A new year and an exciting new project!
Announcing The Fall of America – A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute
Release date February 5th. (A vinyl release is scheduled, on the occasion of Allen’s birthday in June)
Pre-order and you get sample tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
See our Bandcamp page with full details and information – here
So far we have eight tracks, including tracks by Ed Sanders, Scanner, Social Animals, Angelique Kidjo, Disco Pusher, Bill Frisell…
and more to come from Steven Taylor, Bill Laswell, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Yo La Tengo.. & more
Tracks will be added in the coming weeks, as they are completed
Stay tuned!
The idea behind the project dates from early 2020. There was the recognition that 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the seminal (and curiously prophetic) City Lights collection The Fall of America.
To quote Jesse Goodman and Peter Hale, the project’s inspired co-organizers:
“(We thought), why not team up with other artists and open these (poems) up to song and sound interpretations?” – (the model was Allen’s masterful 1989 recording, “The Lion For Real”)
“We started probing around and asking Allen’s musician and artist friends how they’d feel about interpreting (them), many of which don’t easily lend themselves to song”.
“Once we had enough people on board, the plan was to approach Hal Willner, (the producer of “The Lion For Real”, and the one man most knowledgeable of Allen’s audio archive and recording history) to help produce it. Frankly, as we saw it, there was no way we could do this project without him.”
“Alas, fate would intervene, the pandemic hit and Hal, tragically, was an early casualty. While there is no way we could even come close to the genius he would bring to a project, we can at least hope to try. Shoot for the stars as they say.”
“He’ll forever be our guiding light, our guardian angel.”