James McMurtry Is On Fire

In January I posted a video of James McMurtry doing a great live version of his song "We Can't Make It Here." As anyone who's spent any time on this blog knows I generally prefer live versions of stuff (even lame ones taken with cell-phones) to lip-synching and music videos. But no way am I gonna to wait for somebody to slap up a decent live version of McMurtry's recently released "Cheney's Toy" to spread the word. The heart of the song is a critique of the idea of finding manhood by joining the US military.



You're the man
Show 'em what you're made of
You're no longer daddy's boy
You're the man
That they're all afraid of
But you're only Cheney's toy

It may not be as nuanced as, say, Stan Goff's critiques of gender and the military, but McMurtry's aim is sharp and he hits hard.

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The Great Debaters; or The Sea-Turtle and the Shark

When I posted James McMurtry's brilliant and savage "We Can't Make It Here" on FotM a bit ago as something to consider in evaluating the effects of imperial privilege on the working class in the US, I said McMurtry was "arguing the negative (yeah, I just saw The Great Debaters--don't miss it)."

Sure enough, a couple friends asked, "What's The Great Debaters?" It is, for my money, the purest feel-good movie since 2002's The Quiet American. If a film based on the exploits of a Communist professor who trained a championship debating team at a small Black college in Texas in the '30s while secretly organizing for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union doesn't sound appealing to you, maybe you should give it a miss. Otherwise, catch it while it's still in the theaters!

To pique your interest further, here is a poem about a higher stakes debate by the real Professor Melvin B. Tolson (played in the film by Denzel Washington), actually a section of his book-length poem Harlem Gallery, published the year before his death in 1966.

The Sea-Turtle and the Shark
by Melvin B. Tolson

Strange but true is the story
of the sea-turtle and the shark-
the instinctive drive of the weak to survive
in the oceanic dark.
Driven
riven by hunger
from abyss to shoal,
sometimes the shark swallows
the sea-turtle whole.

The sly reptilian marine
withdraws,
into the shell
of his undersea craft,
his leathery head and the rapacious claws
that can rip
a rhinoceros’ hide
or strip
a crocodile to fare-thee-well;
now,
inside the shark,
the sea-turtle begins the churning seesaws
of his descent into pelagic hell;
then . . . then,
with ravenous jaws
that can cut sheet steel scrap,
the sea-turtle gnaws
. . . and gnaws . . . and gnaws . . .
his way in a way that appalls-
his way to freedom,
beyond the vomiting dark,
beyond the stomach walls
of the shark.

I was introduced to Harlem Gallery by my friend Chuck Colding in 1967, so when "The Sea Turtle and the Shark" played a small role in the emergence of the New Communist Movement in the U.S., I recognized it. FotM offers a cool historic prize to the first person to identify that role in the comments section here. Just click on the word "comments" directly below.

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A New One On Me

Maybe I'm just late to the picnic again, but here's a tune I found last night by one of this country's best songwriters, Tom Russell. I wanted to pair it up with another tune by an Anglo living in Aztlan, James McMurtry's "Safe Side," but I couldn't find it on YouTube.




UPDATE

Shoulda thought to look for this cut by Molotov. I've had the tune, "Frijolero," for a while but now find out it's got a cool video too. (Note to impatient Anglo types: it is bilingual, don't check out after 30 seconds.)

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