Jim Carroll at Shim Sham Club
New Orleans, LA 7 February 2001
Offbeat Feb. 2001
Review by David Kunian
I can quote Jim Carroll better than I can quote myself, so when my hero came to New Orleans, I was pumped and primed. Carroll’s reading style is quirky to say the least. He still sounds like the stoned Upper Manhattanite that he was for so many years. His voice inhabits his pieces like a long lost friend with an edge, giving them shading and depth and even more humor than the words on the page provide. The crowd was with him all the way. He read several pieces from his second diary, Forced Entries, including the one about him and Patti Smith racing their crotch crabs. The poems came at the end, and he read two of my favorites: “My Ruins,” where the subject will only allow himself to destroy himself, and “8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain,” which was the best reflection of Cobain’s life of all the drivel that came out when he offed himself. As an added bonus, he sang “I Want the Angel” from one of the best albums ever, Catholic Boy, as his final piece.