Herman Melville

20 years ago this week, after some unexpected delays, I moved all my stuff from Westchester to Brooklyn, over two trips on the Metro-North and MTA. I don't think I was pondering the significance of starting my New York City life on Herman Melville's birthday—I was more concerned with finding my first paying job (Kim's Video) and and the movie listing at the now-defunct Pavilion Theater (I saw Jackass Number Two opening weekend). But let's give Melville his due today.

I'd read Moby-Dick for my beloved Ilja Wachs' literature course at Sarah Lawrence the previous year. I felt awestruck by the book and the class discussions, if not quite bold enough to give my own takes (when we were assigned to pick a chapter to talk about in class, I chose "The Cassock." Before you look up what it's about, I'll direct you to John Waters reading it in The Moby-Dick Big Read.) But I kept meaning to reread it, even if not as frequently as Ilja's suggested every five years.

13 years later, I had enjoyed Billy Budd (sorry, Carmela Soprano), Benito Cereno (beautifully honored in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man), The Confidence-Man (cheers, Simon) and Bartleby, the Scrivener (thank you, Dad). I had also paid respects to Melville and his long-suffering wife Elizabeth Shaw at their Woodlawn Cemetery grave. But I hadn't revisited the Pequod since Ilja's classes, or was really giving it much thought in 2019, when I was feverishly concerned my biggest project, a book about Metallica for the (also now-defunct) publishers Rowman & Littlefield.

It had seemed like a good idea to pitch. I loved Metallica, and hadn't found the book I wanted to write about them—one that explored their cultural significance, emphasizing why this band really mattered. I had thrown my heart into a Metallica book proposal for the prestigious 33 1/3 series, submitted it hours before the deadline on New Year's Eve 2008, and felt crushed when it was rejected six weeks later. I adapted some of those ideas from the proposal into a successful Metallica class for the Morbid Anatomy Museum by 2016, and was inspired to try pitching it one more time. The next year, I had a book deal. 

The book was due December 31, 2018. By summer 2019, it looked further from being done than ever. The editors were, understandably, breathing down my neck and threatening to rescind the book deal and advance. But it wasn't the book I wanted it to be. I'd been saying, again and again, that this wasn't going to be a fact book. How could it be? There were already fact books and biographies about Metallica. Also, people could already find just about any Metallica fact on the internet.

If I was going to do Metallica justice with this book, it needed to be different. It would be like my author hero Rob Sheffield's book Dreaming the Beatles, taking on the biggest subject in its field and somehow coming up with something thoughtful, unique, vibrant, essential. How could I justify the existence of Metallica FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Greatest Metal Band of All Time if it were just another fact book?

But here I was. I'm a nerd, and I like facts. I liked knowing that Metallica used the word "hella" in the Master of Puppets liner notes years before it entered the Oxford English Dictionary, or that Jeffrey "the Dude" Lebowski roadied for Metallica on the apocryphal Speed of Sound tour. The more fact-ridden my book got, the further it went from being the book I wanted it to be. The culmination of 30+ years of writing and thinking about music, and 20+ years of loving Metallica, the most complete statement of my life, was going to be a boring fact book.

For August 1, 2019, Herman Melville's bicentennial birthday, I gave Moby-Dick another read. It went by faster this time, on my two-hour work commute, with one copy on my phone's e-reader, an audiobook in my library app (read by Anthony Heald), and a hard copy in my backpack. I loved it even more this time and didn't want it to end. I was taking pictures of passages and sending them to my friends. Almost directly after I finished, I reread and re-listened, this time with the audiobook by William Hootkins. I'd been counting it in my top five books since college, but I think 2019 was the first year I started calling it my favorite.

Moby-Dick also showed me a path forward. My book would be a fact book, sure. But there would also be a religion chapter, a fashion chapter, a performance chapter, chapters on each character and album (again inspired by Dreaming the Beatles, but further empowered by Moby-Dick), and so much more. I set to make Metallica: The $24.95 Book, with its new title and cover, the Moby-Dick of Metallica books. That's probably not what it ended up being, but trying to do so helped me write and complete the book. 

"God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!"

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

"Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar."

Ilja Wachs died in 2022. At his memorial service on campus, his books were organized across a few tables for his friends, peers, and students to take with us. Some of us had traveled over continents to pay our respects. There were a few of Ilja's copies of Moby-Dick, which were going quickly (he definitely reread it more than once every five years), but I found a well-worn, hardbound Library of America edition that included two lesser-read Melvilles (Redburn and White-Jacket), filled with Ilja's notes and underlines. I took it home among five or so of Ilja's books.

I read Ilja's copy over the next few months, enjoying his notations (such as his monosyllabic Edna Krabappel laugh, a staple of our class that I was delighted to see in his notes), and mailed it to a former classmate in Alaska when I was finished. 

At the time, I was also working on my next book. I'd signed a book deal in 2021 to write a 33 1/3 volume on Body Count, accepted 13 years after my first pitch. I ended the acknowledgments of Body Count (33 1/3) with a message for Ilja, adapted from Melville's dedication of Moby-Dick to Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

I'm currently writing my third book, and once again returning to Melville. I don't think I'll ever write another book without rereading Moby-Dick in the process.

America 250

“Don’t these politicians realize the country was founded on the kind of revolutionary political thought expressed in my song? I mean, haven’t they ever listened to the national anthem? Anybody knows that ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is really just a song about a shoot-out between us and the police. Have they forgotten that Paul Revere became a Revolutionary War hero for warning everybody, ‘The police are coming, the police are coming?'”

Ice-T in the Los Angeles Times, 1992. Photo by Mark Seliger for Rolling Stone.

Howie Klein

My Howie Klein remembrance is up at the site he founded, Down With Tyranny.

Howie Klein

Howie Klein, president of 415 Records, with heavy-metal group Rude Girl in San Francisco, Calif., 1984 (Iris Schneider, Los Angeles Times - https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0002sf7c)

Sad to see that Howie Klein, a political and music industry hero as well as one of the best storytellers I've known, has died. He relentlessly fought for important causes and used his stature to help artists and marginalized people. Great punk rock sense of humor, too. 

I was surprised to hear Jello Biafra tell me how much he loved Howie, and that I needed to talk to him. Not that I didn't have utmost respect for Howie—it's just that he was in the upper ranks of the corporate music industry, against so much of what Jello stands for. Of course, within minutes of speaking with Howie I could tell they were kindred spirits. Howie had a mischievous, anarchic streak that was constantly superseded authority and sticking it to the man, long after so many of the music forms he championed had become mainstream. From his concert bookings at a Stony Brook University student (the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, the Who, many others) through his interviews as a San Francisco DJ (the Cramps, Devo, Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, many others) through his stints at 415, Sire, and Reprise Records (the Cure, Green Day, Fleetwood Mac, Ice-T,  Madonna, Alanis Morissette, the Pretenders, Ramones, Lou Reed, Romeo Void, the Smiths, Neil Young, many others), he's almost certainly worked with some music you love, likely something you'd never have heard without Howie's efforts and influence.

He signed Body Count out of a love for their music and the musicians, and staunchly defended them against pressure from America's government and police forces when the "Cop Killer" scandal broke. He spoke with me about flying out to New York solo to defend "Cop Killer" from corporate (when asked if he had a suit for the journey, his response was that he'd gotten one for his bar mitzvah), and revealed that the Time Warner bomb threats were being delivered by angry policemen. But my favorite Howie story is when the Body Count record went gold he had plaques printed for Dan Quayle and Charlton Heston. He was a critical help with my book, sharing stories he hadn't told before, and still made time to talk to me about getting Lou Reed to meet Vaclav Havel at the White House. Today I learned his buyout resignation amidst the disastrous Time Warner-AOL merger occurred a day before his successor infamously rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Howie continued to fight for free speech, artists' rights and progressive causes long after the banning of "Cop Killer," even from his deathbed. I wish he'd written a book, though he certainly cared more about improving the world than promoting his brand. I cherish our conversations and will miss him. Thank you, Howie. 

Ice-T, "Personal"

Seeing Heart this week reminded me that they inadvertently connected Ice-T to Metallica. On Ice-T’s 1988 song “Personal,” he samples Nancy Wilson’s guitar track for “Magic Man.” Kirk Hammett, a longtime Ice fan, credits “Personal” with inspiring the guitar solo for “Enter Sandman.” Check out the little gallop that first comes in around :55 and you can hear what Kirk’s talking about.

Kirk: “I think the time has come to reveal where I actually got the guitar lick before the breakdown in Enter Sandman: It’s from "Magic Man," by Heart, but I didn’t get it from Heart’s version; I got it from a cut off Ice-T’s Power album, where he sampled it. I heard that and thought, ‘I have to snake this!’”

Body Count

"What you’re listening to right now is the new Body Count album. It’ll be in the stores March 31, it’ll be banned March 32, you’ve gotta get it quick.”

—Ice-T, 1992. 

Happy 33rd to a record that shook up the world.

Original Lollapalooza lineup, 1991

In honor of today's Lollapalooza announcement, check out this backstage photo of the original tour lineup in 1991—Jane's Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails, Ice-T with Body Count, Butthole Surfers and the Rollins Band, all together. I had blast speaking with some of these musicians about Body Count, and loved reading the upcoming Lollapalooza oral history book compiled by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour. Let me know if you read it!

Rowman & Littlefield

Excited to see what comes of Bloomsbury's acquisition of Rowman & Littlefield, which means both of my books will be under the same publisher. Most of my R & L team has moved on long ago, but I'm unspeakably grateful for the chance they took on me as a first-time author, the patience they showed me when I started missing deadlines (I learned my lesson and it hasn't happened since) and the creative control they gave me in making my own book about the greatest metal band of all time—see the original title and cover art above the final product below. I like to think of that as a nod to Metallica too, who had to change the title and cover art of their debut album before its official release.

Last week, I had the honor of speaking with two different music heroes, from different genres and eras, about the possibility of writing a book with their participation. Whether either of those books come to fruition, I'm dumbstruck that this is my life now, where artists I've admired for most of my life would even think about taking the idea of writing a book with me remotely seriously. I know none of this would have happened if the Backbeat/Rowman & Littlefield team didn't have the nerve to, as Apollo Creed might say, give an unknown a chance. Thank you Robert, John, Barbara, Carol and Brianna for believing in the dream.

Darryl Strawberry

Happy birthday Darryl Strawberry, who attended Crenshaw High School with the original Body Count lineup.

Heidi Siegmund Cuda

Taking International Women's Day as a moment to celebrate Heidi Siegmund Cuda. She cowrote Ice-T's groundbreaking 1994 book The Ice Opinion, as well as Darlene Ortiz's memoir Definition of Down. Heidi was one of the first people to respond to my interview requests for Body Count (33⅓), and was generous enough to host my book talk in LA two years later. Her Bette Dangerous column is a must-read—give her a follow!

George Lowe

RIP Space Ghost Coast to Coast's George Lowe, who had the honor of interviewing both Metallica and Body Count.

Happy birthday, Lou Reed

Happy birthday, Lou Reed. I love this story and these pictures of Lou and Laurie Anderson’s encounter with Ice-T in 2005, via Reddit user BladeRunnerTHX.

"I worked on the television series SVU for about 5 seasons and ICE-T was definitely very cool and down to earth and had no problem either hanging with the crew or saying hi to fans. One day we were filming at a cafe in downtown Tribeca and we were about to break for lunch. While we were filming Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were eating outside. Most of the crew didn't recognize them but I was pretty excited seeing them. Once we wrapped for lunch Ice walked out of the cafe in a rush to go eat. On set when lunch is called everyone pretty much scatters, minus the crew that are required to watch the set. As Ice walked out Lou recognizes him and yells out "Hey Ice!". Ice in a rush half turned his head and said "What's up" and kept walking. Lou was already behind Ice as he yelled for him but Ice just assumed it was a fan and kept walking.

I notice this happen so I stopped Ice as he was walking away and told him to turn around. Ice stopped turned around and immediately noticed who it was. When he saw Lou he was like oh shit, said "Oh whats up!" and walked back to greet Lou and gave him a warm hello. They talked for a few minutes and Lou introduced his wife Laurie.

This kind of stuff happened often but it was very unusual that I stopped to take photos of it. Hope you like."

Happy birthday, Kurt Cobain

Happy birthday Kurt Cobain, shown here watching the first Lollapalooza tour with Dave Grohl at the Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre in 1991, two months before Nevermind's release. Dave later told Body Count's Ernie C that he and Kurt enjoyed their performance. I've got some quotes from Ernie and Talib Kweli about Nirvana's influence and their connection to Body Count in my book.

Happy birthday, Ice-T

Happy birthday, Ice-T. Today, you can get my book about Ice's banned Body Count album 30% off at the Bloomsbury website. 

Kendrick Lamar and Ice-T

With Kendrick Lamar's dazzling Super Bowl performance over the weekend, it's a good time to revisit the Ice-T and Kendrick analysis in Sequoia Maner's terrific 33⅓ book on To Pimp a Butterfly. The quotes are from Ice's 1994 book The Ice Opinion, of which Sequoia told me, "This classic book has definitely shaped my ear and pen."

Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, "Mascot Mania"

It's unlikely we'll ever see Body Count perform at the Super Bowl. But longtime Body Count pal Jello Biafra (interviewed in my book) gives "Cop Killer" a shout in his NFL sendup "Mascot Mania," recorded with the late Mojo Nixon, on the 1994 album Prairie Home Invasion.

Langston Hughes

 

Happy birthday, Langston Hughes. Hughes and Ice-T have a few connections, including this passage from Adam Bradley's 2009 book Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, which compares Hughes' Sylvester’s Dying Bed” with Ice's “6 N the Mornin’.” Ice also performed Hughes’ “Ask Your Mama” in the UK in 2015, to rave reviews. If anyone has a recording, please send it my way.

Barry Michael Cooper

RIP Barry Michael Cooper. New Jack City is such a fascinating movie, and it pained me to cut some stories about it out of my Body Count book to make the word count (something I tried to remedy by hosting an NJC screening at Nitehawk for one of my book talks). Cooper's screenplay reshaped American vernacular, popularizing the terms "canceled" (as in cancel culture), "new jack" (as in new jack swing), "cash money" (Cash Money Records), and "Nino Brown" (countless rap songs), not to mention getting breakthrough performances from young Ice-T, Wesley Snipes, and Chris Rock. Cooper, who also had an illustrious career covering music for The Village Voice, recalled coming up with Snipes' catchphrase while listening to the 1981 Chic song "Your Love Is Cancelled." 

Ice-T's performance is widely believed to be the first major film performance by a rapper, who wasn't playing himself (this wasn't House Party or Tougher Than Leather). This came at a time when hip-hop was still often perceived as a fad, and the idea of a notorious gangsta rapper taking on a dramatic role as a policeman seemed bewildering. Thank you, Barry Michael Cooper, for taking a chance.

No Lives Matter

No Lives Matter

1. Black Flag, "Rise Above"
2. Bikini Kill, "Double Dare Ya"
3. Anthrax and Public Enemy, "Bring the Noise"
4. Living Colour, "Cult of Personality"
5. Sepultura, "Refuse/Resist"
6. Suicidal Tendencies, "Send Me Your Money"
7. Ministry, "Thieves"
8. Time Zone, "World Destruction"
9. Nine Inch Nails, "The Hand That Feeds"
10. Saul Williams, "List of Demands (Reparations)"
11. Discharge, "Protest and Survive"
12. Bad Brains, "Banned in D.C."
13.  Faith No More, "War Pigs"
14. Motörhead, "God Save the Queen"
15. Body Count, "No Lives Matter"
16. Revocation, "Pestilence Reigns"
17. A Tribe Called Quest, "We the People..."
18. Rage Against the Machine, "The Ghost of Tom Joad"
19. Sinéad O'Connor, "Black Boys on Mopeds"
20. David Bowie and Trent Reznor, "I'm Afraid of Americans"

For DMS.

Ten Songs for Your Next Protest

1. Black Flag, "Police Story"

Greg Ginn is apparently a terrible person, and if this song is based on true incidents, I fear that the police may have been right to club him. But guys like Ginn are why we separate the art from the artist, and an example of how great artists can confront the horrors of reality.



2. Body Count, "Body Count"

Not as blunt or as infamous as "Cop Killer," but also less excessive. Ice-T's messages about police brutality seem to get more important every day, though I'm not sure he would have kept the song's anti-gun control stance had he foreseen the NRA's role in getting his music banned.



3. The Clash, "Police on My Back"

The Clash's third-most-famous cover of a song about fighting law enforcement got stranded in the middle of Sandinista!, but no one who ever made it to side four ever forgot how it turned the original's garage-rock riff into an urgent siren, diffusing all claims that the band had gone soft. And yes, it was written by Eddy Grant, who was only a few years away from "Electric Avenue."



4. Dead Kennedys, "Police Truck"

Chris Rock recently told Rolling Stone, "Comedy rots. Trading Places is a perfect movie, just unbelievably good. But there are other comedies, not nearly as old as Trading Places, that just have references and things in them that aren't funny five years later. And rap's got a lot of that." He could have added the Dead Kennedys to that comparison. Jello Biafra's Anita Bryant jokes might not be funny anymore, but this one of the Dead Kennedy's unfortunately timeless messages.



5. Fugazi, "Great Cop"

Anyone who's heard the Ice Cream-Eating Motherfucker story knows that the guys in Fugazi are more like cops than outlaws. With that in mind, they must have known that nothing could shut down a punk kid like the couplet "I look for wires when I'm talking to you/You'd make a great cop."

6. Le Tigre, "Bang! Bang!"

A Brooklyn dance-punk tirade against NYPD tactics is practically a given in 2014, but the terrifyingly infectious "Bang! Bang!" arrived in 2001 on the heels of the Amadou Diallo shooting. Guess where Kathleen Hanna stops counting.



7. Living Colour, "41 Shots (American Skin)"

Bruce Springsteen has written better songs about policemen (most of them on Nebraska), but none as direct as this 2000 ballad, also inspired by Diallo, which sparked a boycott of Springsteen's music from New York's biggest police union before the song was even officially released. My favorite version is Living Colour's, only performed live but an emotional peak of their transcendent shows.



8. Mudhoney, "Hate the Police"

Originally by the Dicks, though I like Mudhoney's more fleshed-out, hi-fi version (and if you didn't think anything could be less fleshed-out or hi-fi than Mudhoney, listen). Somewhat like the Rolling Stones updating Robert Johnson's songs, Mudhoney gave "Hate the Police" a more robust reading that was still dishonorably scuzzy.



9. Operation Ivy, "Officer"

Of course the world's biggest Clash fans would have a song about the police on their first 7", but lest you think these guys were living in punk's past, "Officer" offered alternatives to hardcore nihilism and punk anarchy--"Tough guy asshole do what you can/Whatever you destroy we'll create it again."



10. Rage Against the Machine, "Killing in the Name"

The immortal riff. This song is so great that we loved Rage Against the Machine for imitating it 40 more times. Morello's Drop D progressions will outlive all of us, and while no one with a high school education would call Zack de la Rocha poetic, his message here is just as relevant 20 years later.