My review of this performance covers more than the performance itself . . .
I drove ten hours (from East Lansing, MI, to Ithaca, NY) to see Jim Carroll perform with Lenny Kaye at Cornell University; I did it partly because it happened during my spring break and I could, but mainly because I found it impossible to pass up a chance to see Jim Carroll doing a music show with Lenny Kaye. I discovered Jim Carroll in 1987, about three years after the demise of the Jim Carroll Band, so this was an incredible opportunity. In the ten-plus years I have been following Carroll, this was my first chance to see him in something resembling “rock star” mode, and in addition to that, I have come to admire Lenny Kaye’s work after seeing him perform with Patti Smith. Kaye also played with the Jim Carroll Band, of course, so that was an added enticement.
I arrived in Ithaca around 4:30 PM, and while I was toting my luggage into my motel room, Mike Villers, Jen Hess, and her girlfriend Maria pulled into the parking lot. Mike is the guy responsible for conceiving and producing Put Your Tongue to the Rail, the Jim Carroll “tribute” album out of Philadelphia, and Jen Hess performs “I Want the Angel” on the album, one of my favorite tracks. I greeted them, then returned to my room to get situated and take a shower.
When I got out of the shower and was drying my hair, a minivan pulled up in front of my motel window; from the van emerged Jim Carroll, Lenny Kaye, and Bob Fitzgerald. Bob, JC’s booking agent, had told me he was staying at this joint, so I had taken that as a reference–but I had thought, innocently, that Cornell (being the bigshot university it is) would put Jim and Lenny up in some fancy hotel. I was wrong (which doesn’t surprise me). So . . . by the time I wrapped myself and my hair up in towels, Bob and Lenny had already gone inside, and Jim was headed towards the stairwell. I cranked open my window and yelled, “Jim!” He was wearing a furry black hat that made him look like a Russian or something. He turned and looked around until he found me, waving in my window through the screen. I yelled that I didn’t know he was staying at that motel and he returned, “Yeah, sure!” About thirty minutes later, while I was trying to get myself ready (beauty-wise) to go out to dinner with Mike Villers and company, Jim called me from his room and we talked for about ten minutes.
After that, Mike called me to see how my beauty regimine was progressing, and eventually I emerged from my room. Mike, Jen, Maria, and I went out for soup and salads, then headed for the performance venue.
The three of us arrived about half an hour before the show. What amazed me was that there weren’t many people there waiting in line. I shouldn’t have been amazed: the ONLY publicity I saw consisted of a few posters around the vicinity of the venue. By the time the show began, I realized that I was attending the least-well attended Jim Carroll performance of my life (and yes, I’ve attended many). I’m guestimating that the audience numbered somewhere around 250-300, and there were many empty seats. The funny (ironic) thing is that the people responsible for the show had no idea what they had! That’s fairly obvious if you check out the review by Jade Chang in the Cornell student newspaper; Chang thought Carroll would be giving a lecture. I can’t believe how poorly organized and promoted the event was. This was the first music show Jim Carroll had done in about ten years, as well as the first time Jim Carroll and Lenny Kaye had performed together for a college audience. The organizers of the show were oblivious!
In any case, because the music part of the show was such a unique experience, I want to focus on that–but first I’ll mention what happened during the first part.
The first part of the performance, which lasted about an hour, was Carroll’s spoken-word performance, in which he read primarily new, unpublished work. In his usual amazing way, he read:
A Day At the Races, from Forced Entries
Bird of Prey, from Forced Entries
The Fat Bat, from Forced Entries
Two excerpts from The Petting Zoo, his new novel
8 Fragments from Kurt Cobain
a new poem
For Virginia (new)
another new poem
Cat (new)
[What Burroughs Told Me] (new)
Two new poems
[Father’s last words] (new)
another new poem
[paint sniffing song] (new)
another new poem
Dance Floor (new)
another new poem
another new poem
- List item
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Carroll’s spoken-word performance was terrific, as always. The last poem he read, one of the best I’ve ever seen from him, culminated with, “I AM the river, fool!” and then he introduced Lenny Kaye.
Carroll and Kaye had not rehearsed much before this show, and they began with “Wicked Gravity.” It wasn’t perfect, to say the least. Carroll forgot the lyrics about halfway through, and Kaye was scrambling to keep up with Carroll. Toward the end, Carroll was struggling to avoid tripping over the microphone cord. It was comical, but Carroll’s inimitable sense of humor prevailed. At the end of the song, Carroll pointed out, “You know, they say that a good song can stand on its own. . . . We’re proving that either that dictum isn’t true, or my song just sucks!”
Carroll and Kaye continued with “Catholic Boy,” which they performed almost flawlessly, and then a medley that was perhaps the highlight of the evening. I don’t know what the original song was, but it was terrific because Carroll inserted his own lyrics and Kaye did more than backup, resulting in the most bizzare ’50s ballad one could ever imagine:
When I saw her on the corner
Then I knew I was a goner
I’ve had it, I’ve had it
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
She’s got inscrutable poise and nihilous charm
She gets her sleep through tubes in her arm
She’s had it, she’s had it
She’s got a beautiful eye and a gown so thin
She stops the whip before it tames her sin
She’s had it, she’s had it
They followed this with “I Want the Angel”–Carroll has been doing this one a capella at readings for ten years, but it was really something with Kaye’s guitar backing. Next was “Still Life,” which Carroll and Kaye co-wrote, and the two alterated verses, singing their own contributions. “City Drops Into the Night” came next, followed by “The Beast Within,” a song Carroll and Kaye wrote for the Basketball Diaries film soundtrack (which, in his infinite wisdom, the director decided not to use). This song was another highlight in the performance: I had seen Carroll “speak/sing” it at readings before, but this was the first time I had heard the music intended to accompany it. It is a hauntingly beautiful, almost dirge-like melody, which is appropriate for the lyrics that describe Carroll’s present perspective on his teenage years:
Some say it’s a lie, some say it’s a sin
Do you know how it ends if you won’t let it begin
You feel it [breathing] now against your skin
You can’t live without the beast within
Following “The Beast Within” was “Freddy’s Store,” which also worked especially well with only Kaye’s guitar accompaniment. (The song as it was recorded has fairly complex instrumentation, so this surprised me.) Also, Carroll was in top form in his vocal performance on this one, although he forgot some of the lyrics about halfway through. It is a major accomplishment for anyone to remember all of the lyrics for this extremely long song, and Carroll took it in stride, laughing at himself. To top it all off, Kaye didn’t know when to end the song, so another amusing moment was when Carroll finished the last verse and Kaye was still going. He turned to Kaye and said, “That’s It.”
The last song of the evening was a super-slow version of “People Who Died”– imagine the recorded song played at half-speed–but it finished off with a hyper-fast run-through of the song. Mike and I speculated that this was Jim’s answer to the super-fast cover version on Put Your Tongue to the Rail, but it turns out that Carroll and Kaye have been performing the song this way for many years. The performance concluded with a question and answer session.
After the show, Carroll and Kaye signed books and talked to fans for about half an hour, then we all met back at the motel parking lot. We spent quite a while just looking for a place in Ithaca to get something to eat. One bar/cafe was so packed that there was no place to sit down. Another had already closed down the kitchen. Finally we headed down the hill to a basement bar/cafe, where we ordered salads, pasta, and beer. As soon as we ordered, the place closed down, and the bartender was basically trying to kick us out before we had finished eating. So . . . we left that place and headed back up the hill, looking for a bar that was still open. Jim headed back to his motel room, but the rest of us played pool for a couple of hours, finally giving it up around 2:00 AM.
It was quite an evening, well worth the ten-hour drive!