‘Tales Of Times Square’ author Josh Alan Friedman has written a delightfully bent memoir of what it was like being a white kid attending an all-Black elementary school in Long Island during the early 1960’s. In ‘Black Cracker’, Friedman combines his usual sardonic humor with a surprisingly sweet tone and the result is both very funny and touching. It also deals with race in America by hewing to real life details, avoiding broad sentiment and proselytizing. The truth is really in the telling. This is a very funny book and an immensely satisfying one. Who knew that Josh could be such a warmhearted ol’ fuck.  

South School, 1962: The last segregated school in New York. Their teacher moonlights on ‘Lawrence Welk’, the lady principal wears boxing gloves, and the student body is all-Negro . . . except for first grader Josh Friedman. He’s white, but he’s working on it. Center stage in the unflinching and frequently hilarious funhouse tour of Friedman’s Long Island boyhood is a rogues’ gallery that includes Bobo, precocious third-grade dropout and boy prince of the ghetto; his bumbling (and alarmingly potent) ne’er-do-well Uncle Limpy; Mumsy, the smelliest shoeshine boy in Penn Station; Mrs. O’Leary, the menacing Irish nanny; her son, Drake, an etiquette-obsessed, switchblade-totin’ clammer overwhelmed by the tides of racial progress; and the impoverished Wilshires, the bone-white, nigger-hatin’-est crackers in town. At once heartbreaking and hysterically funny, ‘Black Cracker’ delivers a fearless account of adventures in the now-forgotten poor Black shantytowns of Long Island, exploring the singular ugliness of racism, the intrigue of janitorial whodunits, the tragic limits of friendship, and the inexplicable seductive powers of croco-print footwear.

‘Black Cracker’ is published by Wyatt Doyle/New Texture. Wyatt has also unleashed Chris D.‘s (The Flesheaters) ‘A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die’ and his own collection of short stories called ’ Stop Requested’.  Chris D.‘s anthology is comprised of his song lyrics, poetry, short stories, dream journal entries and excerpts from as-yet-unpublished novels. Chris was in the heat of the action during L.A.‘s 1970’s punk explosion and his book is street smart and unruly, filled with noirish surrealism and rock hard beatitudes that ache with yearning, anger and red hot eroticism. Shelve next to Patti Smith and Nick Cave.

Doyle’s ‘Stop Requested’ is a series of rueful, witty and occasionally heartwrenching stories about the fellow passengers that Doyle observes while riding the bus in L.A.. These are folks living on the margin between nothing and everything, stuck between Rodeo Drive and The Highway To Nowhere. Doyle’s gift is in capturing those tiny dramatic moments that linger for a brief moment on the periphery of vision. He has a Zen-like ability to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter (and everything matters), he finds consequence in the inconsequential. He’s Bukowski without the nasty streak. And he’s real good. Profusely illustrated with drawings by Stanley J. Zappa . Highly recommended.

Support indie publishers. Buy these suckers.

Completely unrelated to his book ‘Black Cracker’ (but so much fun I had to include it here), Josh has written a musical based on the life of Ed Wood Jr. Here’s an excerpt for your amusement.    
 

“Bela Lugosi” by Josh Alan Friedman (BLACK CRACKER) from New Texture on Vimeo.

 
Musical tastes are important when it comes to relationships, something I realized the night Alex Harvey died, in 1982. The radio was playing a loop of tracks in memory of the great man, when my then girlfriend asked why I liked The Sensational Alex Harvey Band? I explained, and she replied, ‘But he looked so dirty, like a bad workman that would come to your house and drink Dad’s booze and fuck Mom.’ She had a point, and some imagination, but that was the moment I knew we wouldn’t last.

If you lived in Glasgow in the 1970s, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were bigger than Jesus. Well, Alex was at least, for he was one of the city’s three religions - the other two being soccer and alcohol. While soccer could disappoint, and drink left you hungover, SAHB never let you down.

As Charles Shaar Murray wrote, after Alex Harvey’s death in the NME:

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were one of the craziest, most honest, most creative and most courageous bands of their time, and also the most public and best-known phase of the career of Alex Harvey, the man who won a Tommy Steele rock-alike contest in Glasgow in the mid-fifties and thereafter dubbed himself The Last Of The Teenage Idols.

Alex Harvey was a genuine working-class hero, born in Plantation, the harbor district of Glasgow in 1935, he grew up with a love of Billie Holliday, Big Bill Broozny, Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. In 1959, he formed his first band, Alex Harvey’s Soul Band, which established his great, cigarette and alcohol voice that didn’t mimic American inflection, but delivered songs in his native Glaswegian. The band toured the U.K. and Europe, and for one gig had the embryonic Beatles as support.

But Harvey was more than just a Blues singer and he moved on to performing in the musical Hair, which inspired the theatrical style he used with his most successful group, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

SAHB were unique as they mixed genres and styles - Weimar cabaret, film, Blues, rock and torch song, with which, as Murray writes, “they achieved their impact simply because Alex Harvey had the insight to locate the central core of the song and the passion to get him to that core.”

What showed most about Alex Harvey the performer was his very real devotion to his audiences. He would go to any length to enlighten and to entertain, and - as his notion of theatrical presentation developed from a few simple costume changes and bits of business to complex arrangements of props and gadgets - his work was never bombastic and never attempted to substitute extravagance for genuine communication. Time after time, he would exhort his audiences to avoid both private and institutionalized violence - “don’t make any bullets, don’t buy any bullets and don’t shoot any fucken bullets” - and to behave responsibly towards each other and their environment - “don’t pish in the water supply.”

During the period of Alex’s greatest popularity, he did not just provide an escape from everyday existence through dem ol’ rock and roll fantasies, but he depicted and celebrated that existence and the process of that escape, and the relationship of one to the other.

Vambo still rules.
 

 
Bonus clips of SAHB plus an interview with Alex Harvey after the jump…
 

 
Pre-Halloween disco grooviness.

Hot Blood’s classic ‘Soul Dracula’ was released in 1975. Here’s a clip from French TV
 

 
Bill Hicks on Austin cable television. The show aired on October, 1993, five months before Hicks died.

Bill knows his days are numbered and seems more intent on speaking truth to power than being funny. He’s getting his last licks in, discussing the Waco Branch Davidian masscres and censorship, including Letterman’s chickenshit decision not to air his appearance on The Late Show.
 

 
Waco is 102 miles from Austin and the Branch Davidian confrontation was taking place at the time of this interview. Hicks had visited the site of the compound during the siege. His thoughts on the matter swung wildly from being dismissive of Koresh to outrage at the government over the outcome. Here’s a couple of videos of Hicks talking about the Waco disaster.
 

 
More from Hicks on Waco after the jump…

 
Ace photographer Henry Chalfant who produced the classic 1984 documentary on New York City graffiti artists and hip hop, Style Wars, has a new website and it’s a beauty. An incredible resource for anyone interested in street art, hip hop culture and outlaw artists, check out Henry’s site here. It will blow your mind.

These photos were cropped in order to fit the page. See them in their full glory on Henry’s webpage, where you can actually scroll along the full length of the subway car.
 

 

 
Grandpa Woodstock hosts his show ‘The Flower Power Hour’ from wherever he might be at any given time, whether it’s a box or a cave in Arizona. I like him. This old flower child is a perennial. An American sadhu.

He has a Facebook page. You can check it out here.
 
“I will continue to spread peace and love for the rest of my life.”
Even if peace comes I still won’t stop.”

I like the way Grandpa schools that young fuckin’ punk hippie.

“Now you wanna lay on Grandpa’s bed and smoke the bowl all day.”
 

 
Burroughs reads Morrison’s ‘Is Everybody In’ on this track from Doors tribute album ‘Stoned Immaculate’ released in 2000. The surviving Doors provided the music. 

Bill Burroughs, the originator of the mashup.

 
In 1967, I hitchhiked from Washington D.C. to the Haight-Ashbury to get in on some groovy hippie shit.

As a former acidhead who took multiple trips in many different settings, I never encountered anything remotely like ‘Blue Boy’. But,  I’m glad that I didn’t see this episode of Dragnet when it aired in 1967. Talk about a bummer. This probably triggered a few bad trips.

I remember the anti-acid hysteria that dominated the media of the time, from chromosome damage to people jumping out of windows to kids staring at the sun until they went blind. All of which were lies. It seems there’s a renewed interest in LSD and MDMA among psychologists and therapists. I’m looking forward to the day when pharmaceutical grade LSD is made available to those of us who respect it. I haven’t done acid since 1970 and I’m about due. But, it’s gotta be the real deal.

Warning: this video could trigger flashbacks and/or serious injury due to laughter-induced hyperventilation.

Starring Michael Burns as Benjie “Blue Boy” Carver.
 

 
Dear Friends, just a reminder that the legendary comedy troupe, Firesign Theatre will be performing at the Barnsdall Gallery Theater in Los Angeles this weekend, doing their classic album I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus (my personal favorite) in its entirety.

Get tickets for Friday here and for the Saturday night performance, here.
 

 
Trippy, man, trippy.