Guess Swayze's "unexpected" passing overshadowed the recent death of rocker/poet Jim Carroll (heart attack, age 60). Most know him as the People Who Died guy (classic, as is the entire Catholic Boy album). I only saw him once, a spoken word show with Romeo Void's Deborah Iyall. Forget the substandard film, but read his Basketball Diaries, a TRUE set of drugged up, sexed up remembrances that I'll bet was some sort of influence on the Laura Palmer Diary...

I hadn't heard he died, Chris, but having read that dreary Basketball Diaries book one day whilst standing in Crown Books (remember that chain?) I'm sure he would have wanted it that way.

Surprised he made it to his 60s.

Susan

I hadn't heard he died, Chris, but having read that dreary Basketball Diaries book one day whilst standing in Crown Books (remember that chain?) I'm sure he would have wanted it that way.

Surprised he made it to his 60s.

Susan

 What, are you some kinda speed reader? No, the B.D. is not the feel good book of the year, but it's about survival on the mean teen streets of New York. Jim was a tough bastard & he's in the ranks of those "how'd he last so long?" like Keith Richards, Lou Reed, Iggy, Alice Cooper, Burroughs, etc.  Guess nobody else has read "that dreary book" & can see no parallels with Jen Lynch's book. Just read an article on J.C. in Paste, where the author talks about how People Who Died came out right around the time that Lennon was killed & how a group of friends dealt with their grief by playing the song over & over. It also makes a great credits tune for the Dawn of The Dead remake...
 

I went to see Carroll do a reading in 1996, and thought he was a really powerful writer who was fairly captivating to watch, even if a lot of his work was visceral and gross.  That was then, though.  He hasn't gotten a lot of talk in the past bunch of years, I would guess because B.D. has faded from the public eye.

-cg

I just got around to listening to Vin Scelsa's Idiots Delight  from Sept. 19.  He starts the show with reminiscences of radio interviews with Jim Carroll in the 70's and 80's,  then plays a couple of Carroll songs, and a spoken word piece from the  Praying Mantis collection called "Tiny Tortures", recorded in the 80's at St. Mark's church in the Bowery. Then Vin reads a piece called "The Bells" from Carroll's book Forced Entries, about Phil Ochs at a Timothy Leary benefit.   Tidbit from the show: Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Carroll all lived together in N.Y. before they  became famous.  You can listen here:

http://wfuv.streamguys.us/archive/9407.asx

(if the link doesn't work, you can find it at the WFUV-FM website)