James Harrington, a/k/a Jimmy Reject, former drummer for the shoulda-been-legendary Boston glam/trash punks the Dimestore Haloes, published novelist, passionate rock critic, compulsive LiveJournal scribbler, former ice-cream shop employee, GG Allin fan, and through-and-through punk rocker, died suddenly last Monday at age 35. For a guy who called himself an “outsider,” whose self-chosen nom de punk reflected his sense of isolation in this world, he’ll be missed by more people than he might have guessed. When I profiled Jimmy exactly one year ago (see “Persona non grata,” News and Features, August 26, 2005), I found a smart guy who was very shy. A big guy who was very fragile. Someone who was honest about his own struggles and shortcomings, and who had a deadpan, self-deprecating sense of humor. And someone who — above all — had an undying love of punk. Jimmy Reject was not the world’s greatest drummer. But he tapped into the music and the lifestyle as much for the self-expression and -reinvention they encouraged as for the middle finger they waved at the world. And it wasn’t mere sloganeering.
“Jimmy embodied punk in a way most people only play at, and he did it for the majority of his life while most people just see it as a teenage phase,” says Dimestore Haloes frontman Chaz Matthews. “He loved to push buttons and offend people, and so did I, which is why we clicked in the first place. We had similar emotional responses to things and we both were obsessives. Both of us totally saw punk as confrontational theater, not as populism. While other bands were singing about ‘unity’ we were trying to be individualists.”
In recent years Jimmy discovered the therapeutic effects of writing, and his two self-published books — the autobiographical The Enemies Within and the roman à clef-ish Notes on Johnny Nihil — seemed to help him process a tumultuous life marked by mental illness, alcoholism, and a general feeling of unease with the world at large. At the same time, this self-described “reject” had deep empathy and wanted to help others with similar problems. “My aim was to write something that was of tangible use to other people,” Jimmy told me last year. “If anyone reading this picks up Notes on Johnny Nihil and derives great help from it, then they’ve done me a bigger favor than I’ve done them.”
While Jimmy Reject proudly wore the mantle of the disaffected punk outcast, it cloaked an enduring sense of loneliness. “There aren’t many people walking around detached from the outside world who don’t feel some sort of suffering from it,” he told me then. He might have taken some comfort from the four-page remembrance on the Noise message board, or the posthumous comments left on his MySpace page, or the tribute at his funeral in Marshfield last Saturday.
“At the behest of Jim’s mother, all his punk-rock friends got to divide up his vast record collection,” says Matthews. “His leather [jacket] was displayed next to the casket. It was almost like he was sitting right next to each of us. The last song played at the funeral was the Haloes’ “Hot Pink Stereo,” one of his favorites, and before the song could conclude, the CD started skipping so bad they had to shut it off. That’s how I knew Jimmy was in the room, and I could almost hear him giggling.”
