I’ve been working a lot of over time lately so my time is pretty limited for creative ventures right now. For now let this incredible footage of Sleep performing at my home away from home, The Cat’s Cradle in Carborro NC in 1994 suffice until I have time to devote to ranting again.
Sleep @ Cat’s Cradle Carborro, NC 1994
It is not easy pulling beauty from the mouth of the grotesque or disturbing. I can count the number of writers, musicians and artists who have been able to do it on one hand. Harmony Korine comes to mind especially circa Gummo. Burroughs did this time and again through Naked Lunch and his cut up novels of the mid sixties. Dennis Cooper stands head and shoulders above them all. A kind of post-Burroughs wunderkind his style defies easy categorization. First known as one of the new voices in the New York poetry renaissance of the 70’s and early 80’s he found his greatest notoriety with the five book masterwork The George Miles Cycle.
The books in the cycle have roots reaching back to Dennis’ teen years spent struggling with his sexuality and searching out an identity. When Dennis met young George Miles he felt he’d found his soul mate and for the next few years they would be practically inseparable. He was the first man Dennis ever loved and it was in those younger days that he first put forth the plan for the cycle as a tribute to this. George Miles would commit suicide before the first book of the cycle saw print. Grief stricken, Dennis poured his pain and loss into the remaining books.
While first conceived in High School Dennis didn’t begin the cycle until his mid thirties after years writing poetry, essays and a few novels. He has said he wanted to be sure that he was a good enough writer to undertake the series first before he set out to write them. The first book in the series is almost a surreal love story written from the point of view of a revolving roster of teenage boys who all long for the enigmatic George Miles with a kind of religious intensity.
As the cycle progresses the more pronounced the extreme themes of sexual violence, genital mutilation, BDSM, the two headed coin of sex and death, pedophilia, rape and homophobia/homoeroticism become. The intensity of these themes only grows more chaotic through the course of the books until in the final book, Period, the narrative is broken down to a cryptic monosyllabic code. Bradford Cox sites this guy as a lyrical influence and listening to my Deerhunter and Atlas Sound records now it is plain as day.
The first book of Dennis Cooper’s I read is the fourth book in the cycle, Guide. It follows the increasingly disturbing downward spiral of a group of drug addled, morally flexible childhood friends set against the backdrop of 90’s indie and alternative rock. Chapters lift titles and allusions from songs by Guided By Voices, Husker Du, Royal Trux, Sebadoh and Pavement. The fictional English rock band one of the group pines over is a not so thinly veiled reference to Blur who had just released their self titled record around the same time which was also rife with American indie rock influences.
Independent and esoteric music references are littered throughout the cycle and many of Cooper’s other works. Dennis found himself through punk but like so many others he balked at the increasingly strident orthodoxy of hardcore and began to explore extreme jazz, no wave and goth music. This do it yourself process greatly inspired his own work as he founded small presses like Little House On the Bowery and Little Caeser and was one of the earliest champions of fellow literary iconoclasts Kathy Acker and JT Leroy.
These swirls of influences both sonic, literary and visual would swirl together in his books where plot was almost beside the point and the text scanning like some sort of collage or literary Jackson Pollock painting. His spirit has influenced many but there is still no one quite like him, Burroughs included. He carved up his world and reassembled all the pieces into word paintings, a kind of kaleidoscope of life in all its beauty and ugliness which are just flip sides of the same coin after all.
Hand written draft of George Miles Cycle chapter
Little House on the Bowery titles
A Poem by Dennis Cooper (3:45 AM)
Derived from cassette recordings at his kitchen table throughout the early 90’s it is a family affair. At times his wife or children jump in on vocal harmonies or to read one of dear old dad’s poems while he teases and cheers them on to many girlish giggles. Mostly though it’s all just the man and his guitar or at times only his manic stomps and thigh slaps as accompaniment.
There are songs devoid of any instrumentation at all leaving room for what amounts to an almost audio verite recording of a full blown panic attack on the song “Every Little Thing.” The results are incredibly haunting especially once you begin to catch the verses he’s practically gagging on with intense mania and pure rage and recognize you’re listening to a screed against a nameless pedophile from the point of view of the victim. Billy Childish has never shied away from being open about his childhood of sexual abuse and this is not the first time he’s drawn from these experiences for his work but it may be the most unhinged.
In between songs we catch brief moments of recordings these songs were dubbed over on well used tapes. Stray bits of conversation, a beer commercial, hateful early 90’s right wing talk shows, all swallowed up by five seconds of angry garage punk.
The end results amount to an album for all of us struggling songwriters out there. The kind you listen to and think “Damn, I wish my record sounded like this.”
Wild Billy Childish and The Buff Medways-Medway Wheelers
Poet, painter, singer, dreamer Billy Childish
…and you have to respect that. I’ve just finished watching The Cramps Live video which was filmed at a festival date in Europe just a little over a year before frontman Lux Interior died ending the band. Here he is well into his 60’s and yet he still the greatest rock and roll frontman of all time. Don’t dispute me. If Dick Clark was the eternal teenager then Lux was his closest drug buddy, plied with wine and amphetamines and shoved onto the stage. He tosses the Mic stand around like a rag doll often with microphone still attached yet never misses a single note or lyric. Eventually the stand shatters and is tossed into the drum riser in four pieces. He suggestively sucks the mic between words which emits a strange, guttural hiss. Harp raised to bottle chapped lips he doesn’t toss out some tired Little Walter licks as much as channel Albert Ayler’s suicide ghost over primal Bo Diddley beats.
Poison Ivy stalks the stage with battered Gretsch slung low, two stepping in place and parrying like a champion fencer. The rhythm section locks in hypnotically behind her trademark two note solos. There are flubs and bum notes galore but that’s what makes them great. That’s what rock ‘n roll is all about, warts and fuck all.
The Cramps Live At Napa State Mental Hospital
The Cramps-Don’t Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk 1976 Demo version/rare live footage
News report on The Cramps in the studio with Alex Chilton recording Songs the Lord Taught Us (1979)
I have decided in order to get more motivated to keep this blog going (especially now that I’m permanently off Facebook) I would start introducing new segments. The first segment is the Quick Cap Movie Review in which I will review different films in one paragraph or less. The first film is the 2003 erotic drama The Dreamers.
Years ago I dated a girl who insisted that I borrow her copy of this film because she said, winking, that it was the sexiest film she’d ever seen. I broke up with her immediately after watching it.
Do You Remember? 