Rick, Barbara Dane was doing a concert at a club on Lincoln Avenue (Linclon Ave. and Clark St. is hwere the "Newtown" clubs were concentrated) -- had to be after 1970, 'cause that's when I moved to Chi-town, but before Holstein's opened in '76 - onthe corner, it was, across from the wonderful Army-Navy surplus store that used to be there (owned by some variety of leftie). Barbara was telling an anecdote about being on tour with Bob Newhart; she was his warmup act or something, and one of her set numbers was this blues thing about "My man's gonna hang." I mentioned it on the old Songs about Capital Punishment thread. She described the tour arriving in California, where C.P. was a hot issue at the time, and Newhart hinted that she not do the song, as "after all this is California." she wouldn't drop the song, as, "after all, this is California" -- and she was out of a job. Her comment about Bessie Smith came in there somewhere, and the audience was somehow left with the impression that if Blues didn't serve The Cause it was impure.

Having read Irwin's diatribes in the Guardian for some time then myself, the ones labelled "reviews," I think that was it. Barbara also did some kind of Filipino jungle marching song, and the only way it fit was because it was the right cause. I developed a definite kink in those days about Bad Politically Correct Art. The feminist publications and organizations which were the river I swam in were full of it; every left splinter group out to organize us Peaceniks were full of it. Every single one of Irwin's reviews was aimed at revealing the ruling class thinking of every piece of popular culture. they got funny. Strangely enough, his strongest spleen was for a documentary on red-diaper babies produced by the Democratic-Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), sort of a left-left wing of the Democratic Party (now Democratis Socialists of America (DSA). The doc interviewed families who had been through McCarthyism and its effect on them. Irwin was scathing; these people couldn't possibly understand what it had been like, as they were now aligned with sellout types like DSA.

Pardon me; whoever said awhile back he was confrontational had it right; or, as my favorite Chicago folksinger once said, "Irwin's a putz."

Any thoughts, Irwin, if you are listening?