Best Of

A selection of our top stories, for your reading pleasure…

Charley Plymell eating with William Burroughs. Lawrence, Kansas. Photo by Allen Ginsberg. Courtesy: Allen Ginsberg Estate/Stanford University Libraries.

CHARLEY PLYMELL: OUTLAW POET & ORIGINAL PUNK

Benito VilaJanuary 6, 2020

Poet, publisher, provocateur and people-connector, Charley Plymell is, like fellow Midwesterner Ed Sanders, a floater among contingents of kindred spirits, from the Beats to the hippies to the punks and back again. Publisher of William S. Burroughs a...

All Please Kill Me PostsBenito VilaBest OfInterviewsPoetry4 Comments 2

WELCOME TO THE TRIDENT: WHERE YOU COULD GET ANYTHING YOU WANT

Benito VilaNovember 25, 2019

From its waterfront perch in Sausalito, the Trident’s clientele could see the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. The club/restaurant was “a trippy space ship” whose passengers just happened to be a Who’s Who of rock & roll (the Sto...

All Please Kill Me PostsBenito VilaBest OfHistory3 Comments 7

THEE BIRD MAN: RIC OCASEK

Bebe BuellNovember 14, 2019

Ever since Ric Ocasek died two months ago (on Sept. 15), Bebe Buell has been trying to process the loss of one of her dearest friends and the guiding force of her own musical career. Even while Ocasek was steering The Cars to success (and into the Ro...

All Please Kill Me PostsBebe BuellBest OfCool PeopleMusiciansR.I.P.4 Comments 10

THE DEATH OF COUNTRY DICK MONTANA & THE BALLAD OF DAN MCLAIN

Burt KearnsNovember 12, 2019

Once described as ‘half Waylon and half Johnny Rotten,’ Dan McLain was a mortal drummer from San Diego who transformed himself into Country Dick Montana, driving force for the Beat Farmers and Pleasure Barons. It was while performing with the Beat Fa...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfBurt KearnsCool PeopleHistoryR.I.P.0 Comments 8

BJ PAPAS: FROM NY HARDCORE TO LA PUNK – SHE’S SHOT THEM ALL

Sharon M. HannonNovember 6, 2019

Photographer BJ Papas started out shooting the New York hardcore scene—bands like Agnostic Front, the Bad Brains and their audiences. A fan and friend of the bands, she started going to hardcore Sunday matinees at CBGB when she was in college, then h...

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David Johansen / Shawn Cassidy image by Bob Gruen

PANYC ATTACK: CAMILLA SALY’S LIVING HISTORY OF NYC PUNK

Eric DavidsonOctober 30, 2019

Camilla Saly turned her wild stories of a misspent youth in punk bars, and their eventual boxes of ephemeral proof, into the Punk Archives NYC, a developing online database for collectors of punk artifacts related to the city. Camilla talked with Eri...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfCool PeopleEric DavidsonHistoryInterviews4 Comments 2

NICO: THERE SHE GOES AGAIN, A MEDITATION ON DEATH, BEAUTY AND ARTISTRY

Billy HoughOctober 24, 2019

Nico (Christa Paffgen) was many things to many different people, including Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Alain Delon and numerous other collaborators. But to performance artist Billy Hough, Nico was “the most underrated/overexposed ...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfBilly HoughCool PeopleHistory4 Comments 4

THE JOY OF DESOLATION: TAKING PUNK ROCK TO THE DESERT

Richie UnterbergerOctober 16, 2019

Putting on punk shows in Los Angeles in the early 1980s became near to impossible with the lack of venues and police harassment of those events that did manage to find one. So a young promoter, Stuart Swezey, took bands like Redd Kross, the Minutemen...

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WHEN JACK KEROUAC HAD HIS CRACK-UP

Paul Maher, JrOctober 8, 2019

Spiraling down a silo of despair and drunkenness in the wake of his On The Road/Dharma Bums celebrity as ‘king of the Beats’, Jack Kerouac longed for a safe haven. Poet/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti heeded the call, loaning Kerouac his cabin at Big...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfBooksHistoryPaul Maher4 Comments 4

JABBERJAW: WHEN AN L.A. CLUB CREATED ITS OWN SCENE

Lucretia Tye JasmineOctober 1, 2019

What started as an all-ages coffee bar and acoustic venue in 1989 turned into a must-play showcase for local and out of town bands. Jabberjaw’s roster included L7, Bikini Kill, Iggy Pop, Elliott Smith, Hole, Beck, and many others. In its nine-year ru...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfHistoryLucretia Tye Jasmine0 Comments 2

ROGER MCGUINN: A NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHER FINDS PEACE

Larry Ratso SlomanSeptember 16, 2019

Roger McGuinn, as a founding member and guiding force of The Byrds, had a huge impact on rock 'n' roll of the 1960s, before embarking on a long and distinguished solo career that continues today. His fellow member of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Larry ...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfHistoryInterviewsLarry “Ratso” SlomanMusicians5 Comments 3

THE MURDER OF ALFALFA

Burt KearnsAugust 27, 2019

Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer was the most popular star of the classic Our Gang comedies. But the facts of the Little Rascal’s untimely death have been clouded in Hollywood Babylon myth... until Burt Kearns & Jeff Abraham started digging. by Burt Kearn...

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GARY PANTER: LIFE AFTER PUNK & PEE WEE

Eric DavidsonAugust 19, 2019

Raised in Texas, artist Gary Panter moved to L.A. in the late 1970s and made an immediate mark on the L.A. punk scene with his now iconic poster for the Screamers, among many other fliers, posters and comic strips in Slash. But his amazingly varied a...

All Please Kill Me PostsArtBest OfEric DavidsonNews7 Comments 3

BE KIND TO ME: THE MUSIC AND ART OF MICHAEL HURLEY

Gregory DaurerAugust 7, 2019

Michael Hurley could be called the godfather, or grandfather, of ‘freak-folk” but the Oregon-based singer, songwriter, artist and storyteller’s roots go back to his childhood in rural Pennsylvania and early forays into New York City, where he found k...

All Please Kill Me PostsBest OfInterviewsMusiciansNews2 Comments 4

Carol Kaye started as a jazz solo guitarist, working the club scene of 1950s LA, when she was asked to work on some studio tracks for Sam Cooke. Though she loved the bebop jazz scene, Carol was a single mother with three kids and so to the studios she went, eventually switching to bass. She ultimately changed the very sound and role of that instrument in pop music as a member of what drummer Hal Blaine dubbed The Wrecking Crew (but which Carol has called The Clique). By any name, these were the session musicians who shaped some of the biggest hits of the 1960s, after which she went back to playing live gigs and working in movies and television, writing and teaching, which she is still doing in her 80s. Michael Shelley talks with the amazing Carol Kaye for PKM. Read more!

Daniel on DADDY COOL: AUSTRALIA’S UNSUNG ROCK & ROLL GREATSExcellent article. I understand everything you wrote about. I discovered Daddy Cool back when in the East Tennessee boonies off a Warner Bros double album sampler and still remain smitten to this day.
Barbara Shafer on MY OWN PRIVATE BASKETBALL DIARY: MEETING JIM CARROLLNO question the real unsung hero of CATHOLIC BOY is that terrelle winn(?) sorry the LP isn't within reach-the left handed guitarist he had then. he told me they " had a falling out" anyone know the details on that? after he left the albums became not so good.
David C Thompson on THE JOYS OF RENT BOYS AND DRAG QUEENS, THE STOOGES AND BOWIE: A CONVERSATION WITH LEEE BLACK CHILDERSYour paragraph about the bands Leee had a hand in has a mistake. It was Levi and the Rockats, not Rockettes, or Cockettes or any other ettes.

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SLANT 6: STRAIGHT OUTTA WASHINGTON, D.C. IN THE ’90S

JOHNNY THUNDERS IN COLD BLOOD

DADDY COOL: AUSTRALIA’S UNSUNG ROCK & ROLL GREATS

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FRED WILLARD WAS FOREVER YOUNG: AND REALLY REALLY OLD

SHOOTING STIV BATORS AND LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH

DENNIS HOPPER’S BLUE PERIOD: THE MAKING OF OUT OF THE BLUE (1980)

Best Of

CHARLEY PLYMELL: OUTLAW POET & ORIGINAL PUNK

WELCOME TO THE TRIDENT: WHERE YOU COULD GET ANYTHING YOU WANT

THEE BIRD MAN: RIC OCASEK

THE DEATH OF COUNTRY DICK MONTANA & THE BALLAD OF DAN MCLAIN

BJ PAPAS: FROM NY HARDCORE TO LA PUNK – SHE’S SHOT THEM ALL

PANYC ATTACK: CAMILLA SALY’S LIVING HISTORY OF NYC PUNK

NICO: THERE SHE GOES AGAIN, A MEDITATION ON DEATH, BEAUTY AND ARTISTRY

THE JOY OF DESOLATION: TAKING PUNK ROCK TO THE DESERT

WHEN JACK KEROUAC HAD HIS CRACK-UP

JABBERJAW: WHEN AN L.A. CLUB CREATED ITS OWN SCENE

ROGER MCGUINN: A NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHER FINDS PEACE

THE MURDER OF ALFALFA

GARY PANTER: LIFE AFTER PUNK & PEE WEE

BE KIND TO ME: THE MUSIC AND ART OF MICHAEL HURLEY

SLANT 6: STRAIGHT OUTTA WASHINGTON, D.C. IN THE ’90S

JOHNNY THUNDERS IN COLD BLOOD

DADDY COOL: AUSTRALIA’S UNSUNG ROCK & ROLL GREATS

SCANDAL! THE 1927 CASE THAT JUMP-STARTED THE TABS!

MY OWN PRIVATE BASKETBALL DIARY: MEETING JIM CARROLL