‘Live In Fishtown’ is a collaborative live album from a gig Mike Watt and Charles Plymell played on August 9, 2008 in Philadelphia.

Charles Plymell is a poet, novelist, and small press publisher. He has published, printed, and designed many underground magazines and books with his wife Pamela Beach, a namesake in avant-garde publishing. He published former prisoner Ray Bremser and Herbert Huncke, whom he identified with from the hipster 1950s. He was influential in the underground comix scene, first printing Zap Comix artists such as Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson, whom he first published in Lawrence, Kansas.

“I am always prepared and never prepared”

Grant Hart, Mike Watt, Charles Plymell (16 Nov 2007, Yod Space, Florence MA) | Source: thirdav.com

Do you remember the day and the evening of your performance together?

Charles Plymell: Oh yeah, Philly shook!

Do you prepare a performance like this, or is it: getting on stage and seeing what happens

I am always prepared and never prepared. I don’t think of reading poetry as a “performance” anyway.

This show took place 15 years ago. Does time make a difference?

“Time keeps on slipping into the future,” Neal Cassidy said. I had a thing with time, in 1963, when I told him things were going faster. Sure enough, they had to re-set BIG BEN ahead.

Do you listen to this now in a different way than at the time when it was recorded?

Yeah, on my back…

This performance was recorded, so was it already initially the plan to release this as an album one day?

No plans.

What do you and Mike Watt have in common, you think?

Mike Watt is brilliant and we are both great drivers. I’ve been driving for 81 years. Mike Watt is as good a driver as Neal Cassady of On The Road. Jack Kerouac couldn’t drive.