Thoroughly enjoying NYC Babylon: Beat Punks. Notes, Raps, Essays, Secrets, Transcripts, Opinions (Wise and Otherwise), and Pictures of a Gone World and of How the Punk Generation Typhooned Its Way Back Through and Harpooned the Beat Generation Harmonica Collaboration by Victor Bockris (1998). Coming up next for happy reading time: "The Captain's Cocktail Party: Dinner with Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and William Burroughs" (pages 89-101).
It's astonishing to me to see so many of the people I've been reading about, listening to or watching on some kind of screen for many years all converge together in this one book.
So far, the most interesting sections (to me) have been transcripts of interviews with Debbie Harry, Marianne Faithfull and Susan Sontag, all strong and sharply observant people.
So where is this convergence of Angela Davis and Marianne Faithfull?
It is this: "Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday were my goddesses," Faithfull tells Victor Bockris in an interview circa 1991 (Bockris, NYC Babylon, page 66).
And in 1998, Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday is published.
Of course, Davis and Faithfull also converge through The Rolling Stones, but that's for another post. Time to get back to NYC Babylon first.
Today's Rune: Growth.
2 comments:
Susan Sontag sounded like a handful in the memoir by Nunez reviewed in the NYT yesterday.
I like Faithfull's music a lot. Such a great voice.
Post a Comment