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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!

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A WORD FROM THE WISE GUY

Billy HoughJune 16, 2020

Billy Hough is a longtime fan of William S. Burroughs. He sees parallels between Burroughs’ writings and our present moment. We will let Billy explain it all to you. The country has been taken over by a fascist regime using false news and opiates to...

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MY STINT AS HUNTINGTON HARTFORD’S SECRETARY: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

Cree McCreeJune 15, 2020

Huntington Hartford, heir to the A&P fortune, was once a fixture on Manhattan’s social upper crust. By the time Cree McCree was hired as his personal secretary in 1982, however, he was toast—in more ways than one. His money dwindling, his drug us...

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HOW HOLLYWOOD HANDLED THE HIPPIES

Jim AllenJune 11, 2020

By the late 1960s, Hollywood had been infiltrated by psychedelia as a recreational pastime (pot, LSD, peyote were already in wide use among the film set by the late 1950s). How that mindset translated to the screen was another story. Sometimes good, ...

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THE STORY BEHIND DINO VALENTI’S HEY JOE AND LET’S GET TOGETHER

Alan BisbortJune 10, 2020

This is a story about singer-songwriter Dino Valenti and two songs for which he has songwriting credit that defined the Sixties. It also stars Edie Sedgwick, Jimi Hendrix, The Kingston Trio and Folsom Prison. This is a story about two songs, one son...

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LETTER TO A FIRST-TIME THOMAS PYNCHON READER

Gary LippmanJune 9, 2020

Thomas Pynchon, the great American novelist, may be best known for being invisible. (Although he did do a voiceover on an episode of The Simpsons). Who is he? Where does he live? He is also known for being Too Damn Difficult to read. In celebration o...

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SECOND FIDDLE TO NO MAN: BEVERLEY MARTYN AND LINDA THOMPSON

Fiona McQuarrieJune 8, 2020

The talented singer-songwriters Beverley Martyn and Linda Thompson faced an unfair hurdle in their careers: Though accomplished before meeting either of their husbands, they are best known for who they married and with whom they collaborated, John Ma...

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KEITH RELF: WHEN A YARDBIRD FLEW SOLO

Richie UnterbergerJune 4, 2020

Though the guitarists for The Yardbirds got all the ink, the band's other four members—bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, drummer Jim McCarty, rhythm guitarist (and later bassist) Chris Dreja, and vocalist Keith Relf—stood on equal footing with Clapton, Pag...

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VISUALIZING ROKY & THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS

Eric DavidsonJune 3, 2020

The music of the Texas garage band 13th Floor Elevators needs little introduction to PKM readers. They were among the first bands to collectively hitch their wagon to LSD, even coining the term "psychedelic rock". But there was a visual side to Roky ...

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THE CULT OF COSMOPOP: TRUE BELIEVERS IN THE ARIZONA OUTBACK

Joseph L. FlatleyJune 2, 2020

In southern Arizona lies the compound of a religious group, the Global Community Communications Alliance (GCCA). The charismatic head of the GCCA is ‘Gabriel of Urantia,’ aka Tony Delevin, a frustrated Pittsburgh musician. Delevin’s defining reason f...

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FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE

Alan BisbortJune 1, 2020

All the mothers of the world are showered with bowers of flowers and other sweet-smelling powders on Mother’s Day. And, of course, as Abe Lincoln put it, it is altogether fitting and proper that we do this. But what do the men get on Father’s Day? So...

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PRIVATE SORROW: REMEMBERING PHIL MAY OF THE PRETTY THINGS

Valerie SimadisMay 28, 2020

Phil May was one of the originators of the British rock sound of the 1960s: equal parts R&B, psychedelia and hard-driving rock & roll. He fronted The Pretty Things, a band that, with a break here or there, could have been as big as the Stones...

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FRED WILLARD WAS FOREVER YOUNG: AND REALLY REALLY OLD

Burt KearnsMay 27, 2020

For 60 years, Fred Willard made us laugh playing the same character, from early comedy club gigs with Vic Greco and appearances on Steve Allen’s and Ed Sullivan’s shows to countless appearances on David Letterman’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s shows. And then ...

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UNMASKED: THE PHANTOM SURFERS’ JOHNNY BARTLETT HANGS TEN

Anthony PetkovichMay 26, 2020

San Francisco’s longest surviving (and only masked!) instrumental surf band, The Phantom Surfers, have been riding the various musical waves since 1988, in that time amassing an international following while carrying the torch for surf music. They na...

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ALL THE YOUNG DROOGS: MONKEY FROM THE ADICTS SPEAKS

Amy HabenMay 25, 2020

Part of the first wave of punk bands in the U.K., the Adicts hit their stride in the 1980s and never looked back. Still active and still sporting garb from the rack of Clockwork Orange, the Adicts played in New York last year, where PKM’s Amy Haben m...

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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!

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.
John Battles on JOHNNY THUNDERS IN COLD BLOODAntonia expresses her motivation to write a Thunders biography in clear and concise terms , here. Though it's good that her book is being released again in any form , it's a gross injustice that there is not a readily available , affordable version that you can hold in your

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JOHNNY THUNDERS IN COLD BLOOD

DADDY COOL: AUSTRALIA’S UNSUNG ROCK & ROLL GREATS

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

Best Of

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)

All Please Kill Me Posts

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A WORD FROM THE WISE GUY

MY STINT AS HUNTINGTON HARTFORD’S SECRETARY: A SURVIVOR’S TALE

HOW HOLLYWOOD HANDLED THE HIPPIES

THE STORY BEHIND DINO VALENTI’S HEY JOE AND LET’S GET TOGETHER

LETTER TO A FIRST-TIME THOMAS PYNCHON READER

SECOND FIDDLE TO NO MAN: BEVERLEY MARTYN AND LINDA THOMPSON

KEITH RELF: WHEN A YARDBIRD FLEW SOLO

VISUALIZING ROKY & THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS

THE CULT OF COSMOPOP: TRUE BELIEVERS IN THE ARIZONA OUTBACK

FATHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE

PRIVATE SORROW: REMEMBERING PHIL MAY OF THE PRETTY THINGS

FRED WILLARD WAS FOREVER YOUNG: AND REALLY REALLY OLD

UNMASKED: THE PHANTOM SURFERS’ JOHNNY BARTLETT HANGS TEN

ALL THE YOUNG DROOGS: MONKEY FROM THE ADICTS SPEAKS

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

HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT: UNRAVELING A MYSTERY