From The Desk Of Chuck Prophet: “Oh The Glory Of It All”

On his 10th studio album, Temple Beautiful (Yep Roc), Chuck Prophet found his muse in the city he’s called home for 30 years. Exploring the local landmarks and myths with friend and poet klipschutz, Prophet winds his way through San Francisco, stretching tales even taller along the way. But this guided tour isn’t a detailed and prefabricated concept album, so much as it’s the product of spontaneous inspiration, and it’s not a document of the city’s past as much as it is of its present. Prophet will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.

Prophet: Brad Jones, my co-producer on the new record, had read Sean Wilsey’s scathing S.F.-society-world-drenched, poor-little-rich-boy memoir Oh The Glory Of It All and recommended it. He thought there might be some possible source material inside.

My co-conspirator Kurt (a.k.a. klipschutz) and I were moving too fast, and that didn’t happen. After we’d finished writing the album, we both picked up the book and went crazy for it—to the extent that we started a song, “The Ballad Of Sean Wilsey, Part One.” But yeah, I read it. Hard to resist once he works his mojo on you. I kept thinking to myself: Do I know this guy? Am I sure I don’t know him?

The rich really are different. But an evil stepmother is still an evil stepmother. And this one is five star all the way. I didn’t know S.F. had society folk like the Wilsey clan. The book is really something else. Follow Sean to hell and back right up until the former skate punk reinvents himself as a McSweeney’s editor and now NYT features writer! A self-made man at last. For real. A wild fucking ride. A coming-of-age true story, bent in every direction, better than anything you could make up. Not in a pedophiles-in-Tenderloin-studios kind of way. That’s another S.F. story, more William Vollman territory.

Revenge is a dish best served freezer-burn cold. Cold and on the page in this case. Let it be a warning: If you’re considering sending your kid off to boarding school or one of these new-age boot camps to get them to shape and fly righteous, before you do, remember the pen is mighty. And that really is a glorious thing.

Video after the jump.