Died On This Date (September 11, 2009) Jim Carroll / Proto Punk Great; Wrote “The Basketball Diaries”
themusicsover Jim Carroll
August 1, 1950 – September 11, 2009
Jim Carroll was a poet, author, purse snatcher, glue sniffer, male prostitute, heroin addict, post-punk rocker, and one of the greatest basketball players New York City has ever known. His troublesome early life was documented in his own memoirs, written between the ages of 12 and 16. They were later anthologized in best-selling The Basketball Diaries, which was the inspiration of a somewhat fictionalized film of the same name, starring Leonard DiCaprio as Carroll. He published his first book of poetry at the age of 17 and within a few years he was working for Andy Warhol writing script dialog, and later, co- managing his theater. At one point while still a teenager, Carroll became the youngest person ever nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He formed the Jim Carroll Band in 1978 with the help of Patti Smith, and soon released Catholic Boy. It’s “People Who Died” was an instant underground hit and is considered a staple of the New York punk scene of the era. The songs eulogizes his real life childhood friends, the “characters” from The Basketball Diaries. Carroll recorded several more albums of music and spoken word over the next few decades, but in recent years he was mostly writing poetry and fiction. Jim Carroll suffered a fatal heart attack on September 11, 2009.
What You Should Own
Jamie Cohen was a one-time A&R man at Columbia Records and EMI Records, though he began his career in the mid ’70s as a product manager at A&M Records. He was also a musician. Cohen died of a heart attack at the age of 55.
After a stint as drummer for hardcore punk band Agnostic Front, Ray “Raybeez” Barbieri went on to help form New York cult favorites, Warzone. The band formed in 1982, with Barbieri being the only original member to stay with the band until is untimely death in 1997. A Navy veteran, he was admitted to a VA hospital where he died while being treated from pneumonia. Fans and friends have claimed that the inadequate facility was to blame for his untimely death.