Mr. Algie, once known as Blake Cheetah in his punk rock days agreed to do some kind of interview. I was excited though not really knowing what I’d ask but keen to connect with another rabid music fan and historian of music. This latest book is refreshing in its depiction of a music buff/muso as being a fan of all genres of music. One second Lek is listening to Jesus And Mary Chain and the next Cannibal Corpse. It reminds me something Joe Strummer said about punk having no rules.
The book is immensely personal as the reader is privy to every thought and fear of Lek’s via inner dialogue. Maybe this level of authenticity is uncomfortable as we might believe rich and famous rock stars somehow are a perfected form of humanity. It’s anything but… and being with Lek as he writes a song is somewhat painful. Isn’t it always easy in the movies? Anyway I could digress all day but let’s get to the interview conducted via email where Jim answers all my questions regarding the book, music journalism, the life of artists and relates a funny GG Allin story.
Hope you enjoy this. There are some spoilers but I don’t think it’s a major issue. Thanks to Jim for doing this.
I’m a hopeful romantic.”
One Amazon reviewer said that Lek, the main character of the two interconnected novellas in the first part of the book, is having a “dark night of the soul” on the evening when he heard that his favorite punk singer, Joey Ramone, had died and his own music career is in free fall and he’s now producing boy bands. When you’re dealing with a story that’s more about personal issues, like divorce, rehab, bad family relationships and one musician’s mid-life crisis, you need to be as close as possible to that character‘s state of mind and emotions. In any of the cow-punk, rockabilly and pop-punk bands I played in from 1980 to 1991, I played bass and rhythm guitar and wrote some songs, but I was never a lead singer or a lead guitarist, both of whom come with outsized egos. Many musicians compare bands to families and, if so, they’re extremely dysfunctional families. That comes through more in the second novella when Lek is trying to write a comeback album and gets in touch with his old drummer, Ric, who is still resentful about the lack of songwriting credits and royalties he received, and having to put up with all the singer’s egomania and temper tantrums.
Those are good points and insights. To be a real musician, or any kind of productive, careen-minded artist, or entrepreneur, you have to be very driven and self-focused. Part of the story, in looking at his troubled relationship with his teenaged musician son, named after Dee Dee Ramone, deals with Lek trying to come to terms with his selfishness and make amends. At one point of the story, where he’s relapsing into doing cocaine again, he mentions how addictive both the drug and this Norwegian girl are and starts humming to himself, “She’s Like Heroin to Me” by the Gun Club, which was one of my favorite bands of the 1980s. And in the new paperback edition with the music journalism section in the back, I describe a bizarre encounter with the band’s bassist, who died of a heroin overdose only a year or two after I met him.
The narrative seems to finish abruptly with a letter if I recall correctly. Lek is kind of a hopeless romantic I guess? Is he really capable of love? Why doesn’t he just go find her in Mongolia?
Without giving away too many plot spoilers, by the end of the story he’s finally quit drinking and drugs and is acting somewhat his own age again, though he is back playing music again. I know people have accused me of being a “hopeless romantic” and I always say, “No, I’m a hopeful romantic.” But the sappy ending of romantic comedies has grown tedious. In the last decade I’d say the most moving ‘love story’ I’ve seen or read was Lost In Translation, where you have these two lost souls of different ages and at completely different points in their lives, coming together to share some laughs, experiences and commiserate with each other, but they both know it can’t last or go any farther. The last scene, where they have that final hug and chat, and “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain kicks in, is spellbinding. If I had any sort of blueprint in mind for this odd couple and darkly comedic “love story” it was probably more influenced by Lost in Translation than anything else,
...the age of great rock writers like Lester Bangs in Creem magazine, and Ira Levin, in Trouser Press, has faded...
With a lot of musicians who have enjoyed success and still have money, you have to wonder sometimes why they keep doing it? But when music has been your entire life, and you don’t have any other skills, what else are you going to do? A couple of months ago I met an older American guy of my age in Bangkok who used to play guitar in hard rock bands. We ended up comparing notes on our musical careers, and then discovered that both of us had started playing again. Dave told me, “Cranking up an electric guitar is like riding a motorcycle. It’s a monkey on your back. And you’ll always crave that thrill again.” When older musicians are out there doing reunion tours the cynical response is that they’re just doing it for the money, or trying to relive their glory days, but I think they still love playing and they still love music too.
There was a mention of Lek receiving royalties from his music. How much different does the royalty system in Thailand different from North America?
I think they’re similar in that all recording and publishing deals bilk the musician out of most of the money.
Here’s a question about music journalism. I grew up on music zines like RIP for metal and Rolling Stone. Where does one find great music journalism these days (besides your book)?
Frankly, the age of great rock writers like Lester Bangs in Creem magazine, and Ira Levin, in Trouser Press, has faded because critics don’t have nearly the influence that they once did in the pre-Internet age. It’s also because stories and reviews are so short now that nobody is going to publish any of Lester Bangs’ type of long, experimental pieces, like when he allegedly interviewed Jimi Hendrix in the afterlife. Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound and Louder Than War still have some good writers and articles and reviews, but I don’t see anybody breaking any new ground in music writing these days.
I also got some of my first publishing credits in music fanzines and university newspapers where I was allowed free reign to experiment with different styles and voices. When I put out the new edition of the paperback and ebook, I decided to add a whole 130-page nonfiction section of “Rock Writings and Musical Memoirs,” which gives the two main novellas more context and history, but also allowed me to include a few pieces about my own musical career and some of my favorite journalism stories, like how I met Leonard Cohen in Montreal and what his music means to me, and how I had the opportunity to interview Ice-T in Bangkok and watch him do a small club show. He’s still the funniest musician I’ve ever met. When you see rappers doing cameos in boy-band videos now it’s easy to forget how radical Ice, NWA and Public Enemy, were in their early days.
The first rule of punk is that there are no rules - Joe Strummer
You’re exactly and sadly right. More and more often these days the media is just a marketing machine for their corporate advertisers, which also means less and less investigative journalism or any quality reporting or op-ed pieces. When newspapers, magazines and websites are all fighting for the same diminishing pile of advertising scraps because their circulations are so low, they will not dare to scare off any potential advertisers by writing critical reviews or stories.
I have mentioned this several times already but I enjoyed how much you bring together so many different kinds of music. It’s really troubling for me to meet people who only listen to one kind of music like punk! Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth loves Norwegian black metal and that’s totally cool. I guess my question is, what do you think punk is if not a musical genre and not a way of dressing?
When we were having some Messenger chats before I think we came to the same conclusion that listening to the same genre of music over and over again, and then splitting pubic hairs over what is and what isn’t punk, or what is real metal, is just tedious. In a way it’s kind of like identity politics, where people define themselves solely by what music they listen to, and how they dress to conform to that particular genre, whether they’re punks or Goths or metal-heads or rockabilly cats, it seems very limiting. My musical tastes are all over the map, and so this book wanders from the Ramones to Hank Williams, to Chet Baker, to Cannibal Corpse, the Carpenters and the New York Dolls. It’s not a very commercial move, but it will make an eccentric playlist on Spotify when I put it up. In the journalism piece at the end of the book, “When Punk Turned 40,” I mention how the whole DIY aspect of punk is its most enduring legacy, and that indie spirit still rocks on. The great quote by the late singer of The Clash, Joe Strummer, “The first rule of punk is that there are no rules,” is also instructive.
When GG came on as the headliner at a 500-seat club in Montreal I was still at the bar finishing my beer. About three minutes after the music started my girlfriend came running up to say GG had just punched her in the head. Almost in tears, she described how he came out with a stripper on stage and while she was dancing around he took a dump onstage, then pushed her in it and he began rolling around in his mess too. After that he jumped into the crowd to start punching people. By the time I got inside, I’m not sure if there’s a fecal term for premature ejaculation, but the rest of the gig largely consisted of him wandering into the crowd and fighting people, or smashing the mic into his face until he drew blood, over songs that could best be described as third-rate MC5 and Stooges: a true ‘shit show,’ in all senses of the word. Some six months later at a local music mag where I worked, we received a press release saying that GG was going to kill himself onstage at a Halloween concert that year after he took out as many of the audience members as he could. That show never happened and he died a few years later.
Fame seems to really mess with people’s heads. Do you think musicians just accidentally become famous AND successful or is it really a goal?
If you’re going to become famous it usually takes a strong marketing plan, plenty of ambition, talent, persistence and some Svengali of a manager like Colonel Tom Parker or Malcolm McLaren. In the nonfiction story in the book, “My Close Encounters with Rock Stars,” I talk about meeting everyone from the Pixies to Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and Jim Carroll, with the Pixies and Carroll being by far the nicest and most approachable, but the story also talks about how, if you have enough ego to get onstage in the first place, then all the adulation you receive is only going to heighten your towering narcissism and justify your egomania. Now that everyone is trying to be famous on social media, from the fitness coach to the “butt model” to the marketing maven and the chef, there’s never been a better time to rediscover the age-old virtue of humility. In this sense, most rock stars should be viewed as cautionary tales not role models.
The new edition of Jim Algie’s latest book, “On the Night Joey Ramone Died: Tales of Rock and Punk from Bangkok, New York, Cambodia and Norway,” comes with a new music journalism section and front-cover blurb from the acclaimed author and hit songwriter, Timothy Hallinan: “The funniest sad book and the saddest funny book I’ve read in a long time.” It’s available as an ebook or paperback from Amazon.com.