Fri Feb 10 2012

Lethal Lyrics: The machinery to kill fascists
by Steven Conliff
December 10, 2005

Dylan to English Dictionary, by A.J. Weberman (Dylanologist).
2005. New York: Yippie Museum Press.
560 pages. ISBN: 1-4196-1338-3.
www.booksurge.com
orders@booksurge.com

The consensual undergirding of American society (since capitulation to the Slavocracy secured the fraudulent 1876 election) crumbled away (in the 1960s) under relentless kicking, hammering and headbutting from many directions. Some who brought about a brief enlightenment were stubborn plodders, some stubborn plotters, a few overarching narcissists, not a few underappreciated geniuses. Through all the turmoil, among the latter stood tall a lone truth-teller, exposing the hypocrisies, the hypno-crises, and the hyperboles, indifferent alike to the carping of friends and the faint praise of critics, his curly locks a-blowin’ in the wind and his chiseled Hebraic profile jutted at the fates. He and he alone crafted the archetypes of our youth, the soundtrack of our lives, the images that carousel through our noodles when we take drugs or have really good sex. Yes, the man (not his fault he was born without ovaries or melanin) of whom I sing should belong in the Hall of Fame of Social Rebellion, did such a Parthenon of political rectitude but exist, though doubtless he would ruffle its infrastructure and scorn its honors. For such is his essential dignity, integrity and self-worth, so committed to the countercultural pillars of periodic self-reinvention and the holy identity crisis is the Honorable Alan J. Weberman.

Children and drones, unfathomable as it may be to contemplate, short decades ago we did not even dream of believing our leaders were murdered by conspiracies among corrupt government insiders. We did not understand the mass media as pathetic little bureaucracies that could be stroked and manipulated into promoting anorexics and imbeciles. We hardly imagined the intellectual treasure to be amassed by simply pawing through celebrity garbage. But most retrospectively and dramatically disheartening of all, we had no troubadour. Not one.

While still in college in East Lansing, Michigan, A.J. heard from his roommate Dana Beal (whom he had turned on to marijuana) of a kid from Minnesota who had grafted his sophomoric poetry onto imitation folksongs in the vain hope of a large advertising contract. So far Bobby Zimmerman had only managed to attract the lewd attentions of various Bohemian writers. But A.J. had an epiphany. He realized there once had been real folksingers: Joe Hill of the Wobblies and Woody Guthrie with his guitar labeled “This Machine Kills Fascists” had led people’s insurrections. He understood that, other than the anonymous tip to steal the name of a real poet, Zimmerman needed but one thing to rocket starward: a celebrity stalker.

And so for many years, A.J. hounded Byron Zimmerman, Bob Chaucer, Sappho Guthrie, and at last Bob Dylan. The subtlety of A.J.’s approach became evident even then. He was the first underground press writer to use a computer – he put every word of Dylan onto punchcards at NYU, finishing just as his igor Aron “Pieman” Kay lugged in a stolen prototype of the Apple Macintosh. Seemingly an obsessed neurotic, his indefatigable insistence upon infusing Dylan’s work with the wrong meaning challenged other literate Bohemians to find alternative meanings. It was the very concept that popular culture might have meaning that was so revolutionary. No one had ever propounded it before. A Z-form lightening bolt shot across the intellectual firmament. Soon teenyboppers the world over were squinting at Sgt. Pepper and explicating Steppenwulf (the book). Star Wars and Harry Potter remained but glints in God’s eye when A.J. completed his Coup-d’etat In America by installing as Kulturekampf Commie-czar the former doorman who had bounced him out of his first gate-crashed Dylan concert, Abbie Hoffman. As another great poet once wrote:

“Ramma-damma ding-dong!”

Tragically, Dylan became a junkie and got AIDS, Zionists murdered Abbie, Barbara Bush stole the secret of cloning and A.J. did a short prison stretch when Norman Mailer ghostwriter Bob Singer planted $12 million worth of Mailer’s stash in the apartment they shared with Debbie Harry, Bette Midler and Grace Slick. A.J. graciously took the fall. In federal custody, he had a first-hand view of the unfolding 9-11 horror. That doubtless will be another story. If you want to read that one, though, you’d better buy this book first, because I’m pretty sure Beal invested the entire damn Yippie treasury in it.

Recent Reviews Articles

Dining with terrorists
December 28, 2005
Iqbal Jassat

Fog Facts
December 26, 2005
David Swanson

Lethal lyrics: The machinery to kill fascists
December 12, 2005
Steven Conliff

Lethal Lyrics: The machinery to kill fascists
December 10, 2005
Steven Conliff

Peyote visions
December 7, 2005
Harvey Wasserman

Ongoing quest for the many manifestations of bigfoot
November 25, 2005
Jason Miller

The Mazruiana collection revisited
November 24, 2005
Iqbal Jassat

Bonnie Raitt's soulful masterpiece
October 9, 2005
Harvey Wasserman

Studs sings America
September 30, 2005
Harvey Wasserman

Death by Public Relations
August 30, 2005
Jules Siegel

Solomon's Unspinning of War
August 7, 2005
David Swanson