Feb 10, 2015 Punks with pens: Marky Ramone, Dr. Frank, Aaron Cometbus
I’m always hearing authorities say how technology is rendering traditional media obsolete. Streaming music, reading books on a tablet, and so on is the way of the future. But I still appreciate the physical manifestations of what I listen to or read and–get this–I even want to pay for them to support the creators and their culture.
So, naturally, I’m a sucker when it comes to musicians who write books. And somehow I’ve come across a quite a run of them recently.
A couple of weeks ago, Marky Ramone stopped by Vroman’s Books in Pasadena to promote his autobiography, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone. There was a lengthy Q&A with RazorCake‘s Jim Ruland, in which he explained why Dee Dee was his favorite, asserted his opinion that Phil Spector is innocent, and talked about sobriety before signing books. Although the line was long, Marky chatted with each and every one of his fans. I mentioned that I got to see him drum on the Halfway To Sanity and Brain Drain tours and he struck up a conversation about listening to records at home and cassettes in the car. A legendary drummer and a nice guy.
A solid author, too, it turns out. Punk Rock Blitzkrieg is a real page turner that’s front-loaded even before he becomes a Ramone. He not only played with Richard Hell and The Voivoids but toured with them and The Clash around England! His anecdotes surrounding joining the Ramones, being let go because of his drinking problem, and rejoining are straightforward and create an absorbing middle ground between Johnny’s, Dee Dee’s, Joey’s brother Mickey, or the band’s tour manager Monte’s memoirs. It seems I’ve not only come to grips with the band’s dysfunction but can’t stop reading about it.
Frank Portman has been on a book tour to support King Dork Approximately and played a show at The Redwood with Bad Cop Bad Cop (who I’ve been corresponding with and have been meaning to see) and Kepi Ghoulie (who was my cousin’s roommate). I love Dr. Frank’s band The Mr. T Experience and hadn’t seen them in more than a decade, so how could I miss this? Turns out he was contractually barred from having books at the event. Oh well, it was a great show mixing up Dr. Frank and Kepi, two survivors of the glory days of the East Bay’s Gilman Street collective, with the new generation of punks from SoCal (Turkish Techno and Pizza Wolf were great, too!).
The very next day I went to my local library to see if Portman was on the shelves, and got the first King Dork novel to hold me over until I purchase the newer installment. I haven’t read a YA book since I was a young adult. It took a few chapters to adjust to the underdog protagonist’s hyper-aware, know-it-all voice (nothing more maddening than Dostoevsky’s Underground Man or Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly) but it turned out to be an compelling mystery filtered through high school politics, mixed family dynamics, and an overactive mind that finds meaning and belonging through music. Glad I don’t have to deal with waiting for the sequel.
And then there are the newest works of Aaron Cometbus. There was no book tour or shows that I know of (I shot the photo above of my favorite writer drumming for Thorns of Life at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, circa 2009) but who has time for that when one is cranking out publications and selling used books? The new issue of Cometbus, which I have bought without hesitation since the early ’90s, collects stories about the used bookseller culture: The characters, the codes, the constant hunt. The thing about Cometbus, which was famously entirely handwritten until recently, is that it is punk in ethos and attitude but hardly has any music in it at all. This installment isn’t a stretch as much as it is a loving yet honest peek into his other subculture.
Last Supper isn’t as new and it’s something else. That Cometbus would write poetry isn’t shocking since he’s played with and written songs for at least a dozen bands that I know of. But to release verse without music is a rather bold step and, on top of that, it is much less guarded than his prose. Loyal fans of Cometbus will know all the settings and scenes, but he describes being a kid who idolized 999 and Generation X and his changing relationships with his three sisters with equal candor, and addresses heavy topics such as depression just as directly. It’s non-ornamental poetry that non-poetry readers like me can not only get through but reall appreciate–a vastly different yet necessary supplement to the zine.
Reading books is good–even if they’re just extensions of your record collection. And follow Imprint on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, too!