Okay, so you all read “Perry and Me,” my account of how a $2.50 blurb caused famed rock star Perry Farrel to stalk the fuck out of me for months. I just ran across evidence of another bit of similar hilarity.

Another $2.50 blurb I wrote was for Henry Rollins in 1987. This was when Henry was just starting out on a literary career by doing “spoken word.” “Spoken Word” meant rock musicians doing standup comedy with occasional blank verse.

One of the regular venues for music and other things was BeBop Records, a little store on Reseda Blvd owned by a guy named Rich. In the mid to late 1980s Rich booked an impressive series of events there: live music, performance of all kinds, and art. Henry was slated to do one of his “spoken word” gigs there. I’d just seen Henry do this thing at UCLA and I wasn’t very impressed, but I didn’t pan it or tell anyone to avoid it; I just described in a very few words what it looked like.

Henry’s response is here: Hack Writer (.mp3, 5.3M). It went into a book, too, not sure which one.

The funny part was that not much later I interviewed Henry for publication. He actually came to my apartment in Hollywood on the bus from where he was living in Echo Park. I opened the door to see a very tentative and anxious rock star in black t-shirts and black shorts. He was clearly worried that I had taken his shtick to heart, but we had a good laugh and did the interview. I was impressed with how serious he was about publishing and writing.

By the time I saw him again, for another interview when he and Weiss were putting out Wartime, it was a running gag.

And now, of course, he’s Dick Clark. But that’s another story.