3:AM Magazine

» Typical Girl: Cathi Unsworth Interviewed

The book does end on a hopeful note as I think there are some very young people out there utilising the very new technology that the Internet provides to really do their own version of punk, that by-passes the record company and the ad men, the marketing and the impotent music media. That was inspired by the Arctic Monkeys and what they did, by all those underage clubs that are springing up (and often run by the offspring of old punkers). I am heartened that it is out there as this really is a sick and scary time for young people to have to grow up in.

Andrew Stevens talks with novelist Cathi Unsworth about goth, noir and laddism.

» Books Are For Squares: An Interview With David Browne

Plenty has been written about the band’s career and guitar tunings and such. Sonic Youth have always had a somewhat aloof public image, so I felt having readers learn more about their childhoods, occasional clashes, and individual preferences on everything from album titles to recording methods would add an extra dimension: You’d get to know them as complex, creative people, not just rock stars.

Peter Wild interviews David Browne, author of Goodbye 20th Century: Sonic Youth and the Rise of Alternative Nation.

» Dead Philosophers Society: An Interview With Simon Critchley

The idea of the philosophical death is the core teaching of philosophy in antiquity from Socrates and Epicurus onwards: we can go to our death freely and without fear having given up the consolation of any belief in an afterlife. As Wittgenstein says, is some problem solved by the idea of my living forever? Of course not. It is, however, difficult to fully and completely renounce any idea of the afterlife.

Andrew Gallix interviews philosopher Simon Critchley.

» Is This Text Fucking With My Brain

My point is that it is not really the content of Cooper’s work that makes him an outsider, but instead bad luck. He came very close to crossing over and if he had done we would be considering him as a writer who fits neatly alongside Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh (Ellis and Welsh are, of course, both big fans of Cooper’s work.) There is no reason why at least two of Cooper’s novels, My Loose Thread and God Jr could have been mainstream successes, and the latter seems to have been written with that desire and intention.

Matt Thorne reviews the Dennis Cooper Writing at the Edge collection for 3:AM.

» One Break, A Thousand Blows!

The perversity of the book rests in this conflict. It can’t be avoided by any sprightly reader. The conflict in fact works in both directions, to add to the multiplicity of its perversity. The book also, simultaneously, presents itself as a text. The beautifully produced object with its lists, white spaces, blanked out lines and so on comes on as if an artful glory of semiotextual post-post structuralist nnnnnn to reveal, once more, how regna cadunt luxu and the possibilities of treating the Tournament of S, Croce as a mere reportage. It looks like a text, thinks like a text but it reads like a novel.

By Richard Marshall.

» A journey into the intestines of insanity

I always approach the revival of an underground literary classic with trepidation. Will it live up to its reputation as the purveyor of the perfect blowjob? Or will it be like discovering at your 30th high school reunion that the hot blonde you loved from afar has morphed into a frumpy house frau with eight children, an overweight schnauzer and a beer gut… Raymond doesn’t shilly-shally around. The first thirty pages of I Was Dora Suarez catapults the reader into the swirling, twisted mind of a psychopathic serial killer as he brutally offs Dora Suarez and her landlady Betty Carstairs.

Jonathan Woods on I Was Dora Suarez

» Dark Voices – The Suarez Séance

Tall, gaunt, with either beret pushed forward or straggly hair pushed back over his forehead, Raymond – in both French and English – talked about his writing and adventures, his hatred of the British police force, and his literary heroes – Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, and David Goodis. Although the sound quality of the print was poor, the documentary showed us Robin Cook as his friends in the audience remembered him – passionate, darkly flamboyant, and extraordinarily well spoken. Watching him sing along to the Pogues while drinking his bottles of beer and glasses of red wine, one could just imagine him in The French House, Gerry’s Club, or The Coach and Horses (his “office”) in Soho.

Steve Finbow and co. gather in Euston to commune with the late Derek Raymond.

» Flotsam and jetsam

It began with a murder straight out of a grisly pulp paperback. The New York Times reported “the discovery of a bound and stabbed body…in the murky waters of the Hudson River.” Several days previous, Lucien Carr had been hanging around the shorefront, drinking with an associate David Kammerer in the early hours. A fight broke out, during which Carr lodged his penknife into Kammerer’s chest. He died almost instantly. Panicking, Carr tied the body up and dragged it out into the water. Then he fled to a friend’s house; a certain William Seward Burroughs.

Darran Anderson takes a look at the books that came back from the grave.

» Resist, rebel, relax…ahh: The Offbeats at the KGB Bar

During the break Kendra told me that they’d found some rotten spring onions in a bin on the way there, and she and Tao planned to throw them at Zachary while he read. He read about fifteen short poems from The Name of This Band is the Talking Heads in a disinterested fashion, and didn’t laugh or smile much. Everyone else laughed a lot. It felt like Zachary German was playing around with monotony and finding something new in it. The spring onions got thrown near the end, but missed.

Chris Killen reports from an Offbeat gathering in New York.

» Bad Faith X

One of the creeping, unanalysed myths of our time is that it is somehow wrong to dislike Islam, or any part thereof, and wrong to take a dim view of its tenets and demands, and wrong to take a still dimmer view of the figure who founded it. I can practically hear the distant tutting and grunts of disapproval. Poor Islam. Poor Muslims. Their beliefs are being mocked. How hurtful. How “racist”. How terribly unfair.

David Thompson’s final column for 3:AM.

» Bad Faith IX

Freberg’s story is among the film’s more disturbing revelations, in that it shows how the most innocuous of details can identify someone as incompatible with orthodoxy and a target for punishment. Freberg explains how despite her excellent performance she was labelled a “problem” by her colleagues and subjected to a campaign of harassment until finally, and successfully, she sought legal remedy. Freberg’s students later admitted they’d known she was a “closet Republican” precisely because she didn’t use the classroom to air her political views.

David Thompson’s regular column for 3:AM returns.

» A Sad, Sad Day

Because of the rather cruel nature of his TV shows, he had a rather love-hate relationship with the public. It’s strange, not only did he have a baby hand to contend with but he looked liked the kind of guy who would steal your grandma and sell her for camels or something. But it is said that he raised over 100m pounds for leukaemia and other charities and that, in person, he was a top bloke.

James Daly pays tribute to the late Jeremy Beadle.

» We Need to Talk About Kevin

I am standing at the back of The Roundhouse, but during “When You Wake You’re Still In A Dream” I am starting to shake from the floor. And by the time they hit the twenty-three minute version of “You Made Me Realise”, this is the equivalent of standing under a jet plane taking off. The sound is so loud that I want to vomit, but somehow I start to wonder if Kevin Shields planned this all along? Purification via noise terrorism. I can feel every vein in my body. From the spleen outwards my head pounds, and fingers shake.

Adelle Stripe reviews My Bloody Valentine live in London.

» Are You Ready For U.S. Ghost Punk Psych Jams?

Such is my obsession with music, a trip to NYC simply would not have been even half complete or as much fun without seeking out some live underground sounds, and this I found at local promoter Todd P’s Death by Audio night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In contrast to the kind-of-in-a-similar-vein Hoxton scene in London, there are less skinny jeans but more checked shirts and beards, the outfit that is almost tradition for the learned and serious underground music fan. This is totally DIY and a far cry from the usual mainstream venues.

Kate Picard pays a visit to Williamsburg’s Death By Audio.

» Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

Whereas contemporaries were revelling in punk angst and rebellion, Dury told stories from his life and East End/Essex life with both a gentle wit and a filthy sense of humour, all suffused by jazz and impregnated and low down dirty funk that probably meant he got away with an awful lot more than the angry young men of bands like The Clash and The Buzzcocks. In a way Ian Dury and the Blockheads were perhaps, a more true representation of Britain in the late 70s and running in sharp contrast with edgier bands of the time that were coming out of the north like Joy Division.

Elizia Volkmann says “Das ist gut! C’est fantastique!” about the 30th anniversary reissue of Ian Dury’s classic album.

» Johnny, Remember Me

It was a seething song of unrequited lust. ‘All Shook Down’ was mine and I gotta admit, it was my attempt to get that voodoo beat from Gene Vincent’s ‘Cat Man’ nailed down, while Johnny spun around it a list of physical afflictions that assailed him once he’d spotted a swell looking dame. He shivered and shaked, shimmied and quaked, and the girls all screamed their lungs out with approval when he did it.

By Cathi Unsworth.

» Pussy

“I don’t like being at work, serving tables, with people that have watched and jerked off to my smut, I can see that they are looking at me, knowing what kind of person I am, I don’t like that, I don’t want anyone to know what kind of person I am, I don’t like to share emotions with strangers or in public, but who isn’t a stranger to me anymore”

By Noah Cicero.

» To Be Read in Some Place That Doesn’t Exist

“The truth was that I had been thinking about you cheating for a while. I thought about it on several occasions while I was alone and touching myself and was beginning to wonder if I was fucking myself to fiction.”

By Patrick Howell O’Neill.

» 15 dollars & 61 cents

Julia sits down at her kitchen table with a bowl of pasta. She has been googling the word ‘tutu’ all day. She is still wearing the green polyester slip she wore to bed the night before. She has been alone. It is now evening. Her eyes look a little milky.

It’s on craigslist that Julia sees an ad for a sugar daddy. Julia reads it over and over again. She has been out of work for nearly three months and at this point has only 15 dollars in her wallett and 61 cents in her bank account.

By Kendra Grant Malone.

» Small Change

I had brokered the meeting after encountering one of them online. From his picture, he seemed cute enough and the photo he emailed of his boyfriend clenched the deal. Both were somewhere between Steve’s age and mine, older than him, younger than me. The guy I chatted with, Glen, was tall and well-built, looked as if he materialized from a cornfield. His boyfriend was more slender with a bush of dark curls. More importantly, we had run out of tweak and they had more.

By Thomas Kearnes.

» Broken, Borrowed Time, and Some Women Like to Travel

“I had already broken and defeated two men. It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought. It was easier than it looked. It was harder breaking the first man than the second, though at the time I thought it was harder breaking the second than the first. Sometimes you have to step away from the trees to see the forest. Or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter. The point is I needed someone to break me. I felt whole. I wanted to feel split in two. I wanted to be brought to my knees with an unstoppable force. I wanted to be struck in awe and then just as forcefully awestruck. I had been once. I knew I could be again. I just needed to step away from the trees. I needed to get a glimpse of the forest.”

By Elizabeth Ellen.

» Three Poems

I look around me. Despite the happy outburst, you can tell these people come from the Medway Towns, thanks to their general downtrodden and depressed demeanours. Every one of them looks like they are ill – diabetes aside – and they all have greasy hair. Maybe it’s due to inbreeding, or the amount of alcohol consumed by their pregnant mothers. Perhaps it’s not their fault at all and these towns were built on some ancient site of violence and carnage, later cursed by a witch or the devil himself. Or could it be nothing more than the high levels of pollution to be found in the Medway air?

By Wolf Howard.

» A View From Santorini

I hurl myself off 100 ft cliffs
To a place where it’s hard to tell good luck from
Bad

And where we don’t always recognise the
Doors
That close even as we miss those that open

Offering a chance to lose substance, to become
Transparent
To defy gravity

By Richard Cabut.

» two poems

make sure i have everything i need so i won’t look stupid

go outside

wait for the bus

think about something

think, “look at me, i’m waiting for the bus, i’m horrible”

By Jillian Clark.