing, and they lived together in his London flat. He encouraged her to pursue sexual relationships with his upper-class friends. Ward introduced her to his friend Yevgeny "Eugene" Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache who some suspected was a spy, and she began a sexual relationship with the Soviet diplomat. Several weeks after meeting Profumo at Cliveden, she also began an affair with the war minister.

On March 21, 1963, Colonel George Wigg, a Labour MP, raised the issue in the House of Commons, inviting Profumo to affirm or deny the rumors of his improprieties. Profumo vehemently denied the charges. This defused the scandal for several weeks, but in May Stephen Ward went on trial on charges of prostituting Keeler and other young women. In the highly sensationalized trial, Keeler testified under oath about her relationship with Profumo. On June 5, Profumo resigned as war minister.

Prime Minister Macmillan was widely condemned as being old, out-of-touch, and incompetent. In October, he resigned under pressure from his own government. In the general election in 1964 the Conservatives were swept from power by Harold Wilson's Labour Party.

Stephen Ward committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Christine Keeler was convicted of perjury in a related trial and began a prison sentence in December 1963. John Profumo left politics after his resignation and dedicated himself to philanthropy in the East End of London.

Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies on their way to court

And now about those subtexts...

American novelist R.V. Cassill, in his 1970 best-seller, Dr. Cobb's Game, makes Michael Cobb, the Stephen Ward character, not only a playboy and man about town, but a magician who is dedicated to bringing about a psychic rebirth of poor old shabby, war-broken England.The way he intends to do this is by...sex magic! Good old, Merry Old Pagan English sex magic of the D.H. Lawrence one with nature, feel your deep self variety. Cobb initiates Cecile Banner (Christine Keeler) into the erotic mysteries, then sends her out to gather a representative new England around her, including the creative and artistic, the successful, the marginalized, the very good, the very bad, the weak and the very powerful. This last includes Richard Derwent (John Profumo), England's Minister of War, whose potential to play Arthur to his Merlin particularly interests Dr. Cobb.

But then things start to go wrong. On the one hand the old gods become unruly, on the other the Establishment finally takes notice and bares its claws, looking for a scapegoat for the unholy mess Cobb and Derwent have unwittingly created. Caught between the two forces, Cobb takes his own life. And Cecile goes on to become the muse of Swinging England.

It is true that part of the fascination of the Profumo Affair for the general public is that it opened a window into an aristocratic netherworld of campy occult-tinged perversity, which is probably what suggested the whole scenario to Cassill.

On the grittier side, English investigative journalist Anthony Summers, author of Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, in his book Honeytrap, maintains that Stephen Ward was a British intelligence asset who was working with MI5 to turn Ivanov into a double agent by compromising him sexually. Of course, his suicide was no suicide; he was murdered by British intelligence, having become a liability when the whole affair blew up.

Interestingly, one idea that Cassill and Summers share is that Ward (like millions of others) was traumatized by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was working desperately, through his vast web of contacts, to set up unofficial meetings between Soviet and British citizens to prevent another confrontation.

All of this was turned into a wonderful movie, Scandal (1989), with John Hurt as Stephen Ward, Ian McKellen as John Profumo, Bridget Fonda as Mandy Rice-Davies, and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Christine Keeler.

Here's a great clip from Scandal as Christine and Mandy apply warpaint to the tune of "Apache" by the Shadows.

Review: The Incredible String Band--Kitsch or Cosmic?

2009-06-02T06:04:00.009-05:00

The Incredible String Band inspires extreme reactions. Their music is either one of the few instances of genuine Blakean vision to come out of the 60s; or they are Exhibit A in the museum of addle-brained twee hippy self-indulgence. The release of Tricks of the Senses, a collection of String Band rarities and oddities, is an opportunity to look for a more nuanced approach, an opportunity I explore in "The Vision Thing," a meditation on the Incredible String Band in the June issue of The Bluegrass Special:

"The first cut on Tricks of the Senses is taken from a rehearsal tape ca. 1966. By way of introducing himself and his Incredible String Band partner Mike Heron, Robin Williamson gives their names, and then adds, "We are songwriters and players and prophets from the North; also seers extraordinary by appointment to the wonder of the universe."

I guess you'd have to have lived a little bit of the '60s life to understand how this might not sound completely risible. Listen again. There's not a hint of preciousness or acid mysterioso about Robin's comment. It's thrown away. Instead of a petal-strewing fool, he sounds like a cheeky 18-year-old Scots elf lord on Adderall...."

Read the rest here.

The new "Dolls": Is America's greatest cult band back (in any meaningful sense)?

2009-05-31T09:48:00.007-05:00

The Good Old Days

Let’s finally just say it. The New York Dolls by the New York Dolls is a Great Record. I don’t mean a great record as in a condescending 225th out of some panel of critic’s 500 best. I mean it’s one of the Great Records, impertinently elbowing its way in among British Royalty like the Beatles and Stones; cheerily bumming smokes off their own countrymen from places like Tupelo, Mississippi and Hibbing, Minnesota.

Other records may have gone deeper into soul and spirit, but for sheer screaming, nuts, up the walls, electrifying, testifying, snake-handling, wave your arms in the air like you don't care, bringing all the noise, white light/white heat, once in a lifetime, out on the far careening edge rock and roll ecstasy, I've never heard its equal, in four decades plus of listening to rock and roll.

Seeing the Dolls was--I have to use what is now a rock cliche--a religious experience. The wave of energy and charisma that came off the stage left you feeling that you had had an encounter with the essential heart of the music, that you had been given the chance to know what it was like to see Elvis singing off of a flatbed truck in Memphis in 1954, the Beatles at the Cavern Club, the Stones at the Marquee, Robert Johnson in a Misissipppi juke joint. The Dolls made me more interested in the roots of rock and roll, in tracing it back thru gospel music and field hollers and back to Africa, to find out what was the nature of this power, what was its source, and how do you wield it.

The exta edge in the Dolls music is the realization that it could all fall apart. That’s what makes the music feel so shockingly alive.Taking the stage, for the Dolls, was taking a dare. It was like watching a high wire act every night. The sense that the musicians are actually risking something, are taking a gamble, jaded my palate, giving me less patience for other, safer musicians, who make up, after all, the vast majority of what gets on record.

Well now, a band in 2009, having the nerve to call themselves the New York Dolls, has put out a record. The second under that name in fact. Who has such nerve? The two still-breathing New York Dolls, never lacking for nerve, of course. Singer/songwriter David Johansen and second lead/rhythm/songwriter Sylvain Sylvain. Is it a piece of crap, as you might assume? No, strangely enough. 'Cause I Sez So might be the only reunion that has actually captured a little old magic in its sails, and worked up some new at the same time.

I am reflexively skeptical of reunions, solo albums, partial bands struggling under an old name, etc. When it comes to rock & roll, I believe in magic, and I don't think magic rings twice, or can be forced. This goes double for bands that I loved. I had zero invested in whether this "New York Dolls" album was going to be any good or not, and I didn't even buy the first (re-union) one. But lo and behold -- something really peculiar has happened.What it sounds like is that, instead of being backing guys for Johansen--which is how his solo bands always seemed to me--a pretty tough rock & roll band with some interesting ideas and more chops than they need recruited Johansen to sing for them and pitch in on the songwriting. Or, from another angle, to this Dolls fanatic, this sounds like the best post-Dolls project Johansen's ever been involved with. The kind of thing we wanted him to do from the beginning. And strangely, while being a very good band in their own right, these "Dolls" are good in ways that remind you of the original band, without ever making any conscious hommages to the old days. Something of the Dolls sashay and sneer are there in the title cut, and the last, "Exorcism of Despair." And "My World" is not what I was looking for on this record--one for the all-time Dolls greatest hits line-up. If you've ever wondered what the Dolls might have done had they been able to keep on making records, this suggests an answer: A kind of Bo Diddley maracas shuffle taken from its its earthy roots and set against a turbulent sky. With little oriental-sounding scalar hooks, and a perfectly conceived wah-wah(!) break that cracks open the song in the middle.

David Johansen is as distinct a presence on a record as Tom Waits, and it takes some real group-first, me-second solidarity to deploy his larger than life New Yawk eccentricities to add color and character without having him take over the record. Ego's are being submerged toward the greater good here, and maybe that's what makes this different from so many of its ilk.

By the way, don't miss the great new book, New York Dolls , Photographs by Bob Gruen,. The legendary rock and roll photographer and Dolls maniac chronicles the band in all their brief but blazing glory in over 230 great photographs, most never published before.

This week in the Secret History: Wales for the Welsh!

2009-05-28T07:19:00.014-05:00

The blood-red dragon of Wales, Owain Glyndwr's battle flag

Owain Glyndwr, b. May 28, 1354

"'Tis the sound of Saxon foemen, Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen..."

Most people have heard something about Ireland's long struggle for independence from Great Britain. Thanks to Mel Gibson, many people know something about William Wallace and Scotland's fight to be free of English rule. But outside of Wales, not that many have heard of Owain Glyndwr, perhaps the most dramatic story of all, the heir to King Arthur, whose death is stilll shrouded in mystery.

Welsh prince Owain Glyndwr led a successful people’s rebellion against England’s iron-fisted rule in the early 15th century and arguably became the most famous and highly regarded figure in Welsh history.

Burdened with onerous taxation and restrictive land policies, the Welsh people chafed under English domination. Welsh myths and legends foretold a national redeemer, and the Welsh prayed for a man who would rise up against England and restore Welsh independence, a new pendragon, or head dragon, as King Arthur had been. From out of these rumblings of discontent, Owain Glyndwr emerged. Despite England’s massive military strength at the beginning of the 15th century, the Welsh, under the charismatic leadership of Glyndwr, drove the English from their land and enjoyed a hard-earned–albeit brief–independence.

The English, after having subdued Scotland, turned their full might against Wales. Many of Glyndwr's most loyal supporters died in 1410 in a battle in Shropshire. After a series of such reverses, from the sanctuary of the Welsh mountains, Glyndwr and his band of warriors employed guerrilla tactics to unsettle the English. In 1413 Prince Henry (Prince Hal of Shakespearian fame) took the throne, ruling as Henry V, and offered Glyndwr and his supporters a pardon if they would submit. Twice they refused. Glyndwr, his cause lost, vanished from history without a trace, becoming the most potent symbol of Welsh independence.

To find out where Welsh nationalism is today, read The Welsh Patriot, a blog devoted to the "Alternative Nationalist Movement and Struggle."

This week in the Secret History: Anarchy in the UK - 1381

2009-05-08T07:22:00.029-05:00

The murder of Wat Tyler,
peasant leader

"When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

On this day in 1525 the German Peasants' Revolt was brutally crushed by the combined forces of the nobility and the church. This was the typical fate of a peasants' revolt. But these epical risings by supposedly ignorant and subservient men and women were the first symptoms of a change in consciousness that would eventually sweep their oppressors from power and begin a new age in Europe...

We tend to imagine medieval society as a fixed and immovable hierarchy, where even imagining a different ordering of society wold have been impossible. Not so. The sense of dignity and the desire for freedom are inherent in human nature. Peasant revolts, uprisings of exploited subsistence farmers, whose labor was at the disposal of their feuudal overlords, were in fact fairly common in the late Middle Ages. In Germany alone between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest. In the end they were almost always defeated. .

The main demand of the revolutionaries was for the abolishment of serfdom, whereby the poorest of the small farmers were in effect owned and, by law and tradition, exploited by their feudal lord.

Inn the late Middle Ages, the social gap between rich and poor had become extreme, as it is now in the United States. Dress, behaviour, manners, courtesy, speech, diet, education — all became signs of the noble class, making them distinct from others. By the 14th century the nobles had indeed become very different in their behaviour, appearance and values from those "beneath".

"The Peasants' Revolt," "Wat Tyler’s Rebellion," or the "Great Rising of 1381" is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the best documented popular rebellion ever to have occurred during medieval times. The names of some of its leaders, John Ball, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, are still familiar.

In June 1381, Kentish rebels formed behind Wat Tyler and joined with rebels from Essex and marched on London. When the rebels arrived in Blackheath on June 12, the renegade priest, John Ball, preached a sermon including the famous question that has echoed down the centuries: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?". (I.e. "While Adam dug, and Eve spun, who then was the Gentleman ?") The following day, the rebels, encouraged by the sermon, crossed London Bridge into the heart of the city. They were betrayed by false promises from King Richard II, their leaders murdered, and the rising crushed.

Even though the revolt itself failed, the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 demonstrated such enormous support that it marked the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England. It led to calls for the reform of feudalism in England and an increase in rights for the serf class.

Bond Men Made Free is a highly readable account of peasant revolts in general, and the English Revolt of 1381 in particular, written by one of the foremost current authorities on the subject, Rodney Hilton.

Review: Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

2009-05-07T07:20:00.006-05:00

From indie heartthrob to pop star

With her new album, Middle Cyclone, entering the Billboard charts at #3, former indie heartthrob and alt-country belter Neko Case is on the cusp of transformation into a Star. Will she be the background soundtrack for better loft parties everywhere, or will she rip the joint up and demand a response from all of us? She's a Voice, alright, but one that's still in search of the right ears.

Read my review at Bluegrassspecial.com as we ponder the eternal dilemma of underground meeting overground.

Here's how it starts:

The Angel of Anomie

"Every so often you hear Neko Case referred to as 'that voice;' sometimes, even more emphatically, 'the voice.' Something makes people talk about her like that, an awareness that Case seems poised to evolve from a mere singer into a Voice.

When a singer becomes a Voice we're no longer talking about the technical qualities of breath over vocal chords or control of the diaphragm. No, Voice in this sense means singing plus signifying. A Voice is a singer whose actual singing is just one piece of a persona. A Voice creates a psychic space for a constituency that he/she has a unique power to speak to and move. A Voice attracts to itself a world of associations. Who doesn't absorb half of Lou Reed's métier just by hearing him singing a few bars? A singer provides one piece of a performance, like a bass player. A Voice is an attraction all by itself, and carries a weight of extra-musical meaning that a singer is spared. When young Elvis opened his mouth, he personified a generation of white kids in the Deep South who had been secretly thrilling to black music in the depths of Jim Crow. When Joni Mitchell sang, there was a whole self-involved southern California hippie gentry world present. When Sinatra did his thing, there was always a saloon at closing time implied, the streets outside empty and black with rain. Lotte Lenya, Dolly Parton, Judy Garland, Marc Bolan--every inflection was enriched by what they had come to mean.

"Neko Case is one of the few performers from '90-'00's indie music equipped to even formulate that ambition...."

Find the rest in this month's issue of Bluegrassspecial.com.

Let Texas Go! Yeehaaa!

2009-05-06T13:24:00.005-05:00

"For the old United States, the benefits would be obvious. A more intimately sized Congress would briskly enact sensible gun control, universal health insurance, and ample support for the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Although Texas itself has been a net contributor to the Treasury—it gets back ninety-four cents for each dollar it sends to Washington—nearly all the other potential Federated States that would join Texas, especially the ones whose politicians complain most loudly about the federal jackboot, are on the dole. (South Carolina, for example, receives $1.35 on the dollar, as compared with Illinois’s seventy-five cents.) Republicans would have a hard time winning elections for a generation or two, but eventually a responsible opposition party would emerge, along the lines of Britain’s Conservatives, and a normal alternation in power could return.

"The new Federated States of the south, meanwhile, could get on with the business of protecting the sanctity of marriage, mandating organized prayer sessions and the teaching of creationism in schools, and giving the theory that eliminating taxes increases government revenues a fair test. Although Texas and the other likely F.S. states already conduct some eighty-six per cent of executions, their death rows remain clogged with thousands of prisoners kept alive by meddling judges. These would be rapidly cleared out, providing more prison space for abortion providers. "

Read the rest at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/05/04/090504taco_talk_hertzberg

from "So Long, Pardner"
by Hendrik Hertzberg

New Yorker, May 4, 2009

Tripping with JFK

2009-04-19T06:32:00.016-05:00

Of all the women who passed into and out of JFK's life, the only one, by many accounts, that he ever showed more than the passing itch for (besides his wife) was Mary Pinchot Meyer, the aristocratic divorced wife of high level CIA agent Cord Meyer. Possibly it was because, out of all of them, she was his intellectual equal. After her marriage to CIA man Meyer fell apart in the wake of the death of their son, Mary took on the lifestyle of a proto-flower child--art, incense, peasant blouses, pacifist politics, dope, sheltered by her privileged Georgetown lifestyle. Apparently all this held some fascination for Kennedy. The really interesting thing that was going on here was her apparently simultaneous connection with JFK and Prof. Timoth Leary of Harvard who was in the middle of the acid experiments that would ultimately get him fired.

From Wikipedia:

"In 1983 [Leary] claimed that in the spring of 1962 Meyer, told him she was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude the Cold War was meaningless. Meyer said she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high ranking government officials. Mary Meyer and John F Kennedy reportedly had "about 30 trysts" and at least one author has claimed she brought marijuana or LSD to almost all of these meetings, the acid mostly supplied by Leary who was intrigued by Meyer's project."

It was during this time that Kennedy biographer James W. Douglass, says that Kennedy was undergoing a "conversion process" triggered by his confrontation with the real horror of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a process that eventually resulted in his "American University Speech" where he in effect proposed the dismantling of the Cold War status quo.

Was some of this reinforced by Mary Meyer and her Leary-supplied acid?

Meyer's biographer speculates that, "Mary might actually have been a force for peace during some of the most frightening years of the cold war..."In his biography Flashbacks Leary claimed he had a call from Mary soon after the Kennedy assassination during which she sobbed and said, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much... They'll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm scared. I'm afraid."

Not long after, Mary Meyer was murdered in what some call "execution style" while walking along the Potomac Towpath in Georgetown. The man acused of the murder was acquitted and no-one else has ever been arrested for her murder. Immediately after her death high level officials of the CIA searched her apartment and apparently made off with her diary, which was never seen again.

For more on Mary Meyer, see her biography, A Very Private Woman, by Nina Burleigh.

Incident at My Lai

2009-03-29T06:23:00.004-05:00

Hugh Thompson Jr., a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot died at age 62 on January 6, 2006.

Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai.

Thompson flew over the northeast corner of the village and spotted a group of about ten civilians, including children, running toward a homemade bomb shelter. Pursuing them were soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, C Company. Realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese, Thompson landed his aircraft between them and the villagers. Thompson turned to Colburn and Andreotta and told them that if the Americans began shooting at the villagers or him, they should fire their M60 machine guns at the Americans: "Y'all cover me! If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!" He then dismounted to confront the 2nd Platoon's leader, Stephen Brooks. Thompson told him he wanted help getting the peasants out of the bunker.

According to Thompson's gunner, Spec. Lawrence Colburn, "Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant [Brooks], and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said. Thompson: 'Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.' Brooks: 'We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.' Thompson: 'I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.' Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it."

After coaxing the 11 Vietnamese out of the bunker, Thompson persuaded the pilots of the two gunships flying as his escort to evacuate them. While Thompson was returning to base to refuel, Andreotta spotted movement in an irrigation ditch filled with approximately 100 bodies. The helicopter again landed and the men dismounted to search for survivors. After wading through the remains of the dead and dying men, women and children, Andreotta extracted a live boy. Thompson flew the survivor to the hospital in Quang Ngai.

Upon returning back to their base at about 1100, Thompson heatedly reported the massacre to his superiors. His allegations of civilian killings quickly reached Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the operation's overall commander. Barker radioed his executive officer to find out from Captain Medina what was happening on the ground. Medina then gave the order to Charlie Company to "knock off the killing".

In late 1969, Thompson was summoned to Washington DC and appeared before a special closed hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. There, he was sharply criticized by Congressmen, in particular Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-SC), who were anxious to play down allegations of a massacre by American troops. Rivers publicly stated that he felt Thompson was the only soldier at My Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and unsuccessfully attempted to have him court-martialed. As word of his actions became publicly known, Thompson started receiving hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on his doorstep.

In 1998, the Army honored the three men with the prestigious Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. Thompson and his crew's actions have been used as an example in the ethics manuals of U.S. and European militaries.

"He was treated like a traitor for 30 years, so he was conditioned to just shut up and be quiet. Every bit of information I got from him, I had to drag it out of him."
Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer

"What a great man. There are so many people today walking around alive because of him, not only in Vietnam, but people who kept their units under control under other circumstances because they had heard his story. We may never know just how many lives he saved."
Col. Tom Kolditz, head of the Army academy's behavioral sciences and leadership department

"You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did. "
Seymour Hersh, journalist who "broke" the My Lai massacre story.

Joseph Campbell, born March 26, 1904

2009-03-26T12:03:00.003-05:00

"I don't have to have faith, I have experience. "

Go to War for the People, Barack

2009-03-25T18:46:00.005-05:00

From an article by Gary Kamiya in Salon

"This long-overdue outburst of populist rage could mark a decisive shift in Americans' attitudes toward income inequality. It could also prove temporary, just another populist crest in a long cycle: Revulsion at economic injustice has historically been followed by variants of the 'greed is good' credo. But it would be a mistake for Obama to dismiss the current outrage as ephemeral, or as the uninformed ranting of a mob.

>"As historian Michael Kazin has pointed out, 'For better or worse, populism lives too deeply in America's fears and expectations to be trivialized or replaced.' Populism does not always offer practical solutions. But it unerringly expresses deep national feelings -- and right now, Americans feel profoundly betrayed by the system. If Obama channels populist rage in the right way, he could use it to effect fundamental changes in our rigged version of capitalism, and begin to make America a fairer and more truly prosperous society."

Blair Mountain: Where the United States Air Force Bombed U.S. Citizens on U.S. Soil

2009-03-22T11:20:00.010-05:00

Federal troops and hired mercenaries fire on striking miners on Blair Mountain, West Virginia.

How to Really Celebrate

2009-03-11T10:23:00.010-05:00

Learn how to turn ordinary time into sacred time... (written by me)

From Spirituality and Practice Magazine...
"This awe-inducing resource probes the poetic, symbolic, natural, folkloric, and psychological nuances of the church year. Hill consciously swerves away from a scholarly approach and chooses instead to make this a gazette filled with hundreds of spicy, thought-provoking, and practical details about The Feast of Michael and All Angels, Halloween, The Feast of All Saints, The Feast of All Faithful Departed, Advent, Christmas Eve, Twelfth Night, the Feast of Epiphany, The Feast of St. Brigid of Ireland, The Purification of St. Mary the Virgin, The Annunciation of the Lord, Easter Vigil, Pentecost, The Nativity of St. John the Baptist, The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, and the Feast of the Transfiguration. Each chapter includes a meditation, a story giving the background of the day, and several ways to "enter the season."

We loved the use of paintings such as "The Annunciation" by Henry Ossawa Tanner and "Easter Morning" by Caspar David Friedrich to catalyze our appreciation of these festivals. Hill also uses snippets of poems and does imaginative treatments of familiar material, demonstrating an openness to all the subtle and sneaky manifestations of the Divine in our lives. "

Read excerpts from Holidays and Holy Nights here and here.

Order here.

Mummy Fiction and the Occupation of Egypt

2009-03-11T05:57:00.004-05:00

Publication: English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

Publication Date: 22-SEP-08

Bradley Deane

"During the unofficial occupation of Egypt (1882-1914), British writers discovered a way to combine these two female characters--the contemporary veiled Arab woman and the majestic queen of classical antiquity--into a single fanciful figure that could embody the sexual and historical themes through which the "Egyptian Question" was popularly represented: the living mummy. Late-Victorian Britain experienced a minor craze for this creature of imperial fantasy, (1) and mummy stories continued to fascinate Edwardian readers and became a staple of twentieth-century film. We are now more accustomed to the extensive cinematic tradition of grotesquely desiccated male monsters relentlessly avenging the violation of their tombs, but Victorian and Edwardian mummies embody Egypt in terms strikingly like those of the prurient Punch cartoons. The typical mummy of Victorian and Edwardian fiction is a woman, and one who, perfectly preserved in her youthful beauty, strongly attracts the libidinous attention of modern British men. While their desire is certainly a cause of some ambivalence, it is nevertheless the case that the men in these stories are less inclined to flee from a mummy than to marry her, to see in her a chance to be kissed rather than cursed. In short, the Victorian mummy narrative is a love story, one as politically charged as the Punch cartoons."

The Temple of Man

2009-03-10T04:45:00.015-05:00

The Temple of Luxor in the town of Luxor in Upper Egypt (actually the southern part of the country), known in Pharaonic times as Thebes, the sacred capital of Egypt's New Kingdom golden age, is one of the most beautiful and significant of Egypt's "Houses of Life" as the Egyptians called their temples.

Huge libraries have been filled with the work of scholars attempting to get inside the ancient Egyptian head. Mostly they make it sound about as mundane as it could be and still have something to do with ancient Egypt. In fact sometimes they make it all sound so ordinary that you can feel a little silly for being intrigued with ancient Egypt at all.

I haven't read much conventional Egyptology, but in what I have, the scholars never start with the effect that an encounter with ancient Egyptian art and architecture has upon contemporary men and women. Because ever since tourists started regularly visiting Egypt in the 18th century,the effect has been pretty much the same--they're blown away. What's the scholarly interpretation of that?

Here's the thing, and this is true, it's just that for some reason scholars aren't particularly interested in it--the architecture of sacred places is consciously and carefully created to have an effect on you, to transmit pieces of a vision to you even if you cannot read or write a word of the language. This is what the Pyramids of Giza do, it's what the Gothic cathedrals of Medieval Europe do, it's what the great stone circles of the British Isles do, it's what the Indian mounds of North American do, and I'm sure all these have their counterparts in Asia.

The first thing that can be said is that it's really fun being in these places. I think that if a kind of exhilaration isn't your first response then either the original builders forgot some of the important principles, or you should try again another day. Just being in the precincts sort of puts things in a healthier perspective. You--with all your list of worries and concerns that loom so large --suddenly seem blissfully small and unimportant. You're here to explore a new and bigger world. If I'm sure of anything, I'm sure this effect was part of the builders' intent.

Anyway, I've never been to Luxor, but I think Luxor Temple is probably an especially potent example of this whole thing. In the middle of the 20th century, an amateur French Egyptologist named R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz spent fifteen years poking around, measuring, sketching, photographing and meditating on Luxor Temple. He decided that Luxor was the height of the Egyptian science of sacred architecture, the "Parthenon of Egypt" and, as he ended up calling it, the Temple of Man. de Lubicz believed that one of the principals of sacred architecture is that its structures are in some sense "alive." And nowhere was this more true than at Luxor. He came to decide that the temple was symbolically a huge human body. Laying a medically accurate rendering of an adult male skeleton over a plan of Luxor Temple--head at the top by the Holy of Holies, feet at the bottom by the Pylon Gate--he believed he found a key to the design and function of the temple.

The first section of the Temple of Luxor, the Court of Ramesses the Second, corresponds to the legs from the knees down. What do you find in the Court of Ramesses the Second? You're surrounded by statues of Ramesses in an unusual striding position with the lower leg from the knee down extended forward so that at certain times of day the shin, alone of the whole statue, catches the light.

At the point in the Temple where the skeleton overlay indicates the genitals, there is a wall carving of a pharaoh with a huge erection ("ithyphallic" the Egyptologists call it. ) Where the navel should be is an inscription that says,"Here is the true birthplace of the Pharaoh." At the point where the first of the twelve vertebrae begins is a depiction of twelve interlinked horsedrawn chariots. Moving up into the Hypostyle Hall, you enter the domain of the lungs. The lungs are governed by the moon in Egyptian microcosmology, and the bases of the pillars in the Hall depict the moon processing through its full cycle. The Hall of the Twelve Columns corresponds to the eyes, and is dedicated to solar symbolism, the light by which we see. Two more final steps along the way take you to the triple sanctuary, whose three interlinked holy of holies shrines form a band across the top of the skull, Finally, the dome of the skull rises to enclose and complete the sanctuaries, the very top of the skull rising out of the top of the temple to absorb the power of the Egyptian sun and start it circulating through the body of the Temple again.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was true. After all, it seems to me that the purpose of these places is to coordinate the little cosmos--you--with the big cosmos--the universe.To show how you fit into the really big picture. I've noticed on more than one occasion that the first sensation when entering some sacred precinct is that I felt bigger. They stretch you and pull the kinks out, like a spiritual chiropractor.

Advice for the president (cont.)

2009-03-04T04:57:00.000-06:00

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this dark world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

The letter of St. Paul to the Christians in Epheseus, 6:12

Van Misses the Mystic

2009-03-03T07:29:00.000-06:00

Wondering if you need to buy the new Astral Weeks Live cd from Van Morrison? After all, it sounds pretty interesting--the most soulful white singer to come out of the 60s performs his 1968 masterpiece, live, for the first time in its entirety.

Read my review here...

Here's how it starts:

Let’s say David Lean is (was) your uncle. One afternoon he drops in on you with a funny look in his eye. He announces that he has decided to re-make Lawrence of Arabia because now he knows “how to do it right.” What to do? First, check the old guy’s meds and up them if necessary. Then, just try to gently distract him. But sometimes with these grande auteurs it’s not that easy.

Beware of aging artists when the itch seizes them to revisit one of their early works because now they know how to do it right.

You Don't Want to Tell Your Children You Missed Scott Miller pt. 2

2009-02-27T06:02:00.006-06:00

Well, Game Theory put out a series of brilliant albums on Enigma, outstanding among them Real Nighttime, The Big Shot Chronicles and Lolita Nation. And then there was their farewell to the label and the album that was supposed to break them (I mean that in the good sense)--Two Steps from the Middle Ages. Two Steps has everything people want in a rock and roll record. Melodies to break your heart, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ingenious hooks, tunes and insouciant energy, great big colorful guitars with sharply pointed tasteful solos smartly set just where they do the most good, just like on Revolver; heady lyrics just cryptic enough to allow you to identify from wherever you're at without closing off interpretation; intellectual firepower harnessed to raw power, a composer intimate enough with classic pop song conventions to write his way into and out of, around and over them. By any standards one of the handful of albums of the decade, able to stand tall in the company of the Replacements and REM.

Well, break them it did, in the bad sense. A half a dozen albums that they knew damn well were as good and accessible as anything on the marketplace, even the rather restricted market of college/indie radio, that ended as detritus washed up against the seawall of popular acceptance. The failure of Two Steps was too much for Scott and the band, for whom this was their last album. But Scott was back in a year or two with The Loud Family. And he did something remarkable. After the disillusion of Game Theory, he put together a debut for the Loud Family that was a bookend to Two Steps. For any other pop artist Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things would have been a greatest hits album--instead it's merely more testimony to the fecundity of Scott's songwriter's imagination and craft. Since then, Scott revitalizes various version of the Loud Family whenever he's got enough songs stored up, and even releases albums on various micro-labels, but he has made the devastating decision that even his degree of talent doesn't guarantee even a significant cult following, and that his music is now just a hobby. He now has a family with kids and an online column where he answers questions from Game Theory/Loud Family fans about almost anything with his formidable intelligence and his always humane instinct. Read it.

It's an instructive American story, not a little tragic, that you could have an artist possessed of every tool and talent for enormous influence and popularity, who through a few bad breaks (some undoubdtedly self inflicted but what rocker hasn't absorbed self inflicted wounds?) falls even below the Velvet Undergound's status (You know, "Not many people bought their records, but everyone who did went out and formed a band.")

Here's where you can buy Scott Miller Records:

Game Theory
Real Nightime
Big Shot Chronicles
Lolita Nation
Two Steps from the Middle Ages

Loud Family
Plants and Birds and Rock and Things

Alot of these are rarities and are priced accordingly, which is to say beyond most people's budget (an encouraging development for Scott, at least). But used copies of Two Steps and Plants and Birds can be had for reasonable prices. For the rest, I suggest a thorough search of online used cd services, going through interlibrary loan at your public library, or contacting the Loud Family Website.

But by all means make some effort. You'll be doing yourself a favor, opening up a source of delight and pleasure and stimulation that you'll listen to for years. And when your kids are playing all their Scott Miller-influenced music, you can establish your cred as the hippest mom or dad around.

You Don't Want to Tell Your Children You Missed Scott Miller

2009-02-25T07:41:00.000-06:00

It's a rather tired critical commonplace to say that a
band is "shamefully underrated" or "shamefully ignored," or some other words to the effect that there is a wide gulf between the critic's estimation of the band, and the general, music-buying public's. It's been said so often now that it doesn't carry much weight. But if it's shameful you want, I'll give you shameful. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Scott Miller, one of the great rock and roll talents of our epoch, and a man who could never quit his day job.

Back in the 80s at UC-Davis, Scott, a native Californian, drew together a band that he called Game Theory, with a peripatetic lineup, though each version stayed together long enough to learn Scott's groove. Game Theory began to attract an audience of college kids and local skaters. They were beginning to hear something ecstatic crackling through cheap amps. It was the sound of a kid who'd been working out in his head (and on his guitar) since early childhood how the Beatles made magic with two guitars, bass and drums, thought he saw the answer in Alex Chilton and Big Star, and absorbed a lot of sophisticated songwriting and production tips from Todd Rundgren and Bryan Ferry. There were other things you cold hear, too, hints of bright pacific sand and surf and a cloud of Jefferson Airplane fog-bound San Francisco melancholy.

It was always too easy for music biz folks and music geeks, hung up on categories as they often are, to associate Game Theory with power pop, or "quirky pop," or New Wave. But paying closer attention, you heard and felt that Scott Miller and Game Theory were the Platonic ideal of power pop. Having fully interiorized the lessons of the 60's, he was free, deliciously free to explore zones of lofty, stratospheric melody, tossing off heartbreaking melodies, finger-popping hooks with manic prolificity. As for the power part of the equation, Game Theory were always a rock and roll band first--the melodies and hooks a sweet counterpoint to the tense, compressed frenzy of the band's rave-ups. As a lead guitarist, Scott was always a combination of balls and invention. (His break on "Jimmy Still Comes Around" with The Loud Family, a later Scott aggregation, sounds like what Pete Townsend might be doing if he'd just turned twenty.) Game Theory got signed to a record label, put out a string of records to good critical notices, and started building a little national cult, a promise of bigger things in those heady days of college radio.

Part 2 Tomorrow

More presidential wisdom for the new president

2009-02-25T07:31:00.000-06:00

"Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital."

Lincoln's Annual Message to Congress, 1861

For an astute summation of what Lincoln really stood for, read "How Would Lincoln Vote?" by Michael Lind.

New online music magazine

2009-02-25T06:40:00.001-06:00

The Bluegrassspecial.com is a new online music magazine edited by David McGee, a former editor at Rolling Stone and Managing Editor of Spin Magazine. The Bluegrass Special.com covers Americana, world music, blues and gospel, and a healthy dose of rock and roll. In the latest issue, I have a review of The Bairns, the new album by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, who are being hailed in Britain as the biggest thing in British folk-rock since Richard Thompson. Here's how it begins:

"Bob Dylan once said something about how the only true death you can feel in music was in folk music. Particularly, I'd guess he was thinking about the body of song that came down off the southeastern American mountains, the Appalachian tradition that forms the core of the American folk tradition. Where that death came from was the northern border counties of England and southern Scotland, a region that has some of the grimmest history of any place in Europe. It was the cockpit of the centuries-long, savage back and forth struggle between England and Scotland, regularly burned over by brutal scorched earth warfare and in between ravaged by institutionalized raiding between the Border clans. The peasants who had taken the brunt of this for generations took their first chance when the New World opened up, and fled to the American back country, bringing the strain of darkness and harsh fatalism to the mood of the Appalachian culture.

Now we're hearing from two sisters and their friends who haven't fled, but rather have dug deep into the darkness and occasional buried golden beauty of their culture, and ingeniously molded it into something new and challenging..."

For the rest of it, go here...

Coming Up

2009-02-25T06:10:00.000-06:00

Secrets of Egypt

Obama's job, from TR

2009-02-25T06:01:00.001-06:00

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

"The Progressive Covenant With The People" speech (August, 1912)

A new picture of British witchcraft and witch trials

2009-02-25T05:08:00.000-06:00

The trend in modern witchcraft studies has been to picture the "confessions" of accused witches as mostly obtained under duress, including torture, with the details supplied by inquisitors eager to confirm their own notions of witchcraft taken from "learned" treatises on demonology.

Recently, some historians have urged that we take the narratives of the accused more seriously. They suggest that the stories contain genuine folkloric traditions of the British rural poor--not about selling one's soul to the Devil, but about certain men and women, known as "cunning folk" , who gain powers of healing and divination by their relations with ancestral spirits of the British countryside, usually desribed as fairies or spirits of the dead.

In "Cunning Folk And Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions In Early Modern British Witchcraft And Magic," historian Emma Wilby studies the witchcraft confessions carefully and locates a consistent thread of folk belief and practice beneath the diabolical veneer applied by the interrogators. She then takes these beliefs and, using a comparative anthropological approach, compares them with shamanic tradition and practices from Siberia and North American Indians, and finds many points of apparent similarity.

In the end she suggests that a popular tradition of native shamanism persisted among the British peasantry since pre-historic times (she asserts that many parts of rural Britain were only thinly Christianized up until the dawn of the modern era). She sugggests that this tradition was the mysticism of the illiterate, comparable to the contemplative visions of the more elite, learned and celebrated narratives of recognized, orthodox Christian mystics and saints.

A fascinating, frequently mind-blowing book, whose ultimate message is that people will always tend to find their own source of mystical experience, even when they are barred from the orthodox channels of the elite milieu they canot hope to enter.

Coming Soon

2009-01-07T06:06:00.000-06:00

Coming soon: The movies, myths, categories of experience that history has no name for, the 24th South Wales Borderers, and Scottish witches.

Time for a Poem

2009-01-07T05:55:00.000-06:00

Trismegistus

by Richard Wilbur

from The New Yorker, January 5, 2009

O Egypt, Egypt—so the great lament

Of thrice-great Hermes went—

Nothing of thy religion shall remain

Save fables, which thy children shall disdain.

His grieving eye foresaw

The world’s bright fabric overthrown

Which married star to stone

And charged all things with awe.

And what, in that dismantled world, could be

More fabulous than he?

Had he existed? Was he but a name

Tacked on to forgeries which pressed the claim

Of every ancient quack—

That one could from a smoky cell

By talisman or spell

Coerce the Zodiac?

Still, still we summon him at midnight hour

To Milton’s pensive tower,

And hear him tell again how, then and now,

Creation is a house of mirrors, how

Each herb that sips the dew

Dazzles the eye with many small

Reflections of the All—

Which, after all, is true.

Another European Socialist Spouts Off

2008-12-18T08:47:00.000-06:00

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

I correspond with Camille Paglia

2008-12-11T13:14:00.000-06:00

We talked about The Golden Bough.

MC5 for the Rock Hall! Tell Jann Wenner

2008-12-02T10:19:00.000-06:00

Rock critic Dave Marsh once said that, if the MC5 and the Rolling Stones (at the height of their powers) were playing across the street from each other, he would choose to go see the 5. So would I, and we're far from alone in this. There seems to be near unanimity among people who saw the 5 live that it was one of the greatest rock and roll shows they'd ever experienced. There's now something of a concensus that the 5 belong on a short list of contenders for the title of The Great American Rock and Roll Band. All the "alternative" movements in hard rock that have come since them--glam, punk, grunge, indie-- are unthinkable without them. But you will not find them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The concensus would be stronger if not for legal hassles holding up the release of The MC5: A True Testimonial, a thrilling, inspiring, long-overdue documentary telling of the band's career. It now looks like the legal obstacles are clearing up, and if A True Testimonial sees the light of day, run, do not walk, to get a copy of one of the key rock and roll documents of recent years. Those wanting to know more of the story of the MC5 in the meantime are referred to Don McLeese's excellent Kick Out the Jams.

Do this experiment for me. Go watch the You Tube video of the 5 performing Kick Out the Jams. Then come back and try to explain to me why Bobby Darrin, the Bee Gees, Ricky Nelson and the Four Seasons belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 5 don't. Do not forget the name of the institution: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Then e-mail Jann Wenner, founder and editor of Rolling Stone ( jann.wenner@rollingstone.com) and the 800 pound gorilla of the Rock Hall induction process.

If you need to hear more of the 5, buy their three albums here.

The Rock Hall may have compromised its mission in the years since its founding, but maybe an appeal to conscience may still work. In theory it exists to recognize and promulgate awareness of great rock and roll, and if the MC5 aren't great rock and roll, then my definition of the term is completely invalid. Go watch the video. Then buy Kick Out the Jams. It'll change your life.

Get the MC5 in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

2008-12-02T10:15:00.000-06:00

Watch this space...

The free market heresy

2008-11-26T14:36:00.001-06:00

No legitimate spiritual tradition sanctions the abandonment of human responsibility for a just social order in favor of some neo-idolatrous faith in an "invisible hand." We cannot have our well-being at the mercy of a system whose primary energies and motivations come from greed and fear. This is very low-level stuff on which to order a social structure.

Pope Pius XI issued Quadragesimo Anno, subtitled "On Reconstruction of the Social Order" on May 15 of 1931. I quote:

"...the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching. Destroying through forgetfulness or ignorance the social and moral character of economic life, it held that economic life must be considered and treated as altogether free from and independent of public authority, because in the market, i.e., in the free struggle of competitors, it would have a principle of self direction which governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of any created intellect. But free competition, while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life..."

The belief in the unrestricted free market as the best force for ordering society is what is referred to in Christian teaching as idolatry. It is the subservience of the human intellect, created in the image of God, to an inhuman amoral force. This, the faith teaches, is an abandonment of human responsibility, especially our responsibility to the poor.

American free market extremists, who have dominated economic discourse since the Reagan administration, are quite literally worshipping a false god. Look around our country today to see where that leads.

The Religious Argument Against Free Market Extremism

2008-11-26T09:56:00.000-06:00

The conservative agrument that the market should be the primary arbiter of our social and politcal relations is, strictly speaking, a heresy, and should be named as such by the Roman, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant hierarchies. More on this to come...

The Road to a Long-Term Progressive Ascendancy

2008-11-26T09:10:00.000-06:00

The best thing I've read about where American progressivism should go from here is an article by Michael Lind in Salon on August 15th of this year. As I read it, he reccomends that the Democrats stop engaging the Republicans on life-style, cultural issues--abortion, religious values, guns and gays, identity politics, special interest grievances--that have come to define the Democratic party since the McGovern candidacy, but played to a Republican strong suit. Instead they should engage them on economic issues, and the constructive role of a strong, healthily functioning federal government, where poll after poll shows a majority of American siding with the progressive vision. This is where the real power struggle in this country is waged, but only the Republicans seem to have understood it, and they have systematically dismantled the structures that support an effective national government (see Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule) as we saw with Hurricane Katrina. With the economic catastrophe that's upon us now, the time is ripe for intiatives that will reassert the preference of American's for a reasonably mixed, rationally managed economy, and a strong and effective public sector. This Obama largely managed to do in the recent election--he resolutely refused to be engaged on God, guns, gays and patriotism-- and the results bear out the validity of this approach.

Sleater-Kinney:Headed for Valhalla?

2008-11-20T09:25:00.000-06:00

I know I'm a little late on this, but a decade of nattering by rock critics got me to check out Sleater-Kinney. So I got Dig Me Out from the Library. I had dipped into All Hands on the Bad One a couple of yeas ago, and it struck me the sort of aimless indie plinky-plonk, art

damaged stuff that can convince young rock writers and dj's that they're getting the real thing. And Corin Tucker's vocals sounded affected and inhumane, a version of the kind of freak-like dead-affect posing of American punk in the 80's, itself a misreading of English punk of the 70's, a misreading in turn of the New York Dolls. So.

But curiosity got the better of me a few weeks ago, and I picked up a copy of Dig Me Out. Still the same sort of angular noodling around that made me wonder when, if ever, this band was gonna get off the ground. But I decided I was going to put ip with it and see where it went. At first it sounds distressingly like 80's American punk--you know, the "loud fast rules" thing. Loud-fast of course, as should have been eveident at the time, doesn't mean you're rocking. Steve Jones of the Pistols delightfully punctures that stupid aesthetic in a recent issue of Mojo, where he points out that alot of the power of the Pistol's mighty sound had to do with drummer Cook deliberately hanging back creating an exhilarating tension, a sensual technique I wouldn't expect an American 80s punk band to know about it.

Well, anyway. I got to "Turn It On" and it happened. Without warning, we--the band and I--were suddenly There. Frenzy. Ecstasy. The point at which the musician stop playing the music and this particular form of energy we've decided to call rock & roll plays itself through them. A place I've only heard the New Yord Dolls and the MC5 go before, but that I suspect you would have encountered at an early Elvis or Beatles show. It's like accidentally picking up an exposed wire. I hadn't been to that place for a long time, and I can see why some people thought the MC5 or the Dolls or the Pistols scary. It is scary--you go out of your head. This is the ecstasy of rock & roll, this is what the music aims at even in its most deracinated forms. These girls are on intimate terms with it.

Read My Book

2008-11-18T10:24:00.000-06:00

Read a review of my book, Holidays and Holy Nights here.

Read some of Holidays and Holy Nights on Google Books here.

Order Holidays and Holy Nights here.

The Stakes of the Election

2008-11-18T10:20:00.000-06:00

Read Norman Mailer's 1960 essay "Superman Comes to the Supermarket", about the Democratic Covention that nominated JFK for president. It's the only thing I've ever read that comes close to capturing what Kennedy meant in the imagination of America, and why his death felt like certain possibilities were being closed off forever. Mailer talks about what he calls the "Two Rivers" theory of American history. One river is the accepted standard narration of events. The other is the underground river, the subversive dream life of the nation. When the two rivers come together, or the underground river surfaces, something critical is happening in the psyche of the nation.

The only work of straight history I know of that recognizes what Mailer is talking about is The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK by John Hellman. It's about how the very clever group of people around JFK , including his family and Kennedy himself, consciously wove him into the mythic life of the United States, to communicate the sense that the nation had the chance to remake itself if it elected John Kennedy, to make a new history, more in line with the imaginary America that we like to pretend it is but secretly know it isn't.

It's intriguing, in the light of the recent election, to wonder if the underground river hasn't surfaced for a moment, after many, many years of being confined and ignored. That may be the only way to explain what happened. If that's the case, it's critical that Obama succeed. We're being given another shot.

Something big is happening in our country and the world. You can feel it in multiple ways. A door of possibility seems to be opening where there was no door before. More on that tomorrow.

Obama's Starting to Disappear

2008-11-17T11:38:00.000-06:00

Watching him on 60 Minutes last night, I could almost see his face disappearing. Something transpersonal was taking over his features. But it retains a flavor of individual personality. Like Lincoln with his jokes and stories. Or Kennedy with his wit and his lecherousness. When we see a person taken up like this, it's scary and we value the remaining human traits all that much more.

Presidents Making Themselves Disappear

2008-11-17T11:00:00.000-06:00

Great leaders learn to set their small selves aside and let larger forces act through them. It's all you can do to survive intact when you're in a position like being president of the United States. Sometimes those power will take you up and use you up and almost tear you apart. Look at the pictures of Lincoln before and after the War. Look at how the job ages almost everyone who takes it. Obama's already turning grey. You could see that John Kennedy, flawed mortal through he was, had an innate respect for the powers that had him to work through. When he gave his civil rights speeach on television, there was a deep well of seriousness evident that supported his words with a power that was prophetic, beyond individual personality. You only need look at George Bush's face to know that he has never allowed that power to work through him. He is not a fundamentally serious man.