American Bison

A good day for hiking. And, for the first time since the beginning of summer, greeting the buffalo. Click for larger image -- if you wish. 

When I was hiking through the woods, a strong picture image of approaching bison came to mind, and fifteen minutes later, there they were.

A strangely flowing hybrid landscape in cloudy light. The black shadow is an idiosyncrasy of the well-seasoned camera. 

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Buffalo Stance

With statue of a White Buffalo a few years ago, Comanche Center, Lawton.

The American Bison / Buffalo was nearly wiped out, but thankfully, not quite. Most people have a pretty good sense, I think, of buffalo herds ranging in the American West in the 1800s, but I suspect that fewer have contemplated the reality that there were bison in the East, too: among the First Nations (to use a Canadian term), yes, but even -- through the 1700s into the dawn of the nineteenth century -- among the Europeans and Africans arrived or arriving from across the Atlantic. Of those Eastern herds, spectral traces remain. Some of my immediate family, for instance, lived on land that abutted a Buffalo Creek in North Carolina, in the twentieth century. Pretty mind-blowing, really. Before incoming settlers, servants and slaves arrived in North America, there had been an extensive range of European Bison, too.

All the above leads into me having the great good fortune of being able to hang out with these Bison (with accompanying feathered friends) today, after a 95-minute walk through nearby woods. Despite being almost destroyed at one point in the not too distant past, the American Bison, I believe now, is here to stay, in some numbers at least. If you click on this image -- taken on this very day, May 2, 2014 -- you'll see the whole thing.

The historical Bison range-- mostly before the modern state and provincial borders were even in place. (Source: Wiki Commons).

Bison grazing quietly in a field flanked by woods, much as they did in the East. Today, man!

Today's Rune: Joy.  

Paint Your Cave, or: Petroglyphs Are Us

Well, given it's Mary Leakey's centennial (1913-1996), now's as good a time as any to dive back into petroglyphs and cave art.  

There's a great scene in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Hushpuppy is hiding in a box, drawing pictograms, little pictures that look for all the world like cave and rock art. At one point, she notes this:  "I see that I'm a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they're gonna find it . . . They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy."

And, judging from the above cover for Keith Harvey's poetry book Petroglyphs (2008), we're gonna know that once there were creatures that look a lot like bison, buffalo. That once there were herds of bison that covered whole areas of North America, from as far east as North Carolina (we once lived by Buffalo Creek) to as far west and north as Alaska.

That people can see petroglyphs, cave art and other evidence; that there were people living before us, way before us; that here we are now, looking at the traces they left behind. Mind-blowing, really. 

Today's Rune: Signals.

  

Oliver Loving, Bose Ikard and the Loving-Goodnight Trail

Bose Ikard was born in slavery but died a free man. He was one of thousands of "black cowboys" who rode freely after the Union victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Thanks to a tip from my Dad, I was able to find his grave in Weatherford, Texas, at the City Greenwood Cemetery. Ikard worked with Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight along the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Loving is buried at City Greenwood Cemetery, too.  

Weatherford, on the the Western frontier fringe of the CSA by the end of the Civil War, is located by car less than half an hour's drive west of Fort Worth.

Samuel France, my great great grandfather, was one of some 50,000 Union troops to Texas at war's end. His unit, the 31st Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, patroled the region between Indianola, Victoria and San Antonio, in part to reinforce the Juneteenth-announced carrying out of the Emancipation Proclamation throughout recalcitrant areas of Texas.   
 

Grave of Oliver Loving (1812-1867), the "Dean of Texas Trail Drivers." He was mortally wounded in a skirmish with Comanche warriors and died at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
 

Main Texas cattle trails after the American Civil War. The Goodnight-Loving Trail is the solid red curve, stretching from Fort Belknap, Texas, to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Also marked are the Chisholm Trail and the Great Western Trail. Much of this was also American bison territory and frquented by Comanche, Kiowa, Apache and other hunter-warriors until the destruction of the buffalo herds between 1874 and 1884. Charles Goodnight (1836-1929) helped save the bison from complete extinction by preserving small herds on ranches.
 

Bose Ikard historical marker adjacent to his grave, which is within easy walking distance from Loving's.
 

Bose Ikard (circa 1843-1929), RIP. The 1859-1928 dates are wrong on his grave marker. Charles Goodnight's epitaph reads: "Bose Ikard served with me four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked a duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior." Ikard died in January 1929, Goodnight in December of the same year.  

Today's Rune: Journey.

Forests and Trees

Like the First Nations and the American Bison, the ancient growth forests of "the Lower 48" were decimated not that long ago, and in short order. However, some stands remain, some ancient trees remain, many First Nations remain and the American Bison has been saved, barely, from extinction. I've been in a quest for all of my adult life to connect with these categorical survivors, symbolically and in person, so it was with great curiosity that I picked up a library copy of Eric Rutkow's American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Scribner, 2012). Will report back on this book when I'm done reading it.




































What do older trees and ancient forests mean for you? 

Today's Rune: Flow.  

Fort Griffin Texas Safari

In the spirit of Louis L'Amour, last Friday I threaded my way through broken hills of the "Shatterbelt," and made it eventually to Fort Griffin and vicinity under a hot sun. It being above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit (37.8+ Celsius) when I arrived, Jane Lenoir, the knowledgeable, energetic and funny site manager, suggested I roam about the 500-or-so-acre grounds in an electric vehicle, which I did and proved to be great fun. It's so quiet out there. Some scrub vegetation, shapely clouds, light hot breezes, a handful of grasshoppers, ghostly fort ruins and nary a person or bird in sight. Astonishing, really.  
 

Built in a strategic area of Texas after the American Civil War, Fort Griffin served as base camp or respite point for cavalry operations, gunfighters, buffalo hunters and cattledrivers. The adjacent Flats hosted saloons and hookers, gambling and treachery. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday met here; Bat Masterson and Hurricane Minnie came through; Major General William T. Sherman inspected the fort; and let's not forget the appearance of John Wesley Hardin (son of a preacher man), nor the gambler Lottie Deno, nor Pat Garrett. The so-called "Tin Hat Brigade," a vigilante group, terrorized the area in the mid-1870s. There was, in fact, much in the way of "unauthorized" murder and mayhem around those parts. Which reminds me: Cormac McCarthy's creepy 1985 novel Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West pretty much ends at Fort Griffin and the Flats.   

  

Massive cattle drives came through, too, along the Goodnight-Loving trail right after the Civil War, and along the Western Cattle Trail (Fort Griffin-Dodge City). Cattle were brought in to replace the American Bison, which was virtually wiped out by the time Fort Griffin was abandoned in 1881.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.  

The Medium is the Message: Cassette Tapes

". . . an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. Because we are benumbed by any new technology — which in turn creates a totally new environment — we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as we’ve done with jazz, and as we’re now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art. . . -- “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy (March 1969).

As an influential medium, the cassette tape took off in the 1970s, overcoming reel-to-reel and the 8-Track and challenging vinyl LPs. But behind it emerged the CD, and behind that, digital downloads. What next?

According to Kara Rose in "Cassette Tapes See New Life after MP3s," USA Today (October 3, 2011 - updated), cassette sales peaked in 1990 with over 440 million sold. New "herds" were "killed off" as quickly and brutally as the American Bison after the American Civil War, but like the Buffalo in the 20th century and with care and consideration in the 21st, cassettes have made a modest comeback. It's worth noting that cassettes cost about one tenth of what vinyl did to produce -- though they certainly were not priced that way in the 1980s. Nowadays, cassettes and CDs can be produced in small batches by musicians and their associates -- and priced competitively. The not quite "old environment" has become, as Marshall McLuhan phrases it above,  "more visible" with the passage of time. Now we have so many options that a person can barely know where to turn at any particular moment -- or so it would seem by daily observation. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

Survival of the Caddo

Two watercolors by Lieutenant Lino Sánchez y Tapia, late 1820s: Comanches (above) and Cados/Caddos (below).

Cecile Elkins Carter describes this picture in her Caddo Indians: Where We Came From (University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), pages 260-261: "The woman wore a calf-length cloth coat over a skirt and long blouse. Her blouse had a ruffled collar and was pinned on the front with silver discs, graduating in size from the largest at the top. Her hair was nearly hidden by a turban; she wore moccasins and cloth leggings." On the right side of the watercolor: "The Caddo man wore a long cloth shirt with ruffles at the cuffs and a V neck. His leggings were buckskin, and garters of ribbon or yarn were tied below his knees . . . his face was painted with charcoal, and he wore a gleaming nose ornament."

Though the Caddo may have already lost as much as 75% of their 1700 population base by the 1820s and 1830s, there was more loss to come in the form of "Americans." As Carter puts it, "Apaches, Osages, Chickasaws, and Choctaws stole their horses and killed or made captives of some of their people, but no tribe lived on Caddo land without their permission. The French and Spanish had claimed to possess Caddo country, but neither denied tribal rights. . ." Such would not be the case thereafter because "Americans intended to dispossess . . . and permanently occupy their lands" (page 241). Above is a map indicating (to the right, or East) parts of Texas once inhabited by the Caddo. Much of this land was not incidentally buffalo/bison country, too.  

Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Cassette Tape, Part II

Yet another commercial cassette tape, a copy of the sleeve for David Bowie's Low (1977).  It -- the format not the content -- is now an obsolete artifact. The little symbol just behind Bowie is for "Dolby sound."  The full throttle transition to CDs came in the 1990s, when sales began dropping from hundreds of millions of individual tapes sold annually to a tiny fraction, in the thousands, by 2010, a collapse as dramatic as that of the American Bison in the 1880s. The Sony Walkman for cassettes is now on the verge of extinction, too.  It was fun while it lasted. However, vinyl records are cooler, and remain in limited production. It's worth noting the American Bison has made a slight comeback in the past century.

Today's Rune: Movement.  

What If the American Revolution Had Fizzled Out?

Between the Dodge Challenger ad mentioned in yesterday's post ("There's a coupla things America got right. Cars -- and freedom") and Michele Bachmann's statements in Iowa on January 21, it occurred to me to ask the question, "What if the American Revolution had just fizzled out?" And: "How would things be different now if it had?"

But first, Bachmann's claims (as reported in numerous outlets, and available in video form on the internet): "How unique in all of the world, that one nation was the resting point from people groups [sic] all across the world. It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status. . . Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" Bachmann characterized slavery as an "evil," but then claimed "we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."  Presumably, Waterloo, Iowa native Bachmann hopes to become the next president of the United States.

In response to the Dodge Challenger ad, is freedom one of the things "America got right"?  

During the American Revolution, rebel-owned slaves who joined the British-Loyalist side were offered freedom; and indeed, many who sided with the British and Loyalists were relocated to Canada, the West Indies and other places after the war, as free people. Most slaves linked with the Patriots/rebels remained slaves after the war. 

The British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807, outlawing the transportation of slaves throughout the empire and eventually treating it as piracy. In 1833, the British Crown assented to the Slavery Abolition Act, which was then phased in by 1840. By contrast, the United States did not abolish slavery nationally until 1865, at the end of a bloody civil war.  It also did little to help those emancipated, and it took another hundred years to pass major civil rights legislation.  Who "got [it] right" more, the Americans, or the British?   

As for Bachmann's statements, she is just flat out historically wrong. Like Sarah Palin, she might want to read more and speak less. I seriously doubt she would ever be fit to be president of anything, let alone a country. 

In the USA, the American Revolution is treated like a sacred cow.  What if the areas now known as Canada and the United States were part of a great British Commonwealth, maybe called the Commonwealth of North America? Would that be a terrible thing for the world? 

What if: no War of 1812, no American Civil War, and an earlier transition away from slavery?  

And a million other matters such as, how about the American Bison?  What if there had been a massive Crown Preserve set aside for ritualized small scale royal hunting expeditions, thus preventing their near-extermination in the 1800s?  What if the people of the Comancheria had been charged as guardians of the Bison, and largely left alone except for annual royal hunts?

In all seriousness for those now residing in the USA, do you think your life would be that different living in the British Commonwealth of North America? Is there anything that really makes the USA exceptional in the world? 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

The Comanche Empire

Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008) provides a riveting reassessment of North American history, particularly in the area of what is now the US Southwest and Northern Mexico. It opens up new vistas for inquiry and is nothing less than mind-blowing.

That's the short version. One could easily devote several posts combing through Hämäläinen's tome, bit for now here's one thread. The Comanche (operating from a core area called the Comancheria, once they harnessed the horse and moved out of the mountains and into the plains in the late 1600s) were major players in shaping historical developments in the 1700s and 1800s.



The Comanche Empire kept the Spanish at bay, mostly confined to Santa Fe and a ribbon of territory down the Rio Grande through New Mexico, and also around San Antonio, Texas. Heavy and repeated Comanche raids into Mexico in the 1800s undermined organized development in the northern regions of the Mexican Republic, leaving all of Mexico vulnerable to attack by the industrializing United States.

Once the United States defeated Mexico, it eventually destroyed the Comanche Empire, too, in large part by nearly exterminating the American bison herds that helped sustain the Comanche way of life.

Not in the book, but a probable corollary: an unintended consequence of the US takeover of Mexican and Comanche areas will continue to come home to roost for the rest of the 21st century: the demographic Hispanicization of much of the US Southwest. In one of those great ironies of history, US imperialism trumped Comanche imperialism, only to bring about now what the Spanish and Mexicans had hoped to achieve centuries ago -- expanding Hispanic influence in those areas.

Today's Rune: The Self.

Where the Buffalo Roamed

In the late 1970s and for the next twenty years, my parents had a thirty-acre land tract with home and outbuildings in rural northern Durham County, North Carolina, they called La Terre. It was bordered in back by Buffalo Creek, a small tributary of the Haw River, which is in turn a tributary of the Cape Fear River, eventually flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.

I only lived there briefly, maybe a year in all, but helped do some of the routine maintenance work from time to time. With friends and family, I also explored all around the area, which was hilly and heavily wooded in back. Over the years, we found old wells at abandoned homestead sites, a few old grave sites, and a number of Native American artifacts like spear points and arrowheads and scraping tools. But it was the very name Buffalo Creek that piqued my interest. Where there buffalo/bison in the area at one time?

Sure enough there were, right into historical times. For at least up until the 1700s, Piedmont North Carolina was situated at the Eastern fringe of where the buffalo roamed -- to me, a mind-blowing realization at the time.

Between the 1700s and early 1800s, the bison population of North America peaked at perhaps seventy million, only to be hunted into near extinction near the end of the long US-tribal wars, by the 1880s. From seventy million to a few thousand buffalo in a generation or two -- can you imagine?

Just short of extinction, the bison as a species (or subspecies) was saved by a handful of smart people and has been somewhat repopulated, up to more than a third of a million in the USA as of 2009. Even so, two thirds of those are for food, and most have cattle in their lineage. (I've tried buffalo beef myself, it's leaner than cattle beef.)

Last but not least, I remember seeing a large herd of buffalo near the South Dakota Badlands in 1982. Do you have bison in your area, or were there at one time?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

What's on your feeble mind Duane?

Let's just give in and give up. Democrats and Independents and Libertarians, go home, let the Republican way of life rule the world. Let them drill off the coasts of Florida and California, let them build a hundred nuclear plants, let them dump toxic waste in all the wetlands. Kick back and enjoy. They'll be doing us all a favor. Mass collective suicide, better faster than slower, better sooner than later. The Rapture's a -comin' anyway, and this is What Jesus Would Do, isn't it?

What am I talking about? Well, our kindly president G.W. Bush and his even kindlier, gentler potential "conservative" successor John McCain both eagerly want to lift the Outer Continental Shelf Moratorium (which has been in place since 1981), thus ending our national collective nightmare and bringing Him more American Oil Gas and Glory! Amen, Amen!

Didn't God give us Dominion, and don't we intend to Dominate, Damage and Destroy everything in Our Path, Cheek by Other Cheek?


One of the things I certainly do remember from the Reagan years -- William S. Burroughs and snippets from his "Thanksgiving Prayer" (Tornado Alley, 1986):

Thanks
For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

*Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison*

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on
wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify

until

the bare lies shine through.

[Yes, & thanks for those elections in 1968, 1972, 1980,

1984, 1988 and 2000

Thanks for keeping the half-wit in charge

in 2004

Thanks for a Silent Majority

And The Moral Majority

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks,

Now please give us More!]

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Toussaint

Angela Bassett turned 49 today. As of now, she will play Suzanne Louverture in Toussaint, Danny Glover's biopic about Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (Don Cheadle). Already controversial, the film will be shot in Venezuela and is supported by Hugo Chávez (Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías).

Iggy Pop's "Zombie Birdhouse" (1982) was recorded in Haiti. "No synthesizers were used on this record."

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Birthdays: Emilie Juliane of Barby-Mühlingen, Jean de La Bruyère, Jules Laforgue, T. E. Lawrence, Henry Charles Bukowski, Fess Parker, Bill Evans, Robert Culp, Eydie Gormé (b. Edith Gormezano), Julie Newmar (b. Julie Chalene Newmeyer), Carol Moseley Braun, Angela Bassett, Madonna (b. Madonna Louise Ciccone), Timothy Hutton, Emily Robison.

Bon voyage!

When the World is Running Down

Turn on my V.C.R., same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I show,
Same tape I've had for years
I sit in my old car, same one I've had for years
Old battery's running down, it ran for years and years.

-- "When the World is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around" -- The Police, Zenyatta Mondatta (1980)

"Teenage command performance"

If you've never seen The T.A.M.I. Show (1964) or the The Big T.N.T. Show (1966), keep an eye and ear out for them! These are real life-affirming treats! I saw them so long ago in different formats (16 mm film, Beta video cassette) that the current underground DVD version of T.A.M.I. doesn't quite jive with my memories. It seems to be patched together, and though it may be complete, the sound quality is horrendous. Even so, it's better than nothing! First, my usual mantra in the form of a question: why haven't these been remastered and re-released in digital format? In this case, it may be mired in legal issues. Apparently Dick Clark owns the rights, and he didn't look too hot last time I saw him on TV. Please, please, please bring these out to the bigger world again!

“Don’t forget the Motor City”

Jack Nitzsche and Steve Binder, the guys who put The T.A.M.I. Show together, are rightfully famous for their work in music and film. Nitzsche worked with all sorts of singers and bands, and Binder directed the "Elvis Comeback Special" in 1968, the one where the King comes back in black, lean and hungry for his dramatic if relatively short-lived rebound.

What the heck is a T.A.M.I., anyway? Answer: Teenage Awards Music International, a scholarship program that didn't last long, I guess. More importantly, who performs on this particular special? Go-go dancers abound, including Teri Garr and Toni Basil! It'd be worth it just for them, too -- so cool! So crazy! Then you have the big bands and performers like Chuck Berry, who trades songs with Gerry and the Pacemakers, followed by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles doing their choreographed song and foot dance routine in front of 2,500+ screaming fans at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Smokey and crew look spiffy, too, in their gentlemen's attire. They aren't the only ones to do Detroit proud. Next comes the youthful incarnation of Marvin Gaye, clean-shaven, finger-snapping and wearing an all-white Zoot Suit and bowtie. Backed by the Blossoms, he hits his stride with "Can I Get a Witness," which was covered by the Rolling Stones that same year. His "Hitch Hike" is given a cool treatment, too. You can see Teri Garr wiggle by with a Batman Riddler-like motif on the odd top she sports.

Next comes a teaser for the Beach Boys, who were cut out of some versions along the way (legal issues again?),* followed by the adorable Leslie Gore in well-sprayed hairdo. Her rendition of "You Don't Own Me" is really something to dig! The camera has some soft focus around the edges as it zooms in on her expressive face. A true freedom song, no question. Jan and Dean, who sound like the Beach Boys, have already skated in to introduce the show and have also provided a cheesy/corny theme song; after Leslie Gore they do their "Little Old Lady from Pasadena."

Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas come next. They are low-key and don't really fit the energy of the other performers -- not their fault, though. Billy looks like Andy Kaufman playing Bobby Darin and sounds a little like Roy Orbison.

Things get crazy again when Diana Ross & the Supremes kick into gear. There's a telling shot of Queen Diana in the opening credits, applying lipstick. Her vocals are powerful, and even performing for a mostly teenage audience she looks like a tough customer. Full Motown regalia, of course. Don't forget the wig hats!

The Barbarians sound pretty cool, a little rough like a pop garage band and a little like the "shape of things to come" a la The Yardbirds. "Can't You Understand?" Groovy riff, groovier go-go dancing up on the stage set behind them.

Next comes THE PERFORMANCE -- when HEAVEN MEETS HELL ON PLANET EARTH: the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please himself -- the one, the only: JAMES BROWN and his Famous Flames! This section must be seen to be believed -- which is why he's the only one of the whole special singled out by Sting and the Police in their little anthem quoted above. It's just crazy to behold -- the booming bass line, the horns, the tuxedo dancers, James in complete mastery of the situation, great pompadour hair and flamboyant outfit. If you hate James Brown, though, you'll want to stab yourself -- just like you would listening to Live at the Apollo. I love it! He does the whole cape routine and everything. He and his Famous Flames end with an insanely wild version of "Night Train." Are you ready for the Night Train? (Screaming, biserk audience). One more time for the Night Train!

You almost feel sorry for the brand-spanking-new Rolling Stones, because they have to follow King James. Keith Richards once quipped that following him was one of the biggest mistakes of their careers -- and one of the hardest to bear. Still, the young Stones are great, too; plenty for everyone! Mick Jagger is Mick the Star, Keith is Keith -- gang's all there: Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, even Brian Jones (lookng a little zoned out on something, no surprise there). The bad boys look pretty dashing, in fact, and Mick is already very charismatic with his performance -- there is no doubt who fronts the stage show. The crowd goes wild! "It's Off the Hook," man! Next they cover Irma Thomas's "Time Is On My Side," which I still like better when she sings it. But the audience eats it up! It's pretty funny when he does the talk-sing part, too, very campy. Appropriately, "It's All Over Now" is the last real song of the whole show, followed by them playing "It's All Right" or I'm All Right, or Somebody's All Right and something called "Get Together" -- when finally all the other performers pour out on stage, go-go dancers galore, to a crescendo ending of screams and wails. James Brown, of course, the former boxer, seizes center stage. All right, indeed!

The Big T.N.T. Show

I only got to see this one twice, and here it's Tina Turner who's the real revelation of raw power. Stand back, Ike! Bo Diddley is cool, and a loose array of other performers and bands as diverse as Ray Charles, Roger Miller (an underrated and ultimately tragic song writer if there ever was one), the Byrds, and the Ronettes, among others. Tina Turner's performance was a joy to behold, certainly.

The T.A.M.I. and T.N.T. shows were mangled and butchered together in a horrible thing called That Was Rock in 1984, with Chuck Berry not at his best as "narrator." (If you want to keep pure thoughts about Chuck, don't ever see Hail Hail Rock n Roll!)

*The missing Beach Boys section is appended to the underground DVD, and they sound good.

Are You Ready for the Night Train? All Aboard!