Wrathful deities – Moloch – Don Mudra’s suitably Germanic setting of that celebrated section of “Howl” kicks off our regular “Friday Round -Up” this week. Auf Deutsch and with pile-driving relentless back-beat, it may be listened to here. Also on his site is a recording (sans beats, but with the requisite backing of Allen’s rhythmic Aboriginal songsticks) of “Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag”, a.k.a, “Don’t Smoke”, morphing nicely into Kurt Schwitters‘ classic avant-garde (Dada–ist) composition, (the) “Ursonate”, (not to mention, recordings of the late, much-lamented, Rolf Dieter Brinckmann – and even, Klaus Kinski) – all courtesy of SoundCloud.
Pluto – Plutonian – more utilization of SoundCloud – this time by author and DJ, Bart Plantenga on his new and challenging sloowtapes site. Allen (& Peter (Orlovsky) are featured (see here), in a 1979 recording, along with Steven Taylor, and Harry Hoogstraten (source of the original tape) – a vintage performance, recorded, one wild night, at the De Leeuweik bar in Eindhoven, Holland. Allen introduces and reads his recently-composed “Plutonian Ode”
Sloow Tapes is a limited-edition, cassettes-only, back-to-basics, project.
For a list of currently-available titles, see here
Staying in that part of the world, (well, sort of), Unrequited Records (out of San Francisco) have been working with Eddie Woods and Ins and Outs Press in Amsterdam, (again, on vintage recordings – (this one from 1987)), and have put together an elegant, first-rate, double-CD of Herbert Huncke – Guilty of Everything (same title – and what a title! – he gave to that collection of his back in 1990 – also the title given, a few years earlier, to his wonderful little Hanuman book)
While you’re at it, check out also Unrequited Records’ CD’s of other Beat greats – Harold Norse (Harold Norse, Of Course) and Jack Micheline (Give America A Break).
Meanwhile, in Paris, at the Beat Hotel… Well, look what has happened to the Beat Hotel!
The death this week of the “prolific, elegant (and) acerbic” Gore Vidal (as the New York Times obituary so described him) should, of course, be noted here – and is. We respect, most, (for the immediate present), his political savvy – a maverick, (but not unhinged), almost lone voice, bravely “telling it like it is”, an “eminent outlaw”, speaking, at all times, “truth to power” (all the more significant – and useful, because he, himself, was of that power (born into, and never really ever escaping, the power elite)).
There was the high discourse and there was the “deep gossip” – Regarding the latter – that he slept with Jack Kerouac! (the “Beat connection”!) – “Lust aside, we both thought, even then (this was before On The Road) that we owed it to literary history to couple”. Allen, of course, whilst acknowledging the tryst, vigorously denies that they actually, fully (sic), “consummated”! (Kerouac too drunk?) – well, of course, he would!
nonzerologic (sic) ponders the Allen Ginsberg-Stanley Kubrick connection. (Yes, there is a one). (2018 update – regrettably this link is no longer available)
Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone on his forthcoming Tempest.
Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s birthday tomorrow, Saturday. AH! – Exhalation of breath.