New York Howl

Every band has a story an image a brand and a one-sheet. Rarely is it well written, rarely is it well-conceived or even vaguely interesting. The New York Howl however... what a great line. Who wrote it? Who knows.

"The New York Howl is an explosive punk, blues, rock n roll, psychedelic, soul family band living in Brooklyn, New York. We share a dream. We endeavor to hold the crackling, livid, blinding, screaming, fleeting, weightless truth in the palm of our hands, in the muscle of our hearts, and in the wet of our mouths. You will see us breathe bright waterfalls of fire and you will hear the sounds of children playing with electricity."

Roth

"The profusion of stars told him unambiguously that he was doomed to die, and the thunder of the sea only yards away—and the nightmare of the blackest blackness beneath the frenzy of the water—made him want to run from the menace of oblivion in their cozy, lighted, underfurnished house."

Philip Roth is still alive, and while his book "Everyman" is in my view his best since Portnoys Complaint his persistence gives hope he will better it yet. It's been half a century since he began writing and still no one else grasps that arena of queasy emotionality. He discussed it on NPR back in 2006.

Black Market Surgery

Matthew Good was probably fabricating everything. But he wrote an online journal of sorts. For a short period of time he was on Atlantic Records, and they for some reason printed them in two editions with identical covers but including journals of slightly different eras. the writing was disjointed, non-linear almost reflective of the Burroughs cut-up experiments. But ultimately, the words are not shuffled, only the strange mind of Mr. Good.

"Tomorrow everything will be the same as it was yesterday. Today is just another two minutes on the news. That picture in your wallet, salvation, they won't bring that up. Will they? There's a million different ways to say I love you."

Brother JT

Brother JT was a small-time rocker, a local legend that didn't make the big leap. His old band The Original Sins were a garage rock powerhouse. Today he's a more minor figure. But in his introspective obscurity he wrote a substantial rock essay. I say rock essay as you might say rock opera. It's 58 pages long and strings together his ideas about acid rock, Jesus, baseball, Ted Nugent and Miles Davis. He posted it online here.

"Her impossibly nimble, razor-like voice performs a sacred earjob on the listener, carving an explicit dream of dusty tent initiations into your poor brain, while simultaneously rubbing warm balm into the incision, leaving only a scar of involuntary enlightenment."