The Unorthodox Website Blog

Turning 74 the end of next month, Jerry Lee Lewis has just released a new single ‘Mean Old Man’, written by Kris Kristofferson who’s provided Jerry with #1 hits in the past. The single is available for download from ITunes and Amazon USA. It can also be heard on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e22vFxBcEvI

This is taken from his upcoming CD to be released hopefully later this year. His last CD ‘Last Man Standing’ released three years ago was his biggest selling album of all time, earning a gold disk for over half-a-million copies sold in USA alone, and hitting #1, #4, #8 and #26 spots the week of its release on four Billboard charts (Indie, Country, Rock, Pop).

There are high hopes for the new album, which is described as Country orientated. The new single does not feature Jerry’s piano and is best described as New Country.

Some people who lived in the former Socialist countries are nostalgic for at least some things that kind of society gave them, others say the whole thing was a ’sham’ and not Socialist at all. As a former Communist, I most definitely side with the former.

As with all things in this world involving humans, the Socialism achieved was imperfect, you could even say distorted. But Socialism it most certainly was. The vast majority of the means of production, distribution and exchange were publicly owned, though the State monopolies prevalent in most Socialist countries, and also introduced into capitalist countries like Britain after the Second World War, were not always the most efficient form of public ownership. Cooperatives and small scale publicly owned enterprises competing in a Socialist market place worked much more efficiently in Yugoslavia, for instance. But some nationalized industries were far more efficient than their privatized versions which followed.

This is a difficult time for me. Many friends have fallen ill over the past 12 months, several been hospitalized, some with life-threatening situations. One has actually died.

The Friday before last my uncle rang to say that my mother’s sister, Olive, was very ill in hospital. I informed the rest of the family, and my mother and I visited her twice last week, and other cousins also visited. Then we learnt via my mobile phone on the way back from an organized day-trip to Hastings last Friday that my aunt had died a short while before.

Meanwhile Brian, an old friend of my partner George (now on the Other Side) and myself is also very ill in hospital. Neither Brian nor my aunt really able to recognize visitors. Brian, if he survives the current illness, will probably have to go into a permanent care home.

Not a blog about aliens, but about Jerry Lee Lewis, and how other popular music has passed me by as though I were living on Mars. Many people identify the past decades by the pop hits of the day, or the styles of music/fashions. So we have the rock’n'roll era, the Merseybeat era of the middle Sixties, the Flower Children/Hippie era of the late 1960s, the punk era, New Romantics, the Boy Bands, etc. I’m not an expert on most of these, because I completely missed most of them.

For me the decades are identified by Jerry Lee Lewis and HIS music. So we have the rock’n'roll era when his huge million sellers and popularity were about to knock Elvis off his throne, until the hoo-ha erupted over Jerry’s marriage to his young cousin, causing radio stations and TV in America to pull his records and live appearances off the air.

Yesterday, August 6th, was Hiroshima Day, and Sunday August 9th will be Nagasaki Day, when peace lovers remember the thousands of innocent men, women and children murdered by the United States military both on those terrible two days in 1945 and in the decades since from cancers caused by the nuclear fallout.

The lie has been spread that it was only these terrible weapons which ended the War in the Far East. Even if true, that was no justification, because there CAN be no justification under ANY circumstances whatsoever for dropping nuclear bombs on innocent men, women and children. No justification for burning little babies and children alive, and causing terrible deformities and cancers in those not yet even born.

However, since the Japanese considered it an honor to die for their Emperor and their country, hence the kamikazi pilots, it would have been about as effective as nuclear bombing Al Quaida and creating thousands more martyrs with many more lining up to fill their shoes.

Every adult in this country with a partner now has the option of either marriage or a civil partnership. But spare a thought for my generation of gay men and women, now in our 60s and 70s or older. If our partners have died then we have no status whatsoever.

I was with my partner for 21 years till his death in 1991, my friend Tom was with his partner for even longer, Frank was with his partner for about 40 years, so was Brian. All our partners have now died, mostly from old age afflictions like heart attacks and strokes. None of us has any marital/widowhood status whatsoever, our long partnerships are completely unrecognized by gays and straights alike, and we are all lucky not to have been disinherited, denied visiting rights to our partners if they ended up in intensive care in hospital, barred from their funerals, and perhaps thrown out of our homes during our bereavement.