Tag Archives: Heroin
PSH at 50
I recently got on a kick of remembering the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman before I realized that I’d missed the chance to observe what would have been the actor’s 50th birthday on July 23. Most of Hoffman’s fans didn’t know that he’d struggled with substances in his early 20s. And it came as a [...]
Nazis! Drugs! Madness!
Yesterday morning I came across this The Guardian author interview with Norman Ohler whose new book, Blitzed, is an exhaustive excavation of the drug culture at the center of the Third Reich. Here are a few words… …“Yes, it is strange,” he says, smiling at my giddiness. But then he has long believed in a [...]
Liquid Sky
The great hero of the 1982 cult film Liquid Sky is Anne Carlisle: Carlisle co-wrote the screenplay, plays both the male and female fashion model leads in the film, and even authored the movie’s novelization. The flick actually did well on the festival circuit after debuting in Montreal, and according to Wikipedia it was the [...]
Basketball Diarist
April in America is National Poetry Month. Reminded of this today, I immediately thought of Jim Carroll – a prodigy of verse whose hybrid poetic memoirs are required reading for anyone interested in punk era New York city and the decades that followed before Carroll’s death in 2009. Carroll’s musical releases are well-worth a listen, [...]
A Love Supreme At 50
50 years ago in February, 1965, John Coltrane released A Love Supreme. One of the greatest albums in any genre, the record represented the culmination of Coltrane’s spiritual rebirth after recovering from heroin addiction nearly 10 years earlier. Coltrane pledged his horn to god during his struggles and Supreme is the sound of a man [...]
Dylan & Bloomfield
In 1965 Bob Dylan released Bringing it all Back Home — the record’s first side featuring the folk music hero playing with an electric band. In July of that same year, Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival and made history when he took to the hallowed stage with the fully amplified Paul Butterfield Blues Band [...]
New Shots in Kurt Cobain Case
There’s a fine line between the truth and a good story when it comes to celebrities. And when it comes to the death of a celebrity like Kurt Cobain, there is a fine line between the findings of the police investigation that ruled his demise a suicide and the conspiracy theories that insist the singer [...]
Jane’s Addiction: Gifted
In the late ’80′s and early 90′s, Jane’s Addiction brought the druggy, draggy Los Angeles underground sound to mainstream audiences with a trio of unforgettable albums: Jane’s Addiction (1987), the classic Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and Ritual de lo Habitual (1990). The fact that Jane’s guitar player Dave Navarro claims to have no recollection of recording [...]
Burroughs Reads Junky
Hola, amigos Junky is William S. Burroughs’ first book and also his most readable. While many readers may have already cracked the cover on this dusky treasure, I recently found a fine gem that washed up on the cyber shores of this here late night lookout. This YouTube offering is an abridged audibook version of [...]
