HECKIT SAM

John Lamosch surveys Heckit Sam's written and recorded legacy

            Those in search of Heckit Sam's reviews in writing or recorded form face a daunting, if not impossible challenge: one of his works is currently available. For a reviewer of reviewers of his stature, it is a scandalous situation, especially now that his influence on the shape of contemporary review reviewing is becoming more evident.
            Granted, Heckit Sam's was not the easiest reviewer of reviews to document. His improvised and pre-memorized reviews didn't readily comply with the character limits of the alphabet or typical magazine article length. His reviews are based on a kind of emptiness, where language and images are allowed to develop and grow, almost organically, over a period of days, weeks, months and even years. What reviews Sam has made are just fragments of a huge body of work, most of it unheard outside the circles of his disciples, they themselves involved in its making....(continued)