Some Came Running

Peter Laughner and self-indulgence in arts writing; or, "It's the prose, stupid"

This is a hell of a way to kick off a record review:

This album made me so morose and depressed when I got the advance copy that I stayed drunk for three days. I didn't go to work. I had a horrible physical fight with my wife over a stupid bottle of 10 mg. Valiums. (She threw an ashtray, a brick, and a five foot candelabra at me, but I got her down and sat on her chest and beat her head on the wooden floor.) I called up the editor of this magazine (on my bill) and did virtually nothing but cough up phlegm in an alcoholic stupor for three hours, wishing somewhere in the back of my deadened brain that he could give me a clue as to why I should like this record. I came on to my sister-in-law: "C'mon over and gimme head while I'm passed out." I cadged drinks off anyone who would come near me or let me into their apartments. I ended up the whole debacle passing out stone cold after puking and pissing myself at a band rehearsal, had to be kicked awake by my lead singer, was driven home by my long-suffering best friend and force fed by his old lady who could still find it in the boundless reaches of her good heart to smile on my absolutely incorrigible state of dissolution...I willed her all of my worldly goods before dropping six Valiums (and three vitamin B complexes, so I must've figured to wake up, or at least at the autopsy they would say my liver was OK). Well, wake up I did, after sleeping sixteen hours, and guess what was running through my head, along with the visual images of flaming metropolises and sinking ocean liners foaming and exploding in vast whirling vortexes of salt water...

"Watch out for Charlie's girl...

She'll turn ya in...
doncha know... 

Ya gotta watch out for Charlie's girl..."

Which is supposed to be the single off Coney Island Baby and therefore may be a big hit if promoted right, 'cause it's at least as catchy as "Saturday Night"...if they can just get four cute teens to impersonate Lou Reed.

Those once-read-never-forgotten words are from an ostensible review of Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby, by Peter Laughner, which appeared in the March 1976 issue of Creem magazine. I've been thinking about this piece on account of a little internet kerfuffle I've been involved with, which now spans two separate sites not counting this one.

Scene From A Marriage

SCENE: Carroll Gardens, on an early spring afternoon.
CHARACTERS:
Glenn Kenny, hereafter referred to as "GK," recently deprived-of-steady-employment film critic.

His Lovely Wife Claire, hereafter referred to as "HLW," actress, administrative assistant, overall wonder of nature.

(As the couple stroll down Second Place, an SUV rolls by, blaring Thin Lizzy's '70s hit, "The Boys Are Back In Town.")

GK (nodding in nostalgic approval): Nice. Lizzy.

HLW: I always got them mixed up with Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

GK: Oh, no way. Totally different animal.
(unfortunately, he begins singing)
Friday night they'll be dressed to kill...
Down at Dino's Bar and Grill...
(ceases singing, furrows brow)
...because, as everybody knows, Ireland is replete with joints called "Dino's".
(resumes singing, alas)
drinks will flow and blood will spill,
and if the boys wanna fight you better let 'em...
(ceases singing again, thank the lord)
That part always bothered me. "Blood will spill." Okay, so blood will spill. But they follow it with "And if the boys wanna fight." When they say "blood will spill," don't you think that presupposes the boys are gonna fight to begin with?

HLW: Well, yeah, absolutely.

GK: It's like when the Butthole Surfers did that song "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave." "There's a time to fuck and a time to crave, but the Shah sleeps in Lee Harvey's grave." I think when R.J. Smith reviewed it, he just said, "But?"

HLW: Well, in the case of this song, you know, it could just be that Dino, the proprietor of the aforementioned Bar and Grill, is a hemophiliac; hence, he's cutting himself all the time and getting blood everywhere as he goes about his business. And that's why, at his place, the blood will spill even before the boys decide whether or not they want to fight.

GK: I think you're on to something there.

(GK and HLW enter subway station, and, scene.)