SAINTS PRESERVE US

His Holiness quotes His Bobness

Recently the United States Secretary of Defense, a man who changed his title on his business cards to “Secretary of War,” quoted “Bible” verse as recited by a hitman in Pulp Fiction to members of the US military. Reality is now a nebulous concept, having plunged into some heretofore unimaginable thirteenth circle of Hell far beyond the realm of satire. And I thought actual theocrats were bad dudes.

Meanwhile, his boss der Trumpenfuhrer took on Pope Leo XIV, a fellow American. President versus pontiff! A holy smackdown! A gilded cage match! The odious vulgarian’s Truth Social opening salvo was a pretty good one. The Bishop of Rome is “WEAK” on crime. Fair enough. Every venerated and long-established institution has proved incapable of policing itself. Paradoxically, the Roman Catholic Church, whose rock-solid central tenet is love and mercy, has historically been fanatical in its persecution of heretics. “Thoughtcrime” warranted numerous clauses in the First Papal Bull(shit). The last national leader to grapple with a pope was probably Britain’s King Henry VIII who demanded the Holy See expedite a niggling bit of post-nuptial paperwork.

A war of words or weapons demands an answering salvo. Globe and Mail headline, Friday, 17 April: “Pope denounces ‘tyrants’ and ‘masters of war’ during tour of Africa.” I thought, “My God, Leo’s quoting Bob. It can’t be.”

Dylan released “Masters of War” in 1963. It’s no coincidence that the Second Vatican Council sat from 1962 through 1965. Actually, it is and maybe I’m just messing around... wait for it... But seriously folks, Dylan mines the classics for source material, just as Shakespeare did. Only the future is unwritten and when it happens, chances are you’ll have read it all before. I’ve always assumed Dylan borrowed “masters of war” from an ancient primary text or some oft-quoted colloquialism. I became curious about the phrase’s origin.

My volume of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (third edition) was a gift from my father, Christmas 1982. His inscription reads in part, “Best wishes for 1983. Regards, Dad.” The Moores are not a particularly warm family. And yet, the care and attention devoted to the brief note is unmistakable. The block printing is precise enough to have been set in lead type. A steel rule was employed and a disposable ballpoint just wouldn’t do (I’ve since applied this same discipline to family records). I went through the book’s index with my drugstore readers angled on the tip of my nose. Nothing. My next reference source was his father’s volume of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (tenth edition). Still nothing. My last resort was a reluctant nod to modern times: I scrolled Wikipedia; further investigation uncovered text unworthy of even an inattentive scan.

Vatican II changed the tenor of Catholic ritual. Latin and formal choirs went out the stained-glass window. The “folk mass” was in ascension. My childhood parish was Annunciation of Our Lady. Father Moyle who baptized me, and whom I habitually lied to at Confession, was the top gun priest. The other man was Father Schnell (I’m guessing at his surname’s spelling – I’ve no idea), younger, hipper and given to pinstriped suits. He must’ve been the Svengali behind the parish folk group which was mostly comprised of high school seniors with acoustic guitars. I joined it – this was before my voice broke into its endearing and enduring cigarette croak. I figured hanging out in the choir loft during 11 o’clock mass was a better deal than going mental in the pews down below. I gleaned this from my big brother who had been an usher. He was able to be present but not really there, hanging out in a backroom as opposed to the altar boys who always had to be on.

I can’t recall what the folk group sang with earnest inexpertise to warrant a weekly glare from the pulpit, followed by a back-handed compliment and then a mic’ed throat-clearing. Pete Seeger and spirituals I suppose; psalm sing, sing song sing, good morning starshine, turn, turn, turn. What I do remember is the group’s leader’s anger after Father Moyle banned all songs written by Bob Dylan and specifically “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Irony.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Cockroaches

I have never joined a political party. I am suspicious of people who actively promote themselves as activists and philanthropists. Corporations with fluffy mission statements are suspect, or worse, inept. Team-building exercises at work? Oh, please. They’re worse than meetings. I’m no plumber or roofer, never been a joiner. Most venerable, long-established human institutions are rotten. In cosmic terms a lifetime is woefully short and ultimately absurd. Dredge your own meaning should you care to; take it where you find it. Stop and smell the dead flowers. And, gee, all things considered, for the most part and way more often than not, it’s fun being on the planet.

Late last century I had a passing acquaintance with a guy whose job was masquerading as Mick in a Rolling Stones tribute band. He called their hardcore fans “freakazoids.” The adjective wasn’t meant as an insult. He spoke it with bemused gratitude; these people paid his wages. I’ve seen his band perform in the three Canadian cities I’ve resided in going back to the 80s; the last time was spring 2022. I’ve seen the actual Stones seven times, dating back to the summer of 1978 but not since autumn 2005.

It's possible I’m a Stones completist. It’s possible I have every album they’ve ever released and multiple copies of maybe more than a few of them. It’s possible there are four or five box sets stashed around the Crooked 9. It’s possible there’s a baker’s foot of DVD and book spines on a shelf in the den; it’s possible some more are down in the basement. It’s possible I have a modest collection of tour posters. It’s possible there may be a couple of Stones t-shirts in my bureau drawer. It’s possible there are some sad sack fanboy “collectible” sundries cluttering other rooms. It’s possible my emotional and intellectual growth, certainly with this particular file, stood on the brakes as I rammed in to puberty. But I am not a freakazoid.

A longtime friend of mine, a Springsteen nut though not an unhinged one, once said to me, “Had the internet existed when we were teenagers, our heads would’ve exploded.” No two-week wait for Rolling Stone’s “Random Notes” tidbits (and porn of course; let’s not forget porn as accessible as guns in the United States). Bless some of the tribes on what Pete Townshend imagined as “the Grid” for the failed “Lifehouse project,” parts of which we know as Who’s Next. There are two internet freakazoid Stones sites I infrequently waste some time visiting. Denizens have been burning up wifi and the wires this week.

“Who the fuck are The Cockroaches?” posters popped up throughout London over Easter like Banksy murals. Freakazoids noted that the type font was the same as the “Who the fuck is Mick Jagger?” t-shirt Keith sometimes wore on the 1975 “Tour of the Americas.” Equally important, The Cockroaches is a not-so-secret Stones pseudonym for secret club shows. Real life “Da Vinci Code” stuff with more gravitas. The pink poster suggested the “Miss You” 45 sleeve. The bottom right, where any graphic designer would place a logo, featured a QR code (those weird pixels – I can’t remember what phrase QR abbreviates anymore). That code led to a static website, a throwback bedroom with a black Bakelite dial phone and Bowie’s “Ziggy” LP visible on a shelf. One click infested The Cockroaches poster on the wall with scurrying vermin.

The Stones embraced the dark art of hype and promotion long ago even though their music and performance did the real talking They morphed into marketing pros with the onset of their corporate era which I date from Steel Wheels in 1989. Clothing lines in IMAX; buy the stemware and cologne; Mick could teach an MBA course. A commercial pop culture juggernaut is very different from an irresistible cultural force. Their last relevant album is the punk-goosed Some Girls dating from the time when Mick realized the Clash could indeed become the only band that matters. And he was right. Nothing the Stones released subsequently defined any of the ensuing decades(!) or any particular era therein. Times changed but the Rolling Stones didn’t.

The Stones are one of those bands poorly served by greatest hits compilations (and good gawd y’all, there’s tons of them). Their magic to me was always the rest of any particular album. To use modern phrases, the “deep dives” into “deep cuts” require patience, repeated plays. The freakazoid demands a couple of obscurities or B-sides in the set in exchange for an expensive ticket and a poor seat – not that I would know. And so… With the release of Emotional Rescue (1980) or maybe Tattoo You (1981) Stones albums had to be picked apart for gems. Inspired individual tracks, never the complete package; the music took a backseat to their status and marketing acumen. And fair enough, the recording industry was flipped on its head in the Information Age. Money-losing tours used to be offset by album sales in the millions.

The Cockroaches yesterday released “Rough and Twisted” in white vinyl in a plain white sleeve. It’s yet to exist in any other format. There’s no other way to hear it. Only available in very limited quantities in certain record shops. Marketing gimmickry up “Andrew’s Blues.” Stones-centric detectives, those internet freakazoids, have drawn comparisons to the “Cook Cook Blues” B-side of the unremarkable and less than memorable “Rock and a Hard Place” 1989 single. (I had to look that one up; flip through the collection not knowing where to start or consult a reference book – it’s possible I own an out of date Rolling Stones encyclopaedia of songs.) The next single may be called “Mr Charm.” The album, slated for a June (or maybe July) release, may be called Foreign Tongues – I can just imagine the deluge of alternate sleeves and related merch. 

I emailed my friends at Blackbyrd Myzoozik hoping for a meaningful and specialized loyal customer Cockroaches trophy in a plain white sleeve, money no object. Seems they’ve ghosted me. All of this makes me feel 16 instead of 66. I have been highly amused this last week and not in a detached way. “Well all right! Are you having a good time?”               

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Be a completist! Be a happy sad sack! Collect the set!