INXS - “This Time”
1985
I recently finished reading Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson and wow his life story got boring. Drug addict, alcoholic, abuser of women, a constant litany of “if he wouldn’t have fallen to his vices and lived up to his talent” quotes. Though when excerpts of his work were printed you could see that glimmer, that spark that proved he could at times live up to his hype. But the dude skipped out on reporting on both the Fall of Saigon and the Rumble in the Jungle, which is not gonzo. Not at all.
There was an interesting tidbit that grabbed me. In the early eighties some kid from the University of North Dakota called one of Thompson’s agents, wondering if he’d come to UND to give a lecture. And it turned out that Hunter S. Thompson’s first college “lecture” was in Grand Forks circa 1983-84. I was a student there then, but have no recollection of this event. Then again, I didn’t become familiar with his writing until a few years later when a roommate subscribed to Rolling Stone. I remember Thompson wrote a review of ecstasy, which was likely when I found out that it’s a drug. A few weeks earlier I had run into a guy from high school in a loud bar and he was raving about ecstasy. I bluffed and nodded my head in approval. I thought “Ecstasy” was a band. (I was probably thinking of INXS, both having that “ex” sound it them.) So yet again not actively participating in a conversation paid off. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool …”