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Jim Carroll, punk rock poet, dies at the age of 60. Now, I was a bit neutral about his work, though I did vicarioulsy enjoy the self-destruction of 'The Basketball Diaries.' My real memory of Carroll is playing 'People Who Died' with my punk-discovering friends. We were young enough to not really see that the stories of young lives tragically wasted were, indeed, tragic. Instead we found the song cool and even fun. Part of the youthful rebellion that makes it cool to enjoy the morose and the sad.
I don't really regret or am not even really embarrassed by it. We were young and it was fun. And there are still parts of me that are attracted by the socially taboo thoughts on the fringe. I have very fond memories of sitting in the control room of 110-watt powered WKDU, a little too drunk to be on the air, with other DJ's and various sundry hanger-ons from the music scene, playing this record in tribute to someone we knew who died before they reached 25. Maybe it wasn't the best way to celebrate someone who had so many problems at such a young age that he wasted his potential on drugs or just simply decided to take matter into his own hands. By adding our friend to the list, however, we put him into the burning bright category.
Jim Carroll didn't die young. 60 isn't really old, but its not the same as those flames extinguished before adulthood couild even be realized. Carroll's death really makes me look at the "death" of my own childhood. I had moved from the innocent Mego-playing years through Atari, sports and girls to this point in college. And this point was the waning days of freedom that adulthood changes. Its not worse or better, really. Just different. Childhood has been gone for a while, admittedly, but I still remember it well. We all have things that dominated our formative years and for me, music was very high on that list. The punk of the early 80's expressed a lot for me. I wasn't a radical or anarchist. Christ, my hair was feathered and parted on the side in those days. Discovering those bands in the basements of dingy record stores on side streets in Philadelphia was part of forming my own individuality. Phil Collins was fine for some, but I needed to feel a bit different. Now the people who were my teen years are dying- Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone and, yes, to a much lesser extent, Jim carroll. Again, I'm quite content with who I am now and where I am in my life. But I enjoyed the days of knowing looks traded with people and their Specials or Clash buttons pinned on army surplus jackets. We had a secret and, for a few years, we shared membership in a special club.
I don't really regret or am not even really embarrassed by it. We were young and it was fun. And there are still parts of me that are attracted by the socially taboo thoughts on the fringe. I have very fond memories of sitting in the control room of 110-watt powered WKDU, a little too drunk to be on the air, with other DJ's and various sundry hanger-ons from the music scene, playing this record in tribute to someone we knew who died before they reached 25. Maybe it wasn't the best way to celebrate someone who had so many problems at such a young age that he wasted his potential on drugs or just simply decided to take matter into his own hands. By adding our friend to the list, however, we put him into the burning bright category.
Jim Carroll didn't die young. 60 isn't really old, but its not the same as those flames extinguished before adulthood couild even be realized. Carroll's death really makes me look at the "death" of my own childhood. I had moved from the innocent Mego-playing years through Atari, sports and girls to this point in college. And this point was the waning days of freedom that adulthood changes. Its not worse or better, really. Just different. Childhood has been gone for a while, admittedly, but I still remember it well. We all have things that dominated our formative years and for me, music was very high on that list. The punk of the early 80's expressed a lot for me. I wasn't a radical or anarchist. Christ, my hair was feathered and parted on the side in those days. Discovering those bands in the basements of dingy record stores on side streets in Philadelphia was part of forming my own individuality. Phil Collins was fine for some, but I needed to feel a bit different. Now the people who were my teen years are dying- Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone and, yes, to a much lesser extent, Jim carroll. Again, I'm quite content with who I am now and where I am in my life. But I enjoyed the days of knowing looks traded with people and their Specials or Clash buttons pinned on army surplus jackets. We had a secret and, for a few years, we shared membership in a special club.
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