by Jim Israel, aka Mister Gripes
www.MisterGripes.com
June 22, 2011

Dylan — In April, Bob Dylan, the putative avatar of the young protest generation of the 1960’s, gave a concert in mainland China as part of an Asian tour. He was asked to submit to Chinese authorities a list of the songs he intended to play at the concert; he complied with the request. At the show, songs pointedly, he did not perform included ’Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘The Times, They Are A-Changin’,’ his enduring ‘protest’ ballads, which, incidentally, he played a week earlier in Taiwan. By the time he got home, many people were not happy.

Mr. Gripes will comment on Mr. Dylan’s missteps a little later, but first he does have some comments on Bob Dylan, the reality:

I’ll give Mr. Dylan credit for one unassailable achievement: he’s a survivor. Virtually every other folksinger of that era has disappeared from the American music scene, their music relegated to a bat-guano dung heap a long time ago. Robert Goulet has more staying power. They’re forgotten for one very obvious reason: the music is unremittingly horrific. A short list of the erstwhile celebrity songwriters: Judy Collins [music: awful]; Phil Ochs [tendentious, ear-shattering ‘message’ music]; Joni Mitchell [an astonishingly disharmonious mélange of indecipherable lyrics and cacophonous melodies]. The ‘folk rock’ that emanated from those times is worse: a generational mass psychosis can be the only explanation for songs such as The Byrds’ ‘Tambourine Man’ and ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ attaining ‘hit’ status 35 years ago.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget Pete Seeger. This guy, who must be 163 years old if he’s a day, still is hanging around, sailing in his sloop on the upper Hudson, and twanging on his guitar such gems as ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’, or ‘If I Had a Hammer.’ [Sample Gaga-like lyric: ‘If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning’ – the jute joints sure are jumping with that line, eh?] God bless him, I suppose, although he’s probably still waiting for Joe Stalin to get that damn Commie revolution turned around and back on the right track.

One more whom Mr. Gripes actually feels sorry for: Joan Baez, who still possesses a gorgeous, angelic voice. In her affluent days, though, she made some terrible financial mistakes, taking to heart that garbage about giving all your money away to liberal causes; the millions are now gone, record contracts went poof!, and her gigs these days probably go for 200 bucks and a ham sandwich. She’s essentially broke.

That brings me back around to Mr. Dylan: he ain’t broke, that’s for sure. He grinds on slowly, one tour after another, year-round, all over the world. And, he accomplishes this with a harsh, gravelly voice that cries out desperately for some sort of emergency esophageal surgery. I’ll cede to Mr. Dylan he never made any claims he was a vanguard for any movement, anti-war or otherwise. He’s not a phony-baloney activist, spewing out radical cant, and acting the opposite. No, that’s never been him. But, he is an exemplary Capitalist, amassing huge stacks of cash, way beyond what he and successive generations of Dylans will ever need. A greedy Wall Street and Bob Dylan have a lot in common.

China? Bob Dylan certainly showed his true colors there – one color, actually: green. The Chinese authorities continue to be one of the most repressive regimes in the world in terms of personal freedoms: no freedom of assembly, no free press, no open internet, only crackdowns. The government controls all. As far as playing a song like ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’? That’s not going to change the behavior of Chinese Communist brutes one iota. Avoiding certain songs is no big deal, although I suspect Mr. Dylan self-censored his song list before the authorities could do it for him.

But it was unconscionable Mr. Dylan did not raise one word of protest at the concert about the arrest and detention of Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist [He was the designer of the ‘Bee Hive’ Stadium built in Peking for the 2008 Olympics]. Dylan could have brought a lot of media attention to Ai Weiwei’s plight. So what if the authorities would then accuse Dylan of ‘interference in Chinese internet affairs,’ as surely they would do. Who really cares what those bastards have to say? As an ‘artist’ himself, Dylan had a moral obligation to express some sort of solidarity with Ai Weiwei and other artists in illegal detention. He kept his mouth shut, took the ‘Communist cash’ [Maureen Dowd’s words], and hightailed it back to the States. A burnt-out Mr. Dylan just doesn’t give a damn. Shameful, Bob Dylan, shameful.

Paul Revere’s Ride, I Think –Great Britain exalts with Wellington and Churchill; France, DeGaulle and Napoleon; Russia, Tsarina Catherine and Peter the First. The Great United States of America? Let’s listen in on a history lesson as rendered by a recent candidate for national office:
“He [Paul Revere] warned, uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

God Save the Republic — we’re going to need Him.

Jack Dempsey and Dad — Aging, and the attendant knowledge that time is limited, bring their own imperatives: in Mr. Gripes’ case, a compulsion to unearth the long-ago-forgotten artifacts of his immediate ancestry. An e-mail exchange with his first cousin, Burt, whom, regrettably, he had not spoken to in about 50 years, initiated the endeavor.

I mentioned to Burt that his dad, Abe, the oldest of eight in the Israel clan, introduced my father to boxing. Burt never knew that, unaware even that his father had been a boxer. What a shame, I thought: our first-generation American fathers, intent on moving on and upward, never took the time to relate their often startling and rich biographies to their children. It’s such a loss.

That generation, I think, didn‘t dwell on its forefathers for very sensible reasons: My grandparents, after all, by coming to America, had recently escaped a centuries-long family history dominated by poverty, fear and oppression – their emigration ensued, in fact, soon after an edict was issued mandating forced conscription into the Russian army. America represented a brand-new template; the bleak lives left across the ocean were best forgotten.

In any event, since my chat with Burt, I’ve been combing through accounts of my father as a young man: my cousins and especially my children will one day read the tale with some curiosity and fascination, I hope.

It’s an exhilarating, out-of-body experience looking backwards some 85 years at a father’s young life:

New York University Daily News, March 23, 1925: “Murray Israel last weekend took a train to Baltimore and won the Junior National Amateur Championship at 135 lbs by knocking out 3 opponents over three nights.” As a writer, I appreciate the understated, deadpan phrasing — ‘…. last weekend [he] took a train to Baltimore, … and won….’ – Raymond Carver couldn’t have put it any better. The journalist, of course, had no idea that particular weekend was the dramatic turning point of my dad’s life — a wealthy NYU majordomo took notice after he won the championship, became a mentor, and subsequently paid for the rest of his undergraduate education, and medical school, too. The boxing accomplishments were indeed remarkable, but my dad’s goal from age 8 was to become a doctor.

NYU Daily News, November 25, 1925: at a charity event to raise funds for a university gym, the boxing team was recruited to put on a few exhibition bouts. Someone lent to the school for the occasion the identical ring in which Jack Dempsey and the Argentinean ‘Wild Bull of the Pampas’ Luis Furpo fought for the heavyweight championship of the world in the Polo Grounds two years prior. That fight, with eleven knockdowns, produced one of the iconic images in boxing history: late in the first round, the great Dempsey was knocked through the ropes, out of the ring, landing on his back and rump amidst sportswriters and typewriters arrayed along press row. [Mr. Dempsey, propelled back into the ring by the boxing scribes, proceeded to knock Mr. Firpo down several more times, finally finishing him off in the second round. Artist George Bellows recreated the scene in a magnificent painting – Google it.]
My father was not a man to divulge to his children much of his interior life. But, we kids somehow understood he was a very emotional and thoughtful man. Dad, 19-years-old, adrenaline streaming through his body at the exquisite prospect of beating the crap out of his opponent, as he climbed through those ropes into the very ring his hero Jack Dempsey danced on, certainly must have realized, if only for a moment, how far he had come in his very young life. God willing, he might have thought, with intelligence, ambition, drive and education, and living in this miracle called America, the future was as bright and limitless as a Texas sky.

Jim Israel
June 22, 2011
www.mistergripes.com