Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 320

June 16, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in the recording studio, 1989]

June 23, next Friday. We’re getting closer to the official release-date, but we’re already putting the word out  about this exciting Ginsberg re-release from Omnivore Recordings of Allen’s settings of William Blake.

Here’s more info (courtesy Aquarium Drunkard)

and here’s the official video just put out of Allen/Blake’s “The Garden of Love”

Speaking of William Blake, hats off to antiquarian bookseller, John Windle (“Windle’s connection to Blake is more spiritual than commercial”). Allen would, more than once, call Windle, Windle remembers, if he “needed a Blake fix”.

[William Blake ( 1757-1827] … Read More

Surkov on Allen & Tupac (& Jackson Pollock)

March 18, 2014admin

                                                      [Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)]

 It’s not every day you get such a glorious global name-check!                                                       (new Cold War name-dropping/ name-calling?)

Vladislav Surkov, the Russian power-broker, eminence grise (and, now, under-the-sanctions-of-the-US  Russian power-broker)

File:Vladislav Surkov in 2010.jpeg
 

[Vladislav Surkov –  via www.kremlin.ru.]

 

whose rendition of Allen’s “Sunflower Sutra” we featured here last year.                            
 
 (Here it is again in case you missed it  (it begins approximately two-minutes in)) 
 So, his statement, made to the Russian newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets:
 
“…The only things that interest me in the U.S. are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock. I don’t
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Friday Weekly Round-Up – 129

June 7, 2013Simon Pettet

Ginsbergian Zeitgeist – We’re, admittedly, a little late in putting this up – but here‘s (recently-deposed) Russian power-broker/politician, Vladislav Surkov reading Allen Ginsberg (in English!) – “Sunflower Sutra” (the English begins approximately two minutes in) – [thanks too to “Cloudpine” – we should point out, entirely unrelated – for his fantasy Alexander-Rodchenko-inspired Howl cover!]

“No hope Communism/No hope Capitalism” – Here’s another surprising sighting, Gary Silverman’s “I saw the best taxes of my generation..”, [sic], an extended Ginsbergian metaphor in..(of all places) The Financial Times!

So, looking back on last week, birthday week… First, the New York

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