THE JIM CARROLL BAND - Catholic Boy - (ATCO) - 1980, Punk, New York, NYC, Beat

I welcome another couple of bods to this list … who I have migrated over from another list …

I have Carroll's "Dry Dreams" album which is quite good but this is his better known album with his "well known" tracks. Given that he passed away recently (11.09.2009 of a heart attack) it is appropriate that I pull this out of the pile and have a listen.

There's no shortage of biographical information on Carroll (see links at end) but suffice it to say he had a pretty fucked up adolescence.

He was born in 1949 in New York.

wikipedia: Carroll was of Irish descent and attended Roman Catholic grammar schools from 1955 to 1963. In fall 1963, he entered public school, but was soon awarded a scholarship to the elite private school Trinity School (New York). He entered Trinity High School in 1964 … Apart from being interested in writing, Carroll was an all-star basketball player throughout his grade school and high school career. He entered the "Biddy League" at age 13 and participated in the National High School All Star Game in 1966. During this time, Carroll was living a double life as a heroin addict who prostituted himself to afford his habit, but was also writing poems and attending poetry workshops at St. Mark's Poetry Project.

He then dealt with his past through his poetry (he was first published in 1967) and secondly through his music (this is his first album). Accordingly, and not surprisingly, his music is very much an extension to his poetry.

It certainly is punk, but not the visceral punk of California, the aggressive "no future" punk of Detroit and Cleveland, or the garage punk of the mid-west (or Brisbane, Australia). It is the intellectual punk of New York which is "very New York" and of the time (The Ramones and The Dictators excepted).

New York punk defined the New Wave style as well as laid back punk intellectualism. Even the aggressive and confrontational "No Wave" NYC punk sounds positively high-brow when compared to some kid from the mid-west who cant string two words together and whose only expression is bashing his instrument into oblivion. Accordingly there is as much "beat poetry" and art in NYC punk as there is angst and rage. Think Television, Blondie, Richard Hell, James Chance, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Suicide etc. There is nothing wrong with that, and, indeed I have named some of my favourite punk acts, but it certainly is something specifically New York. If you weren't from New York and you had those punk stylings in you then you gravitated to New York anyway like Richard Hell, The Nails etc.

Unfortunately, today this is what makes the music less "punk" to the kids. Most of the modern punk bands take their musical cues from California hardcore or English first generation punk and then just "pop" the songs up. Very few popular acts look back to the "art" and "beat" punk coming out of New York. (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sonic Youth excepted).

And that's a shame.

Jim Carroll was certainly one of the more articulate of the NYC punks and was certainly influenced by the Beats (he was a friend of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac). I say NYC punk knowing that Carroll shuffled around a lot between New York and California …. which I suppose is very "Beat" of him.

His voiced is pitched like Richard Lloyd delivered by Lou Reed and has all the angst that punk requires without any need for screaming, yelling or frantic distorted instruments … so he comes over as a more rockier male version of Patti Smith. His lyrics, unsurprisingly, are always evocative and literate with an abundance of (Catholic) religious imagery whilst his rhythm section lays down a beat as busy and dangerous as NYC streets at night (I wrote that sentence myself and winced after I had finished it). The songs, accordingly, come across as mini film noir movies about redemption and regret like a Abel Ferrara film in gentler moments, perhaps.

Tracks (the best in italics)

Wicked Gravity – a good slice of first generation new wave punk.
Three Sisters – more obvious punk stylings. I leave it to others to figure out what the lyrics are about

            Though I don't really understand her
            I love my sister, her name's Miranda
            The boys from uptown they can't stand her
            The more she denies them the more they demand her
            But she just wants to lay in bed all night
            Reading Raymond Chandler
            She got high heel shoes
            She sings the blues
            She says abracadabra when she goes down on you

Day and Night
Nothing Is True
People Who Died – pretty unrelenting … a litany of people who Carroll knows who have died, done as a structured stream of consciousness … I'm glad I'm not his friend. (This must have been an influence, structure wise, on The Nails magnificent "88 Lines about 44 Women"). A perfect example of Carroll's knack of capturing the feeling of the streets.

                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 leukaemia, 14 years old
                He looked like 65 when he died
                He was a friend of mine

                Refrain:
                Those are people who died, died
                Those are people who died, died
                Those are people who died, died
                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 / I miss 'em–they died

Repeat Refrain

                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/ This song is for you my brother

Repeat Refrain

                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
                And Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly'";
                But Tony couldn't fly . . . Tony died

Repeat Refrain:

                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

Repeat Refrain; repeat song to Eddie

City Drops Into the Night
Crow
It's Too Late
I Want the Angel
Catholic Boy – must be an Irish American Catholic upbringing … cause it certainly isn't a Croatian–Australian Catholic one … though some of it rings true. Similarities or differences in upbringing aside this is a great song.

            I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand
            And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand
            When I felt the light I was worse than bored
            I stole the doctor's scalpel and I slit the cord

            Refrain:
            I was a Catholic boy,
            Redeemed through pain,
            Not through joy

            I was two months early they put me under glass
            I screamed and cursed their children when the nurses passed
            Was convicted of theft when I slipped from the womb
            They led me straight from my mother to a cell in the Tombs

Repeat Refrain

            They starved me for weeks, they thought they'd teach me fear
            I fed on cellmates' dreams, it gave me fine ideas
            When they cut me loose, the time had served me well
            I made allies in heaven, I made comrades in Hell

            I was a Catholic child
            The blood ran red
            The blood ran wild

            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

Repeat Refrain

            I watched the sweetest psalm stolen by the choir
            I dreamed of martyrs' bones hanging from a wire
            I make a contribution, I get absolution
            I make a resolution to purify my soul

Repeat Refrain

            They can't touch me now
            I got every sacrament behind me:
            I got baptism,
            I got communion,
            I got penance,
            I got extreme unction
            I've got confirmation
            'Cause I'm a Catholic child
            The blood ran red
            The blood ran wild!

Now I'm a Catholic man
I put my tongue to the rail whenever I can.

And …

This as good as any other album that came out of the New York New Wave and of all the poet / rock cross overs I would think that Carroll has to be in the Top 5.

Australia wise, I could easily see (or have seen) Slaughterhouse Joe doing this if the guitar was a bit more sharp (and loud) … a less strident Nunbait also would be barking up this tree.

Chart Position

Billboard Pop Albums #73 (1981)

People Who Died single Dance Music/Club Play Singles #51 (1981)

Sounds

Wicked Gravity

live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bFwbBcRXLE

Three Sisters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1qVKyidDPg

Day and Night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq30WdtEsww&feature=related

People Who Died

attached