Three From You Tube

(There’s plenty of Allen on YouTube these days (but not everything stays up – here’s something that did, and a bunch of things that didn’t))

Supersonic Blues

Supersonic Blues is an hommage/elegy put together by John Heartfield for Farepoesia Editions in Pavia, Italy, featuring, among other things, interesting footage of Allen and Peter and Peter’s brother Julius, from Robert Frank’s classic Me And My Brother.

Wichita Vortex Sutra

The Philip Glass-Allen Ginsberg collaboration on the CD Hydrogen Jukebox contains this exquisite setting of Allen’s classic 1966 poem with his sensitive narration [2012 update – this You Tube clip is no longer available, but...}. A live recording, however (from a performance in Modena, Italy, in 1992), is  available and may be listened to here. A series of brief commentaries on the poem (including Allen’s note from Composed On The Tongue may be found  here .

LSD (A Documentary Report)

Now here’s an odd piece (but posted in the light of recent interest in the Peter Conners’ dual biography , Allen, in 1966, on a rare out-of-print vinyl record, chanting and speaking/participating, as part of a documentary about LSD. Allen’s open no-nonsense clarity cuts through the rather dated and certainly opinionated general nature of the program. (2012 update – sadly, this one has been pulled, hopefully, we’ll be able to track it down again soon, but, the very nature of the medium – “Three From You Tube”? two years on? – it’s remarkable that that (well, Robert Frank’s “Me And My Brother” too) was/is the only casualty)

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