I don’t know Mike Edison, but I like him. He’s part of a generation of NYC rummagers who came before me, stirring the trough around here when there was plenty of room at the edges to stink it up. Born in the suburbs of New Jersey, Edison parlayed a teenage marijuana habit into a resume that, in his own words, “reads like a crime scene”:
* driver of the crash car for the Rock Against Reagan tour in ’84, and crowd instigator for Reagan Youth’s sets
* columnist, then editor, of Wrestling’s Main Event, back when such business mattered
* drummer for GG Allin and the Holy Men, Sharky’s Machine, the Raunch Hands, and the Pleasure Fuckers
* author of dozens of anonymous stroke books sold in ye old Times Square
* writer for various Drake Publications offerings (High Society, Celebrity Skin, Hawk, Live Young Girls!)
* freelancer for Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine (and later there in management)
* journalist for Soft Drinks & Beverages Magazine
* publisher of High Times, who led the magazine into its most profitable stretch to date
* frontman and guitarist of Edison Rocket Train
I Have Fun Everywhere I Go (Faber & Faber/Interstellar Roadhouse, 2008) is the story of his life, as told by the man himself. I grabbed a copy at his book release party at Black & White, a bar I used to remember as a hipster dive, Italian restaurant worth a slight damn (depending on how messed up you were), and pre-game spot for SPA Wednesdays back in the dot-com days, before 9/11, when this town’s nightlife was still dealing in young decadence. Edison’s not the type of guy I would have associated with that sort of place, but it didn’t matter: he’s as much a part of what kept NYC as dangerously great as it was for years on end, and his writing is clear, solid evidence of that. Capturing first the awe and confusion, and eventual degenerate mastery of a metropolis on the verge of cultural bankruptcy, his prose dances through tales of peddling smut and heroic benders dance like Nero fiddling his way through the back alleys of a burning Rome. Edison also plies himself as the voice of reason, the one guy in the room who actually gets off on pride in his work, and in this regard he finds himself at odds with the remnants of the culture he loves so dearly (his struggles with the lifetime burnouts of the High Times empire are as entertaining to read as they were frustrating for him to deal with). Still the man trudges, onward and upward, into local legend status.
Sadly the same thing cannot be said for his CD. Sharing the title of the book, Edison recites his text with plenty of gusto, landing him between the Big Bopper and Wolfman Jack. He’s also got respectable backing musicians in Raunch Hands singer Mike Chandler, and producer-guitarist-theremin savant Jon Spencer (yeah, that Jon Spencer, of Blues Explosion fame). Sadly, this comes at a cost; namely, overlong rave-ups where seediness goes to seed, hoedaddy ramblings of the old guy at the corner of the bar to anyone who’ll listen. Great writing doesn’t need to be deflated by such rote music charts or hammy performance, and the lounge-bop-groove tracks have about as much legitimacy as flames on a silk shirt. But hey, in this day and age, who gets to bat .500 and be the last man standing? Edison’s lived it; he gets the pass.
Book Rating: 8.4