Schoultz’s Lo-Fi Motel

Kanye West acting like a blithering idiot on that yearly parade of hollow, vapid, ear-cancer know as the VMAs makes headlines, but I wouldn’t have heard of Jim Carroll’s passing if it wasn’t for an e-mail from a teacher/poet friend from the Detroit area.

For those unaware, Jim Carroll was a poet, rocker, and autobiographer.  His most well-known written work is The Basketball Diaries, which with brutal honesty, documented Carroll’s basketball scholarship at a Catholic school in the 1960’s and his descent into drug addiction and prostitution.  It was made into a suprisingly solid film in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  He also fronted The Jim Carroll Band.  The group had a minor early ’80’s hit with the song “People Who Died.”  I liked his writing very much while I found his music to be hit-or-miss.  The Jim Carroll Band’s “best of” album A World Without Gravity is certainly worth checking out for the hidden gem here and there, however. 

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