“People Who Died” – Jim Carroll Band
(Words/music: Jim Carroll, available on Catholic Boy, Atco 1980)

I envisioned this blog as an opportunity to discuss songs and my relationship with them, so this is not the place for me to eulogize Jim Carroll. To be honest, Carroll’s death saddened me mainly because I know a lot of people who loved his work, in particular The Basketball Diaries, and will consider this death a personal blow. I only mention it because the touching tributes around the web pointed me back toward “People Who Died,” a song I haven’t heard in years and hadn’t thought about in almost the same amount of time.

Most of the tributes characterized Carroll as a “punk poet” – a writer who tried his hand at music the way other writers adapt a new genre. I’ve heard the term attached to people like Patti Smith (who described Carroll as “pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation” in the New York Times obituary) but thought of it as a stopgap term – the way to describe someone who dabbled in the spirit of punk rock and approached songwriting with a literary eye. I’m skeptical to call a poet playing punk rock a “punk poet” – as it seems too tidy. However, hearing “People Who Died” now after being introduced to it on VH-1 Classic a few years back, Carroll’s song embodies the spirit of both punk and poetry. Poetry has this stigma of being dense and unapproachable, but just as often a writer will compose something that looks simple (at least on the outside) as the best way to communicate an idea. Specifically, a trashing punk song doesn’t provide the optimal ground for a web of complex imagery (at least usually), and Carroll seems to understand this about the medium. Rather than get bogged down in details, he presents his “poem,” (if you want to call it that) as a series of images bombarding his audience. It creates the same effect as elaborately lurid details, except using bodycount rather than gore to elicit shock. The stories fly by too fast before Carroll and his band describe them in a droll and deadpan way in the chorus, perhaps as a commentary to those who turn a blind eye to the casualties of drug abuse. The sing-songy chorus and blank faced descriptions give “People Who Died” the same feel as an Edward Gorey painting – simple on the outside and subversive right below the surface.

More on Jim Carroll: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm