“I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.” — Tony Campolo, to a church congregation
I wrote this essay five years ago for a now-defunct blog by and for music lovers. After learning of punk poet Jim Carroll’s passing at age 60 this past weekend, I decided to dig it out and post it again. It isn’t appropriate for my blog, so I put in on here.
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If you want to talk about the true poets of punk rock – and by true poets I mean those few artists who could paint masterpieces with a few well honed words and phrases – then the conversation would involve a handful of punks. (You can’t count Lou Reed, because he was pre-punk.) You had Patti Smith, of course, and John Lydon/Johnny Rotten, and Talking Heads (count them as one), and you could spend all night just talking about the power of their words.
But then you’ve got Jim Carroll. If Patti Smith is the mother of punk poetry, then Jim Carroll is the father.
I’d never heard of Jim Carroll until one night in college. My roommates and I were engaged in our usual late-night study-break ritual – passing the bong around to the noise coming out of our campus’ low-power FM station, which is where I learned about the various flavors of punk rock, or all the flavors a kid in Columbia, Missouri, in 1980 or ’81 could access – when this song came on that blew my weed-addled mind. It started out with a bang: a taut guitar intro – four sharp, bluesy power chords, almost too brief to be called an intro – followed by this streetwise rap-chant coming from the hoarse, tough voice. The chant was a beautiful litany of tragedy:
Teddy sniffing glue he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine
I nearly dropped the bong, laughing. Trying to absorb the lyrics – this beautiful, macabre, mad poetry about people who died, died – and digging the guitar. The song ended, and the DJ said the song was “People Who Died,” by the Jim Carroll Band.
The next day, after classes, I headed for the local record store, dug through the bins, discovered “Catholic Boy,” and made my purchase. Then I went back to the apartment to enjoy the record, accompanied by some sensimilla in the bong.
I loved that record. Each of Jim Carroll’s songs was a vignette of life on the streets of NYC. His working-class, Catholic roots came through in the lyrics of his most memorable songs. “People Who Died” was the most popular on the underground radio stations of the day; it was one of the most purely “punk” in tone and theme. Backed by a solid, thumping rhythm section and enveloped in Chuck Berry guitar riffs, Carroll matter-of-factly recites the names of friends who died on NYC’s mean streets and the conditions of their demise. Long before Chuck D of Public Enemy declared rap to be “CNN for black people,” Jim Carroll was using music as journalism, reporting from the front lines the gritty reality of life in the ‘70s street culture that gave rise to New York’s punk scene.
Some of Carroll’s friends died of their own accord, in pursuit of cheap highs: the aforementioned Teddy and Cathy, of course, but also G-berg and Georgie, who “let their gimmicks go rotten/So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan,” and my personal favorite, a rather dull-witted kid named Bobby, who “OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed.” Others died from circumstances beyond their control: “Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head” and Tony, whom Herbie pushed from the Boys’ Club roof.
But Carroll’s poetry – his stark word-pictures of the world – were just as powerful in tunes like “Wicked Gravity,” Three Sisters” and the more anthemic “City Drops into the Night,” a beautiful description of the melting of day into dusk, echoed by that honey-dripping saxophone.
Every song on “Catholic Boy” was a short story: a prose-poem. “Three Sisters” is the quick, witty tale of Miranda, Anita and Sally aka Cleo, three women with distinct but equally attractive personalities. The title song, “Catholic Boy,” is Carroll’s autobiography and a poem about the spiritual side of his life, of how “I made allies in heaven, I made comrades in hell.”
I make angels dance and drop to their knees
When I enter a church the feet of statues bleed
I understand the fate of all my enemies
Just like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane
And “City Drops into the Night” is beautiful beat poetry. Heavily influenced by Jack Kerouac (after reading “On the Road” as a lad, Carroll decided to start keeping a diary, which led to his book, “The Basketball Diaries,” which later became a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio), that stream-of-consciousness, caffeinated style of prose comes through with lyrics like:
It’s when the door to the River
That door is like 26 miles
It’s when ambitious little girls start
They start to dream about a change in style
It’s when the slick boys got their fingers
They got their fingers in the telephone dial
But I think I’ll just wait a while
And the refrain – it’s the voice of promise, of renewal, of redemption and rebirth. The night holds promise:
‘Cause when the city drops into the night
Before the darkness there’s one moment of light
When everything seems clear
The other side, it seems so near
What seemed wrong?
I think it’s gonna be just about right
Before the city drops, the city drops
Into the night
A 12-song playlist to help you kick your summertime blues:
1. The Who - Summertime Blues (Live at Leeds)
2. The Specials - Too Hot (live)
3. Janis Joplin - Summertime (Live at Woodstock)
4. The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer
5. The Sex Pistols - Holidays in the Sun
6. Yeasayer - Wait for the Summer
7. Ramones - Rockaway Beach
8. Regina Spektor - Summer in the City
9. Belle and Sebastian - Anothe rSunny Day
10. Taking Back Sunday - You’re So Last Summer
11. Bruce Springsteen - Girls in their Summer Clothes
12. The Ataris - The Boys of Summer (Don Henley Cover)
[video]
Why Twitter is killing blogs and that's not a good thing -
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