Camden Joy – Lost Joy
A scintillating collection of the tracts and manifestoes that first brought Camden Joy public attention in the mid-1990s, when he wheat-pasted his rants all over New York City, taunting the moribund, out-of-touch record industry, celebrating the unsung geniuses of rock and roll. His style – angry and mocking, ecstatic yet razor sharp, both satirical and sincere - had its roots in the indie world of 'zines and DIY-publishing; his incantatory voice swiftly earned Joy comparisons to Allen Ginsburg, Patti Smith, Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus. Lost Joy also includes Joy’s early stories, in which musicians and music play important roles in fiction that reveal much about how we use music to express our emotions and explore our memories: a technique Joy pioneered that has since been widely adopted in contemporary literature.
The contents include: The Greatest Record Album Ever Told (about Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year); The Greatest Record Album Singer That Ever Was (about Al Green); The Lost Manifestoes of Camden Joy (various music screeds glued around NYC in late 1995); This Poster Will Change Your Life (painted posters “protesting” the Macintosh NYC Music Festival of 1996); Dear CMJ… Posters of Protest from the CMJoy Gang (hand-written collaborative open letters posted in public spaces in 1996); and Make Me Laugh, Make Me Cry: Fifty Posters About Souled American (ornate posters plastered around Manhattan in mid-1997).
