Go Have Fun With Mike Edison In Brooklyn
Mike Edison playing Freebird Books in Red Hook last June
If the young hedonists of Brooklyn could have a cheerleader – one that works his mysticism in the form of a Marty Markowitz – it’s Mike Edison.
“Beyond the bluster and beyond the broken glass,” goes one of Mr. Edison’s songs, titled GG Allin Died Last Night. “GG adhered to a cogent philosophy of Rock n’ Roll: Rock n’ Roll as the creator; Rock n’ Roll as the destroyer. He was everything Ma and Pa America ever warned you about. Fuck phonies like Lou Reed! GG Allin was the Rock n’ Roll animal.”
Mr. Edison, 40, was singing to an intimate crowd of friends and hecklers on May 26 at BookCourt in Carroll Gardens, backed up by the Dictators’ Andy Shernoff on guitar.
It was the opening night of ‘I Have Fun In Brooklyn,’ the author/musician’s tour of Brooklyn, the name of which is based on the title of his memoir, “I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and The Most Notorious Magazines in the World,” which was just released in paperback by FSG.
Next on the tour roster: Pete’s Candy Store (June 6), Frank’s Cocktail Lounge (June 10), Freebird Books (June 13), and finally at Roberta’s Restaurant (June 20) in Bushwick. His tunes, produced by Jon Spencer, are really sing-speak tales of an unbelievable life (the one mentioned above includes the description of a barbecue attended by the famously vile Mr. Allin). The shows are billed as loud and live, and different every night.
It’s not a surprise, Mr. Edison’s life has been loud and different every night. From editing dope magazines to paling around with Rock n’ Roll greats, Mike Edison has lived the life that the youngs of Bushwick might be dreaming about.
Though seemingly a punk rock manifestation of Hunter S. Thompson, Mr. Edison made sure to inform his audience that unlike some of Thompson’s work, his stories of lurid behavior and excessive substance abuse are all true. In fact, he left much of it out, he said, because he didn’t think anyone would believe how many times he’s dropped acid.
Mr. Edison’s New York is a different one than it is today.
“When I was hanging out in Manhattan in the 80s,” he said after hocking his tome to a few audience members. “You could sit at any bar whether it was a dive bar, or a nice restaurant, and you didn’t know who you were sitting next to. It could be a great musician; or a struggling poet; or some weirdo filmmaker that was probably never going to make it but had great ideas; or someone with terrible ideas who was going to be fabulously wealthy.“
Today, he says, it’s the latter that fill the streets and shops of Manhattan. “I don’t even mind the money so much as I mind they have bad taste. That’s what really offends me. Their fucking bad taste offends me. Everything is cookie cutter, everything is a goddamn name brand, all the mom and pops are being run away.”
And thus to Brooklyn he came. Though it's not his first time or anything.
“Brooklyn, obviously for economic reasons, has become more of a hotbed of artists,” he continued. “Young people and thinking people – people who also spend their money discretionally on liquor and drugs – and who appreciate the stories I’m trying to tell and the career I’ve racked up and can relate to it. It’s nothing to aspire to of course.“
But for the borough’s average 20-something in a loft apartment somewhere, it might be exactly that. At 40, he’s written 28 pornographic novels, edited more than one controversial magazine, and known the legendary forces of Downtown Manhattan that became the impetus for so many young Brooklynites to immigrate here in the first place. In fact, he was literally playing shows on Lorimer Street when the hipsters that now inhabit it were likely in diapers.
“For the life of me I couldn’t remember where it was,” Mr. Edison said of the Williamsburg show space he played in the mid-eighties. “Getting there I didn’t know where it was – the L train wasn’t part of my vocabulary – we took cars there, someone had a car because you could have a car, and we went there and we played, and I just found these fliers a couple of months ago and said, ‘That was on Driggs?? That was on Lorimer?’ That’s like playing in the heart of Paris right now.”
I asked him if he thought it might be possible to have a career like his today. “Apples to apples, no. But I hope someone could have an adventure. The whole thing about how my career rolled is that it wasn’t premeditated. It’s not that I lurched from job to job, but it’s not that I was really reaching for a brass ring particularly, except maybe to try to make myself happy.”
For all the young media-obsessed Brooklynites around these days, a premeditated career in writing seems next to impossible – or at least suicidal. But with a partial college degree and a lot of liquor, Mr. Edison has managed to keep rolling.
His advice to the future smut makers of America: “Wade in the water! Go in there, roll up your sleeves, take off your pants, get dirty, do it, don’t be squeamish, make it happen and have fun.”
And for now at least, Mr. Edison will be doing the same in Brooklyn.
