Subway Art
Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
Chronicle Books

A few months back, I took my parents on a trip to Manhattan. I work there, so it wasn’t a big deal for this bridge and tunneler, but for my parents—who have not been to New York City in almost 25 years—the trip was a culture shock.

See, my mom and dad remember a very different New York. One teeming with prostitutes, drug dealers, grime, and graffiti. Watching my mom step foot on a subway in the evening to go from City Hall to 42nd Street, it was difficult to ignore that she was clutching her purse a little closer to her chest and eyeballing the homeless person in the corner. In the 15 years I’ve been going to New York on my own, I’ve never been robbed, assaulted, or even harassed. They don’t know this New York.

The Manhattan they know is the one from Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s “Subway Art,” a photo retrospective of the early New York street art scene. This is the 25th anniversary for the book and it’s been reissued in a large format with a new intro and more pictures. The two photojournalists were entrenched in the underground art movement, meandering around train yards and dilapidated buildings to capture artists like SEEN and DAZE in the middle of the night.

The photos are vintage New York—dirty alleys and ugly subway cars adorned with breathtaking colorful artwork and massive bombings. It’s still mind boggling, in this day of graffiti-proof subways, that so much paint could be applied to public transportation. It’s also shocking that so much quality art trumped gang signs and scratchy tags.

The best part of the book, however, is not the art or the scenes of a chaotic New York, but the portraits of the artists as young men. You get a wonderful look into the eyes of kids who just wanted to express themselves. These are not criminals or monsters, but bored youth trying to get their voice across in a visual manner. These are kids my parents were scared of, and the ironic thing is, many of these kids are now legends.

I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto
By Dave Thompson
Backbeat Books

“We need our reprobates, we need our delinquents, we need our antiheroes. Because if we don’t get them, what’s the [Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame going to look like in another 25 years?” – Dave Thompson

How many Limeys do you know that love American classic rock? Me either. Rock critic and author Dave Thompson’s new book is less a manifesto than a collection of diatribes about what he hates about new, and old, music.

Overall, I Hate New Music is a quick, fun read but seems scattered at times. Thompson wants to take on everything – stadium rock, Live Aid, U2, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – but he seems to have trouble containing his rage, making chapter breaks seem like little more than chances for him to catch his breath. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Edison
I Have Fun Everywhere I Go
Faber and Faber, Inc.

Mike Edison and the Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra
I Have Fun Everywhere I Go
Spoken word CD
Interstellar Roadhouse

My goodness did he ever! Mike Edison is a rock’n’roller, pornographer, wrestling journalist, hedonist, confidante of GG Allin, Beatles-hater, fierce First Amendment protector and self-proclaimed media whore. And a damn funny storyteller, too. Like the great pro wrestlers of old, Edison admits to being prone to hyperbole but his stories are so insane they have to be true. I bought this book because I knew of Edison as the drummer for my all-time favorite band, the Raunch Hands. People who know me know it doesn’t take much for me to bring up the Raunch Hands and this time is no different. I had heard Edison served as publisher for High Times but I knew little else about his life.

In a nutshell, New Jersey native Edison is a two-time Ivy League dropout who spent some time in the mid-1980s writing for the pro wrestling mag Main Event and writing paperback porno books. He played drums for GG Allin and did stand-up comedy as part of Reagan Youth’s “Rock Against Reagan” 1984 tour. He wrote for Screw magazine and joined the world’s most dangerous band the Raunch Hands as they rocked and rolled and debauched across the globe. After the Raunch Hands took a break in the early ‘90s he lived in Spain and played skins in the Pleasure Fuckers before moving back to New York to write and publish full time. Somewhere in there he finds time to play badass rock’n’roll as the Edison Rocket Train (look up “swamp stomp blues skronk” in your dictionary.) I Have Fun…documents Edison’s life in a very hilarious, smart ass but never jaded way. He gives the reader many life lessons (dating advice in the porn world, the best places to dine in Spain) and preaches the word of rock and roll.

Speaking of preaching, there’s a spoken word CD of I Have Fun… that’s a good listen (sold separately, folks.) You get seven tracks of Edison doing shtick, backed by members of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Raunch Hands. I think “GG Allin Died Last Night” is set to the tune of the Misfits’ “Some Kinda Hate.” Dig it all!