Radio Exile | Outloud – A Good Catholic Boy

Outloud – A Good Catholic Boy

By Dan Berkman October 24, 2008 Post a comment | Email the author

Punk rock and reading, two great tastes that believe it or not go together. I know that leather jackets, mohawks and three chord guitar playing doesn’t exactly scream “I read french existentialist poetry” but behind all that posturing were some real quick minds. Legendary singer/songwriter Patti Smith first studied poetry and performed in the theater before she ever picked up a guitar. Young Tom Miller didn’t think his given name was interesting enough so he merely borrowed the last name of one of his favorite writers, the French poet Paul Verlaine, and started a little band called Television. One of Richard Hell’s first DIY/punk projects was setting up a printing press to distribute his own poetry and the literary works of others.

While many of these artists jumped from amateur poets to professional musicians, only a scant few became professional poets and amateur rockstars. One of these few is the focus of this week’s Outloud – Jim Carroll. Carroll’s life reads like a movie, in fact it got made into one called The Basketball Diaries, which is based on his journals. He was a tall, good looking, fair haired kid who was a wiz at basketball. He was even being scouted by colleges and playing in high school all star games. Little did most people know that he was addicted to heroin, prostituting himself, committing crimes and most importantly writing poetry.

Young Jim attended poetry workshops in St. Mark’s where he ran into the likes of Hell, Verlaine, Lenny Kaye, and Patti Smith. Now you may be asking, “Dan, how does this tie in to your whole punk rock singles diatribe?” His writing friends encouraged him to explore music. This led to one of the greatest sing-a-longs in punk rock history – the darkly comic “People Who Died”.

Much like Carroll’s novels, journals and poetry, the song takes a deep street level look at New York City in the early 70s. The song is dedicated to his friends who all met their ends due to suicide, murder, drugs, and disease. Despite being amazingly depressing idea, Carroll mixes his prose with his trademark wit and proves to be oddly a good time. I think it is the only time you will hear people saying “They were all my friends….and they died” with their arms around friends wearing ear to ear grins.

Why don’t you take a gander at this rare version that features piano and keyboard:

“People Who Died” [mp3]

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People Who Died
(written by: Jim Carroll)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jim Carroll and his band released three albums: Catholic Boy, Dry Dreams and I Write Your Name. After that Carroll returned to poetry and spoken word performances where he has remained since. He has periodically returned to music to work with Blue Oyster Cult, Lenny Kaye, Pearl Jam and countless others.

Jim Carroll’s music and poetry, along with the work of others, helped cement the written word and other arts into the new alternative rock scene. Many of these artistic concepts would inform post-punk bands like Magazine, Wire, Sonic Youth, Gang of Four and PIL who took the philosophies of surrealism, dada and impressionism and applied them to music.