CatholicBoy.com provides information about the late music artist Jim Carroll
Title
CATHOLICBOY.COM: The Jim Carroll Website
Description
Lynn Hirschberg, describing a Jim Carroll Band concert in 1980, before the release of Catholic Boy, reported overhearing a Oui photographer remark, "You're watching the Dylan of the 80s, you know. . . . Seeing Jim Carroll now . . . is like witnessing history."
Indeed, Jim Carroll expressed the Bomb-fear anticipation, the optimistic nihilism and glittering darkness of the 1980s that we who were there felt even if we couldn't communicate it ourselves. When John Lennon was assassinated in front of the Dakota in December 1980, "People Who Died" was one of the most-requested songs on FM radio, just after Lennon's own "Imagine." Steven Spielberg chose "People Who Died" to play during the opening scene of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "People Who Died" tapped a mainline. It was a hit even before it was released, and, as Newsweek's Barbara Graustark noted, it "propelled [Carroll] from underground status . . . to national attention as a contender for the title of rock's new poet laureate."
"People Who Died" wasn't the only thing that sustained Carroll's reputation. The first full-length article about him appeared in 1969, when Jim was 19, and he was featured in Rolling Stone as early as 1973--the same year, it was rumored, that he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize at age 22. The 1980 release of Catholic Boy, along with the re-publication of his cult- classic book The Basketball Diaries, shot Jim and his band into the international spotlight. Catholic Boy, named the second-most-popular album of 1980 by BAM, is now considered one of the last great punk albums. Jim appeared with his band on the variety program Fridays, he was interviewed by Tom Snyder, and he was featured on the MTV series The Roots of Rock, hosted by Lou Reed. Cover stories appeared in Newsweek, New York, Creem, Interview, Melody Maker, Stereo Review, Rolling Stone, Variety, and Penthouse. Playboy even printed a cartoon in which the punchline was, "Ever since the advent of Jim Carroll, 'I'm a Catholic junkie poet' seems hipper than 'What's your sign.'"
