The Clash’s eponymous first album was a classic that didn’t get released in America until after their second album was released here. Give ‘em Enough Rope is generally considered a slick, American produced sophomore jinx of an album, but I’ll be posting about that soon. The band loses their manager and heads back to London, balanced on the edge of legendary status, but needing to prove themselves with a third record. They hole up in a rehearsal space in a warehouse, and proceed to do nearly nothing but play soccer and play music. As they slowly write a new collection of songs they also play the pop, folk and old rock ‘n’ roll classics that they all love, abandoning punk rock’s “Year Zero” aesthetics to simply revel in their love of music. They write. They rehearse. And they record one of the greatest albums of all time, London Calling.

Today’s post continues our look back at 30 years since the end of The Clash with The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling…

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Nowadays, it’s hard to remember a time when poetry really mattered. I still love to read poetry and write poetry, and I occasionally get out to read my words in a bar or a coffeehouse in Nashville where other poets gather to share their words, but it’s almost always a case of singing to the choir — nowadays the main audience for poetry is other poets.

But that’s not always how it was. 55 years ago, after World War II, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas began nearly five years of BBC appearances that found Thomas reading his verse, lecturing, interviewing and appearing on panels. Thomas was treated like a rock star and his busy touring schedule around Britain, across the Atlantic to America and back looks more like what we’d expect from a famous singer/songwriter.

Today, most of us think of poetry as something that is read in a book, but poetry has always been meant for speaking aloud and Thomas’s resonant voice and dramatic delivery captivated his radio and live audiences alike. He won and fostered a cult of personality, perpetuating a myth as the wild, drunken writer and eventually inspiring the Beats and The Beatles. Thomas supposedly drank himself to death in New York, consuming 18 straight whiskey’s in the White Horse tavern before slipping into a coma back at the Chelsea hotel. This version of the poet’s demise sounds perfectly punk rock. It’s also, almost surely, untrue.

Here’s a great Dylan Thomas biography from the BBC’s great Arena program…

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On February 5, 1958, the United States military lost an armed hydrogen bomb off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. Why don’t you take a second to read that again — somewhere off the coast of Georgia, there is a massive bomb that’s 500 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Perhaps the most terrifying fact is that it’s only one of a number of nuclear bombs that have been lost by the U.S. since America entered the Atomic Age.

Here’s a chilling documentary about America’s record of lost bombs, focusing on the incident off of Georgia and the loss of the so-called Tybee bomb…

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Sorry for the delay this week kids. I (the all seeing Ken), have been stricken with evil germs. What are you going to do uh?

This week: I actually don’t know…it’s all in American…But I think they talk about Black Eyed kids again…or was it the black eyed peas?, Something about Pigeons being terrorists?, How Twin Peaks is an all American cherry pie of a show?, Going to war again?…I dunno you listen.

Personnel – Joe Nolan, and Frater Isla

• Ghost News: Black Eyed Child is back! – Link
• 10,000 Chinese Pigeons Subjected to Cavity SearchesLink
• The Return of Twin Peaks Link
• ‘The Art of Future War Project’: Washington Hires ‘Call of Duty’ Creator Link
• Spooktober – The Goatman of Pope Lick Link
• Antarctica’s Melting Ice Causing Gravity to Change Link
• The Medium is the Message at 50 – Link

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Was casting about for some weirdness to post here when I got into a quick chat with Chris Charbonneau on Facebook. A few quick clicks around on his page uncovered a paranormal phenomenon that I wasn’t familiar with: It’s a story about America’s haunted history of racism and violence that may have resulted in an actual haunting at an abandoned bridge in Texas involving a mysterious tragedy that took place one dark night back in 1967.

Here’s the back story from the Goatman’s Bridge site…

Goatman’s Bridge Hunting the Goat Man
November 15th 1967: police discover an abandoned car beside Old Alton Bridge, five miles south of Denton, Texas. A rash of mysterious disappearances are becoming alarmingly routine on a chilling stretch of road that is known by locals as “the Goatman’s bridge.”

Constructed in 1884, the bridge connected Lewisville to Alton. The turn of the century brought a black goat farmer and his family to a residence just North of the bridge, and a few short years later, Oscar Washburn was known as a dependable, honest businessman. North Texans endearingly began to call him the Goat man. But the success of a black man was still unwelcome, and Klansmen in the local government turned to violence after he displayed a sign on Alton Bridge: “this way to the Goat man’s”

One night in August 1938, with their headlights off, Klansmen crossed the bridge, dragged the Goat man from his family, and lynched him over the side. Peering over into the water, his murderers saw a rope, but not his body. In a panic, the Klansman returned to the Washburn residence, and killed his family in cold blood.

Since the disappearance of the Goat man there have been many strange sightings on and near Old Alton Bridge. Some say his spirit still haunts these woods. Locals tell the story and follow it with a warning: those who cross the bridge with no headlights will be met on the other side by the Goat man.

Here’s a short documentary about the Old Alton Bridge and the spirit of the centaur that guards it…

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While the date varies depending on the source, sometime within the last 48 hours, way back in 1647, the first American woman was executed in Salem, Massachusetts for being a witch. Achsah Young was hanged for using her knowledge of natural herbs to cure her neighbors of their ills. In 1692, 24 alleged witches were executed in New England, but Young and 11 others were killed in the nearly 50 years that lead up to the full-force-frenzy of the Salem witch frenzy.

Religion, superstition, folk magic, psychedelic wheat fungus, racism, the imaginations of children, the paranoia of adults, post-traumatic stress and litigiousness all may have played a role in this madness. Fears about women and their powerless positions in the American colonies definitely did.

With the revelations about Elliot Rodger’s sorority-focused massacre in Southern California coming to light at this same time, some might see coincidence at work or even a meaningful synchronicity at play or even a conspiracy. But I see something deeper and darker — it can be found in the very heart of America’s origins and in the manner in which our culture’s projected fears and anxieties often cast a spotlight on women as scapegoats for perceived ills and wrong-doing. This most recent tragedy is, sadly, nothing new.

This History Channel video must have been made before that channel went to shit. This account of the later horrors of the witch frenzy is full of actual public testimony from the time. The story is confused and panicked and shot through with secret hates and fears, vendettas and the force of privelege. It’s also all too familiar…

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