'D'y ever get one of them days, boys...'

January 8th – Today’s the day that Fabian (no last name, just ‘Fabian’) was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was one of the atypical all-American, clean-cut boys out of the Del Shannon, Pat Boone lookalike camp. Had several hits including ‘I’m a Man’, ‘Tiger’ and ‘This Friendly World’. He was... oh, Christ…enough!I’m bored with his pop history already. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who testified before Congress, during the ‘payola’ scandal that ‘did’ for Alan Freedman, that, yes, he had his voice doctored in recordings to make him sound better; so, Fabian was endowed with a certain level of the self-survival gene? A higher level than you think. What he also did, along with a number of other musicians of the day, was avoid the draft! Yup, this homage to air-brush photography and the wearer of hair so thickly over-sprayed that it would support a house brick and fracture walnuts, was seemingly from the same stable of such refuseniks as Ted Nugent; him of ‘Live Gonzo’ and ‘firearms for all’ fame. All one can say is he must have had some pretty strong convictions; right? Must have been prepared to face some full-on flak? Must have seen his countrymen fighting and dying for the flag and known that to support them would've just prolonged a struggle being fought for all the wrong reasons...? We've all got our own take on the war in Vietnam; mine is probably more outspoken than most, so let’s cut to the chase and follow our hero through to the bitter end. To avoid the draft took a lot of courage, y’ know? You could claim you were a conscientious objector but you had to have history to prove it. You couldn't just wake up, see your call-up papers on the front stoop and say, “I love the world, hate guns and the sight of blood makes me weep; even a rare steak has me blubbing”. And you’d have to endure the ‘slings and arrows’ too. ‘Conchies', in the lead up to the 14/18 war, were beaten, imprisoned, shot or tarred-and-feathered; sometimes all four, so no easy option. With no case history of conscientious objections what was our hero to do? Well there were one or two others who showed the way.Folk like Jesse Winchester (singer-songwriter for some of the best) who buggered off to Canada and left all behind them; home, friends, family, recording contracts…the biz.Folk like Carl Wilson (Beach Boys) who said something like, “I aint goin’, so sue me” to the U.S. government – which they did, apparently… for five years; a fight he won in the end.Folk like our Mr T. Nugent? He just forgot about personal hygiene; reasoning that, smelling like a freshly-wallowed pig, no one would serve alongside him…although you'd figure his love affair with guns would have stood him in good stead....maybe it was the thought of folk firing back that bothered him; moose don’t do that. Country Joe and the Fish put all this Vietnam kerfuffle into a protest-nutshell when they released ‘Feelin’ Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag’ so there were plenty of pointers as to the way to go… You know, you have to kind of wish that more of the 'F.U Uncle Sam' attitude had been voiced in the U.K. in the lead up to the “Weapons of Mass Destruction – Launch them Bombs in 45 Minutes” debacle of ten years ago, except it would have been, 'F.U. Mr Blair'…sorry, I digress.So, thank God that, back then, in the good old 60’s, there were rock musicians of the calibre of Fabian who had the courage to stand up and be counted. What did Fabian do to avoid the draft? Well, he got a letter from his doctor to state that joining the army would turn him into a homosexual.
“Napalm, Mr. Fabian?” 
“Yeah, fuck it, let’s burn!”
“Bamboo cages in swamp-water containing rats, Mr. Fabian?”
“Bring it on y’ pussies and starve the rats before you release ‘em.”
“Game of Russian roulette with a howitzer, Mr. Fabian?”
“You betcha. You use blanks, I’ll use lives and I’ll take two goes to your one.”
“Run the risk of unearthing your feminine gene, Mr. Fabian?”
“Whoa now, just you hold on there a second…”