SUBTERRANEAN URBANESQUE BLUES

THE JIM CARROLL BAND Catholic Boy (Atco)

Richard Riegel

Jim Carroll’s the latest word pusher (as in prose, poetry, you know, the pen-meets-paper thing) to cross the art-will-be-convulsive-or-not-at-all line, into the authentically electric seizures of rock music. And if you appreciated the many jagged gems of word’n’roll hidden among the furious chaos of Patti Smith’s attempts to make that same leap of faith, then get set for major acupuncture on your jugular, as you listen to Carroll’s debut recording.

I’d never heard of Jim Carroll myself until last winter, when Atlantic sent me his book The Basketball Diaries as advance promotion of this record. Nonetheless, I quickly learned that Carroll had made his mark as a published writer so many years before as to have earned praise from beatnik godhead Jack Kerouac himself, who, as you must know, died in 1969. Since Carroll’s only 29 or so now, you can see what a prodigy he was when St. Jack smiled down on the earliest Basketball Diaries.