VLVL2 (Chapter 6) - part 6

[Mike Weaver]

77.9 "standing midwatch guard"    Midwatch is a Naval term, probably an 
abbreviation of "midnight watch" since the midwatch (also known as the 
"balls to four") is the stint between midnight and 4 AM. It's followed by 
the dogwatch (4 AM to 8 AM). (BoW)

77.17  "Mario Savio" A leader of the Free Speech Movement which started at 
Berkeley University in the fall of 1964, when the administration asks 
students to stop their political activities on the "Bancroft Strip," in 
front of Sproul Plaza.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/calhistory/60s.html

77.18 "Sproul himself" Robert Gordon Sproul, President of University of 
California from 1930-1958
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CalHistory/brief-history.2.html

  77.19 "Tom Mooney"    Thomas J. Mooney was a famous jailed radical, for 
whom thousands of picket signs ("Free Tom Mooney") were carried by 
thousands of lefties during the twenties and thirties. In 1915, Mooney was 
the foremost labor radical in San Francisco. He was solidly against the 
United Railroads of San Francisco, which in turn put its money behind 
Charles M. Fickert, a leader of the "crush the unions" drive. On July 22, 
1916, Fickert framed Mooney by staging a homicidal dynamite blast on Market 
Street. Ten people were killed; Mooney (and Warren K. Billings) were held 
in prison until 1939, when they were pardoned by California Governor 
Culbert L. Olson. (BoW)

  78.6 "Wild and rowdy like the Clark Gable movie."   That's San Francisco 
[1936]. (BoW)

78.9-10 Anson Weeks and his Orchestra at the Top of the Mark - for info, see:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/weeks.html (Burhan)

78.17 I find here one of several acknowlegements TRP includes to his imitators:
Eddie Enrico and his Hong Kong Hotshots sure sounds a whole lot like 
Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Kavaliers.  The film predates VL by six 
years, so... (Bruce Sublett)

78.29-31 - Ramon Raquello... Mars -  referring to Orson Welles infamous
broadcast of 1938. See:
http://www.irdp.co.uk/hoax.htm (Burhan)

78.30 "La Cumparsita" - Tango's Most Famous Song
http://totango.net/cumpar.html

78.31-32 - boogie-woogie: "a piano style developed around 1900,
probably in New Orleans... an up-tempo 12-bar blues over a driving,
repititious bass figure... [it] became a popular music in the 1930s, often in
big band arrangements..." from a basic description of this piano style at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/sostudies/music/boogie.htm

78.36 'long as she ... stayed on pitch.... could've been just about
anybody'  - 'Band singer' is the designation I have heard for what Sasha
is describing. Someone who can carry a tune in front of a band, but would
not be a featured performer. Of course Sasha had daydreams of being
Billie Holiday, who sang (but never recorded - due to a labor dispute)
with Count Basie. Billie, not just a band singer, modernised singing,
bring the rhythmic inovations of Lester Young (of the Basie band) -
relaxed feeling, less emphasis on the beat - to vocal performance. (He
named her Lady Day and she gave him the nickname Prez - [president of the
saxophone]) (Neil Conaty)

79.9-10 "Chinese references in those days [were] code for opium products" - 
I seem to remember that this linkage was used to fuel a "Yellow Peril" 
paranoia - anti-opium, especially when linked to the spectre of white 
slavery. How long did this association with China continue in terms of 
slang, popular refence, culture, etc.? Incidentally, I also recall that the 
book "Idols of Perversity" by Bram Dijkstra (on decadent and symbolist 
images of women) contains some reproductions of extraordinary paintings 
which depict wealthy, elegant women rapt in opium hazes... (Burhan)