Catholic Boy by Jim Carroll Band

Catholic Boy, the 1980 debut by the Jim Carroll Band, comes from a man who had already made his name on the page, with the 1978 memoir The Basketball Diaries and poetry collections such as Living at the Movies. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones helped get the band a record deal, and Earl McGrath and Bob Clearmountain handled the production.

It's lean, wired New York punk and new wave, with Carroll half-singing, half-sneering his lines like a street-corner poet who's seen too much. The centerpiece is "People Who Died", a breakneck roll call of young people Carroll knew growing up who came to terrible ends, played at a gallop so the grief comes out as fury. The title track and "It's Too Late" carry the same jittery nerve. Annie Leibovitz shot the cover: Carroll with his parents, outside their apartment block at Cumming Street and Seaman Avenue in Manhattan.

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