Jim Carroll

Jim Carroll was a poet and author before he was a punk musician, and that's why his records sound the way they do. Born in Manhattan in 1949, he is best known for The Basketball Diaries, his autobiographical book from 1978, which became a 1995 film with Leonardo DiCaprio playing him.

In 1980, with the Jim Carroll Band, he cut "People Who Died", a breakneck punk song whose title tells you exactly what you're in for, delivered in a deadpan New York bark over guitars that never let up. It is funny and harrowing at once, a eulogy that refuses to slow down for the mourners. "Catholic Boy" and "It's Too Late" share the same lean, snotty, half-spoken attack. He died in 2009, leaving a handful of songs and a shelf of books, 2 sides of the same restless voice.

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