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FEATURED POSTS:
©2023 BY ANDREA KUSTEN
I’m Andrea Kusten, but they call me The Big Mama Freak. FREAKS was my Heavy Orange Rock band with then-husband, Howie Pyro, in NYC circa the late 80’s. Fast forward to 2023, we’ve just released a deluxe career-spanning retrospective double LP set on translucent 180 gram orange vinyl, available to purchase from Rough Trade mail order: Purchase Vinyl
It was such serendipity that the master tapes for our only album, 1989’s “In Sensurround” were discovered in a basement the same week Howie went into the hospital for a successful liver transplant … Read More
©2023 BY TIM STEGALL
Originally published on Feb. 13th at: The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack. “Got a dick an’ 2 balls/That’s more than you all!” Politically incorrect to the bone and unrepentant, these are the first two lines you hear after a blast of Stooges-esque guitar, including a dose of satisfying amplifier hum. Welcome to Every Loser, Iggy Pop’s 19th studio album, and first in four years, interestingly released on January 6th. But this is good. Now that date can signify something positive … Read More
My client was in a small narrow hospital room with no windows and no lights, handcuffed to the bed. He was emaciated, dehydrated, and completely dope sick. It was painful to see. I looked at all things obvious. There was no drip, no oxygen, no nurse. No signs of any food trays, no water bedside with a straw. I whispered to my client, “Hi, it’s me, your bail bondsman Raquel…” … Read More
“Mr. Bad Guy” by Legs McNeil
Published on Air Mail
January 7, 2023
Lawrence Tierney played the meanest, coldest, scariest villains in film noir classics, including Born to Kill and The Devil Thumbs a Ride. He was equally fearsome in his private life, managing to brawl and drink away his career numerous times. But there was always someone willing to give him another chance because, in the words of show-business columnist Jimmie Fidler, “Sober, he’s an alright guy.”
“The Misfits” by Legs McNeil
Published on Air Mail
Tony Notarberardino has been a resident of the Chelsea Hotel—and its unofficial photo-portraitist—since 1994
I was sitting outside the Roxy Hotel at midnight one night this past July, after a showing of Ciao! Manhattan next door. Rock ’n’ roll Zelig Danny Fields and artist and actress Bibbe Hansen were there to field questions about Edie Sedgwick, the film’s star, but now everyone was gone. The party was over.
Krupa’s towering influence has not been confined to jazz and swing drummers. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that he was a major inspiration for some of punk rock’s most important timekeepers, including Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls and Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Rat Scabies of the Damned, and Lucky Lehrer of Circle Jerks … Read More
Volume one (of many). As an artist, it must be stressful coming up with album titles. It’s a bit like naming a baby, if that baby’s name was a determining factor in its commercial success or lack thereof. More often than not, artists strive for interesting names, names that make you think, inspiring one to wonder what’s the story behind the title. Oftentimes however, throughout the history of modern music there have been plenty of instances where the band or artist clearly phoned it in, choosing a name so odd — in many cases, so dumb or gross — that no matter how great the songs contained therein may be, there’s no redeeming it. In no particular order, here are a few particularly stinky stinkers that really stink. … Read More
Former head Kink waxes eloquent about his mom and dad, Village Green Preservation Society, the Beatles, Keith Richards, “Madame” Jagger, Rod Stewart and the Queen Mother’s teeth. … Read More
The book is squalid, evocative and often very, very funny — full of contradictory versions of the same story, all of which have some grain of truth — and that’s how real life is; his version, his version and the truth, which is still compromised … Read More
[Originally published on pleasekillme.com]
Legs McNeil interviewed him in New York in early 1995. At the time, Morrison was undergoing chemotherapy. Sadly, he did not live long enough to witness the answer to his very first comment in this interview. He died on August 30, 1995. The Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the following year … Read More
©2022 By Legs McNeil
We’ve all seen that horribly facile Oliver Stone film, “The Doors” and we still watch it anyway, even though it sucks– thus is the power of Jim Morrison. He still captures our inner belligerent souls. And Val Kilmer looked and imagined Morrison they way we believed him to be. If only Val had a script to work with … Read More
(Or: How a Jewish Mariachi Trumpeter Turned a Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roller into an Easy Listening Pop Crooner) | ©2022 By Burt Kearns … Read More
Al Martino played crooner (and wedding singer) Johnny Fontane. It was a role that Frank Sinatra tried to rub out. Frank believed the character in Mario Puzo’s novel was based on him, but it was a role Martino knew was his. A popular Italian-American balladeer in the early 1950s, he’d been forced to move to Great Britain after he defied the mobsters who’d bought his management contract. Martino returned to America and fought his way back onto the charts and success in the 1960s … Read More
Before the bus and after, tales of Ken Kesey, LSD, the Hells Angels, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and more … Read More
ABOUT LEGS
Photo by: Burt Kearns
INTRODUCTION TO MY COURSE:
ZEN AND THE ART OF THE NARRATIVE ORAL HISTORY
Copyright August 2021 by Legs McNeil ©2021-2022 by Legs McNeil (Based on the techniques developed by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain)
Too long has the Oral History format been thought of as the bastard child of literature; assumed to be a “cut and paste” job for hack writers looking to make an easy buck. In other words, the bottom of the prose barrel. But when the art of the narrative oral history is mastered, it can transform the written spoken word by primary subjects—people who were in the room when the event occurred—into actually experiencing the event being described, with all the human emotion, even more so than the traditional omnipotent narrator.
Photo by: Burt Kearns
Photo by: Tom Hearn
Photo by: Chris Stein
Photo by: Mitchell Kearney
Photo by: Roberta Bayley
Photo by: Dina Regine
Photo by: Tom Hearn
Photo by: Burt Kearns
Photo by: Bob Gruen
Photo by: Tom Hearn
On the 20-year anniversary of ‘Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk,’ Legs and Gillian tell Marc why they wrote it in the first place and why it still resonates two decades later.
Author Roderick “Legs” McNeil — whose 1996 book, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, documents Bowie’s wild early-Seventies New York period — reacts to Bowie’s passing.
Relive the golden days of punk with Legs McNeil in this exclusive article from the April, 1982 issue of High Times, which we’re republishing on the occasion of McNeil’s 65th birthday on January 27.
“Legs, you asshole,” I said. “I am not doing this story on you. I am not taking the responsibility for making you famous.”
Various articles on Vice.com featuring Legs McNeil
“The more we fear the future, the more we recycle the past.” Legs McNeil
At the age of 19, McNeil gathered with two high school friends and decided to create “some sort of media thing” for a living. The name “Punk” was decided upon because “it seemed to sum up…everything…obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side”.
McNeil occupies the oxymoronic status as an underground icon, thanks in part to his role as co-founder of PUNK, the irreverent ‘70s magazine that chronicled the New York punk scene and popularized the term ‘punk.’
McNeil stated that he has left the pleasekillme.com website. He stated simply: “I’M NO LONGER ASSOCIATED WITH THE PLEASEKILLME.COM WEBSITE.” Later, he added that he will be starting a website and project called Legsville.
At the age of 18, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, and decided to create “some sort of media thing” for a living.