Gerrie Lim
Gerrie Lim has written for numerous publications, including Billboard, Details, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, L.A. Style, Playboy, The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post, the San Diego Union-Tribune and Virgin Megastore Online. After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1987, he began his music journalism career at the LA Weekly (where he apprenticed under the late Craig Lee) and later became Staff Writer at Hits and then Managing Editor at Ice.
He was also the U.S. Bureau Chief for the Singapore rock magazine he co-founded, BigO, a tenure that catalyzed his first book Inside the Outsider, which featured a foreword by Bob Guccione, Jr. and was largely a collection of rock music interviews (David Bowie, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Richard Thompson, Joan Jett, Liz Phair, Toni Childs, Beck, Bjork, R.E.M., among others). Gerrie is currently based in Hong Kong, from where he writes about his two other interests – wine and wine travel (for Prestige and other Asian magazines) and various aspects of the sex industry (via several books).
He is best known for two books about the upscale escort business in his hometown of Singapore (Invisible Trade and Invisible Trade 2). In 2005, he was based briefly in London, from where he toured behind his book on celebrity branding (Idol to Icon) and simultaneously penned his memoirs of the American porn business (In Lust We Trust), drawn from his experiences as the "Cinema Blue" adult-film columnist for Penthouse Variations (written under the pseudonym Drew McKenzie) and the International Correspondent for the adult Internet trade journal AVN Online.
He returned briefly to Los Angeles in 2008 to work with his longtime friend Monica Mayhem, the Australian porn star (on co-writing her autobiography Absolute Mayhem, published in 2009). His latest book is Singapore Rebel: Searching for Annabel Chong, a metaphysical inquiry into the life and legend of the controversial Asian porn star, published in March 2011.
28 articles
List of articles in the library
Jim Carroll: A Nod Of Approval: The music and poetry of Jim Carroll
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Orange County Review, June 1986
"I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED myself a poet first," Jim Carroll says, his slightly cracked voice resounding clearly over the phone from New York. "That's what brings ...
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Rock's Backpages audio, 30 July 1986
Ms. Carlisle, new to the Top Ten, looks back at the break-up of the Go-Gos; changes to her lifestyle; her passion for shopping; being a woman in the music business... and raising miniature pigs.
File format: mp3; file size: 30mb, interview length: 32' 46" sound quality: ****
The Go-Go's' Charlotte Caffey (1986)
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Rock's Backpages audio, 30 July 1986
The former Go-Go talks about the breakup of the band; about writing for and touring with the newly-solo Belinda Carlisle; about changes in her lifestyle in her 30s; and about how she was influenced by Debbie Harry and in turn influenced new women in pop. Plus she discovers that Belinda's solo album is in the Billboard charts with three bullets...
File format: mp3; file size: 30.4mb, interview length: 31' 39" sound quality: ***
Gene Clark, Carla Olson: Gene Clark and Carla Olson: At My Place, Santa Monica CA
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 2 April 1987
"IT'S JUST a little folk music," Gene Clark deadpans to the packed house in Santa Monica, and he couldn't have been more self-deprecating. This was ...
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 11 September 1987
IN A BUCOLIC canyon were the faithful gathered, the black-garbed and the henna-haired and the anorexic trendoids baring their nightclub tans, all earnest supplicants at ...
10,000 Maniacs: Variety Arts Center, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 2 October 1987
THEY WERE 9,995 maniacs short on stage, but a winsome chanteuse compensated for the missing madmen, and no link was missed. Natalie Merchant is enchanting, ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Roxy, Los Angeles
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 9 October 1987
THE EVENING before our 6.1 rumble, somebody new rolled into town and left his mark more indelibly than all the debris in Whittier. ...
Alex Chilton, Scruffy the Cat: Variety Arts Center, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 6 November 1987
NO LONGER a Box Top or a Big Star, though after all these years maybe someday he'll be a big star, Alex Chilton showed his ...
The Rainmakers: Palomino, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Weekly, 12 February 1988
A NAME LIKE the Rainmakers infers a drenching of liberating rock & roll sanctification. Tough luck, because tonight wasn't the night. ...
Ruben Blades: Panamanian Pandemonium: Ruben Blades: Musician, Actor, Activist
Report and Interview by Gerrie Lim, L.A. Style, July 1988
RUBEN BLADES, Panamanian musician and aspiring politician lately turned Hollywood actor, pulls from a pack the latest in a series of Merit Ultra Lights and ...
Björk, The Sugarcubes: Rock From Reykjavik: Behold Bjork and her Sugarcubes
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Exposure, September 1988
THEY COME FROM a land of ice and snow, where volcanic peaks and photogenic glaciers surround settlements given to fish factories and sundry cottage industries, ...
Toni Childs: Looking On The Morning Light: Toni Childs, A New Voice And A New Beginning
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Playboy, December 1988
A LONE VOICE of incandescent beauty amid a wilderness of disposable pop music. That's how I saw Toni Childs. ...
Joan Jett: Motorcycle Slut With The Mystic Cross: Joan Jett roars up the alley in Singapore
Report and Interview by Gerrie Lim, unpublished, December 1989
JOAN JETT is sitting in a dressing room a long, long way from home, and the perceptible sliver of anxiety in her voice suggests that ...
Warren Zevon: Flinching Time: Warren Zevon and the Vast Indifference of Heaven
Report and Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, 1 May 1993
SPRINGTIME BLOWS AN idiot wind here in tinseltown, a change of seasons ridden with uncertainly as hay fever breaks out, pet animals act skittish, and ...
Pete Townshend: The Kid's Still Alright: Pete Townshend
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, September 1993
"WHAT A PLEASURE to meet you," Pete Townshend says, hiding nothing behind blue eyes once I'd mentioned the magic mantra (BigO). He quickly extends his ...
Smashing Pumpkins: Life After Gish: Smashing Pumpkins Play Their Generation's Blues
Report and Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, December 1993
SO THIS IS Generation X, I'm musing to myself in the lobby of the Hollywood Palladium, as I contemplate the horde of kids who have ...
Warren Zevon: The Mutineer And His Bounty
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, Spring 1993
LIKE ALL GREAT writers, Warren Zevon likes to quote his own favourite great writers. Graham Greene, for instance, who called his own belief in Christianity ...
Liz Phair: Phair Enough: The Girl From Guyville
Profile and Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, February 1994
This is the story of Liz Phair, the "new" gal in town who shocked the music biz flack and functionaries when she gave GERRIE LIM ...
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Rock's Backpages audio, 4 February 1994
Beck talks about his early influences and songwriting; about Mellow Gold; about his loathing of MTV; about being censored in Singapore... and about slackers and Generation X.
File format: mp3; file size: 24.7mb, interview length: 27' 01" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Beck: Kip Winger With A Protein Shake: The Punknology According to Beck
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, April 1994
THOSE OPENING NOTES attempt to warn you: a slinky salvo of slide guitar and then some hip-hop percussion, and then some dude starts rapping, wending ...
R.E.M.: Rapid Eye Monster: R.E.M. and the Reconstruction of New Fables
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, September 1994
IF ROCK LYRICS ARE the fragile touchstones of this post-punk era, one concisely summarizes all the aspirations and angst of these psychically shifting times. ...
Nick Drake: Hanging On A Star: In Memory of Nick Drake
Retrospective by Gerrie Lim, BigO, November 1994
HIS MUSIC IS as evocative and haunting as ever, though much of his life remains mysterious. Nick Drake died 20 years ago this month, on ...
Nick Drake: Joe Boyd on Nick Drake (1994)
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Rock's Backpages audio, Fall 1994
The legendary producer looks back at the brilliant, doomed singer-songwriter: Drake's enduring qualities; first hearing him; has strong hands and guitar playing; the onset of his troubles, and the clues in his songs.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.3mb, interview length: 32' 02" sound quality: *** (phoner)
Patti Smith: The Power And The Glory, The Resurrection And The Life
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, July 1995
In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.– Patti Smith, "To The Reader," introduction to Early ...
David Bowie: Inside The Outsider: The Postmodern Panorama of David Bowie
Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, October 1995
HE'S BEEN a lot of things to a lot of people, sometimes even too many things to too many people, and the only certainty has ...
Richard Thompson: Watcher Of The Dark: Richard Thompson, Guitar God From Planet Eureka
Book Excerpt by Gerrie Lim, 'Inside the Outsider' (BigO Books) , 1997
IT'S NIGH HIGH impossible to summarize Richard Thompson's vast repertoire and immense talent, not to mention demented humor, but one particular sentence from Thompson himself ...
Review by Gerrie Lim, BigO, April 2000
TO PUT IT MILDLY, the new year's most surprising new album has arrived. And it comes from Joni Mitchell, the woman who wrote Woodstock and ...
Led Zeppelin: Led Astray: How Four Long-Haired Limey Geezers Changed My Life
Memoir by Gerrie Lim, August Man, November 2008
TOOTING BEC, London, is only memorable to me because of a cold, windswept day in November 2005. ...
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