Text by Robert Barry Francos
Doing some cleaning, I recently came across a stack of ticket stubs from shows and events I had seen in New York. While the shows the tickets represent is hardly inclusive to the shows I have attended, and it mostly certainly does not include clubs like Max’s and CBGBs, here are some of them. Note that I have some with no dates, so I will leave them blank. Notes will be in [brackets]. I have also added who I attended to the shows with, if I remember, or in certain cases, I know but do not want to say. Here they are in order of date:
* NY Rangers vs. Detroit Red Wing, Madison Square Garden, Feb 4, 1970 ($4.00) [My father would occasionally get tickets from the office pool]
* The Kinks, Felt Forum, Nov 27, 1974 ($6.50) [After the first half where they played older material, they returned and did the entire Preservation; attended with Bernie Kugel]
* Marcel Marceau, City Center, Mar 25, 1975 ($7.95) [Was on the guest list after interviewing him earlier in the day; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Mireille Mathieu, Carnegie Hall, April 8, 1975 ($5.00) [Beautiful voice; learned about her from the Des O’Connor Show on television; this was just 3 months before the first time I went to CBGB’s and was introduced to the Ramones; attended this show stag]
* Alice Cooper / Suzi Quatro, Madison Square Garden, May 5, 1975 ($6.50) [last row of the balcony, dead center, and he looked like a spec; saw Cooper a total of 4 times]
* Mary Travers / Paul Davis, The Bottom Line, May 19, 1975 ($4.00) [I saw her do the same show twice, and she wore the same dress… other date below; RIP]
* Rolling Stones / Dem Boys, Madison Square Garden, Jun 27, 1975 ($12.50) [Dem Boys was pure torture: a sea of steel drums in an echoing auditorium; it sounded like one long and continuous note, and I have not liked the sound of steel drums since]
* New York Cosmos vs. San Jose Earthquakes, Downing Stadium (Randalls Island), Jul 23, 1975 ($4.00) [Pele was in the Cosmos then; it was a long day, going into double overtime, and by the time we left, my backside was killing me, sitting that long on concrete seats]
* Mary Travers, The Bottom Line, Jul 28, 1975 ($4.00) [Attended with Bernie Kugel]
* Sparks / Mott, Avery Fisher Hall, Nov 19, 1975 ($6.50) [Opening was Mott; note that it was not Mott the Hoople; was on the guest list after interviewing Sparks the evening before: ffanzeen.blogspot.com/2009/04/bad-interviews-lynyrd-skynyrd-and.html; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Roxy Music, Beacon, Nov 26, 1975 (?) [Saw them twice, the other at the Academy of Music; attended with Bernie Kugel]
* Linda Ronstadt / Andrew Gold, Beacon Theatre, Dec 4, 1975 ($7.50) [Our seats were the very last row, left side; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Patti Smith, The Bottom Line, Dec 27, 1975 ($5.50) [The infamous show that was bootlegged everywhere; RIP Richard Sohl; attended with Bernie Kugel]
* NY Rangers vs. Buffalo Sabres, Madison Square Garden, Dec 10, 1975 ($6.00)
* The Who / Golden Earrings, Madison Square Garden, Mar 10, 1976 ($8.50) [The Who was amazing, of course, and did a large chunk of Tommy]
* Sparks, Bottom Line, Dec 21, 1976 ($4.50)
* Patti Smith Group, The Palladium, Dec 31, 1976 ($8.50)
* The Dictators / The Dead Boys, CBGB Theatre, Dec 18, 1977 ($7.50) [RIP Stiv]
* Patti Smith Group / Richard Hell, CBGB Theatre, Dec 29, 1977 ($7.50)
* Harry Chapin, Central Park, Aug 11, 1979 ($4.50) [Saw Harry a number of times; RIP; attended with Dennis Concepcion]
* Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Club Tomato, Sep [?], 1979 ($4.00) [Attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Herman’s Hermits [sans Peter Noone], Club Tomato, Sep 20, 1979 ($4.00) [Also saw HH with Noone once, and saw Noone without the HH once; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* The Uncle Floyd Show, The Bottom Line, Dec 6, 1979 ($5.50) [attended with Alan Abramowitz and Stacy Mantel]
* The Tourists / Speedies, The Bottom Line, Apr 15, 1980 ($6.00) [The Tourists were Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart, soon to be the Eurythmics; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Alice Cooper (New York, New York show), Palladium, Aug 15, 1980 ($12.50)
* Dictators, ?, Sep 12, 1980 ($8.00)
* Rockpile / Moon Martin, The Ritz, Nov 24, 1980 ($10.00) [Have no memory of Moon Martin at all; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Blotto / Doug & the Slugs, The Bottom Line, Mar 16, 1981 ($7.00) [On guest list; RIP Doug Bennett]
* Franken and Davis, Savoy, May 20, 1981 ($3.00) [The show was a disappointment, despite the famous audience members, and many of SNL members guest appearing; this was the night I insulted David Bowie to his face; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Alice Cooper / The Spiders, Savoy, Aug 14, 1981 (12.50)
* NY Rangers vs. Buffalo Sabres, Madison Square Garden, Jan 3, 1982 ($8.00)
* Mireille Mathieu, Carnegie Hall, Apr 10, 1982 ($10) [The whole audience was full of Russians, which I found surprising; didn’t hear a word of English from the audience the whole night; attended with Alan Abramowitz]
* Dave Edmunds / NRBQ, The Ritz, May 17, 1982 ($12.50) [This is around the time Dave Edmunds was a phenomenon, and rightly so; while I respected NRBQ’s talent, I found them so boring, in a Phish kind of way, and my ex-FFanzeen managing editor had quit because I refused to publish an article about them; attended with Alan Abramowitz and Stacy Mantel]
* Let’s Active / Fuzztones, Irving Plaza, Oct 21, 1983 ($8.00) [I had met Lynn Blakey of LA at a party while on vacation in North Carolina a couple of years earlier; the Fuzztones are always great]
* The Animals, Beacon Theater, Nov 12, 1983 ($15.00) [on guest list; night I met them backstage and interviewed Eric Burdon (you can find the interview on an earlier blog); saw the same 2-1/2 hour show on the same tour earlier in the year at Shea Theater in Buffalo, NY; Attended with Mary Anne Cassata]
* Monkees Reunion, Jones Beach Theater, Jul 17, 1986 (14.75) [No Mike]
* Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Mar 14, 1987 (?) [This may have been the time at the Bottom Line; I’ve seen JR a few times; attended with Dawn Kugel]
* Sweet Honey in the Rock, Washington Irving High School [Gramercy Park], Jan 14, 1990 ($19.00) [Another group I have seen a few times; some of the most magical harmonies; attended with my partner and Tamani Wooley]
How many of these have you attended? Feel free to leave a comment on the blog!
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Showing posts with label Rolling Stones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rolling Stones. Show all posts
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
DVD Review: “The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years”
Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen
Images from the Internet
The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years (Limited Collector’s Edition)
Directed by Alex Westbrook
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual, 2010
99 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedreams.co.uk
MVDvisual.com
The Rolling Stones are a three-act play, all positioned around lead guitar: The first was the Brian Jones early period (1962-1969), the middle were the Mick Taylor years of growth (1969-1974), and then there is the Ronnie Wood time of pop malaise and decline (1974-present). Obviously, from the title, this British telley documentary deals with the center portion.
While I’m more of a Brian Jones era kinda guy, there is no doubt that the Rolling Stones had a growth spurt under Mick Taylor’s tenure that was bolstered in part by (and not given enough credit for here) producer Jimmy Miller a nice (though drug addled) Brooklyn boy who was very approachable the few times I met him in Joe Viglione’s kitchen in the 1980s.
The difference between the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor phases of the Rolling Stones is sort of like silver-era DC and Marvel Comics, relatively: DC had one issue complete stories with exemplary yet uncomplicated art, while Marvel was into pushing the envelope with story arcs and art by, well, Jack Kirby – the Mick Taylor of comics - at his finest.
During his five-and-a-half years with the Stones, Mick Taylor worked on five albums that ranged from some of the more musically adept the band were to produce to signs of spinning out of control.
Before I jump ahead, I would like to comment that one of the many things I liked about this particular documentary is that when it says it covers the Stones during the Mick Taylor years, it means the focus is on the Stones part, not just the Mick Taylor influence. They use his tenure as a guide rather than a solitary viewing direction. That being said, I recommend watching the extra first here, which is a 6 minute short, hosted by the oft-Chrome Dreams-used writer Alan Clayson and musician extraordinaire, John Mayall, which tells of Taylor’s pre-Stones life, with Clayson handling the beginning, and Mayall describing Taylor’s influence in the Bluesbreakers. This will set the viewer up nicely for the main feature.
As with many of the Alex Westbrook British bios, this one is well researched and the wide use of clips covers the topic well, including bits by the band (here, mostly live cuts) and some of the other music discussed as influences, or that, say, Keith was into at the moment. There are no complete songs, but that’s okay because that’s not what this is all about.
The selection of experts here is well chosen, generally, including the aforementioned Clayson and Mayall, and includes guitarist (of the Only Ones and Pink Fairies) and writer John Perry, some music historians like Nigel Williamson, Robert Greenfield, and Robert “D-“ Christgau, and Exile on Main Street studio musicians Al Parkins (of the Burrito Bros. on steel guitar) and Bill Plummber (bass). Even a puffy Mick Taylor has a recent, if brief interview toward the end of the program(me) concerning his leaving the Stones. What I want to know is where are all the commentary by the women in the Stones’ world? Where’s Marianne Faithful? Anita “pretty-pretty” Pallenberg? Surely there are female authors or experts on the period? There is a lot of testosterone on this documentary.
Okay, getting back to the subject at hand…
The first single Mick Taylor worked on for the Rolling Stones was the killer “Honky Tonk Women.” His fretwork sets fire to it. Taylor’s first live performance with band was the concert two days after Brian Jones’ drowning (recommended reading on Jones’s death: A.E. Hotchner’s 1990 Blown Away). Talk about pressure for the 20 year old guitar wizard.
While recording their LP, Let It Bleed (produced by Jimmy Miller), the first with Mick Taylor and their eighth in total, a lot of the ideas were from previous sessions, and Taylor was as much a session man as a key member. At this point, there is a discussion on the DVD about the influence of both Taylor and Altamont on the band (opposite poles, but both substantial).
Here, the documentary veers away from Taylor specifically and into the life of the band, when they realize that they were broke and kicked out Allen Klein, a lesson the Beatles had already learned. They start their own record company, attached to Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records. Their first release was Sticky Fingers, on which Keith was heavily influenced by U.S. country music via Gram Parsons (e.g., “Wild Horses”), much to Jagger’s dismay, according to this telling. This record also produced their monster hit “Brown Sugar.” Drugs started to make more of an appearance with the likes of “Moonlight Mile.” While Keith’s (and Brian before him) substance abuse is mention frequently in this, everyone else is left untouched. Whether Taylor (or the rest of the band) was imbibing is not a topic mentioned, but I wondered.
Next up was Exile on Main Street (produced by Miller), like the Beatles’ White Album, sort of a conglomeration as much as anything else, created in the studio. It was started in the south of France, with the full band present, but thanks to a drug raid of Keff’s palace (which doubled as their recording studio) and a need to am-scray as ast-fay as ossibe-pay, Keith and Jagger went to L.A. by themselves, and recorded a bulk of the album using studio musicians, such as Parkins and Plummber. The sound ended up being arguably muddy, and many critics were lukewarm to it, but it is still considered by many to be the Stones’ best release. “Tumbling Dice” was the only cut that Taylor was given any writing credit for, on any album, a bone of contention with him (and rightfully so, as any band that has long guitar solos deserves to have the guitarist given writing credit). It’s at this point, also noted here, that the Stones – that is Keith and especially Jagger due in part to his marriage to Bianca Perez Morena de Macias (who is mentioned in passing) – became socialite butterflies who were know for, as they state here, “being famous for being famous” as much as being musicians.
Goat’s Head Soup, the last Miller produced for the band, is acknowledged by some of the critics here as having less soul, and rehashing of old ideas (one claims that “Dancing with Mr. D” is just a follow-up to “Sympathy for the Devil”), leaning more towards pop than rock, or as one critic here posits, “Where it all starts to go wrong.” It was a No. 1 album that had lukewarm critic enthusiasm, and one big hit: “Angie.”
For the It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll LP, Jagger and Richards produced it themselves as the “Glimmer Twins.” Many consider this their last album before they hit the skids, including some of the experts here (or, as one eloquently states, “they peaked”). But driven by lack of appreciation through being ignored for songwriting credit and tensions within the band, Taylor left after it was released to join the Jack Bruce Band (good luck with that!).
There are some good still pictures at this point, including one of Taylor jamming with Hendrix, as the documentary closes up. There lots of good details here, some great live footage of the band, and plenty of anecdotes, that makes this an interesting watch. I was a DC guy, but I – er – Marvel and appreciate what the Stones accomplished at this growth stage. Meanwhile, I think I’m going to go listen to Hot Rocks now…
Images from the Internet
The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years (Limited Collector’s Edition)
Directed by Alex Westbrook
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual, 2010
99 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedreams.co.uk
MVDvisual.com
The Rolling Stones are a three-act play, all positioned around lead guitar: The first was the Brian Jones early period (1962-1969), the middle were the Mick Taylor years of growth (1969-1974), and then there is the Ronnie Wood time of pop malaise and decline (1974-present). Obviously, from the title, this British telley documentary deals with the center portion.
While I’m more of a Brian Jones era kinda guy, there is no doubt that the Rolling Stones had a growth spurt under Mick Taylor’s tenure that was bolstered in part by (and not given enough credit for here) producer Jimmy Miller a nice (though drug addled) Brooklyn boy who was very approachable the few times I met him in Joe Viglione’s kitchen in the 1980s.
The difference between the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor phases of the Rolling Stones is sort of like silver-era DC and Marvel Comics, relatively: DC had one issue complete stories with exemplary yet uncomplicated art, while Marvel was into pushing the envelope with story arcs and art by, well, Jack Kirby – the Mick Taylor of comics - at his finest.
During his five-and-a-half years with the Stones, Mick Taylor worked on five albums that ranged from some of the more musically adept the band were to produce to signs of spinning out of control.
Before I jump ahead, I would like to comment that one of the many things I liked about this particular documentary is that when it says it covers the Stones during the Mick Taylor years, it means the focus is on the Stones part, not just the Mick Taylor influence. They use his tenure as a guide rather than a solitary viewing direction. That being said, I recommend watching the extra first here, which is a 6 minute short, hosted by the oft-Chrome Dreams-used writer Alan Clayson and musician extraordinaire, John Mayall, which tells of Taylor’s pre-Stones life, with Clayson handling the beginning, and Mayall describing Taylor’s influence in the Bluesbreakers. This will set the viewer up nicely for the main feature.
As with many of the Alex Westbrook British bios, this one is well researched and the wide use of clips covers the topic well, including bits by the band (here, mostly live cuts) and some of the other music discussed as influences, or that, say, Keith was into at the moment. There are no complete songs, but that’s okay because that’s not what this is all about.
The selection of experts here is well chosen, generally, including the aforementioned Clayson and Mayall, and includes guitarist (of the Only Ones and Pink Fairies) and writer John Perry, some music historians like Nigel Williamson, Robert Greenfield, and Robert “D-“ Christgau, and Exile on Main Street studio musicians Al Parkins (of the Burrito Bros. on steel guitar) and Bill Plummber (bass). Even a puffy Mick Taylor has a recent, if brief interview toward the end of the program(me) concerning his leaving the Stones. What I want to know is where are all the commentary by the women in the Stones’ world? Where’s Marianne Faithful? Anita “pretty-pretty” Pallenberg? Surely there are female authors or experts on the period? There is a lot of testosterone on this documentary.
Okay, getting back to the subject at hand…
The first single Mick Taylor worked on for the Rolling Stones was the killer “Honky Tonk Women.” His fretwork sets fire to it. Taylor’s first live performance with band was the concert two days after Brian Jones’ drowning (recommended reading on Jones’s death: A.E. Hotchner’s 1990 Blown Away). Talk about pressure for the 20 year old guitar wizard.
While recording their LP, Let It Bleed (produced by Jimmy Miller), the first with Mick Taylor and their eighth in total, a lot of the ideas were from previous sessions, and Taylor was as much a session man as a key member. At this point, there is a discussion on the DVD about the influence of both Taylor and Altamont on the band (opposite poles, but both substantial).
Here, the documentary veers away from Taylor specifically and into the life of the band, when they realize that they were broke and kicked out Allen Klein, a lesson the Beatles had already learned. They start their own record company, attached to Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records. Their first release was Sticky Fingers, on which Keith was heavily influenced by U.S. country music via Gram Parsons (e.g., “Wild Horses”), much to Jagger’s dismay, according to this telling. This record also produced their monster hit “Brown Sugar.” Drugs started to make more of an appearance with the likes of “Moonlight Mile.” While Keith’s (and Brian before him) substance abuse is mention frequently in this, everyone else is left untouched. Whether Taylor (or the rest of the band) was imbibing is not a topic mentioned, but I wondered. 
Next up was Exile on Main Street (produced by Miller), like the Beatles’ White Album, sort of a conglomeration as much as anything else, created in the studio. It was started in the south of France, with the full band present, but thanks to a drug raid of Keff’s palace (which doubled as their recording studio) and a need to am-scray as ast-fay as ossibe-pay, Keith and Jagger went to L.A. by themselves, and recorded a bulk of the album using studio musicians, such as Parkins and Plummber. The sound ended up being arguably muddy, and many critics were lukewarm to it, but it is still considered by many to be the Stones’ best release. “Tumbling Dice” was the only cut that Taylor was given any writing credit for, on any album, a bone of contention with him (and rightfully so, as any band that has long guitar solos deserves to have the guitarist given writing credit). It’s at this point, also noted here, that the Stones – that is Keith and especially Jagger due in part to his marriage to Bianca Perez Morena de Macias (who is mentioned in passing) – became socialite butterflies who were know for, as they state here, “being famous for being famous” as much as being musicians.
Goat’s Head Soup, the last Miller produced for the band, is acknowledged by some of the critics here as having less soul, and rehashing of old ideas (one claims that “Dancing with Mr. D” is just a follow-up to “Sympathy for the Devil”), leaning more towards pop than rock, or as one critic here posits, “Where it all starts to go wrong.” It was a No. 1 album that had lukewarm critic enthusiasm, and one big hit: “Angie.”
For the It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll LP, Jagger and Richards produced it themselves as the “Glimmer Twins.” Many consider this their last album before they hit the skids, including some of the experts here (or, as one eloquently states, “they peaked”). But driven by lack of appreciation through being ignored for songwriting credit and tensions within the band, Taylor left after it was released to join the Jack Bruce Band (good luck with that!). There are some good still pictures at this point, including one of Taylor jamming with Hendrix, as the documentary closes up. There lots of good details here, some great live footage of the band, and plenty of anecdotes, that makes this an interesting watch. I was a DC guy, but I – er – Marvel and appreciate what the Stones accomplished at this growth stage. Meanwhile, I think I’m going to go listen to Hot Rocks now…
Monday, July 5, 2010
DVD Review: The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen
Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen
Images from the Internet
The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen
Wienerworld Presentations, 2010
64 minutes, USD $14.95
Wienerworld.com
MVDvisual.com
As is usual with this series, there is only action and dialog, with no music. However, there is a lot going on all the time. Less linear than the one on John Lennon, jumping back and forth in both time and topic, it still remains as relatively comprehensive over the career of the band.
Again, there is nothing about the lads before the band’s formation, nor is there even much about how they got together in the first place, but that’s to be expected. Where it does start is with a humorous quote from Mick Jagger very early on after the band had been together for a couple of years. During a television interview, he pensively states (and this is the opening line of the documentary): “I’ve never thought I’d be doing it for two years even; we’re probably set up for another year.”
The first major clip shown is of Mick being interviewed by Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) on his The Tube show. This is just the first of many interviews presented, both as individuals and as a group, such as the hilarious questions asked by Ulster Television’s The South Bank Show, where the reporter asks questions about how much money they’ve made and which band is better, the Stones or the Beatles.
There are plenty of shots of the band playing, but always with no music, either overlaid by the sound of radio coverage or a split screen with the band talking on television. In the place of a narrator, there are blue rectangular boxes on the bottom of the screen, filling in what the viewer is looking at, sometimes quite humorously. As for the framework, there seems to be very little thought to chronology given to the clips, sort of like driving a familiar road paying no attention to the yellow line down the center. There are also few temporal descriptors, so events are not well explained or placed in context of the timeline of the band. While this is sometimes frustrating, it can also be said that most die-hard fans know the facts, and are more interested in the rare clips than have the screen filled with redundant (to them) text.
An example of this is the amusing press conference in Russia during the Bridges to Babylon tour in 1998, where it is obvious there is a language barrier that is both funny, and somewhat frustrating to the participants. Another interesting interview is one taken from a 1983 television program where Mick and director Julian Temple are taken to task for the violence in their music video “Undercover of the Night.”
A theme throughout, especially from their early period, is how often the Stones are asked questions on how they compare themselves to the Beatles. They are usually quite diplomatic about it, though it’s obvious Mick is drolly annoyed. Mick, however, is not the only one interviewed, and in fact there is an interesting one-camera Q&A outside a studio with Bill Wyman on the 10th anniversary of his being in the band. He is quite frank and sharp.
There are few details given about the big drug bust of the band, and includes all the same footage one usually sees of them entering and exiting the courthouse both after the arrest itself, the trial, and after the rap-on-the-wrist plea bargain. This is the only time one gets to see Maryanne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg, who go undefined and unexplained. There is, however, a bit more footage of Mick’s marriage to Bianca in 1971 in St. Tropez, where we get to hear Mick speak French. In fact, it’s kind of cool to watch Mick’s accent change over the years, as he starts to drop the faux working class cockney tinge he applied early on.
Speaking of drug busts, there is some coverage of their 1977 Canadian arrest, including the press conference, where Keith Richards looks completely stoned (pun intended).
Jeri Hall makes a very brief (and again, unexplained) appearance at the 2000 opening of the Mick Jagger Centre. Amazingly, there is very little on Brian Jones here, but more focus is placed on some of the other members of the band one usually does not get to see, such as the abovementioned Wyman interview and his live, on-camera resignation from the band in 1993, and some footage of Ronnie Wood’s art show opening at the Drury Lane Theatre.
But the main focus remains on Mick Jagger, with the conclusion of this DVD focusing on Mick’s knighthood, and the band showing up for the opening of Martin Scorcese’s concert film about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, which premiered in Berlin in 2008.
While this DVD is somewhat of a mess as far as linearity, the footage shown is accurately described as rare and unseen. I do recommend this more for those somewhat familiar with the band’s history to place the context of the footage, but overall it was an enjoyable ride through the Rolling Stones’ public psyches.
Images from the Internet
The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen
Wienerworld Presentations, 2010
64 minutes, USD $14.95
Wienerworld.com
MVDvisual.com
As is usual with this series, there is only action and dialog, with no music. However, there is a lot going on all the time. Less linear than the one on John Lennon, jumping back and forth in both time and topic, it still remains as relatively comprehensive over the career of the band.
Again, there is nothing about the lads before the band’s formation, nor is there even much about how they got together in the first place, but that’s to be expected. Where it does start is with a humorous quote from Mick Jagger very early on after the band had been together for a couple of years. During a television interview, he pensively states (and this is the opening line of the documentary): “I’ve never thought I’d be doing it for two years even; we’re probably set up for another year.”
The first major clip shown is of Mick being interviewed by Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) on his The Tube show. This is just the first of many interviews presented, both as individuals and as a group, such as the hilarious questions asked by Ulster Television’s The South Bank Show, where the reporter asks questions about how much money they’ve made and which band is better, the Stones or the Beatles.
There are plenty of shots of the band playing, but always with no music, either overlaid by the sound of radio coverage or a split screen with the band talking on television. In the place of a narrator, there are blue rectangular boxes on the bottom of the screen, filling in what the viewer is looking at, sometimes quite humorously. As for the framework, there seems to be very little thought to chronology given to the clips, sort of like driving a familiar road paying no attention to the yellow line down the center. There are also few temporal descriptors, so events are not well explained or placed in context of the timeline of the band. While this is sometimes frustrating, it can also be said that most die-hard fans know the facts, and are more interested in the rare clips than have the screen filled with redundant (to them) text.
An example of this is the amusing press conference in Russia during the Bridges to Babylon tour in 1998, where it is obvious there is a language barrier that is both funny, and somewhat frustrating to the participants. Another interesting interview is one taken from a 1983 television program where Mick and director Julian Temple are taken to task for the violence in their music video “Undercover of the Night.”
A theme throughout, especially from their early period, is how often the Stones are asked questions on how they compare themselves to the Beatles. They are usually quite diplomatic about it, though it’s obvious Mick is drolly annoyed. Mick, however, is not the only one interviewed, and in fact there is an interesting one-camera Q&A outside a studio with Bill Wyman on the 10th anniversary of his being in the band. He is quite frank and sharp.
There are few details given about the big drug bust of the band, and includes all the same footage one usually sees of them entering and exiting the courthouse both after the arrest itself, the trial, and after the rap-on-the-wrist plea bargain. This is the only time one gets to see Maryanne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg, who go undefined and unexplained. There is, however, a bit more footage of Mick’s marriage to Bianca in 1971 in St. Tropez, where we get to hear Mick speak French. In fact, it’s kind of cool to watch Mick’s accent change over the years, as he starts to drop the faux working class cockney tinge he applied early on.
Speaking of drug busts, there is some coverage of their 1977 Canadian arrest, including the press conference, where Keith Richards looks completely stoned (pun intended).
Jeri Hall makes a very brief (and again, unexplained) appearance at the 2000 opening of the Mick Jagger Centre. Amazingly, there is very little on Brian Jones here, but more focus is placed on some of the other members of the band one usually does not get to see, such as the abovementioned Wyman interview and his live, on-camera resignation from the band in 1993, and some footage of Ronnie Wood’s art show opening at the Drury Lane Theatre.
But the main focus remains on Mick Jagger, with the conclusion of this DVD focusing on Mick’s knighthood, and the band showing up for the opening of Martin Scorcese’s concert film about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, which premiered in Berlin in 2008.
While this DVD is somewhat of a mess as far as linearity, the footage shown is accurately described as rare and unseen. I do recommend this more for those somewhat familiar with the band’s history to place the context of the footage, but overall it was an enjoyable ride through the Rolling Stones’ public psyches.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
JIM CARROLL: Poet Turned Rock’n’Roll Star
Text by Julia Masi
Images from the Internet
© 1980, 81 FFanzeen
All song lyrics: © 1980 by Earl McGrath Music / Jim Carroll Music; ASCAP All Rights Reserved
The following article/interview with poet/musician Jim Carroll, written by Julia Masi, was originally published in FFanzeen magazine; part one appeared in issue #6 (1980), and Part II in issue #7 (1981). Jim Carroll passed away in September 2009, so I republish this in tribute; even though I personally was not a fan, I respect his accomplishments. I did see him perform a number of times at CBGB’s, however, jumping in with the Lenny Kaye Connection. – RBF
Part I: The Poet
[Jim Carroll]
He may be a rookie to the rock’n’roll stage, but already Jim Carroll’s got a following. Last summer, a group of his devoted fans traveled from San Francisco to New York for his Fourth of July gig at Irving Plaza, where his music was more dynamic than the firework symphony in the street.
If he has any gimmick at all, it’s his honesty. He’s as willing to lay it on the line during an interview as he is in his most recent book, The Basketball Diaries, or his stunning debut album, A Catholic Boy, on Atco Records.
In fading blue jeans and a plaid shirt that matches his reddish blond hair and off-sets his clear blue eyes, Jim seems younger than his 29 years. He’s spent the past few years living in California, but he hasn’t lost his New York accent or his effection for the City. On August 22, he spoke almost non-stop to this awe-struck reporter, explaining his evolution from Pulitzer Prize nominated poet to up-and-coming rock’n’roll star.
[Organic Trains (1967)]
“Poets were always rock’n’roll stars. It’s kind of like the poet’s right to sing, as loudly and as vulgarly as he wants to. Poets now-a-days have forgotten that. Poets now-a-days are more concerned with a kind of style and not so much [with] heart. A good poet should work on two levels. The heart effects someone who is virtually illiterate. The heart level really has no verbal sophistication at all. And then [the poem] should effect the intellect as well.
“The whole thing that puts me off to the poetry scene is that it’s become kind of petty and incestuous. That’s out of frustration and I understand it, because of the way Americans take on poetry, you’d think of him as a wimp; so it’s out of frustration that poets say, ‘Fuck everything. I’m not writing for the public anymore, I’m writing for other poets.’ And they start to get into all these systems of style, like minimal poetry, which really has to do with head games, you know, intellect games.
“I wanted to get back to what the traditional role of the poet’s always been, the way he’s honored in France as the most noble profession. Doctors and lawyers envy poets there – still. And, in America…” he pauses to light a cigarette and leans forward, “I don’t give a shit that most people think poets are faggots. Or whatever their fucking ideas of poets are. I decided that I was, in the traditional sense, gonna make poetry a noble profession again.” He recalls the conversation he used to have with Patti Smith and how he would tell her, “’You just have to write your lyric and put it there. And not worry about publishing or effecting people. It’s just writing for history. Actually, it’s a great honor to be a poet now,’ I’d say to her, “’because the world is probably gonna fuckin’ blow itself up before we die and we’ll be the poets to record the end, even if there’s no one left to read it… No, we should be concerned about life and effecting people while we’re still alive.’”
[Upside Down (1970)]
After giving some thought to the way he was, and wanted to effect people, Jim realized that he needed a larger audience. And rock seemed like a perfect medium. “Kids perceive lyrics through the heart that they can’t intellectually. Say certain lyrics by the Velvet Underground; certain illusions and stuff would be over kids’ heads, but they’d get them.” His musician friends were always asking him to write lyrics. He had collaborated with Patti Smith and Allen Lanier, of the Blue Oyster Cult. “At first, I thought I would just do lyrics. But then, when I saw punk happening, I realized that I didn’t need all the technical ability that was traditionally needed. I could do my songs myself because no one can interpret the songs as well as the person who writes them.
“I wrote the music to my songs to my vocal limitations. And I had the band write the music to my own limitations. As I got better, I took more risks with my voice. I wanted to be careful. I didn’t want to write art. I didn’t want to make an art record. I hate that. I didn’t want poems with just music behind them. I wanted them to be songs. Maybe on the next record we’ll have some songs with spoken introductions that go right into the songs,” he kicks his foot and pushes the palm of his hand forward to emphasize, “that kick right into songs. But that’s easy for me. That’s what I’ve always done and it’s my strength. But I wanted to get the hard part out of the way first and just find myself with this first record.
“Kids are the hardest to lie to and most rock’n’roll lyrics are like an afterthought: in 90 percent of the cases, they’re more like the musician’s idea of what a lyric should be. And they’re not integral to that person’s experience. And so that way, when you sing them, they’re not real. They could be sung by anyone. You’re singing them but you might as well be a stranger yourself then, because they’re not about your experience. They’re about what your idea of a rock song experience should be like. Like limiting the subject matter to getting laid or not getting laid; those songs might as well be sung to some fucking fly stuck to some roof of some abandoned Chateau somewhere, for all the relevance they have to that guy who sings with no experience. They might as well be instrumentals. What I care about is putting all my vulnerability up front, especially on stage.
[Living At the Movies (1973)]
“When we first started doing shows, that’s what people recognized. I was always worried about what I was going to do when I got on stage. When I’m singin’, it’s okay, but when the instrumental break comes… Mick [Jagger] could dance around and stuff and it’s fantastic, but I can’t do that. I’d look like a fool. I can dance and shit but it wouldn’t be real to me. So I just decided that when I get out there, what I’ll just do is not rely on being influenced by anyone in my stage presence. If the songs are integral, if the words are integral to my experience, then my moves on stage will be integral to the words. Just let them move me. It was incredible the way it happened.” Jim’s eyes grow wide and a look of genuine surprise takes over his face: “ When I got out on the stage for the first time, I had fun on stage. I had music there instead of just doing poetry readings. I was moved out of my head. When I saw a video tape for the first time of myself on stage, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t remember doing all those things…making any of those moves. I make very minimal moves most of the time.” That’s when he’s on stage. During an interview, he moves constantly. His long legs wrap themselves around each other, dangle over the arm of the chair, and stretch out in front of him as if he were unconsciously performing a yoga regimen. He explains, “[My movements] reflect my vulnerability the same way that the lyrics reflect their vulnerability fro their experiences. When people mention that, they say it’s mesmerizing when it’s right…when the magic happens.
“When a person puts forth their vulnerabilities – their weaknesses and their strengths – then it can’t be anything but an experience for the other person to relate to it. And I make the lyrics just abstract enough so that people can see that they come out of my experience, but they’re also abstract enough so that they can take them and make them their own, too. They just hit a chord in the heart.
[The Basketball Diaries (1978)]
“If you write lyrics just for the intellect, it comes out some phony stream of consciousness bullshit. It’s like rhetoric. Or else, you try to be clever, like some art band, and it’s like some tenth-rate William Burroughs. I hate groups like that. They’re trying to be clever and it’s all paraphernalia and gimmickry. They take no risks at all. They don’t show anything of themselves. It’s all hidden behind gimmicks and outfits, and things like that. That’s theater. Rock’n’roll is just about putting it out with force. And it’s real. It’s immediate. They lyrics need immediacy. Their own vulnerability’s right there. Let everything show.” He speaks with disgust of the “cock row” (heavy metal) bands, calling them “devious. Rock’n’roll is about sex, sure, but it doesn’t have to be completely. I don’t believe that and I don’t buy it. It should have some kind of integrity. As a poet, that’s what I’m trying to do: show that poetry does have integrity.
“But the line I have that sums it up most,” he quotes his song, “It’s Too Late,” “’I’m here to give you my heart and you want a fashion show…’ I saw that with the punk scene. There’s certain element of it, in San Francisco, where they make punk clubs into singles bars. They don’t listen to the music. They just come decked out in outrageousness. They don’t realize it’s like the hippies of the ‘60s. As I see here [in New York], the people in clubs, more and more lately, are evolving back into just looking like street kids. Fashion is great, but inconspicuousness allows you to get a lot of things done that you don’t, if you look outrageous.
“I want to be part of life. I don’t want to be standing on the edge looking into it. I have to do that by the nature of what I am anyway. Why should you outcast yourself in some kind of outside environment? I went through a whole period when I had my hair long and stuff, even through I wasn’t into the hippie scene. I just thought it was wrong. I was a street kid. I guess the reason I grew my hair long was just to get laid and be an outcast ‘cause the girls I was with dug it. But now I just think differently. My art’s too important for that anymore. If people do it, then it’s fine. But in my position, the way things are for me, I just find I can be more effective without it. Without having any particular style or fashion: ‘It ain’t no contribution / To go and rely on an institution / To validate your chosen art / And to sanction your boredom, and let you play out your art’ [“It’s Too late”],
[Book of Nods (1986)]
“And then I talk about the negativity of the whole scene. I say two things. In some song I say, ‘It’s when the body at the bottom / That body is my own reflection / But it ain’t hip to sink that low / Unless you’re gonna make a resurrection’ [“Into the Night”]. I’m speaking more about my own experiences with drugs and stuff,” which he speaks more about only in the past tense. “You know, there’s nothing heroic about it. You know, that whole thing about, like, a lot of people get into it because it stacks you up above everyone else – the whole romance of the whole thing? They think it’s heroic. And it is heroic in the sense that at least you’re not a dilettante. You’ve thrown yourself over into it completely. You have a chance to be heroic in the real traditional sense of poetry, to start a second life, by coming out of the fuckin’ pit. And I say also in that same song, ‘When they got nothing to give / They parent their legs for what’s negative / They’re so decadent, until their daddy’s money from home is all spent… / So I think it’s time / Because it’s too easy to rely / On worshipping devils and strangers in bed / Though they get good drugs and they do give good head’ [“Into the Night”]. I like those lines,” he smiles. “It is true, you know? I can’t completely deny them, myself. The attraction of the negative. It’s been a part of my life for too long. To look for the good is so much harder.
“”The mythology and the ritual of Catholicism, I’ve come back to. I think it’s fantastic. The whole cult of the Virgin is very attractive. It’s the only feminine side to Western religion. The Virgin is hardly ever mentioned in Protestant religions.
“A good poet should have a feminine side to him. The thing that made me feel best about a review one time, was that [the critic was] saying that I had the ‘best feminine side of any poet in America,’ which has nothing to do with homosexuality. The guy pointed out that. It’s usually homosexuals that have the least feminine side in the works. It’s like Jung said, [that] every guy has a female side and every woman has a male side. Which, as an artist, is imperative to have. And it comes naturally to me.”
Referring to the title of his album, Jim comments that, “A lot of people think that’s an anti-Catholic song.” Comparing the discipline of Catholic elementary school to a jail, he recites, “’I took the doctor’s scalpel, and I slit the cord’ [“Catholic Boy”]. I wanted life. But then, all of a sudden, I got put back in the fuckin’ slammer. They confine you with dogma and put boundaries around it. But the mythology is just the opposite, to open up. It’s about the letting of blood. There’s a lot of images of blood. I call my album Catholic Boy because my whole life is based on [it]. Your history comes out of the streets and what effects you when you were young. That’s what’s in your heart and that’s what’s in your gut. You can’t escape it. People who go to Eastern religions after they grow up are looking in the wrong way. That’s only in the intellect that you think about it. But in the heart, you have to rely on what you grew up with when the heart was formed. In the heart sense, in the sprit of it. And that’s Catholicism for me.
[Fear of Dreaming (1993)]
“What could be more ‘punk rock’ than the Stations of the Cross? Following a guy around with a crown of thorns and a crucifix – His own crucifix – up to the top of a mountain, and having Him pierced in the side by a centurion so that the blood flows? And that blood! I think that’s what the crucifixion was all about. When the centurion struck Him in the side and this magical blood came forth, that was supposedly mixed with water – a Holy Water – that blood was a letting out of all man’s ego. He had to die for man’s ego because man’s ego had built up to such a point. I mean, man’s ego is overwhelming. His arrogance. And his pride.”
He leans forward and drops the level of his voice until it’s just above a whisper. “When I think about it intellectually, it makes sense to me, and that was what junk was all about. After a while, you just wanted to do it to keep watching the blood come up. And letting the blood come out to take out your own ego, because when you were high on junk, you could see the bullshit of what it was. It just slowed everything down and your vision was narrowed. Most people think you just go on the nod. Well, people who go on the nod are wasting a heroin head. I liked a good nod as much as anyone when I was on the stuff. But man, I wanted to see people and their bullshit, too.”
Sinking back into his chair, he admits that, “with this ‘Catholic Boy’ song, that’s kind of anti-Catholic school, but when I say ‘redeemed through pain not through joy,’ that’s the way it should be. The fact is that these Born Again people, you hear them speak, they testify, ‘The Lord is with me 24 hours a day. I get joy from Him. I get such a buzz.’ It’s like a methadone maintenance program for religion. They’re gonna get the buzz 24 hours a day or nothin’s happenin’. They want something back for it.
[Poems, Interviews, Photographs (1997)]
“The thing that I always thought about religion was, that if you love God, you don’t do it because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell. You don’t not sin because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell or because you want to get into Heaven and get this 24 hour a day buzz. You do it because God made you. And you’re alive. And that’s all! If you’re redeemed through pain; if you pray three months that this good friend of yours is not gonna die of leukemia and he dies anyway and you’ve still got faith in what you’ve been praying to before, then that’s love of God and belief. And I don’t get any buzz from that. The fact is I can’t even say I have faith in God. In an intellectual sense, I don’t even know if I can believe in It. There’s too much else happening. But I love the rituals of it. And I want to believe it in my heart. And sometimes I can believe it. But it’s very hard.
“Like Rimbaud said, ‘Charity is a key.’ And that’s what the letting of the blood of Christ is all about: charity. And charity has to be the key more ever now. And those people just don’t think about that.”
Jim tells of his friend who embraced the diet and philosophy of an obscure religious cult. He lived in the desert fasting and preparing himself for the destruction of civilization. He ate only fruit and things that grew from the trees in an attempt to purify his body enough so that he would be able to consume his own urine. Jim explains that, “apparently, during Armageddon, when the Four Horsemen come and the world’s ending, then you can get by and survive, ‘cause you don’t need any food. All the food’s gonna wither. You can get by on your own cycle of pissing and drinking it. And in theory, that works. But the whole point to me was, and I said this to him one time, what the fuck are you gonna do, hide in a cave during a nuke war and drink your own piss? Why would you want to, man? What I’d wanna do is just be around the person I love most. Or, if not, be with any stranger if you didn’t have time to make it to that person.
“I’d feel really left out at this point, if there was a nuclear war and I didn’t die. I don’t want to be in a cave drinking piss. The only thing we could do then is give comfort. I’d want to grab the hand of the person that was next to me, whether it was the person I loved, or some stranger if I couldn’t make it to that person, if the world was ending real quick, and just grab them in whatever shelter you’re in. Or in the subway or wherever you’re hiding from this fuckin’ attack; and just grab that person and hold her hand as tight as you can and just grab hands with the other people. I’m physically a cold person. Usually, I’m not into, you know, that California stuff where everyone touches and hugs people and stuff. That always made me uptight. But is this case, I’d wanna hold the person’s hand so tight. You only have a few seconds. It’s the only time that charity would win out in this fucked up world.
“People would be more alive in those last few seconds – because death was comin’ – then they would be in their whole lives. Death would be life for them then. It’s such an irony, but that’s the case. People would feel for once for the person next to them instead of just for themselves. They look into someone else’s eyes and probably see for the first time in their life, because the edge of death and that flirtation with death always brings that out.
“So this guy drinking piss, what’s he gonna do? First of all, if Revelations is right and the world is gonna end through some kind of mystical thing, the Four Horsemen and the Apocalypse, there ain’t no cave you’re gonna be able to hide in. Those Four Horsemen are gonna check out everything. The whole idea is people are gonna pray to die and not be able to die. So he ain’t gonna be able to hide. If it’s more like just a straight pragmatic nuclear war and everything’s gonna be destroyed, then he could hide from it in a cave.” He lowers his voice again. “But why would you want to? What would you come down to? A bunch of fuckin’ mutants!”
Part II: Soundtrack of the Times
Jim Carroll, 1994
Some people spend their whole lives searching for the spotlight, while others stumble into it repeatedly. Take Jim Carroll for example.
When Jim Carroll chronicles his career, he makes fame sound so easy: a published poet by the time he was 16, a Pulitzer Prize nomination at 22, a best selling author (The Basketball Diaries), and rock star at 29. But his success wasn’t’ built on pure luck. He admits he has no patience with dilatants. He puts everything he has into everything he does. And what he possesses is an incredible talent that can not be ignored.
He grew up tough and fast on the streets of Manhattan. And if it wasn’t for a scholarship to a private high school, he might have ended up like the rest of his friends he mentions in his song, “People Who Died.” But something in his blue eyes suggests that he was always too smart to be consumed by the streets. As a kid writing The Basketball Diaries, he had shown an incredible perception and lack of self-pity.
Jim Carroll took to poetry as soon as he was introduced to it. Knowing the value of voyeurism, he set out to study the best contemporary poets of the ‘60s by attending a Greenwich Village poetry workshop.
“I was hanging around down at St. Mark’s Church, at the Poetry Project down there, where Allan Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan and all these people would read. I didn’t say anything to anybody there. I just stayed and watched in the audience.” At the time, Jim had already begun to write poetry. He showed some of it to a high school friend whose brother ran the press at City College. The brother immediately wanted to publish them. “I only had about thirty pages of poems that I wanted published
Catholic Boy (1980)
“I was too shy to introduce myself to the people at the poetry scene. But then when I had this book, I could give it to them and that way I could introduce myself. And they said, ‘We wondered who you were, if you were a poet or just spyin’ on us.’ Then I started to publish when I was 16, in the magazine that they ran out of [St. Mark’s], The World. And every twelve issues, Bobbs-Merril Publishers would publish this big hardcover anthology of the best works from it. From that I started to get from the underground press into hardcover publishers and stuff. And then I started publishing in the Paris Review, because this poet, Tom Clark, was the poetry editor and he hung out at the St. Mark’s thing.
“And that’s where I first published the diaries, too. They asked me if I had any prose because they were having a prose issue of The World. I said, ‘All I have is these diaries that I kept when I was young.’ And I started to read them at poetry readings at St. Mark’s and they always went over real well. And when George Plimpton read them, he asked me to give him some for the Paris Review [for which he was editor]. I gave him twenty-five pages and I got letters form all these publishers who wanted to publish them. But I didn’t want to publish that book until I published a really big volume of poetry because I didn’t want to be known as a street writer. I wanted to show that I could write as a poet. It was stupid. It was being hung up with style.”
Jim held off publishing the diaries because most editors “wanted to make some changes in it and give it more sociological meaning. Like why I was doing all this and stuff. Since I wasn’t the same age anymore, as 13 to 15, it would’ve been bullshit to change them. Each one I kind of wrote to be a short story; to stand by itself. They weren’t day-to-day diaries. They were all subjective little short stories and anecdotes. I didn’t want to put in any, like ‘Dear Diary, why is this happening to me? Because my parents hate me, I’m shooting junk.’ Bullshit! I did it because I wanted to party.
[Dry Dreams (1982)]
“I never had any editor touch my work at all. Even when I was 16. I wouldn’t allow it. And now that I can command it, of course, I don’t let them. If an editor makes suggestions, that’s one thing. But the only thing I think of an editor as is someone who checks for typos and misspellings. I just didn’t like the idea of that. I really cared about the diaries since this was a book that I wanted kids to read. And I wanted a big distribution on it instead of just to the poetry audience. I wanted a paperback house. All I cared about was the paperback edition because it was affordable for the kids.”
After he published Living in the Movies, the book that earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1974, he moved to California and became a recluse. “I didn’t like the lifestyle in California, that kind of mellow, laid-back shit. I just wanted to use a landscape. I didn’t associate with anyone. I just lived in the country. I had dogs for the first time in my life. I love animals, but could never have them. I’d bring home strays every week when I was a kid and my mother would say, ‘The city’s no place for a dog.’ You know that line? So, once I got out there, I got, like, four dogs. And I’d take these long walks with ‘em and I was writing a lot of poetry and these prose poems, thinking about what I was going to do with the diaries.
“Then, after, I slowly decided I was going to do rock, by what I was writing and what I was reading.
“The book that effected me the most was The Time of the Assassins, by Henry Miller. It was s study of Rimbaud’s works, but it’s really a study of Henry Miller by Henry Miller. It speaks about how a poet – real poet – has to effect the heart as well as the mind. And you have to effect people who are virtually illiterate, as well as the people who are intellectuals. Rock’n’roll is the way you effect people on the social level.”
His initiation into rock’n’roll was a fluke. He had a small part in an underground film with Patti Smith, where he was reading this poem, “The Guitar Voodoo.” [The poem is about a girl with a magical guitar; whenever she plays the strings she inflicts pain to an enemy. The faster the guitar strings vibrate, the worse the pain gets.] The day after the film was shot, Patti Smith was giving a concert in San Diego. She asked Jim to go along.
[Praying Mantis (1991)]
Her opening act, a heavy-metal band, began to pose a problem, so Patti cancelled them and announced, “’Jim will open the show.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, Patti, what am I gonna do?’ She said, ‘We’ll do what we did in the movie last night, only the whole band will play behind you.’ It was very generous of her because it takes away the whole anticipation of an opening act. Patti would just come out playin’ a guitar behind me. I said, ‘Well, that’s cool. I’ll do it, but I’m not gonna read this thing ‘cause I’d be too nervous. I’ll start shaking with the piece of paper. I didn’t have it memorized. I’ll do some of the lyrics that I’ve been writing with Allan [Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult]; but we don’t’ have time to work out the music that Allan did, so I’ll just rap ‘em and you guys can jam.’ And, of course, Lenny [Kaye] and all those guys were real good at that. In the early days, they’d just jam while Patti made up lyrics. So, they started to play and I did these two songs; just rapped ‘em. Patti came over to me and was, like, leanin’ up against me while I was doin’ it. I was totally out of it. Then I loosened up and it was great. It was about ten minutes long – just right. The audience really dug it. Everything was very clear and this energy was coming at me from behind, so it was just like this sandwich of energy. It was fantastic.”
His poems went over so well that he was invited to the Mabohay Gardens to do a gig of his own. But at this point he didn’t have a band, and Allan Lanier was busy finishing the music if the songs they’d been working on. But Jim’s never been restrained by obstacles. He knew a San Francisco bar band called Amsterdam that he’d met one day while he was hitchhiking. “I got a ride from two of the guys in the band. They said, ‘Yeah, you’re a poet. We’ve read your book and stuff. You ever think of writing lyrics?’ And I said, ‘Well, people have spoken to me about it. I’ve been doing it a bit with this old friend of mine, Patti.’ But they weren’t into punk music. They were straight out of the Stones.” He remembers telling them, “Well, maybe we’ll do something together sometime at a poetry reading or something, and you guys can play behind me.” He approached them about playing the Mabohay.
“We had about a week’s rehearsal, and we worked out the music for, like, six songs. And I wanted to make sure they were songs and not just poems with music behind hem – just jamming – like that night with Patti or even lyrics with the music. I wanted to make them integral songs, with breaks, as best I could, or else just rap ‘em. But having these songs, it went over so well that the guy [who owned the club] asked us to come back the next week and play the last show when we could really turn up the volume. We did the gig the next week on a weekend night, so there was a huge crowd. People from the poetry scene were there, as well as people from the punk scene. I was really getting into it. We saw it was working.”
Amsterdam continued to perform at their old haunts before the Jim Carroll Band was officially formed. Whenever they’d back up Jim, they would hide their long hair under berets, “so the people weren’t shouting, ‘Get these hippies off the stage.’ I just wanted the band not to have any one look and not be pinned because it turns people off – especially in the clubs. They say, ‘Oh, these guys were playing hippie music.’ And that wasn’t the case when we started to work together.
[Pools of Mercury (1998)]
The Jim Carroll Band – Brian Linsley and Terrell Winn on guitars, Steve Linsley on bass and Wayne Woods on drums – could easily stand alone. They’ve each co-written something with Jim for the band’s debut album Catholic Boy, and although their music is loud, fast and extremely easy to dance to, it never overshadows Jim’s haunting lyrics.
“I demand attention when I play. It’s not just shit-kicking music. That’s part of it. I just want people to listen. Listen with their ears and listen with their hearts, too. I want them to take something away with them. I don’t want them just to come and dance and exhaust themselves and split. I want them to go home with an image in their minds. Just one image that will stick with them and move them – feel not better about themselves or anything like that, just think about themselves, or think about some image that’s left.”
The band quickly built up a following playing around the San Francisco area, and they knew the time had come to go into the studio. They recorded a six song demo tape at an eight-track studio, and when Jim returned to New York for the release of The Basketball Diaries, he took the demo with him. He had intended to bring it around to some of the record companies, but as luck would have it, he didn’t need to.
Jim’s publisher threw a party for him at the Gotham Book Mart. One of the guests was Earl McGrath, former president of Rolling Stone Records. McGrath had heard about Jim’s band through a mutual friend, artist Larry Rivers. He was anxious to hear the band and invited Jim to bring the tape to his office. Assuming that nothing would come of it expect possibly a little honest criticism, Jim brought this tape to Rolling Stone Records.
“When he heard it, he was just silent for about five minutes. It seemed like ten hours, and I thought, ‘He hates it.’ Then he said, ‘This is very strong and very different. Keith’s been looking for something to produce so I think we’d like to do something with this.’ And I was besides myself ‘cause I knew the band would freak.”
Originally, Keith Richards wanted to produce Catholic Boy, but he was tied up recording with the Rolling Stones. McGrath stepped in as producer, and when he made a move from Rolling Stone to Atco Records, he took his pet project with him.
“It took a long time after me signing before it came out. By my own choice, we put off doing it because I didn’t want to start recording until I had a total handle on the songs, by doing them live. The tendency is to just rush into the studio with the first album and do it real quick. I think it’s a mistake to rush in. I’m glad we took our time.
“We had all the arrangements and stuff, so once we got into the studio, we did it very quickly. We did two sessions about a month apart. Five days the first time and four days the second, four hours each, and we did that in San Francisco. We mixed it here. The band stayed out there, and I came back to do some of the vocals.”
Before the album came out last October, Jim had only played two shows in New York. His first gig turned into a showcase. The tiny club was filled with so many record company people that there was hardly any room for fans of either the Jim Carroll Band, or his surprise guest, Keith Richards. “We got all this flack for hype, because Keith played with me. He can play with us any fuckin’ time he wants. It’s an honor to have Keith Richards play with us. It wasn’t any hype at all. Hype is what people make it. I’ve been a poet since I was 15 years old and I’ve supported myself any way I could, to write poetry. I’ve proven myself all those years that I’m not into things for what I can get out of them financially or any other way. I’ve always stuck by poetry and I always will. And there’s no money in that. And if there’s more money in rock’n’roll, and more in, say, The Basketball Diaries, because it’s doing well, then fine. But if it doesn’t happen, then I’m a poet, that’s what I do. It just seems like a natural evolution, the way it is now. And it’s really integral to my work. The way the album turned out, it doesn’t seem like something different, outside of it, that I just started to do. It seems like a natural extension and that’s what makes it so satisfying.”
Images from the Internet
© 1980, 81 FFanzeen
All song lyrics: © 1980 by Earl McGrath Music / Jim Carroll Music; ASCAP All Rights Reserved
The following article/interview with poet/musician Jim Carroll, written by Julia Masi, was originally published in FFanzeen magazine; part one appeared in issue #6 (1980), and Part II in issue #7 (1981). Jim Carroll passed away in September 2009, so I republish this in tribute; even though I personally was not a fan, I respect his accomplishments. I did see him perform a number of times at CBGB’s, however, jumping in with the Lenny Kaye Connection. – RBF
Part I: The Poet
[Jim Carroll]He may be a rookie to the rock’n’roll stage, but already Jim Carroll’s got a following. Last summer, a group of his devoted fans traveled from San Francisco to New York for his Fourth of July gig at Irving Plaza, where his music was more dynamic than the firework symphony in the street.
If he has any gimmick at all, it’s his honesty. He’s as willing to lay it on the line during an interview as he is in his most recent book, The Basketball Diaries, or his stunning debut album, A Catholic Boy, on Atco Records.
In fading blue jeans and a plaid shirt that matches his reddish blond hair and off-sets his clear blue eyes, Jim seems younger than his 29 years. He’s spent the past few years living in California, but he hasn’t lost his New York accent or his effection for the City. On August 22, he spoke almost non-stop to this awe-struck reporter, explaining his evolution from Pulitzer Prize nominated poet to up-and-coming rock’n’roll star.
[Organic Trains (1967)]“Poets were always rock’n’roll stars. It’s kind of like the poet’s right to sing, as loudly and as vulgarly as he wants to. Poets now-a-days have forgotten that. Poets now-a-days are more concerned with a kind of style and not so much [with] heart. A good poet should work on two levels. The heart effects someone who is virtually illiterate. The heart level really has no verbal sophistication at all. And then [the poem] should effect the intellect as well.
“The whole thing that puts me off to the poetry scene is that it’s become kind of petty and incestuous. That’s out of frustration and I understand it, because of the way Americans take on poetry, you’d think of him as a wimp; so it’s out of frustration that poets say, ‘Fuck everything. I’m not writing for the public anymore, I’m writing for other poets.’ And they start to get into all these systems of style, like minimal poetry, which really has to do with head games, you know, intellect games.
“I wanted to get back to what the traditional role of the poet’s always been, the way he’s honored in France as the most noble profession. Doctors and lawyers envy poets there – still. And, in America…” he pauses to light a cigarette and leans forward, “I don’t give a shit that most people think poets are faggots. Or whatever their fucking ideas of poets are. I decided that I was, in the traditional sense, gonna make poetry a noble profession again.” He recalls the conversation he used to have with Patti Smith and how he would tell her, “’You just have to write your lyric and put it there. And not worry about publishing or effecting people. It’s just writing for history. Actually, it’s a great honor to be a poet now,’ I’d say to her, “’because the world is probably gonna fuckin’ blow itself up before we die and we’ll be the poets to record the end, even if there’s no one left to read it… No, we should be concerned about life and effecting people while we’re still alive.’”
[Upside Down (1970)]After giving some thought to the way he was, and wanted to effect people, Jim realized that he needed a larger audience. And rock seemed like a perfect medium. “Kids perceive lyrics through the heart that they can’t intellectually. Say certain lyrics by the Velvet Underground; certain illusions and stuff would be over kids’ heads, but they’d get them.” His musician friends were always asking him to write lyrics. He had collaborated with Patti Smith and Allen Lanier, of the Blue Oyster Cult. “At first, I thought I would just do lyrics. But then, when I saw punk happening, I realized that I didn’t need all the technical ability that was traditionally needed. I could do my songs myself because no one can interpret the songs as well as the person who writes them.
“I wrote the music to my songs to my vocal limitations. And I had the band write the music to my own limitations. As I got better, I took more risks with my voice. I wanted to be careful. I didn’t want to write art. I didn’t want to make an art record. I hate that. I didn’t want poems with just music behind them. I wanted them to be songs. Maybe on the next record we’ll have some songs with spoken introductions that go right into the songs,” he kicks his foot and pushes the palm of his hand forward to emphasize, “that kick right into songs. But that’s easy for me. That’s what I’ve always done and it’s my strength. But I wanted to get the hard part out of the way first and just find myself with this first record.
“Kids are the hardest to lie to and most rock’n’roll lyrics are like an afterthought: in 90 percent of the cases, they’re more like the musician’s idea of what a lyric should be. And they’re not integral to that person’s experience. And so that way, when you sing them, they’re not real. They could be sung by anyone. You’re singing them but you might as well be a stranger yourself then, because they’re not about your experience. They’re about what your idea of a rock song experience should be like. Like limiting the subject matter to getting laid or not getting laid; those songs might as well be sung to some fucking fly stuck to some roof of some abandoned Chateau somewhere, for all the relevance they have to that guy who sings with no experience. They might as well be instrumentals. What I care about is putting all my vulnerability up front, especially on stage.
[Living At the Movies (1973)]“When we first started doing shows, that’s what people recognized. I was always worried about what I was going to do when I got on stage. When I’m singin’, it’s okay, but when the instrumental break comes… Mick [Jagger] could dance around and stuff and it’s fantastic, but I can’t do that. I’d look like a fool. I can dance and shit but it wouldn’t be real to me. So I just decided that when I get out there, what I’ll just do is not rely on being influenced by anyone in my stage presence. If the songs are integral, if the words are integral to my experience, then my moves on stage will be integral to the words. Just let them move me. It was incredible the way it happened.” Jim’s eyes grow wide and a look of genuine surprise takes over his face: “ When I got out on the stage for the first time, I had fun on stage. I had music there instead of just doing poetry readings. I was moved out of my head. When I saw a video tape for the first time of myself on stage, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t remember doing all those things…making any of those moves. I make very minimal moves most of the time.” That’s when he’s on stage. During an interview, he moves constantly. His long legs wrap themselves around each other, dangle over the arm of the chair, and stretch out in front of him as if he were unconsciously performing a yoga regimen. He explains, “[My movements] reflect my vulnerability the same way that the lyrics reflect their vulnerability fro their experiences. When people mention that, they say it’s mesmerizing when it’s right…when the magic happens.
“When a person puts forth their vulnerabilities – their weaknesses and their strengths – then it can’t be anything but an experience for the other person to relate to it. And I make the lyrics just abstract enough so that people can see that they come out of my experience, but they’re also abstract enough so that they can take them and make them their own, too. They just hit a chord in the heart.
[The Basketball Diaries (1978)]“If you write lyrics just for the intellect, it comes out some phony stream of consciousness bullshit. It’s like rhetoric. Or else, you try to be clever, like some art band, and it’s like some tenth-rate William Burroughs. I hate groups like that. They’re trying to be clever and it’s all paraphernalia and gimmickry. They take no risks at all. They don’t show anything of themselves. It’s all hidden behind gimmicks and outfits, and things like that. That’s theater. Rock’n’roll is just about putting it out with force. And it’s real. It’s immediate. They lyrics need immediacy. Their own vulnerability’s right there. Let everything show.” He speaks with disgust of the “cock row” (heavy metal) bands, calling them “devious. Rock’n’roll is about sex, sure, but it doesn’t have to be completely. I don’t believe that and I don’t buy it. It should have some kind of integrity. As a poet, that’s what I’m trying to do: show that poetry does have integrity.
“But the line I have that sums it up most,” he quotes his song, “It’s Too Late,” “’I’m here to give you my heart and you want a fashion show…’ I saw that with the punk scene. There’s certain element of it, in San Francisco, where they make punk clubs into singles bars. They don’t listen to the music. They just come decked out in outrageousness. They don’t realize it’s like the hippies of the ‘60s. As I see here [in New York], the people in clubs, more and more lately, are evolving back into just looking like street kids. Fashion is great, but inconspicuousness allows you to get a lot of things done that you don’t, if you look outrageous.
“I want to be part of life. I don’t want to be standing on the edge looking into it. I have to do that by the nature of what I am anyway. Why should you outcast yourself in some kind of outside environment? I went through a whole period when I had my hair long and stuff, even through I wasn’t into the hippie scene. I just thought it was wrong. I was a street kid. I guess the reason I grew my hair long was just to get laid and be an outcast ‘cause the girls I was with dug it. But now I just think differently. My art’s too important for that anymore. If people do it, then it’s fine. But in my position, the way things are for me, I just find I can be more effective without it. Without having any particular style or fashion: ‘It ain’t no contribution / To go and rely on an institution / To validate your chosen art / And to sanction your boredom, and let you play out your art’ [“It’s Too late”],
[Book of Nods (1986)]“And then I talk about the negativity of the whole scene. I say two things. In some song I say, ‘It’s when the body at the bottom / That body is my own reflection / But it ain’t hip to sink that low / Unless you’re gonna make a resurrection’ [“Into the Night”]. I’m speaking more about my own experiences with drugs and stuff,” which he speaks more about only in the past tense. “You know, there’s nothing heroic about it. You know, that whole thing about, like, a lot of people get into it because it stacks you up above everyone else – the whole romance of the whole thing? They think it’s heroic. And it is heroic in the sense that at least you’re not a dilettante. You’ve thrown yourself over into it completely. You have a chance to be heroic in the real traditional sense of poetry, to start a second life, by coming out of the fuckin’ pit. And I say also in that same song, ‘When they got nothing to give / They parent their legs for what’s negative / They’re so decadent, until their daddy’s money from home is all spent… / So I think it’s time / Because it’s too easy to rely / On worshipping devils and strangers in bed / Though they get good drugs and they do give good head’ [“Into the Night”]. I like those lines,” he smiles. “It is true, you know? I can’t completely deny them, myself. The attraction of the negative. It’s been a part of my life for too long. To look for the good is so much harder.
“”The mythology and the ritual of Catholicism, I’ve come back to. I think it’s fantastic. The whole cult of the Virgin is very attractive. It’s the only feminine side to Western religion. The Virgin is hardly ever mentioned in Protestant religions.
“A good poet should have a feminine side to him. The thing that made me feel best about a review one time, was that [the critic was] saying that I had the ‘best feminine side of any poet in America,’ which has nothing to do with homosexuality. The guy pointed out that. It’s usually homosexuals that have the least feminine side in the works. It’s like Jung said, [that] every guy has a female side and every woman has a male side. Which, as an artist, is imperative to have. And it comes naturally to me.”
Referring to the title of his album, Jim comments that, “A lot of people think that’s an anti-Catholic song.” Comparing the discipline of Catholic elementary school to a jail, he recites, “’I took the doctor’s scalpel, and I slit the cord’ [“Catholic Boy”]. I wanted life. But then, all of a sudden, I got put back in the fuckin’ slammer. They confine you with dogma and put boundaries around it. But the mythology is just the opposite, to open up. It’s about the letting of blood. There’s a lot of images of blood. I call my album Catholic Boy because my whole life is based on [it]. Your history comes out of the streets and what effects you when you were young. That’s what’s in your heart and that’s what’s in your gut. You can’t escape it. People who go to Eastern religions after they grow up are looking in the wrong way. That’s only in the intellect that you think about it. But in the heart, you have to rely on what you grew up with when the heart was formed. In the heart sense, in the sprit of it. And that’s Catholicism for me.
[Fear of Dreaming (1993)]“What could be more ‘punk rock’ than the Stations of the Cross? Following a guy around with a crown of thorns and a crucifix – His own crucifix – up to the top of a mountain, and having Him pierced in the side by a centurion so that the blood flows? And that blood! I think that’s what the crucifixion was all about. When the centurion struck Him in the side and this magical blood came forth, that was supposedly mixed with water – a Holy Water – that blood was a letting out of all man’s ego. He had to die for man’s ego because man’s ego had built up to such a point. I mean, man’s ego is overwhelming. His arrogance. And his pride.”
He leans forward and drops the level of his voice until it’s just above a whisper. “When I think about it intellectually, it makes sense to me, and that was what junk was all about. After a while, you just wanted to do it to keep watching the blood come up. And letting the blood come out to take out your own ego, because when you were high on junk, you could see the bullshit of what it was. It just slowed everything down and your vision was narrowed. Most people think you just go on the nod. Well, people who go on the nod are wasting a heroin head. I liked a good nod as much as anyone when I was on the stuff. But man, I wanted to see people and their bullshit, too.”
Sinking back into his chair, he admits that, “with this ‘Catholic Boy’ song, that’s kind of anti-Catholic school, but when I say ‘redeemed through pain not through joy,’ that’s the way it should be. The fact is that these Born Again people, you hear them speak, they testify, ‘The Lord is with me 24 hours a day. I get joy from Him. I get such a buzz.’ It’s like a methadone maintenance program for religion. They’re gonna get the buzz 24 hours a day or nothin’s happenin’. They want something back for it.
[Poems, Interviews, Photographs (1997)]“The thing that I always thought about religion was, that if you love God, you don’t do it because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell. You don’t not sin because you’re afraid you’re gonna go to Hell or because you want to get into Heaven and get this 24 hour a day buzz. You do it because God made you. And you’re alive. And that’s all! If you’re redeemed through pain; if you pray three months that this good friend of yours is not gonna die of leukemia and he dies anyway and you’ve still got faith in what you’ve been praying to before, then that’s love of God and belief. And I don’t get any buzz from that. The fact is I can’t even say I have faith in God. In an intellectual sense, I don’t even know if I can believe in It. There’s too much else happening. But I love the rituals of it. And I want to believe it in my heart. And sometimes I can believe it. But it’s very hard.
“Like Rimbaud said, ‘Charity is a key.’ And that’s what the letting of the blood of Christ is all about: charity. And charity has to be the key more ever now. And those people just don’t think about that.”
Jim tells of his friend who embraced the diet and philosophy of an obscure religious cult. He lived in the desert fasting and preparing himself for the destruction of civilization. He ate only fruit and things that grew from the trees in an attempt to purify his body enough so that he would be able to consume his own urine. Jim explains that, “apparently, during Armageddon, when the Four Horsemen come and the world’s ending, then you can get by and survive, ‘cause you don’t need any food. All the food’s gonna wither. You can get by on your own cycle of pissing and drinking it. And in theory, that works. But the whole point to me was, and I said this to him one time, what the fuck are you gonna do, hide in a cave during a nuke war and drink your own piss? Why would you want to, man? What I’d wanna do is just be around the person I love most. Or, if not, be with any stranger if you didn’t have time to make it to that person.
“I’d feel really left out at this point, if there was a nuclear war and I didn’t die. I don’t want to be in a cave drinking piss. The only thing we could do then is give comfort. I’d want to grab the hand of the person that was next to me, whether it was the person I loved, or some stranger if I couldn’t make it to that person, if the world was ending real quick, and just grab them in whatever shelter you’re in. Or in the subway or wherever you’re hiding from this fuckin’ attack; and just grab that person and hold her hand as tight as you can and just grab hands with the other people. I’m physically a cold person. Usually, I’m not into, you know, that California stuff where everyone touches and hugs people and stuff. That always made me uptight. But is this case, I’d wanna hold the person’s hand so tight. You only have a few seconds. It’s the only time that charity would win out in this fucked up world.
“People would be more alive in those last few seconds – because death was comin’ – then they would be in their whole lives. Death would be life for them then. It’s such an irony, but that’s the case. People would feel for once for the person next to them instead of just for themselves. They look into someone else’s eyes and probably see for the first time in their life, because the edge of death and that flirtation with death always brings that out.
“So this guy drinking piss, what’s he gonna do? First of all, if Revelations is right and the world is gonna end through some kind of mystical thing, the Four Horsemen and the Apocalypse, there ain’t no cave you’re gonna be able to hide in. Those Four Horsemen are gonna check out everything. The whole idea is people are gonna pray to die and not be able to die. So he ain’t gonna be able to hide. If it’s more like just a straight pragmatic nuclear war and everything’s gonna be destroyed, then he could hide from it in a cave.” He lowers his voice again. “But why would you want to? What would you come down to? A bunch of fuckin’ mutants!”
Part II: Soundtrack of the Times
Jim Carroll, 1994
Some people spend their whole lives searching for the spotlight, while others stumble into it repeatedly. Take Jim Carroll for example.
When Jim Carroll chronicles his career, he makes fame sound so easy: a published poet by the time he was 16, a Pulitzer Prize nomination at 22, a best selling author (The Basketball Diaries), and rock star at 29. But his success wasn’t’ built on pure luck. He admits he has no patience with dilatants. He puts everything he has into everything he does. And what he possesses is an incredible talent that can not be ignored.
He grew up tough and fast on the streets of Manhattan. And if it wasn’t for a scholarship to a private high school, he might have ended up like the rest of his friends he mentions in his song, “People Who Died.” But something in his blue eyes suggests that he was always too smart to be consumed by the streets. As a kid writing The Basketball Diaries, he had shown an incredible perception and lack of self-pity.
Jim Carroll took to poetry as soon as he was introduced to it. Knowing the value of voyeurism, he set out to study the best contemporary poets of the ‘60s by attending a Greenwich Village poetry workshop.
“I was hanging around down at St. Mark’s Church, at the Poetry Project down there, where Allan Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan and all these people would read. I didn’t say anything to anybody there. I just stayed and watched in the audience.” At the time, Jim had already begun to write poetry. He showed some of it to a high school friend whose brother ran the press at City College. The brother immediately wanted to publish them. “I only had about thirty pages of poems that I wanted published
Catholic Boy (1980)“I was too shy to introduce myself to the people at the poetry scene. But then when I had this book, I could give it to them and that way I could introduce myself. And they said, ‘We wondered who you were, if you were a poet or just spyin’ on us.’ Then I started to publish when I was 16, in the magazine that they ran out of [St. Mark’s], The World. And every twelve issues, Bobbs-Merril Publishers would publish this big hardcover anthology of the best works from it. From that I started to get from the underground press into hardcover publishers and stuff. And then I started publishing in the Paris Review, because this poet, Tom Clark, was the poetry editor and he hung out at the St. Mark’s thing.
“And that’s where I first published the diaries, too. They asked me if I had any prose because they were having a prose issue of The World. I said, ‘All I have is these diaries that I kept when I was young.’ And I started to read them at poetry readings at St. Mark’s and they always went over real well. And when George Plimpton read them, he asked me to give him some for the Paris Review [for which he was editor]. I gave him twenty-five pages and I got letters form all these publishers who wanted to publish them. But I didn’t want to publish that book until I published a really big volume of poetry because I didn’t want to be known as a street writer. I wanted to show that I could write as a poet. It was stupid. It was being hung up with style.”
Jim held off publishing the diaries because most editors “wanted to make some changes in it and give it more sociological meaning. Like why I was doing all this and stuff. Since I wasn’t the same age anymore, as 13 to 15, it would’ve been bullshit to change them. Each one I kind of wrote to be a short story; to stand by itself. They weren’t day-to-day diaries. They were all subjective little short stories and anecdotes. I didn’t want to put in any, like ‘Dear Diary, why is this happening to me? Because my parents hate me, I’m shooting junk.’ Bullshit! I did it because I wanted to party.
[Dry Dreams (1982)]“I never had any editor touch my work at all. Even when I was 16. I wouldn’t allow it. And now that I can command it, of course, I don’t let them. If an editor makes suggestions, that’s one thing. But the only thing I think of an editor as is someone who checks for typos and misspellings. I just didn’t like the idea of that. I really cared about the diaries since this was a book that I wanted kids to read. And I wanted a big distribution on it instead of just to the poetry audience. I wanted a paperback house. All I cared about was the paperback edition because it was affordable for the kids.”
After he published Living in the Movies, the book that earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1974, he moved to California and became a recluse. “I didn’t like the lifestyle in California, that kind of mellow, laid-back shit. I just wanted to use a landscape. I didn’t associate with anyone. I just lived in the country. I had dogs for the first time in my life. I love animals, but could never have them. I’d bring home strays every week when I was a kid and my mother would say, ‘The city’s no place for a dog.’ You know that line? So, once I got out there, I got, like, four dogs. And I’d take these long walks with ‘em and I was writing a lot of poetry and these prose poems, thinking about what I was going to do with the diaries.
“Then, after, I slowly decided I was going to do rock, by what I was writing and what I was reading.
“The book that effected me the most was The Time of the Assassins, by Henry Miller. It was s study of Rimbaud’s works, but it’s really a study of Henry Miller by Henry Miller. It speaks about how a poet – real poet – has to effect the heart as well as the mind. And you have to effect people who are virtually illiterate, as well as the people who are intellectuals. Rock’n’roll is the way you effect people on the social level.”
His initiation into rock’n’roll was a fluke. He had a small part in an underground film with Patti Smith, where he was reading this poem, “The Guitar Voodoo.” [The poem is about a girl with a magical guitar; whenever she plays the strings she inflicts pain to an enemy. The faster the guitar strings vibrate, the worse the pain gets.] The day after the film was shot, Patti Smith was giving a concert in San Diego. She asked Jim to go along.
[Praying Mantis (1991)]Her opening act, a heavy-metal band, began to pose a problem, so Patti cancelled them and announced, “’Jim will open the show.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, Patti, what am I gonna do?’ She said, ‘We’ll do what we did in the movie last night, only the whole band will play behind you.’ It was very generous of her because it takes away the whole anticipation of an opening act. Patti would just come out playin’ a guitar behind me. I said, ‘Well, that’s cool. I’ll do it, but I’m not gonna read this thing ‘cause I’d be too nervous. I’ll start shaking with the piece of paper. I didn’t have it memorized. I’ll do some of the lyrics that I’ve been writing with Allan [Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult]; but we don’t’ have time to work out the music that Allan did, so I’ll just rap ‘em and you guys can jam.’ And, of course, Lenny [Kaye] and all those guys were real good at that. In the early days, they’d just jam while Patti made up lyrics. So, they started to play and I did these two songs; just rapped ‘em. Patti came over to me and was, like, leanin’ up against me while I was doin’ it. I was totally out of it. Then I loosened up and it was great. It was about ten minutes long – just right. The audience really dug it. Everything was very clear and this energy was coming at me from behind, so it was just like this sandwich of energy. It was fantastic.”
His poems went over so well that he was invited to the Mabohay Gardens to do a gig of his own. But at this point he didn’t have a band, and Allan Lanier was busy finishing the music if the songs they’d been working on. But Jim’s never been restrained by obstacles. He knew a San Francisco bar band called Amsterdam that he’d met one day while he was hitchhiking. “I got a ride from two of the guys in the band. They said, ‘Yeah, you’re a poet. We’ve read your book and stuff. You ever think of writing lyrics?’ And I said, ‘Well, people have spoken to me about it. I’ve been doing it a bit with this old friend of mine, Patti.’ But they weren’t into punk music. They were straight out of the Stones.” He remembers telling them, “Well, maybe we’ll do something together sometime at a poetry reading or something, and you guys can play behind me.” He approached them about playing the Mabohay.
“We had about a week’s rehearsal, and we worked out the music for, like, six songs. And I wanted to make sure they were songs and not just poems with music behind hem – just jamming – like that night with Patti or even lyrics with the music. I wanted to make them integral songs, with breaks, as best I could, or else just rap ‘em. But having these songs, it went over so well that the guy [who owned the club] asked us to come back the next week and play the last show when we could really turn up the volume. We did the gig the next week on a weekend night, so there was a huge crowd. People from the poetry scene were there, as well as people from the punk scene. I was really getting into it. We saw it was working.”
Amsterdam continued to perform at their old haunts before the Jim Carroll Band was officially formed. Whenever they’d back up Jim, they would hide their long hair under berets, “so the people weren’t shouting, ‘Get these hippies off the stage.’ I just wanted the band not to have any one look and not be pinned because it turns people off – especially in the clubs. They say, ‘Oh, these guys were playing hippie music.’ And that wasn’t the case when we started to work together.
[Pools of Mercury (1998)]The Jim Carroll Band – Brian Linsley and Terrell Winn on guitars, Steve Linsley on bass and Wayne Woods on drums – could easily stand alone. They’ve each co-written something with Jim for the band’s debut album Catholic Boy, and although their music is loud, fast and extremely easy to dance to, it never overshadows Jim’s haunting lyrics.
“I demand attention when I play. It’s not just shit-kicking music. That’s part of it. I just want people to listen. Listen with their ears and listen with their hearts, too. I want them to take something away with them. I don’t want them just to come and dance and exhaust themselves and split. I want them to go home with an image in their minds. Just one image that will stick with them and move them – feel not better about themselves or anything like that, just think about themselves, or think about some image that’s left.”
The band quickly built up a following playing around the San Francisco area, and they knew the time had come to go into the studio. They recorded a six song demo tape at an eight-track studio, and when Jim returned to New York for the release of The Basketball Diaries, he took the demo with him. He had intended to bring it around to some of the record companies, but as luck would have it, he didn’t need to.
Jim’s publisher threw a party for him at the Gotham Book Mart. One of the guests was Earl McGrath, former president of Rolling Stone Records. McGrath had heard about Jim’s band through a mutual friend, artist Larry Rivers. He was anxious to hear the band and invited Jim to bring the tape to his office. Assuming that nothing would come of it expect possibly a little honest criticism, Jim brought this tape to Rolling Stone Records.
“When he heard it, he was just silent for about five minutes. It seemed like ten hours, and I thought, ‘He hates it.’ Then he said, ‘This is very strong and very different. Keith’s been looking for something to produce so I think we’d like to do something with this.’ And I was besides myself ‘cause I knew the band would freak.”
Originally, Keith Richards wanted to produce Catholic Boy, but he was tied up recording with the Rolling Stones. McGrath stepped in as producer, and when he made a move from Rolling Stone to Atco Records, he took his pet project with him.
“It took a long time after me signing before it came out. By my own choice, we put off doing it because I didn’t want to start recording until I had a total handle on the songs, by doing them live. The tendency is to just rush into the studio with the first album and do it real quick. I think it’s a mistake to rush in. I’m glad we took our time.
“We had all the arrangements and stuff, so once we got into the studio, we did it very quickly. We did two sessions about a month apart. Five days the first time and four days the second, four hours each, and we did that in San Francisco. We mixed it here. The band stayed out there, and I came back to do some of the vocals.”
Before the album came out last October, Jim had only played two shows in New York. His first gig turned into a showcase. The tiny club was filled with so many record company people that there was hardly any room for fans of either the Jim Carroll Band, or his surprise guest, Keith Richards. “We got all this flack for hype, because Keith played with me. He can play with us any fuckin’ time he wants. It’s an honor to have Keith Richards play with us. It wasn’t any hype at all. Hype is what people make it. I’ve been a poet since I was 15 years old and I’ve supported myself any way I could, to write poetry. I’ve proven myself all those years that I’m not into things for what I can get out of them financially or any other way. I’ve always stuck by poetry and I always will. And there’s no money in that. And if there’s more money in rock’n’roll, and more in, say, The Basketball Diaries, because it’s doing well, then fine. But if it doesn’t happen, then I’m a poet, that’s what I do. It just seems like a natural evolution, the way it is now. And it’s really integral to my work. The way the album turned out, it doesn’t seem like something different, outside of it, that I just started to do. It seems like a natural extension and that’s what makes it so satisfying.”
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tribute to a Mixed Tape: Weeeeeeeeird Music
Text © Robert Barry Francos
Images and videos from Internet
There were lots of reasons to make mixed tapes – when it was still tape. When one hears about this phenomenon, it is usually something made as a gift for someone they are trying to impress, like a potential girlfriend. It was infamously one sided in that way, though I do admit that my then-girlfriend made me some powerful collections.
Most cars played cassettes (though some did 8-Tracks, but they were only pre-recorded), and I used to create my own to play in the car, especially since I haven’t found much reason to listen to a music channel (and the good ones, like WFMU, were hard to pick up then), especially since I was dating someone at a distance and needed to take long, long drives pretty often.
Just recently, I came across a tape I made in 1985, which I had labeled Weeeeeeeeird Music. It was only one side of the cassette, thereby coming in at 45 minutes, and I would like to share.
I have linked the songs at the end of each piece, if available online. Though I own all the music (in vinyl, of course), occasionally I have not been able to find the particular song because I can’t remember the artist’s name, so I have listed them as TBD. If anyone knows, inform me and I will update the blog. These are in the order they appear on the tape.
1. “Deteriorata” – National Lampoon’s Radio Dinner
Sometimes the spoof of a song can be better than the original. In this case it is true about this send-up of the meaningful and spiritual “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann. The first starts off with “You are a child of the universe / You have a right to be here,” and continues on giving soulful advice to a hippie mind-expanded culture. The theme of “Deteriorata” is similar, but manipulates it (see end of this review) The advice sounds more like the mind of Comedian Steven Wright, with short, sloganesque bon mots like, “Go placidly amid the noise and waste / And remember what comfort there may be / In owning a piece thereof,” “Let not the sands of time get in your lunch,” and “Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself / And heed their advice / Even though they be turkeys.” The male, sonorous voice sounds fatherly or priestly, giving the off-kilter “Say what?” aspect even more power. Sample lyrics:
You are a fluke of the universe
You have no right to be here
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe
Is laughing behind your back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NAwlepnSs
2. “Magical Misery Tour” – National Lampoon’s Radio Dinner
Obviously recorded before the mellowing and then assassination of John Lennon, this is a scathing imitation of him spouting out his anger at the world for ripping him off (e.g., “I was the walrus! Paul wasn’t the walrus! I was just saying that to be nice, but I was actually the walrus!”). The song, sung by Tony Hendra in full Lennon mode, is full of vindictive comments about the Stones, Paul, George and Hare Krishna’s, his aunt, and Linda (or Lee?) Eastman. Only Yoko comes out looking well (“I’ll tell you why nobody likes her music / Because she’s a woman and she’s Oriental, that’s why!”). It’s painfully funny from beginning to end, though I know a lot of people who were angry with this. But as the song clearly states, “Genius is pain!” And the last line is an impersonation of Yoko presciently saying, “The dream is over…”
Look, I’m not your fuckin’ parents
And I’m sick of upside hippies coming a-knockin’ at me door
With a fuckin peace symbol
Get this, fuck that
I don’t owe you fuckers anything
And all I got to say is fuck you
The sky is blue!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clkX-x5UOK8
3. “Wop Muzik” – Eddy Gorodetsky and Tom Couch
A spoof of M’s “Pop Muzik,” this is accurate to the original, but the lyrics take a funny look at Italian stereotypes, which made it all the more amusing to me since I grew up in heavily Sicilian Bensonhurst. While making fun of this stereotype (though close enough to be offensive to some, especially those I knew from my youth, e.g., the ones throwing watermelons at Al Sharpton during his many marches through my neighborhood back then), it seems to be it is done in a jovial manner, rather than a mocking one: “Wanna be the next pope / Won’t be no-no / Domni Domni / Holy moley!” Sometimes satire can be so close it truly is hard to see the joke forest for the real trees.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Have some spaghetti
Play some bocce
Sing “Pagliacci”
Cosa Nostra, pizza parlor
Everyone’s talkin’ ‘bout…”
4. “Gaslight at The Ice House” – Pat Paulsen
Paulsen was a cast member of The Smothers Brothers show, but there is some funny solo material on his album, Live at the Ice House. He was known for his complete deadpan delivery (and yet, he often cracked himself up, and rightfully so). This is true with this off-the-cuff lovingly kidding of folk songs that really don’t say anything. He is pretty obviously making it up as he goes along in a sort of melodic sing-song monotone (yes, a true oxymoron), as he pauses to think about the next line and laughs about not only what he just said, but one gets the feeling, about where he’s going.
We ordered a cider and there was a cockroach in my glass
So I switched glasses
And you switched glasses
And the cockroach switched glasses
5. “Disco Jesus” – The Clap
I am certain there are people out there who are going to find this offensive. Probably the point. This is certainly one of the few disco songs I can tolerate, because I simply cannot listen to it without laughing. It’s just a standard, by-the-numbers disco tune with the whistles and all – what a friend of mine would call washing machine music (because it has the same woosh-woosh rhythm) – but the lyrics are something else. The singer wants to do the bump with Jesus and states, “so if you love to party / yeah, Jesus loves you.” It’s the mentions of his “golden coke-spoon and skin-tight bulging slacks” that will probably freak out some. Hopefully, if you believe in that kind of thing, Jesus had (has?) some kind of sense of humor. Please note that this is not the one on YouTube where someone dresses as Jesus dances to the Bee Gees.
Jesus he gets down
Comes to boogie He’s the boss
You oughta see him do the hustle
Upon that funky cross
6. “Walk With an Erection” – Swinging Erudites
Led by Johnny Angel of (City) Thrills and the underrated Blackjacks up in Boston, he put out two albums of comedy with this group. I once saw him at the Rat doing an amazingly funny lounge act of punk songs (somewhat later realized by Paul Anka’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). But here, his troupe takes on the Bangles hit, obviously changing the lyrics to fit the sophomoric notions they present. They aren’t mimics, per se, but they come pretty close to the original, making this all the more funny, especially with making light of Vicki’s whistling part.
Those college boys are true to form
They try to lure chicks into their dorm
They’re oozing sweat from every pore
They drop their drawers and ask for more
All the girls from BU they say “Hard on, hard on
Beg my pardon”
Walk with an e-rec-tion
MP3s for the Swinging Erudites can be found at www.myspace.com/theswingingerudites
7. “Jon Anchovi Sings: You Give Rock a Bad Name/Livin' On My Hair” – Swinging Erudites
Johnny Angel takes on the demigod-like (at least at the time he was) Jon Bon Jovi. He starts right off with “Shot through the ears / this tune’s so lame / We give rock / A bad name.” While matching the music quite accurately, Angel almost goes beyond the necessary to strike deep in the heart of Jovi lore. I don’t have a problem with it actually, as while I believe Jovi is a probably nice guy, but his music has always been…whatever. Angel leaves no stone unturned, blending the original song’s guitar solo into the key phrase of “Layla,” not just hinting of a “borrowing” (Boston-based musical comedian Blowfish did this also with Robin Trower and Jimi Hendrix). Whenever I hear “Living on the Air” now, I automatically “hear” this version in my head, and smile.
All the kids in the country know all our songs by heart
Like it or not
Oh, I’m a millionaire
Oh-oh, living on my hair
Take my advice and have it feathered and layered
Oh-oh, living’ on my hair
8. “Dead Skunk” – Loudon Wainwright III
This is one of the few songs in the collection that isn’t a take-off of another song. This was actually a semi-radio hit. Loudon was known for his quirky songs, like “Love to the Nth Degree,” and presented many of them on the first season of M*A*S*H and early Saturday Night Lives. This song is a non-sentimental, and yet respectful, look at what is left over when a skunk “didn’t look left and he didn’t look right.” Still, it is less nasty as, say, Tina Peel’s “Fifi Went Pop” (another great song, but not in this collection). Solid country and with Loudon’s unique voice, this is totally hummable. PETA must hate this.
Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose
Roll up your window and hold your nose
You don’t have to look and you don’t have to see
‘Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pprvp0Uujdg
9. “Kennedy Girls” – Little Roger and the Goosebumps
LR&tG (led by Roger Clark and Dick Bright) are better known for their “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” (which can be found on YouTube), but I find this one to be more fun. Their dead-on interpretation of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” is hysterical. Sacrilege to some, but I see it as a funny and loving tribute, considering how musically adept they cover the song (same with “Stairway,” which totally offended a classic rocker I used to work with). One doesn’t go through the trouble to be this accurate with some appreciation of the original.
Sister or cousin don’t matter to me
On every branch of that family tree
There are Kennedy girls
Don’t care if she’s ugly her credit’s enough
They always carry plenty of green stuff
Those Kennedy girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEe3BKCmwV8
10. “Eleanor Rigby” Jimi Lalumia & The Psychotic Frogs
Led by Long Island musician Jimi Lalumia, the Frogs did a total disrespectful makeover of the Beatles classic. More in a punk vein, they take a sort of Lou Reed-ish “Walk on the Wild Side” slice-and-dice, mixed with a Wayne (as he was then) County outrageousness, and tells the sick and twisted tale of Eleanor and Father MacKenzie. The listener knows they are in for something different with the opening line of “Ah, look at all you fuckin’ people.” But I want to add that with its entire shockability factor, which really is the main point here, it is so sick and twisted, that it is also humorous. Also, if you check out the video, read the comments underneath. Some people just take this stuff too seriously.
Eleanor Rigby scratches her crotch in a church where a wedding has been
She’s rather obscene
Down with her panties
She’s never been fucked but she knows some day that she will
So she’s on the pill
A live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cipi4ezTrQ
11. “I Got Fucked By the Devil Last Night” Jimi Lalumia & The Psychotic Frogs
For those who don’t know, the name of this band comes from a line by Wayne County in his song, “Max’s Kansas City.” Jimi Lalumia is a huge County fan, and this is the perfect example of his dedication. This song is different than any other in this list in that rather than shifting the lyrics to pervert the meaning, Jimi actually changes the lyrics back to their original. When County recorded this, he was forced to soften the title words to “Paranoia Paradise”; Jimi changes it back.
Late last night after I went to bed
I got a demonic feeling in my head
Something pulled my legs apart
And I felt it right up to my heart
I got fucked by the devil last night
He sure fucked the hell out of me
A live version, including Jayne County: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6qGCde6d48
12. “Loco-Motion” – Christopher Milk
Christopher Milk was a band led by rock writer John Mendolsohn, and this was on their album, Some People Will Drink Anything. Basically the lyrics stay the same as on this classic ‘60s tune, but a total reinterpretation with a new bridge in the middle (such as Willie Alexander’s “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”). When I’ve played this for people, they seem to want to scratch their heads in confusion. Definitely a cult thing from the ‘70s, the two main vocals toss between muddled and slurred with a nasal quality, and a sluggish bass, and bolstered by a pounding beat (especially on said bridge)
I want to see all my brothers and all my sisters out here
Doing the Locomotion with me
Where are you brothers and sisters?
C’mon
13. “Satisfaction” – The Residents
One way to look at it is that the Residents are to rock’n’roll what Miles Davis was to jazz. Lots of dissonance, distortion, noise, and sheer “What the hell?” I have emptied more than one party by playing this cut. One has to hear this a number of times to truly appreciate its sheer mania. Pre-industrial, but they left their mark as an influence. And it is long, though not as much as fellow travelers, impLOG. The video on YouTube sounds completely different, by the way. Oh, and my single is on yellow vinyl!
Not a clue…
14. “Fluffy” – Gloria Balsam
This is done kind of straightforward, but under the…er…capable hands of comedian Gloria Balsam, it has its own aura. Out of San Francisco, this is pure experimental pop. Gloria sings a treaclely song about finding, losing, and then re-finding her dog. I really can’t tell if this is some kind of tribute to her dog, or just a comedy bit, but I gotta say I love this song, from the first time I heard it. Glorida does not exactly have a great voice, but that’s all part of the appeal, especially on the parts that are too high for her voice and comes out kind of as a shriek. Wish she had done more. While I proudly own the original single, Dr. Demento also (and wrongfully) has this on collection, The Worst Records Ever Made. Sacrilege!
Here Fluffy, where are you, where ARE you?
Oh, how much you mean to MEEEEEE
A live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ2ndH84JOs
15. “A Blind Man’s Penis” – John Trubee
The story behind this is as interesting as the song itself. John Trubee found an ad in the back of a magazine stating that if you send in a poem, for a fee they’ll send it back as a C&W song. He came up with the most bizarre, psychotic, collection of sentences he could thing of and sent it off. This is what came back. The only line they edited was changing “Stevie Wonder’s Penis” to its present title. With straight deadpan, the able country singer twangs over a standard pre-recorded tinny keyboard. What makes this especially fun is that voice and the contradiction of the lyrics he is singing. This record is brilliant.
The zebra spilled his plastic seed on Venus
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona’s titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill, to kill everyone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vFFewvHwEY
Images and videos from Internet
There were lots of reasons to make mixed tapes – when it was still tape. When one hears about this phenomenon, it is usually something made as a gift for someone they are trying to impress, like a potential girlfriend. It was infamously one sided in that way, though I do admit that my then-girlfriend made me some powerful collections.
Most cars played cassettes (though some did 8-Tracks, but they were only pre-recorded), and I used to create my own to play in the car, especially since I haven’t found much reason to listen to a music channel (and the good ones, like WFMU, were hard to pick up then), especially since I was dating someone at a distance and needed to take long, long drives pretty often.
Just recently, I came across a tape I made in 1985, which I had labeled Weeeeeeeeird Music. It was only one side of the cassette, thereby coming in at 45 minutes, and I would like to share.
I have linked the songs at the end of each piece, if available online. Though I own all the music (in vinyl, of course), occasionally I have not been able to find the particular song because I can’t remember the artist’s name, so I have listed them as TBD. If anyone knows, inform me and I will update the blog. These are in the order they appear on the tape.
1. “Deteriorata” – National Lampoon’s Radio DinnerSometimes the spoof of a song can be better than the original. In this case it is true about this send-up of the meaningful and spiritual “Desiderata” by Max Ehrmann. The first starts off with “You are a child of the universe / You have a right to be here,” and continues on giving soulful advice to a hippie mind-expanded culture. The theme of “Deteriorata” is similar, but manipulates it (see end of this review) The advice sounds more like the mind of Comedian Steven Wright, with short, sloganesque bon mots like, “Go placidly amid the noise and waste / And remember what comfort there may be / In owning a piece thereof,” “Let not the sands of time get in your lunch,” and “Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself / And heed their advice / Even though they be turkeys.” The male, sonorous voice sounds fatherly or priestly, giving the off-kilter “Say what?” aspect even more power. Sample lyrics:
You are a fluke of the universe
You have no right to be here
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe
Is laughing behind your back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NAwlepnSs
2. “Magical Misery Tour” – National Lampoon’s Radio Dinner
Obviously recorded before the mellowing and then assassination of John Lennon, this is a scathing imitation of him spouting out his anger at the world for ripping him off (e.g., “I was the walrus! Paul wasn’t the walrus! I was just saying that to be nice, but I was actually the walrus!”). The song, sung by Tony Hendra in full Lennon mode, is full of vindictive comments about the Stones, Paul, George and Hare Krishna’s, his aunt, and Linda (or Lee?) Eastman. Only Yoko comes out looking well (“I’ll tell you why nobody likes her music / Because she’s a woman and she’s Oriental, that’s why!”). It’s painfully funny from beginning to end, though I know a lot of people who were angry with this. But as the song clearly states, “Genius is pain!” And the last line is an impersonation of Yoko presciently saying, “The dream is over…”
Look, I’m not your fuckin’ parents
And I’m sick of upside hippies coming a-knockin’ at me door
With a fuckin peace symbol
Get this, fuck that
I don’t owe you fuckers anything
And all I got to say is fuck you
The sky is blue!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clkX-x5UOK8
3. “Wop Muzik” – Eddy Gorodetsky and Tom Couch
A spoof of M’s “Pop Muzik,” this is accurate to the original, but the lyrics take a funny look at Italian stereotypes, which made it all the more amusing to me since I grew up in heavily Sicilian Bensonhurst. While making fun of this stereotype (though close enough to be offensive to some, especially those I knew from my youth, e.g., the ones throwing watermelons at Al Sharpton during his many marches through my neighborhood back then), it seems to be it is done in a jovial manner, rather than a mocking one: “Wanna be the next pope / Won’t be no-no / Domni Domni / Holy moley!” Sometimes satire can be so close it truly is hard to see the joke forest for the real trees.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Have some spaghetti
Play some bocce
Sing “Pagliacci”
Cosa Nostra, pizza parlor
Everyone’s talkin’ ‘bout…”
4. “Gaslight at The Ice House” – Pat PaulsenPaulsen was a cast member of The Smothers Brothers show, but there is some funny solo material on his album, Live at the Ice House. He was known for his complete deadpan delivery (and yet, he often cracked himself up, and rightfully so). This is true with this off-the-cuff lovingly kidding of folk songs that really don’t say anything. He is pretty obviously making it up as he goes along in a sort of melodic sing-song monotone (yes, a true oxymoron), as he pauses to think about the next line and laughs about not only what he just said, but one gets the feeling, about where he’s going.
We ordered a cider and there was a cockroach in my glass
So I switched glasses
And you switched glasses
And the cockroach switched glasses
5. “Disco Jesus” – The Clap
I am certain there are people out there who are going to find this offensive. Probably the point. This is certainly one of the few disco songs I can tolerate, because I simply cannot listen to it without laughing. It’s just a standard, by-the-numbers disco tune with the whistles and all – what a friend of mine would call washing machine music (because it has the same woosh-woosh rhythm) – but the lyrics are something else. The singer wants to do the bump with Jesus and states, “so if you love to party / yeah, Jesus loves you.” It’s the mentions of his “golden coke-spoon and skin-tight bulging slacks” that will probably freak out some. Hopefully, if you believe in that kind of thing, Jesus had (has?) some kind of sense of humor. Please note that this is not the one on YouTube where someone dresses as Jesus dances to the Bee Gees.
Jesus he gets down
Comes to boogie He’s the boss
You oughta see him do the hustle
Upon that funky cross
6. “Walk With an Erection” – Swinging EruditesLed by Johnny Angel of (City) Thrills and the underrated Blackjacks up in Boston, he put out two albums of comedy with this group. I once saw him at the Rat doing an amazingly funny lounge act of punk songs (somewhat later realized by Paul Anka’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). But here, his troupe takes on the Bangles hit, obviously changing the lyrics to fit the sophomoric notions they present. They aren’t mimics, per se, but they come pretty close to the original, making this all the more funny, especially with making light of Vicki’s whistling part.
Those college boys are true to form
They try to lure chicks into their dorm
They’re oozing sweat from every pore
They drop their drawers and ask for more
All the girls from BU they say “Hard on, hard on
Beg my pardon”
Walk with an e-rec-tion
MP3s for the Swinging Erudites can be found at www.myspace.com/theswingingerudites
7. “Jon Anchovi Sings: You Give Rock a Bad Name/Livin' On My Hair” – Swinging Erudites
Johnny Angel takes on the demigod-like (at least at the time he was) Jon Bon Jovi. He starts right off with “Shot through the ears / this tune’s so lame / We give rock / A bad name.” While matching the music quite accurately, Angel almost goes beyond the necessary to strike deep in the heart of Jovi lore. I don’t have a problem with it actually, as while I believe Jovi is a probably nice guy, but his music has always been…whatever. Angel leaves no stone unturned, blending the original song’s guitar solo into the key phrase of “Layla,” not just hinting of a “borrowing” (Boston-based musical comedian Blowfish did this also with Robin Trower and Jimi Hendrix). Whenever I hear “Living on the Air” now, I automatically “hear” this version in my head, and smile.
All the kids in the country know all our songs by heart
Like it or not
Oh, I’m a millionaire
Oh-oh, living on my hair
Take my advice and have it feathered and layered
Oh-oh, living’ on my hair
8. “Dead Skunk” – Loudon Wainwright IIIThis is one of the few songs in the collection that isn’t a take-off of another song. This was actually a semi-radio hit. Loudon was known for his quirky songs, like “Love to the Nth Degree,” and presented many of them on the first season of M*A*S*H and early Saturday Night Lives. This song is a non-sentimental, and yet respectful, look at what is left over when a skunk “didn’t look left and he didn’t look right.” Still, it is less nasty as, say, Tina Peel’s “Fifi Went Pop” (another great song, but not in this collection). Solid country and with Loudon’s unique voice, this is totally hummable. PETA must hate this.
Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose
Roll up your window and hold your nose
You don’t have to look and you don’t have to see
‘Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pprvp0Uujdg
9. “Kennedy Girls” – Little Roger and the Goosebumps
LR&tG (led by Roger Clark and Dick Bright) are better known for their “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” (which can be found on YouTube), but I find this one to be more fun. Their dead-on interpretation of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” is hysterical. Sacrilege to some, but I see it as a funny and loving tribute, considering how musically adept they cover the song (same with “Stairway,” which totally offended a classic rocker I used to work with). One doesn’t go through the trouble to be this accurate with some appreciation of the original.
Sister or cousin don’t matter to me
On every branch of that family tree
There are Kennedy girls
Don’t care if she’s ugly her credit’s enough
They always carry plenty of green stuff
Those Kennedy girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEe3BKCmwV8
10. “Eleanor Rigby” Jimi Lalumia & The Psychotic Frogs
Led by Long Island musician Jimi Lalumia, the Frogs did a total disrespectful makeover of the Beatles classic. More in a punk vein, they take a sort of Lou Reed-ish “Walk on the Wild Side” slice-and-dice, mixed with a Wayne (as he was then) County outrageousness, and tells the sick and twisted tale of Eleanor and Father MacKenzie. The listener knows they are in for something different with the opening line of “Ah, look at all you fuckin’ people.” But I want to add that with its entire shockability factor, which really is the main point here, it is so sick and twisted, that it is also humorous. Also, if you check out the video, read the comments underneath. Some people just take this stuff too seriously.
Eleanor Rigby scratches her crotch in a church where a wedding has been
She’s rather obscene
Down with her panties
She’s never been fucked but she knows some day that she will
So she’s on the pill
A live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cipi4ezTrQ
11. “I Got Fucked By the Devil Last Night” Jimi Lalumia & The Psychotic Frogs
For those who don’t know, the name of this band comes from a line by Wayne County in his song, “Max’s Kansas City.” Jimi Lalumia is a huge County fan, and this is the perfect example of his dedication. This song is different than any other in this list in that rather than shifting the lyrics to pervert the meaning, Jimi actually changes the lyrics back to their original. When County recorded this, he was forced to soften the title words to “Paranoia Paradise”; Jimi changes it back.
Late last night after I went to bed
I got a demonic feeling in my head
Something pulled my legs apart
And I felt it right up to my heart
I got fucked by the devil last night
He sure fucked the hell out of me
A live version, including Jayne County: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6qGCde6d48
12. “Loco-Motion” – Christopher MilkChristopher Milk was a band led by rock writer John Mendolsohn, and this was on their album, Some People Will Drink Anything. Basically the lyrics stay the same as on this classic ‘60s tune, but a total reinterpretation with a new bridge in the middle (such as Willie Alexander’s “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”). When I’ve played this for people, they seem to want to scratch their heads in confusion. Definitely a cult thing from the ‘70s, the two main vocals toss between muddled and slurred with a nasal quality, and a sluggish bass, and bolstered by a pounding beat (especially on said bridge)
I want to see all my brothers and all my sisters out here
Doing the Locomotion with me
Where are you brothers and sisters?
C’mon
13. “Satisfaction” – The Residents
One way to look at it is that the Residents are to rock’n’roll what Miles Davis was to jazz. Lots of dissonance, distortion, noise, and sheer “What the hell?” I have emptied more than one party by playing this cut. One has to hear this a number of times to truly appreciate its sheer mania. Pre-industrial, but they left their mark as an influence. And it is long, though not as much as fellow travelers, impLOG. The video on YouTube sounds completely different, by the way. Oh, and my single is on yellow vinyl!
Not a clue…
14. “Fluffy” – Gloria BalsamThis is done kind of straightforward, but under the…er…capable hands of comedian Gloria Balsam, it has its own aura. Out of San Francisco, this is pure experimental pop. Gloria sings a treaclely song about finding, losing, and then re-finding her dog. I really can’t tell if this is some kind of tribute to her dog, or just a comedy bit, but I gotta say I love this song, from the first time I heard it. Glorida does not exactly have a great voice, but that’s all part of the appeal, especially on the parts that are too high for her voice and comes out kind of as a shriek. Wish she had done more. While I proudly own the original single, Dr. Demento also (and wrongfully) has this on collection, The Worst Records Ever Made. Sacrilege!
Here Fluffy, where are you, where ARE you?
Oh, how much you mean to MEEEEEE
A live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ2ndH84JOs
15. “A Blind Man’s Penis” – John Trubee
The story behind this is as interesting as the song itself. John Trubee found an ad in the back of a magazine stating that if you send in a poem, for a fee they’ll send it back as a C&W song. He came up with the most bizarre, psychotic, collection of sentences he could thing of and sent it off. This is what came back. The only line they edited was changing “Stevie Wonder’s Penis” to its present title. With straight deadpan, the able country singer twangs over a standard pre-recorded tinny keyboard. What makes this especially fun is that voice and the contradiction of the lyrics he is singing. This record is brilliant.
The zebra spilled his plastic seed on Venus
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona’s titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill, to kill everyone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vFFewvHwEY
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