There was a time when collected works by music journalists, film critics, and other cultural correspondents appeared regularly in the literary world.
We relied on their observations to understand not only the art we admired and the artists who made it, but also the times in which we lived and the places where we felt at home.
What about now? Not really. The way we celebrate, promote and report on culture has probably changed forever.
So when a book like John Albert’s Running With the Devil: Essays, Articles & Remembrances hits the scene, it feels as anachronistic as a sailing ship sailing a skull and bones.
But John Albert was no ordinary writer.
He died suddenly of a heart attack last year at age 58, leaving behind a body of work scattered across books, anthologies, literary magazines and the pages of alternative weeklies. His friend and editor, Joe Donnelly, came up with the idea of compiling them into a collection.
“Soon after John passed away, I began thinking about my responsibility to preserve the legacy of his writing,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly approached mutual friend and Punk Hostage Press co-founder Iris Berry about the project, and she needed no convincing.
“There always seemed to be a certain magic around John Albert,” Berry said, “an inexplicable mystery and charisma. He is, without a doubt, gone from us far too soon.”
It’s only fitting that a big, old-fashioned book launch party for “Running With the Devil” will be held at the Wacko Soap Plant on Sunday, June 30th from 3-7pm.
Berry and Donnelly will be joined by underground all-stars including Jesse Albert, Jennifer Finch, Brett Gurewitz, Ben Harper, Keith Morris, Artie Nelson, Jerry Staal, John Waldman and Justin Warfield.
Albert emerged from the suburbs of Los Angeles and embraced the city in all its guises. He was an early member of Christian Death and Bad Religion, two bands whose names suggest a spiritual similarity, or at least a commonality, but stylistically they are quite different.
He writes about discovering Black Flag and embracing Pulp-esque punk rock: “I cut my hair short, but I can’t stop smashing windows.”
“I love how in the Black Flag article he writes in detail about his transition into punk rock,” Berry says, “and how it affected everyone around him, especially his parents and friends. Throughout history, parents have always been horrified by the choices their children make, but the punk movement was one of the most extreme, and John expressed it so well.”
Albert is not only a former musician and occasional music writer, but in his recovery from drug addiction, he found solace in sports — first and most famously, baseball, which he writes about in The Wrecking Crew: The Really Bad News Griffith Park Pirates.
Writing about a team of recovering addicts, down-and-out rockers and an assortment of other oddballs, he captured the magic of LA.
“He understood Los Angeles in the Didion or Eve Babitz way,” Donnelly says. “His best subjects were his friends and the people around him, and he had his own unique perspective on Los Angeles of that time and place.”
As Albert’s interests and experiences expanded, so did his writing. He wrote about surfing, living with Hepatitis C, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “John was a prince of a man,” says Keith Morris, founding vocalist of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, “and he had a wealth of knowledge about everything that was going on.”
Albert had a gift for writing about things that were overlooked or marginalized, and by turning his lens on them he helped make them culturally relevant again. In a city that ran on hype, Albert was more interested in those who had been left out, marginalized or cast out of the factory of dreams.
John Albert.
(Susan Tyler)
“He was old-fashioned,” Donnelly says, “a punk rock George Plimpton. He was involved in life and wrote from the perspective of lived experience. He didn’t just dive into an anthropological survey. He really knew what he was talking about.”
Albert was not a sentimental writer, but he wrote with a lot of humor, and although his sarcasm could be shocking, he only reserved it for his most beloved associates.
“John was such a gifted writer,” Berry says. “He had so much going for him: emotion, emotional detail, place. He could glide so gracefully from comedy to tragedy and back again. He was a true storyteller.”
One of the many tragedies of Albert’s untimely death is that we lose a book that portrays a father in 21st century L.A. Albert adored his son Ravi, and all proceeds from the collection will go to him.
“It’s bittersweet for me to publish his book, Running With the Devil,” Berry said. “It’s an honor to have published his book, and I’m grateful to Joe Donnelly for bringing it to me and editing it. I just wish circumstances had been different, but knowing it’s published for his son Ravi means everything. As my mother says, ‘This is definitely a mitzvah.'”
Join Iris Berry, Joe Donnelly and friends at the Wacko Soap Plant, 4633 Hollywood Blvd., on Sunday, June 30th from 3-7pm.
Jim Ruland is the author of the novels Make It Stop and Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records.