Alan Lord's "High Friends in Low Places" (2022)

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Guernica Editions (book, memoir), 2022.
9" x "6" x 0.875", 341 pages, softcover, ISBN 978-1-77183-754-5.

High Friends in Low Places, a memoir by Alan Lord – musician, artist, and author – as published in softcover by Guernica Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) in 2022. A history of life in Montreal and New York City in the '70s and '80s.

This memoir contains multiple recollections of William S. Burroughs throughout, including:

• working as a publicist for a gallery show in Montreal of Burroughs' Shotgun Paintings (pp. 4-5; p. 232-233, 238-239) 
• a 1983 trip to visit the Bunker (222 Bowery) in New York City at Howard Brookner's invitation (pp. 90-91)
• attendance at Burroughs' 70-year birthday party at the Limelight, 1984 (pp. 93-94)
• attendance at Burroughs' Greenwich Village book signing at B. Dalton with Herbert Huncke present (p. 95)
• an Hommages à Burroughs show at the Foufounes in 1989, with Huncke in attendance (pp. 232, 234-238)

Contents: 

• 1. Pleased to Meet You
• 2. My Life Before I Got One
• 3. Montreal Punk
• 4. Montreal New Wave
• 5. From New Wave to Post-Punk
• 6. The Return of Johnny Shivers
• 7. Mario
• 8. A Brief Return to Reason
• 9. Renaissance Punk
• 10. Attack of the Neoists
• 11. Branching Out
• 12. Burroughs, Huncke, New York, The Foufounes
• 13. Ultimatum
• 14. The Wind from Mount Schärr
• 15. Kathy Goes to Montreal
• 16. Ultimatum Tuesdays
• 17. Ultimatum II
• 18. My Dolce Vita Before the Storm
• 19. Gutterdämmerung
• 20. Down and Out in Montreal
• 21. VDMS in Europe
• 22. Burroughs' Shotgun Paintings
• 23. On the Road in France and Catalunya
• 24. The End of My Road to Ruin
• 25. Escape to Paris, Escape from Paris
• 26. Epilogues
• Appendix A: Selected Texts
• Appendix B: Video Web Links
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author