Jim Caroll died. Here's a post I wrote on the very badass rocker last year:
Driving around L.A. listening to Indie 103.1, a local treasure if there ever was one, and stumbled across a fave song I haven't heard to in a long time, Jim Carroll's People Who Died, from his 1980 album Catholic Boy. Carroll was the writer/punk rocker who wrote the Basketball Diaries, an autobiography about growing up in New York in the 60s and 70s as a High School basketball star and heroin addict. It was later made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. As you can guess, I recommend the book and not the film. From a Jim Carroll website:
Lynn Hirschberg, describing a Jim Carroll Band concert in 1980, before the release of Catholic Boy, reported overhearing a Oui photographer remark,"You're watching the Dylan of the 80s, you know. . . . Seeing Jim Carroll now . . . is like witnessing history.
Indeed, Jim Carroll expressed the Bomb-fear anticipation, the optimistic nihilism and glittering darkness of the 1980s that we who were there felt even if we couldn't communicate it ourselves. When JohnLennon was assassinated in front of the Dakota in December 1980, "People Who Died" was one of the most-requested songs on FM radio, just after Lennon's own "Imagine." Steven Spielberg chose "People Who Died" to play during the opening scene of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "People Who Died" tapped a mainline. It was a hit even before it was released, and, as Newsweek's Barbara Graustark noted, it "propelled [Carroll] from underground status . . . to national attention as a contender for the title of rock's new poet laureate."
I don't know about the "Dylan of the 80s" line, but the rest is pretty accurate. To see the band play it live go here. Enjoy.
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