by jim holt
Before I left the club that night I stole the marquee.
I didn’t ask permission, I just took it.
Bright yellow cardboard panel, larger than a car door: Jim Carroll El Mocambo Dec. 10.
Now it hangs as a center piece in Jim’s Garage, anchoring the other things I hold close to my heart: framed photos of desert hikes; a Wolfman model I won by running as fast as I possibly could because I wanted it so badly; mason jars full of marbles and earrings and drum kit hardware….
It’s next to my ‘Running on the Sun’ poster – about the Badwater ultra-marathon, the most grueling footrace in the history of human beings, 135 miles through Death Valley at the hottest time of the year.
Jim Carroll died September 11.
When Catholic Boy was released just before Christmas 1980, I was working in A&A Records on Yonge Street.
We spun that record endlessly in the store, each time louder than the time before. We had a harvest of incredible albums from which to choose: London Calling (Clash); The Pretenders; The English Beat; Television …
But, Jim’s album we cranked up.
So, when he came to Toronto’s El Mocambo from NYC with his skinny ass band, Mikey and I went to see him. Absolutely.
I can still see that drum kit the size of those you get from K-Mart … watching him come out with his band (who all looked like he did) watching them as they huddled in front of that tiny drum set, sharing a cigarette, just before they turned around and rocked the house down.
oh yeah baby …. that was a kick-ass band. when people talk about a kick-ass band …. it’s not the size of woofers, baby …. it’s the size of fucking kickass…..
my ass is still sore … after 30 years … yeah, i stole the marquee that night and kept it all these years to remind me just how powerful that kick was.
and, that album, Catholic Boy, which for some bizarre reason you can’t find anywhere on CD (perhaps just as well) …. digital kicks far less ass and kicks it not near as far.
His words rang as true as concrete, steel … still ring.
The city drops into the night (abso-fucking-lutely leaving the record store each night at midnight) … people who died (sadly, yes) …..
I bought all his books: Basketball Diaries, Living at the Movies, Book of Nods …
After I graduated from journalism school, got a job covering crime in Hamilton …. His words, his grit, his stories – all sharpened into finer focus.
More friends … more cities dropping into night (Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a contract shooting; Detroit for a firefighters funeral; Fort Lauderdale for the start point of a drug route that ended in Hamilton) … each day on the police beat covering death, disease, dying and despair … a marathon of grief …. absolute clarity.
Nine years after the Jim Carroll show, the A&A staffers had all moved on. The store was sold. CDs were replacing vinyl.
On April 29, 1989, after two years of covering crash and burn in Canada’s steeltown, Jim Carroll was back in Toronto, at Lee’s Palace – no band, just the man. No music, just the lyrics to a life.
Absolutely I went. By myself this time, but yes.
The show ended. Walk back into the night.
Another three years go by, another three years on the police beat – day after day, just death and destruction – and Jim Carroll returns again, this time to the El Mocambo – where I had seen him 12 years earlier.
He came alone but the place was packed. No band, yet it was standing room only on Saturday night March 21, 1992.
It was hard getting to the bar – shoulder to shoulder, shoe toes to shoe heels – I ordered two beers whenever I squeezed me way through the crowd to the bar. They hadn’t come for music – they came to listen to one skinny ass man recite poetry, his poetry, in a wavering voice.
I stood at the back by the washrooms; two fisted with my two beers, arms crossed over my chest because there was no room to even relax them.
Since my hands were full I couldn’t clap, so every time a poem ended, I used my left arm to pin the beer to my chest while I whistled so loudly it sounded like I was hailing a cab two blocks away …
When the show ended, I just stood there waiting for everyone to move on, still two-fisted, most definitely teetering inside a beer nod, trying to keep my balance … when he walked by me – the man, Jimmy.
I smiled at him.
“You’re a fucking genius, man. Fucking brilliant.”
He reached out his hand …. I had to pin my second beer to my chest to shake his hand.
I play his words loudly in my head … he was someone who died, died …. He was a friend.
