Notes on the Late Leonard Cohen and Meeting Him in Montreal
Before I was born my mom used to go and see Leonard Cohen do poetry readings in Montreal in the late 1950s. So I grew up with his novels and poetry collections on our bookshelves. She did not listen to his music though, so that epiphany had to wait until 1985 when I’d...
My Close Encounters with Rock Stars Part 1: Joe Strummer
Whether on stage or on the street the late Joe Strummer took great pains to portray himself as an everyman of the people. In person he was very much the same, writes author and former punk musician, Jim Algie. After producing the Pogues’ album Hells’ Ditch the former...
New Expanded Paperback Edition of On the Night Joey Ramone Died
February 19, 2018, Bangkok – Riffing on music history, literature and his own experiences as a musician, Jim Algie’s new book, On the Night Joey Ramone Died: Tales of Rock and Punk from Bangkok, New York, Cambodia and Norway (Magic Bullet Press, 2018), takes readers...
Black Metal Murder in Bangkok: A History of Rock and Satanism
In the aftermath of a black metal murder in the local music scene, Jim Algie looks back at the merger of Satanism and rock that ended up on a collision course in the Thai capital. Ever since rock ‘n’ roll was dubbed the “devil’s music” by some American puritan, and...
My Brief Career as a Music Video Director
For a guy who banged out his riffs, odes and elegies on a typewriter instead of a musical instrument, Hunter S Thompson composed one of the most accurate descriptions of the music industry I’ve ever heard, calling it “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic...
Myanmar Musician and Rocking Revolutionary
Many musicians have adopted guerilla poses and advocated armed insurrection – like The Clash and the MC5 – but none of them ever put down their guitars to take up a machine-gun like the Myanmar musician and rocking revolutionary, Mun Awng. In this profile that began...
Swan songs and sound bytes: 8 snippets of Bangkok rock history
Bangkok rock history has been a sounding board for songs, album covers and gigs by everyone from the Clash and the Pretenders, to the Pogues, Bjork, Rush and Michael Jackson. 1. The last Clash The cover of “Combat Rock,” The Clash’s biggest-selling album, was...
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