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The latest articles on PleaseKillMe.com – music, art, culture, fashion, poetry and movies from the 60s through today. This Is What’s Cool!

JACK KEROUAC: BASKING IN THE GOLDEN ETERNITY

Catherine de Leon·April 27, 2021

By the time Jack Kerouac died at 47 in 1969, he’d exiled himself from the 1960s youth culture he’d partly inspired with the likes of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. Bloated by booze and reactionary politics, he bore...

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SCAT RECORDS REBORN: CLEVELAND ROCKS AGAIN

Eric Davidson·April 26, 2021

Cleveland’s Scat Records, brainchild of Robert Griffin, set a high bar for indie labels in the Midwest, especially after he introduced Guided By Voices to the world in the 1990s. Even before that, Griffin’s 1980s’ bands, the Dark, Prisonshake and...

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THE ZONE IN BETWEEN: 1.5 – A HIDDEN ROCK & ROLL GENRE-PART TWO

Ben Merlis and Daniel Weizmann·April 23, 2021

In the second and third installments, presented here together, Ben Merlis and Daniel Weizmann track how the genre hidden between punk and hardcore smashed through the suburbs and spread across North America. And then how it was shoved out of...

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DAVID AMRAM: ON KEROUAC, GINSBERG, MINGUS, SPIRIT AND FAMILY

Noah Lekas·April 22, 2021

Composer David Amram, now 90, has worked with some of the jazz greats, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Monk, Gillespie and Mingus but his connection with writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg has also helped keep the Beat flame burning....

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LEONARD COHEN, PHIL SPECTOR: DEATH OF LADIES’ MEN

Sylvie Simmons·April 21, 2021

Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector were an unlikely pairing, to say the least. And yet, there they were, in an L.A. studio in 1976, both drinking heavily, both dealing with marital woes, but thrown together by an album project, Death...

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ERIC ANDERSEN: BEAT SENSIBILITY IN A FOLKSINGER CROWD

John Kruth·April 20, 2021

Eric Andersen came to music through Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the Beats, and his own inveterate wanderlust. After a teen odyssey that took him to San Francisco where he befriended Janis Joplin, met and married musician Debbie Green, he was coaxed to...

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MIDNIGHT COWBOY: A NEW YORK CITY PORTRAIT

David Stewart·April 19, 2021

Midnight Cowboy (1969) is the only X-rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. Now considered an American classic, its release was fraught with controversy, inducing an anti-gay backlash. Seen half a century later, it’s a brilliant snapshot of a...

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THE ZONE IN BETWEEN: A HIDDEN ROCK & ROLL GENRE

Ben Merlis and Daniel Weizmann·April 15, 2021

Ben Merlis and Daniel Weizmann are mad musical scientists who, while staying late one night in their lab, discovered a new musical genre. Or, rather, a hidden genre, which they call ‘1.5’. It was hidden between punk and hardcore. It’s...

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ALLAN SHERMAN: WEIRD AL’S FOUNDING ‘FADDAH’

Scott Schinder·April 14, 2021

Allan Sherman, a pudgy TV game show producer, dominated the pre-Beatles record charts with a string of hit singles and albums. His blend of post-Borscht Belt humor and pop-culture references, flavored by wit and warmth, found a ready audience in...

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WHEN HENRY MILLER MET GEORGE ORWELL: A CLASH OF TITANS

Alan Bisbort·April 13, 2021

George Orwell and Henry Miller, two of the most influential writers of the 20th century, had a single brief encounter in Paris in Dec. 1936. It has intrigued and baffled scholars and fans of both writers since. At the time,...

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RICKIE LEE JONES: THE DUCHESS OF COOLSVILLE IS BACK

Cree McCree·April 12, 2021

Rickie Lee Jones is back in the spotlight with a compelling memoir, Last Chance Texaco, and a 40th anniversary box set and tour to celebrate her landmark release Pirates, the follow-up to her 1979 debut that put her, and her...

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LAURA NYRO: THE MIRACULOUS MAGIC OF HER MUSIC

John Kruth·April 8, 2021

Though Laura Nyro’s songs are familiar to millions of people–through hit versions by Three Dog Night, the 5th Dimension and others–she herself remained in the shadows during her remarkable career as a singer, songwriter, arranger and muse. An elusive and...

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BILLIE HOLIDAY: LADY DAY’S ENDURING LEGACY

Sharon M. Hannon·April 7, 2021

Few major musical artists faced the obstacles Billie Holiday had to face, but then few can match her musical legacy. She sang, she said, the way Louis Armstrong played his horn, and she sang the only way she knew—with her...

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WAYNE KRAMER TALKS DRUGS, PRISON, MUSIC, SURVIVAL

JP Olsen·April 6, 2021

Wayne Kramer of the MC5 was sent to ‘The Narcotic Farm’ in 1975, the same federal facility—part hospital/part prison—where the likes of Ray Charles, William S. Burroughs, Chet Baker, Sam Rivers and Elvin Jones had spent time. When opened in...

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Jack Kerouac based his muse/lover “Mardou Fox” in The Subterraneans on Alene Lee, a mixed race (Black/Cherokee) bohemian writer and intellectual who was a part of the NYC Beat circle of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lucien Carr. Despite her intimate connection to these writers, the real Alene Lee is nowhere to be found in most accounts and biographies—partly due to her own reticence to speak. Erika Blair did some digging and presents a more rounded portrait of this fascinating woman. Read more!

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SAM CUTLER: LIFE WITH THE STONES, THE DEAD & OTHER WONDERFUL REPROBATES

ALL THE RAJ: HOW ‘NORWEGIAN WOOD’ UNLEASHED THE ‘INDIAN INVASION’

THE KNACK … AND HOW TO GET IT: AN INTERVIEW WITH PRESCOTT NILES

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PLEASE READ ME: THE BEST OF PKM FOR 2021, PART II

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RUTH UNDERWOOD: A MOTHER OF INVENTION

VIN DIESEL, ARTHUR RUSSELL AND ME

BORDER RADIO: THE LONG RIDE OF AN L.A. CULT CLASSIC

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JACK KEROUAC: BASKING IN THE GOLDEN ETERNITY

SCAT RECORDS REBORN: CLEVELAND ROCKS AGAIN

THE ZONE IN BETWEEN: 1.5 – A HIDDEN ROCK & ROLL GENRE-PART TWO

DAVID AMRAM: ON KEROUAC, GINSBERG, MINGUS, SPIRIT AND FAMILY

LEONARD COHEN, PHIL SPECTOR: DEATH OF LADIES’ MEN

ERIC ANDERSEN: BEAT SENSIBILITY IN A FOLKSINGER CROWD

MIDNIGHT COWBOY: A NEW YORK CITY PORTRAIT

THE ZONE IN BETWEEN: A HIDDEN ROCK & ROLL GENRE

ALLAN SHERMAN: WEIRD AL’S FOUNDING ‘FADDAH’

WHEN HENRY MILLER MET GEORGE ORWELL: A CLASH OF TITANS

RICKIE LEE JONES: THE DUCHESS OF COOLSVILLE IS BACK

LAURA NYRO: THE MIRACULOUS MAGIC OF HER MUSIC

BILLIE HOLIDAY: LADY DAY’S ENDURING LEGACY

WAYNE KRAMER TALKS DRUGS, PRISON, MUSIC, SURVIVAL

SAM CUTLER: LIFE WITH THE STONES, THE DEAD & OTHER WONDERFUL REPROBATES

ALL THE RAJ: HOW ‘NORWEGIAN WOOD’ UNLEASHED THE ‘INDIAN INVASION’

THE KNACK … AND HOW TO GET IT: AN INTERVIEW WITH PRESCOTT NILES

POLY STYRENE: BREAKING DOWN THE BONDAGE

WE NEVER LEARN: GUNK PUNK IN THE 1990S