Riding a Phantom Train

 
 
The well of material that Charlie Pickett and the Eggs were pulling from was evident from their first two singles, B-side covers of “White Light, White Heat” and “Slow Death.” Long lives for the members were in doubt. They were a band full of junkies who scored their dope in the Overtown.
Overtown and Liberty City are the Black neighborhoods in Miami that erupted into riot after the 1980 acquittal of four police officers involved in the beating death of a black salesman and former marine, after he ran a red light. According to the prosecutor at the trial, the police cracked his skull “like an egg.” The riots had an effect on the band beyond limiting their ability to score dope.
Live at the Button is an album of ferocious live rock ‘n’ roll. It’s an album that hit like a ton of bricks upon release. It’s steeped in the type of songs that draw from the same well as their previous singles. But there’s more. Much more. Five songs into the record, the band slows down the tempo for the first and last time. It’s a cover of Manfred Mann’s “Mister You’re a Better Man Than I.”
“Could you condemn a man
If your faith he doesn’t hold?
Say the color of his skin
Is the color of his soul?
Or could you say if men
For king and country all must die?
Well, mister you’re a better man than I”
Manfred Mann was one of the first rock/pop musicians to openly hold an anti-apartheid political view. He left his native South Africa in 1961 in protest and emigrated to England.
The final statement on Live at the Button, however, is an original called “Phantom Train.” It’s a dream sequence in which Pickett is riding on a train with dead poets and authors. Sitting in the back with Edgar Allan Poe and Aleister Crowley is Annabel Lee, a character from a Poe poem by the same name.
But there’s another passenger on the train, Arthur McDuffie. He is not a poet or author, nor a character from any of their writings. McDuffie was the Black man who was murdered in the incident that led to the Miami riots of 1980. McDuffie is the only person on the train who Pickett engages in conversation. McDuffie tells him that it’s “suicide” for a Black man to show even the slightest lack of respect to police. It’s what has become known as “the talk” that many Black men and women give to their children.
Live at the Button isn’t just a great rock ‘n’ roll record. It’s a reminder that Black Lives Matter is a long overdue movement.
(The prosecutor in the trial of the four policemen charged in McDuffie’s murder was Janet Reno. The case was torpedoed from the start, when Reno failed to challenge an all-male, all-white jury.)