Writer, film maker, musician and culture terrorist Joe Ambrose has a penchant for digging around the cultural margins and teasing out of the shadows relevant irreverance, countercultural phenomena, outside and (often) explosive art of pivotal significance. Subject matter and artists regularly delineated by sitting on the periphery of popular culture. His written output includes the novels Serious Time and Too Much Too Soon.  Moshpit Culture, a blood stained and sweat-soaked inside investigation on hardcore dancing; several historical studies of the war of Irish Independance including the best selling Dan Breen and The IRA and is currently editing an anthology of writings by the revolutionary Irish Brotherhood, the Fenians. His writing also appears in numerous magazines, journals and collections.
In 1992 he co-organized the Here To Go Show in Dublin. This mixed media art show was a celebration of the cultural impact and significance of the work of Tangier Beat Scenesters Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. The event was filmed extensively and the movie Destroy All Rational Thought documented many aspects of this week long arts show. It was initially released on video and then later, as an enhanced DVD.  He is a DJ in art hip hop combo Islamic Diggers and has been living in Marrakesh, Morocco for the past 7 months hanging with the likes of the Sufi mystic trance musicians The Gnoua Brotherhood of Marrakesh. Ambrose previously produced the Brothers for the William Burroughs tribute CD, 10% File Under Burroughs, which also features John Cale, Paul Bowles, Marianne Faithfull, Chuck Prophet, Herbert Huncke and The Master Musicians of Joujouka.
Whilst Ambrose has been getting down in Africa, the Islamic Diggers track William Burroughs Dont Play Guitar has featured on the soundtrack to a new Burroughs documentary, Words of Advice, which also features Patti Smith, Hal Willner and Bill Laswell. Another Diggers track, Hashishin, was included along with work by Stockhausen in a January ’08 sound installation, Cut Up, curated by Copenhagen’s Karriere in conjunction with the Danish Museum of Modern Art. Ambrose has previously worked with Anita Pallenberg, Richard Hell, Chrissie Hynde and Herbert Huncke. He is Literary Editor of LA-based magazine, Outsideleft.com. In 2007 he was asked by Iggy Pop to write the sleevenotes for Escaped Maniacs, the Iggy and the Stooges DVD package. His extreme travel writing book, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan has recently been published by Headpress and a new edition of Moshpit is about to be published by Tsunami. Joe talked very recently with me about his latest ventures.
 
Joe, give me some background on the Tsunami edition of Moshpit.....
Moshpit Culture first came out in 2001 and reflected what I’d been up to in the preceding years. I first got dragged into a moshpit, rather improbably, at a Shane McGowan show. I love his work but at that time, the late 90s, I was listening almost exclusively to hip hop, reggae, and the kind of punkish metal exemplified by Slayer, Queens of the Stone Age, the Beastie Boys and RATM. I was going to hip hop shows whenever I could, I saw Snoop a load of times and I was kind of following Gregory Isaacs, the Cool Ruler, around the place. I must have seen Gregory in action about forty times back then. But mainly it was hardcore acts and Slipknot and Rancid and the likes.

So what attracted you to the Moshpit?
I liked the fraternity that I found at those hardcore shows, the openness and the willingness to experiment with new people and to build a new nation which was not of this world. People had talked about experiencing these feelings in the rave scene, which immediately preceded the emergence of the new punk era but I didn’t go for that because I like music and most of the music associated with rave culture was second rate, doesn’t stand the test of time, was mildly diverting at the time but not the real thing. Also, when they were talking about this spirit of collective fraternity and stuff, what they were really talking about was the drugs they were taking.

Ecstasy and a trashy peace and love vibe. The moshpit to me seems to work on a completly different level....  
Moshers were often far more solid sort of individuals. A lot of moshers took good care of their bodies, didn’t do huge amounts of drugs, kept down day jobs or, if very young, lived far away from the city centre with their families in hugely repressive social environments which caused them to see moshing and much of what went with it as hugely liberating.

The publishers, Tsunami, are based in Italy, arent they?
There is already a metal record label in Italy called Moshpit Culture so I knew the book had impacted a bit there. Also Italians of a certain type are much enamoured of the black leather jacket and shades school of rock chic. Give them anything with a loud guitar and they’re off! I have some sympathy with that attitude. The Tsunami edition will be called Moshpit. Things have changed since I wrote the book but it’s still relevant. It wasn’t written as a journalistic account of a scene but rather as travel writing which brought the reader inside the head of the alienated teenage mosher. So, theoretically at least, somebody could pick it up in 200 years time and still find its contents interesting or relevant.  I had a ton of fun writing it and I get emails about it all the time, mostly from people doing postgraduate research into youth culture or music culture. As far as I know it’s the only book which deals exclusively with this huge cultural movement which has had a phenomenal influence upon the lives of millions.

Yeah, that book`s subject matter; the bands and people that make up the moshpits of the world are a popular cultural form of expression, a response to the social and political spaces they inhabit.....
I gave a talk about moshing at Brighton University shortly after the book came out and the guy introducing me admitted that, when he heard that someone was going to explain moshing to them, he thought it had something to do with winemaking.

Jeez.........thats crazy.  You are flying out to NYC again soon Joe, whats happening this time around?
The Chelsea Hotel is hosting a launch for Chelsea Hotel Manhattan. There has been a change in management since I stayed there so it’ll be interesting to see what improvements they’ve made. There’s been minor controversy about some changes they’ve been making but I don’t see why people active in the arts should be so caught up in trying to preserve the past. The Chelsea’s past was great – and it all really happened there – but that particular slice of the past finished a while back.

We`ve jammed on those changes in another interview, havent we.....
I’ve got all those albums, I’ve read all those books. I hope, really, that the new management make some sort of a dynamic intervention. Get Richard Rogers or someone to overhaul it. We’ll see. In any case, this launch event is an opportunity for people to come into the Chelsea Hotel and have a look around.

How has the book been received so far?
I’ve been in Morocco the last six months. I don’t get too much feedback about the book down there but such as I’ve had has been positive. I got a really nice email from Chris Stein of Blondie about it which really pleased me. I like his work a lot, not just with Blondie but Wild Style, the Gun Club, Iggy. That’s New York City for me.

I heard Ira Cohen was going to be involved in the launch....
Unfortunately Ira Cohen, who makes numerous appearances in the book and who contributed to it, has been sick recently. Chris Stein mentioned in his email that Ira is very much himself again and I hope that is the case. Ira is a resource. You can’t replace resources. I hope we get a chance to hang out while I’m in town. I met Ira in 1991 on the Brion Gysin scene, Ira had been a good pal of Gysin’s and I was starting work on the Here To Go Show which sought to highlight Gysin. Naturally Ira was involved, did a great photographic show in Dublin, and did readings. You can see him reading in the movie of the Show, Destroy All Rational Thought, which came out on DVD last year.

You have been living in North Africa. Have you been working down there?
I’ve been wrestling with my third novel, The Darker Side of Me. I’ve been having trouble with it for a couple of years but I think I cracked it in Marrakesh, where I’ve been living. I’ve also been editing an anthology of writings by the Fenians, the secret 19th Century Irish revolutionary organisation. This will come out later this year with Mercier Press. I’ll be previewing some of my thoughts about the Fenians in a piece, Brotherhood, which will be in the next Headpress Journal, the “panther” issue guest edited by the fabulous John Sinclair, founder of the White Panthers and onetime manager of the MC5. I’ve written something about the equally fabulous Panther Burns for the same issue.

Joe Ambrose performs from Chelsea Hotel Manhattan (Headpress) in New York City:

Friday 18th April The Chelsea Hotel 7-30pm
Saturday 19th April Bowery Poetry Club 12 to 1-30pm
Monday 21st April Blue Stocking Books 7pm

His latest extreme travel writing book, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, is published by Headpress and is launched in the USA in April.

There are a number of interviews and conversations we have had on various underground art, film, music and word projects, you can check them out on The Brink, hesterGlock and elsewhere.

paulh

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