Poet Jim Carroll has died (1 Viewer)

In the late 1970s [...] he formed the Jim Carroll Band, whose first release, "Catholic Boy" (1980), is sometimes called the last great punk album.

Really? By who? I don't remember anyone calling it anything. It was mostly (and properly) ignored.
 
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Hmm, for once I have to disagree with MJP-one of music's best lyricist, and I always forget about this guy but I think he really had a way with the words.
 
"The Basketball Diaries", Leonardo Di Caprio portraying Jim Carroll is on you tube for free in a few parts.
Here is the trailer,
 
IMHO, Jim was an architect, an alchemist, a gymnast with language.
Every poem of his was laced with electricity. Just visually and emotionally humming.
He could take the reflection of the sun in a puddle on the street or the sound of a traffic light at 4:00am and build it into a sanctuary of color.
..it's late, lame eulogy.
RIP Jim.
Gonna miss you.
This was the last thing I wanted to read before bed. Or to wake up to.
What dark fucking day.
 
listening to Catholic Boy right now.

seeing the Jim Carroll Band on the tv show Fridays was a musical 'well this is not Billy Joel' moment for me. I was 12 or 13 at the time. not a landmark artist, but one that came along saying and doing the right things for a young impressionable music lover. he eventually led me to Patti Smith, to whom he owes a lot.

never read his writing, except for excerpts standing in a bookstore. but maybe I'll try harder.
 
Ok so don't call it punk
but at the time nobody or very dam few were writing stuff like the below.

If it's real then thats impressive discipline to record and if it's fake then hey great imaginative song writing. The rest of the album sucked and the poetry was neither here nor there, but this song worked for me and still does. Call him Don McLean with Drano

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

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof
"Hey," Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?"
But Tony couldn't fly, Tony died

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

Brian got busted on a narco rap
He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers
He said, "Hey, I know it's dangerous, but it sure beats Riker's"
But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

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

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
 
...one of music's best lyricist, and I always forget about this guy but I think he really had a way with the words.
He wasn't one of music's best anything. He wasn't a musician. Or a lyricist. He was a poet. If Bukowski made a record with a crappy Rolling Stones cover band I would mock it too.

Posting the lyrics to his most well known song (make that his only known song) does not strengthen the argument that he was a great lyricist or a great poet. If you can read that and call it great in any form, I question your judgment.

My issue wasn't with Carroll anyway (not this time), but rather with the obituary writer, who is glorifying Carroll's afterthought of a music "career" as something it never was. But we do that after people die, don't we.
 
My issue wasn't with Carroll anyway (not this time), but rather with the obituary writer, who is glorifying Carroll's afterthought of a music "career" as something it never was. But we do that after people die, don't we.

Point taken-but I'm going on the record now that I like Alexi Sayle before he is dead.
 
"The Basketball Diaries", Leonardo Di Caprio portraying Jim Carroll is on you tube for free in a few parts.
Here is the trailer,

I recall that was a very depressing film. But I saw it long ago before I liked depressing films...

Carroll reads an interesting piece called "Just Visiting" (I believe) in the film Poetry In Motion. I recommend you check it out.
 
basketball diaries was a good film but it was nothing like the book. go read the book. it has real power. it is also fucking hysterical.
i never got into his music. wish he hadnt wasted so much time on it and wrote more books of poetry instead
 
Wow, sad to see he died. I have about 5 books from Jim, but was never a big fan. As many, I was introduced to his stuff through the "Basketball Diaries." I like that book, but never really felt, or got into his poetry. I do have a couple of his cd's and after hearing them once, shelved them and have never pulled them out again.
 
He wasn't one of music's best anything. He wasn't a musician. Or a lyricist. He was a poet. If Bukowski made a record with a crappy Rolling Stones cover band I would mock it too.
I think the music was okay but I liked the words a lot, though I certainly wouldn't pick People Who Died to quote. And I know he was primarily a poet but if you write the lyrics to songs you qualify as a lyricist and their might be five or six of them in popular music that I really like and he would be one.
 
"The Basketball Diaries", Leonardo Di Caprio portraying Jim Carroll is on you tube for free in a few parts.
Here is the trailer,

Yes, the whole movie is there in 13 parts. Here's part one:

 
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Very sad to hear this news. But given the life he lived, it's a wonder he actually made it to 60. I too wish he had devoted more time to poetry than music.

For a solid cross-section of Carroll's poetry, I would recommend "Fear Of Dreaming"(1993, Penguin Books).
It contains selections from four of his previous books.

A personal fave:

Fragment: Little N.Y. Ode

I sleep on a tar roof

scream my songs into lazy floods of stars

a white powder paddles through blood and heart
and the sounds return pure and easy

this city is on my side.
 
My issue wasn't with Carroll anyway (not this time), but rather with the obituary writer, who is glorifying Carroll's afterthought of a music "career" as something it never was. But we do that after people die, don't we.

You have a point, and obviously we've seen this to the hysterical degree during the rewriting of Michael Jackson's History, and a year or so earlier Heath Ledger went from solid actor to one of the cinematic greats.

But on the other don't we do that when people we know die. Uncle Roger goes from moody old bastard we all hated to - actually not such a bad bloke, wonderfully opinionated, when he is six feet under.

On the topic of Carroll his strengths just happened to be his weaknesses, both as a writer and a 'musician'. His music, though good in patches appeared to be a poor man's version of Richard Hell. Though as a writer you just cannot deny his prose, Forced Entries is a fine little book.
 

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