Paul Muldoon: poet and rocker
May
21
Written by:
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Your blogger is heading along to the Irish Cultural Centre here in Paris this Thursday to catch a visit by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.
As well as being a highly-acclaimed and fairly deadly poet (his 2003 Pulitzer winner, 'Moy Sand and Gravel', is great), Muldoon plays guitar in a band called Rackett that make a sound he describes as "3-car garage rock".
Rackett (right, with Muldoon in the centre) toured Ireland last summer and are are currently working on their third album.
Muldoon writes the band's lyrics, of course, and he's got a neat line in extravagant Magnetic Fields-esque couplets. "As Good As It Gets" begins: "Like Holden Caulfield spotting phonies/Or Stephen Sondheim winning Tonies". As for the music, well... it's a bit of fun. Did we mention the lyrics?
A bit more impressive than Muldoon's garage band is the fact of his collaboration with the late Warren Zevon. Muldoon wrote the lyrics to 'My Ride's Here', the title track of Zevon's final album.
Shortly after Zevon's death, the song was performed as a live tribute by none other than Bruce Springsteen. The recording featured on 'Enjoy Every Sandwich', a Zevon tribute compilation.
Here's Bruce's version of the track: