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Howls, Raps & Roars: A Celebration of Beat Poetry |
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Friday, 13 January 2006 20:25 |
Howls, Raps & Roars
A Celebration of Beat Poetry
In a Two-Night Benefit for the Poets Emergency Fund
at Slim's 333 Club, San Francisco
Tuesday & Wednesday, June 8 & 9, 1993
By John Sinclair
It's early June and hip San Francisco is all a-twitter behind the promotional blitz Bill Belmont and Terri Hinte have orchestrated to support the release of Fantasy Records' new 4-CD boxed set of beatnik poetry, Howls, Raps & Roars: Recordings from the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.
Fantasy, the Berkeley-based recording conglomerate that makes an ever-increasing chunk of our musical and cultural heritage available to contemporary listeners through its CD reissues of crucial records from the vaults of Specialty, Prestige, Riverside, Stax/Volt and other labels, has made splendid use of its Bay-Area location to assemble a spectacular cast of characters charged with simultaneously evoking and extending into the present day the spirit, ambience, and bardic force of the Beat poetry movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Howls, Raps & Roars: A Celebration of Beat Poetry is a two-night benefit for the Poet's Emergency Fund to be staged at Slim's 333 Club in San Francisco on Tuesday & Wednesday, June 8 & 9. The first night will feature a gang of post-Beat writers "influenced by or steeped in the beat tradition," including Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter; Hog Farm honcho Hugh Romney, better known as Wavy Gravy; the brilliant novelist Hubert Selby Jr., author of Last Exit To Brooklyn; Deborah Iyall, late of Romeo Void; Michael Franti from the Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy; Brooklyn-bred, Los Angeles-based novelist Michael Ventura; Bay Area poets Sharon Dubiago, Avotcja, Don Bajema, Q.R. Hand, and Jennifer Joseph; and this writer, accompanied by East Bay blues guitarist Mike Henderson.
The big guns will be rolled out the following night: major Beat-era poets Joanne Kyger, Kirby Doyle, David Meltzer, Diane DiPrima, and original Beats Philip Whalen and Michael McClure. Actor (and former Digger) Peter Coyote will MC, and Ann Charters, compiler of the Howls, Raps & Roars box, will introduce each night's show. The press has been wired up, and many tickets have already been sold.
I
Returning to San Francisco for the Howls, Raps & Roars blowout last month brought back a whole lot of happy memories:
" My initial visit in 1960 after a summer of fire-fighting in the Plumas National Forest, heading straight for the mythical City Lights Bookstore at Broadway & Columbus where I'd sent away for my first batch of poetry books Howl and Other Poems, Pictures of the Gone World, Gasoline during my freshman year at Albion College. . . .
" My second visit in the summer of 1965, now a poet from Detroit bringing brand-new copies of my first book from the Artists' Workshop Press, This Is Our Music, to the Berkeley Poetry Conference, where I would study with giants of poetry like Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan and be presented with Ed Sanders, Ted Berrigan, and Lenore Kandel in a reading called "Four Young American Poets." Driving straight from Salt Lake City on the last leg of our journey and into San Francisco, pulling up in front of City Lights and racing inside, then returning to the street to find our car with all our belongings had been towed away by city police. . . .
" A whole month in San Francisco and Berkeley with the MC-5 early in 1969, promoting our Elektra LP, playing for the Black Panther Party at the Polish-American Cultural Center in Berkeley, in Golden Gate Park with the Sons of Champlin, at the Straight Theatre in the Haight-Ashbury, in Provo Park in Berkeley without a permit, Bill Graham barring us from playing on a benefit at the Fillmore, the band arrested in a drunken car on the Bay Bridge and held in jail for a day and a half on some bullshit charge, dropping acid at Tim Leary's house in the Berkeley Hills, hanging out with the dozens of Detroiters who had migrated west during the 60s and with the several wild camps of Bay-Area radicals and poets and underground newspaper people. . . .
" Returning in 1972 to campaign for the California Marijuana Initiative, stumping the state with my pal Michael Aldrich of Amorphia and the Fitzhugh Ludlow Memorial Library, visiting old friends, checking in with fellow radicals and freeks and music-lovers after 29 months in prison. . . .
" Flying in for intensive care at the Stinson Beach cottage of Dr. Marty Rossman after physical and nervous collapse in February 1974 (coincidentally just days after the kidnap of Patty Hearst), totally exhausted and at wits' end from work and worry, finally remembering after 10 unbroken years of sacrificial activism that I'd started out as a poet and could return to private life almost as smoothly as I'd left it. . . .
" Visiting my brother David in 1981 at his new home in the wine country north of San Francisco, hooking up with my dear friend Harry Duncans and digging Horace Silver at the Keystone Corner, dropping to the ground and trying to dive underneath a car when I mistook a backfiring auto for random gunfire and Harry laughing, "Man, you're not in Detroit no more. . . ."
Now it's 1993 and my boy Duncans is the main man at Slim's nightclub, San Francisco's hippest venue for blues & roots music, where Fantasy Records is about to stage its beatnik poetry extravaganza called Howls, Raps & Roars.
Harry's had the exquisite taste to squeeze me onto the opening night bill, secure the services of his friend Mike Henderson to back me up on blues guitar, put the bite on another friend to put me up for several days without charge at the quite hospitable Phoenix Hotel, and personally underwrite the plane fare from my home in the Crescent City to Baghdad by the Bay.
As Duncans drives me in from the airport and we enter the city from the south I can feel the excitement rising in anticipation of this blessed event being staged in honor of the 20th-century American saints who made it all start to happen the legendary Beat poets of San Francisco and their mighty verse.
A powerful force since their emergence almost 40 years ago, the Beat poetry movement continues to impact inquisitive young Americans today as always. The survivors of the bardic explosion of the 1950s persist in their concerns and their work in verse; they are, as Michael McClure puts it, "still here, always here, still speaking and singing against corporate greed and for the environment and for vision, as we've always been doing."
II
"San Francisco at midcentury was the site of an explosion of literary activity, nearly unprecedented in its scope and vitality, that laid the groundwork for the social, cultural, and political cataclysms of the 1960s."
Bill Belmont
The clarion call rang forth on Thursday, October 13, 1955, from a tiny storefront art gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. A frantic overflow crowd, whipped to a frenzy by a raucous, wine-bottle-waving Jack Kerouac, pressed together to dig the poetic offerings of five young unknown Bay Area bards who had come together in the common cause of registering their experience of contemporary America in verse.
Advertised only by a few crude posters and 100 hand-typed postcards announcing 6 POETS AT 6 GALLERY, this small but historic gathering launched a movement which was destined to change inalterably the shape and content of American literature and culture. Not only would the featured participants Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Philip Lamantia (all but the latter yet to publish his first book) go on to be hailed as some of America's finest modern poets, but their lives and works would have an impact on the world at large far beyond anything anyone could have imagined on that October night in 1955.
Master of Ceremonies Kenneth Rexroth, the Bay Area's well-known elder statesman of poesy and radicalism (and, incidentally, the advertised 6th poet of the evening), introduced the evening by comparing San Francisco to Barcelona under fascism, where culture had managed to survive in spite of an oppressive political regime.
Philip Lamantia read first, from the work of the recently departed John Hoffman; Michael McClure followed, at age 23 making the first public performance of his poetry; and Philip Whalen closed the first set with his own most personal verse, opened up by his experience with peyote earlier that year.
After a frantic intermission during which Kerouac ran out for more gallon jugs of wine to pass around the excited crowd, Allen Ginsberg took the stage to deliver the premiere performance of an epic new work called "Howl." Starting out slowly and solemnly, Ginsberg began to rock to the hard-driving rhythms of the poem while Kerouac banged on a wine bottle and hollered "Go!" at the end of each of the long, pounding lines.
The crowd joined in with wild shouts of encouragement and joy as the poet built to a shattering climax, chanting "Holy! Holy! Holy!" in a hoarse, ragged voice as tears streamed down his face and the audience went all the way out of its collective mind.
"In all our memories," Michael McClure recalls, "no one had been so outspoken in poetry before....We had gone beyond a point of no return and we were ready for it."
Gary Snyder, who closed out the 6 Gallery show with poems from his early masterwork Myths & Texts, remembers the reading as "a curious kind of turning point in American poetry.... [Previously, we] had no sense of community of poets and even less of an audience.... Poetry suddenly seemed useful in 1955 San Francisco."
But Kenneth Rexroth really nailed it when he enthused to Ginsberg after the reading: "This poem will make you famous from bridge to bridge." What he couldn't know was that the force unleashed that night at the 6 Gallery would go way beyond the literary world to change the lives of millions of people and the very course of American history that the works of Ginsberg and Kerouac and Synder and McClure would inspire an entire generation to reject the materialistic, war-mongering culture of their parents and pursue the poets' vision of freedom and creative expression by any means necessary.
III
It started right there in San Francisco that night in 1955, when this motley group of unknown bards began to fulfill Shelley's prophesy that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. As McClure puts it: "None of us wanted to go back to the gray, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellective void to the land without poetry to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
The historical voices and visions of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance can be heard in some profusion on Howls, Raps & Roars, the 4-disc boxed set from Fantasy Records which is being celebrated at Slim's on these clear June nights in 1993. Lenny Bruce, Kenneth Rexroth, John Wieners, Lew Welch, Philip Lamantia are no longer with us, Gary Snyder and Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky are somewhere else, and Ginsberg is present only on a videotape he has made for the occasion.
But Ferlinghetti's in the audience, and Phil Whalen, Michael McClure, David Meltzer and Kirby Doyle will grace the stage, and Diane DiPrima and Joanne Kyger will join them, and Ray Manzarek of the Doors will materialize behind the grand piano to lay down a musical groove for Michael McClure.
And there's the legendary Hubert Selby Jr. and his acolyte Michael Ventura of Los Angeles Weekly fame, and Wavy Gravy in a clown suit, and Peter Coyote remembering his days as a Digger in the 60s, and Robert Hunter and Mountain Girl from the Grateful Dead family, and Calico from the Hog Farm, and Diane DiPrima's daughter, and a complement of exciting writers of today brought together to demonstrate that the flame is still in full conflagration.
Ann Charters, Kerouac biographer and editor of The Portable Beat Reader, opens the proceedings with a reading of Jack's proposed dust-jacket copy for The Dharma Bums, setting the scene for the celebration to come. Jennifer Joseph begins with a piece composed entirely of lines from other poems by Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac and then puts her finger on the theme of the evening with her final offering, which begins: "Filled to the brim with mesmerizing memories of what we missed."
The tall, rangy, street-smart poet Q.R. Hand is next, ringing some resonant changes on the struggles of people without homes or hopes in a story titled "People Have Enough Problems." Deborah Iyall, the robust former lead singer of the band Romeo Void, follows with a series of pithy translations from a Native American collection called A Bird's Companion, rendered with sharp, pungent, fiercely idiomatic language and imagery. Her own poems are intensely personal and convincingly delivered, to the delight of the packed house.
Don Bajema is up next with an extended work based on a riff called "Hole in Your Head like a hole in your motherfuckin' head." This shit is definitely on fire, and Bajema rides the rhythm like a bronco buster, dropping science straight from the street. Poet-activist Avotcja is right on time with a series of sensuous verses highlighted by a soulful thing titled "Have You Heard the Blues Poem Talking To You" and a touching piece composed by one of her inmate workshop students, Clarence Garry ("I teach in the joint," she explains).
Michael Franti, poet-rapper with San Francisco's Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hoprisy, rhymes out some more wisdom from the street to that hip-hop beat, reminding me of his performance at Alvin's Detroit Bar last year on one of M.L. Liebler's benefit extravaganzas. I had the pleasure of following Franti once again, enjoying the splendid backing of East Bay guitarist Mike Henderson on a series of blues poems set in the Mississippi Delta.
Hubert Selby Jr. came on with a spirited reading of the opening section of his new novel, The Willow Tree, working his magic with the language and worldview of the downtrodden, and peaked with a great piece called "Que Pasa, Baby?" which answers that eternal question with "Poetry, man. Poetry the bringer of life!"
The next poet, Sharon Dubiago, built on Selby's energy with her slashing odes from the lower depths, including "Outlaw" and "Don't Be Ruthless with Me," and a brutal piece taken from a story titled "Whore."
Michael Ventura began with a bow to Selby "When I read Last Exit To Brooklyn I knew I could get out of there and survive as a writer" and offered several vignettes of Brooklyn life in his hard, lean, beautifully-written prose. His opening selection, "Have You Seen the White Roaches?", heralding the arrival of a tough new breed of cockroaches, was one of the high points of the entire evening.
Master of Ceremonies Wavy Gravy filled his featured spot as his pre-Woodstock alter ego, poet Hugh Romney, accompanied by Martin Fierro on tenor sax and Greg Anton on percussion. And Robert Hunter closed the show with a reading from the just-arrived galleys of his new book, including a fantastic piece which begins with the line "Stan Getz and Bill Evans got lost in a Moroccan bazaar back in 1960."
The overflow crowd filed out with their ears full of music, happy in the sure knowledge that the future of poetry as conceived by the founders of the Beat Generation would be as bright and hopeful as on that night in 1955 when it all began.
IV
With the present and future well accounted for by the first night's festivities, it was time Wednesday night to look back over the past 40 years and smile. Ann Charters set the tone with a reading of Lew Welch's letter of application to the Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Trust for funds to underwrite the composition of a novel centered in the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, a heartfelt plea in which he attempted to explain to a panel of squares the joys and tribulations of a creative writer who had been forced to move in with his widowed mother in order to pursue his craft.
M.C. Peter Coyote reminisced about Welch, a former roommate, remembering that Lew had fashioned the immortal advertising slogan RAID KILLS BUGS DEAD while working at a Chicago advertising agency in the early 1950s. He reminded us also that "there were three people in Dharma Bums Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen," bringing on the now-blind Zen poet to begin the evening's performances.
Whalen, unable to read from his manuscripts, devoted his appearance to a gentle recounting of some of the persons and circumstances of the Beat period in San Francisco, explaining that "We were all trying to do the same thing we were all trying to break out into some different kind of speech, some different kind of form, some different kind of sound and going at it in different ways."
Whalen described watching Ginsberg compose "Howl" and Kerouac typing up passages from his notebooks, laughing and riffing wildly as one phrase would trigger whole new paragraphs of "spontaneous bop prosody."
Peter Coyote, obviously moved by Whalen's performance, testified that "This is not a retrospective event of the 50s these are all living, breathing, functioning artists at the top of their form." And no one illustrated his point any better than Joanne Kyger, a major Bay Area poet for more than 30 years who read poems from her new book, Just Space (Black Sparrow Press).
Kyger's work reflects her life and its geography as a resident of the Pacific Coast above San Francisco; her quiet odes "Morning Is Such a Welcome Time," "Finest First Rain," "Destruction," "Ridge Line and Summer Mist," "Hot Sun After Frost" are full of precisely observed detail gracefully voiced.
Kirby Doyle followed with a long poem, "After Olson," dedicated to the great bard of Gloucester, Charles Olson, one of the giants of 20th-century American poesy. It was wonderful to hear the Big O memorialized in this setting, and Doyle's homage was both deeply felt and masterfully delivered.
Allen Ginsberg paid his respects to the occasion with a short videotape for which he read a 1992 poem called "After Lao Tse" with customary aplomb. David Meltzer appeared, very much in person, to charm the crowd with his whimsical manner and finely crafted verse, noting that "Poetry is kind of a loss-leader occupation I mean, we're not in it for the money!" He pawed through "the tattered manuscripts" of the past 30 years to offer poems from 1965, the early 70s, and from The Name: Selected Poetry 1973-1983. "A Rent Tract" (for Lew Welch) was particularly poignant.
It was truly heart-warming to see and hear Diane DiPrima in performance once again, reading three "more or less love poems" from 1956, "Numbers Racket" from the 60s, and her great "Revolutionary Letter" that begins "Beware of those who say we are the beautiful losers" (1970). She finished with "prose from a week ago" from her work-in-progress, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, and a "very recent revolutionary letter" called "Rant" that demonstrated her continuing power as a worker in the very front lines of poetry.
The celebration closed with an extraordinary performance by Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek. McClure's poetry has deepened and broadened over the years and is at once powerful and full of grace. He and Manzarek have been collaborating in concert for several years now twice I had the privilege of opening for them in Ann Arbor and their presentation continues to grow in emotive force and musical intelligence. Happily enough, Shanachie Records will soon release a CD of their work.
McClure's recitation of his fully mature verse is relaxed yet supremely authoritative, while Manzarek fills the air around the poems with carefully articulated musical commentary, aptly illustrating his credo "play the words." Pieces like "Oh Bam Bam Lover Roar With Joy," with the emblemic line "Jesus how I hate the middle course," or "Fluids Dripping in the Body Make Music," "Innocent as the Smile of a Cougar" and "Baby Mama Lion" are of a piece with McClure's earliest creations, while "You Are the Bare Chested Cowboy in the Movie" and the blues-drenched "For Howlin' Wolf" open up new fields of investigation and expression for the poet.
During one of the several conversational breaks which are an integral part of their presentation, Manzarek remembers coming up from Los Angeles to attend the Mad Mammoth Monster Reading of 1963. "We were up for spring break or something, and Jesus, the words were falling out of Philip Whalen like a machine gun!"
At another point Ray says right out what the whole thing has been about since the beginning: "It's 1993 Poetry's coming. It's gonna be a whole new revolution.... As artists, let's take over the universe it' s ours!" And McClure adds the last word: "Let's put the corporations in chains!"
There it is: The spirit of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance is still very much alive and well and with us at this very moment, and that's definitely something to write home about. Dig it!
V
Howls, Raps & Roars
Recordings from the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance
Fantasy 4FCD-4410-2 (4-Disc Set)
This is the package poetry-lovers have been waiting for ever since the inception of the Compact Disc and then some!
Once Rhino Records came out with the extant recorded works of Jack Kerouac on CD (The Jack Kerouac Box, 1990), it was almost inevitable that Fantasy Records would someday reissue its landmark recordings of Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Poetry Readings in the Cellar, 1958) and Allen Ginsberg (Howl and Other Poems, 1959).
What no one could know is that these historic sides would appear in a stunning 4-CD package assembled by Ann Charters and Bill Belmont which also features over 90 minutes worth of previously unissued poetry performances from 1959-1969 by Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, John Wieners, Philip Lamantia, Lew Welch, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, David Meltzer and Kirby Doyle which amply document the ultimate flowering of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.
Even more amazing in a sense is compiler Ann Charters' inclusion of an entire disc of material by the great improvisational genius Lenny Bruce: 65 minutes of unadulterated brilliance shining through the prism of the artist's uniquely twisted sense of humor and delivered with all the force and power of his fully-developed stagecraft.
As a performer, Lenny Bruce was an extraordinarily inventive master of what Kerouac called "spontaneous bop prosody." His remarkable rhythmic sense and multi-leveled verbal acuity accurately reflect the same deep emotional involvement in the music of the bebop revolution led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk as can be felt in the verse and prose of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
Ginsberg's exhilarating 'live' performances of "Howl," "A Supermarket in California" and "Sunflower Sutra" (Disc Two) were taped in Chicago in January 1959 at a benefit reading for Big Table magazine. Allen, then just beginning to reach the height of his poetic powers, completed the projected Fantasy LP in June 1959 with a set of studio recordings that included such masterpieces as "Transcription of Organ Music," "America," "Europe, Europe" and "Kaddish" (Part 1).
Anyone who has heard the Kerouac recordings from 1958-59 will recognize the impact of his performance style on Ginsberg's delivery; sadly Jack would never again blow so beautifully once the freight train of fame crashed him off the track of his creative talent, but his radiant voice and soulful enthusiasm would live on in Ginsberg's public recitations.
The third disc combines 'live' jazz-poetry performances by Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti from Poetry Readings in the Cellar with previously unissued studio sessions by Gregory Corso (1969) and Peter Orlovsky (date unknown) and a sweet reading by Ferlinghetti of his "Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow," accompanied by an unidentified guitarist.
The great Kenneth Rexroth is heard here in a dramatic presentation of his epochal poem "Thou Shalt Not Kill," a paean to the creative spirit composed upon the tragic death of Dylan Thomas in 1953. Sensitively underscored by Bruce Lippincott's jazz quintet, Rexroth's accusatory epic is rendered with great power and emotion, from its chilling opening strophe to its thundering conclusion.
Ferlinghetti offers lighter but no less satisfying fare in his Cellar performances, also accompanied by the Bruce Lippincott group. "Autobiography" is basically a humorous, breezy reduction of Walt Whitman's "I am the man, I suffered, I was there" theme, nicely set off by the tasty stop-time arrangement contributed by the band. "Statue of St. Francis" also benefits greatly from its musical setting.
Gregory Corso delivers a splendid set of short pieces from his Pocket Poets classic, Gasoline, beautifully informed by his typically vivid imagery and graceful syntax. Peter Orlovsky is likewise in fine form with two early efforts, "A Rainbow" and "Morning Again."
The fourth and final disc in the package presents a treasure trove of poetry recorded in performance by several of the leading lights of the San Francisco poetry renaissance. Never before released, the tapes of these readings sat in unmarked boxes in the Fantasy vaults until the Earthquake of 1989 literally shook them loose and brought them to light.
The Mad Mammoth Monster Reading of August 29, 1959 yields two penetrating masterpieces from John Wieners' magnificent Hotel Wentley Poems and two whimsical odes by Philip Lamantia, whose warmth and imaginative force are well represented by "Rest In Peace, Al Capone" and "All Hail Pope John XXIII."
The second of the Mad Mammoth Monster Readings was presented November 26, 1963 and featured Lew Welch, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, David Meltzer and Kirby Doyle, each represented here by characteristically excellent verse. McClure stands out with the selections from his ground-breaking works Dark Brown and Ghost Tantras, the latter "written in a language I call 'Beast Language,' and in English also."
The disc, and the box itself, closes with a stunning location recording of McClure's "Grahhh!" made in the Lion House of the San Francisco Zoo, probably in the summer of 1966. McClure's recitation elicits a roaring response from the resident beasts, a feral rhythm section against which the poet hurls his verse in a unique performance that is overwhelming in its power, depth and fierce animalistic beauty.
The poetry performances are enhanced by a spectacular 36-page booklet designed by Jamie Putnam which contains a wealth of goodies, including a useful Producer's Note by Bill Belmont; Ann Charters' illuminating essay, Howls, Raps & Roars: The Spoken Arts in San Francisco at Midcentury; and the complete text of Allen Ginsberg's 1959 liner notes to Howl and Other Poems, an essential document in which the artist sets out the formal basis of his poetics.
A colorful centerfold display of books, posters, flyers and other period artifacts and a fantastic collection of photographs of the poets and their milieu by Harry Redl, Jerry Stoll, Allen Ginsberg and Fredrica Drotos offer further delights.
All praise is due to producer Bill Belmont, compiler and annotator Ann Charters, and art director Phil Carroll for blessing us with this wonderful gift.
New Orleans
July 1993
(c) 1993, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Howls, Raps & Roars Recordings from the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance
Fantasy 4FCD-4410-2 (4-Disc Set)
Disc One: Lenny Bruce
Shorty Petterstein Interview
Djinni in the Candy Store
Enchanting Transylvania
How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties
Lima, Ohio
Comic at the Palladium
In Which the Artist Discusses 'The Lie'.....
Disc Two: Allen Ginsburg Howl and Other Poems
Howl
Footnote to Howl
A Supermarket in California
Transcription of Organ Music
America
In Back of the Real
Strange New Cottage in Berkeley
Europe, Europe
Kaddish (Part I)
The Sunflower Sutra
Disc Three: Rexroth/Ferlinghetti/Corso/Orlovsky Kenneth Rexroth: Thou Shalt Not Kill
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Autobiography
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Statue of St. Francis
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow
Gregory Corso: In the Fleeting Hand of Time
Gregory Corso: Vision of Rotterdam
Gregory Corso: The Last Warmth of Arnold
Gregory Corso: Mexican Impressions
Gregory Corso: Botticelli Spring
Gregory Corso: Sun A Spontaneous Poem
Gregory Corso: Ode to Coit Tower
Gregory Corso: I Am 25
Peter Orlovsky: A Rainbow
Peter Orlovsky: Morning Again
Disc Four: Mad Mammoth Monster Poetry Readings
John Wieners: A Poem for Cocksuckers
John Wieners: A Poem for The Old Man
Philip Lamantia: Rest In Peace, Al Capone
Philip Lamantia: All Hail Pope John XXIII
Lew Welch: From Hermit Poems (International Music Hall, SF, 11-26-63)
Allen Ginsberg: Patna-Benares Express
Allen Ginsberg: May 22 Calcutta
Philip Whalen: From The Art of Literature
Michael McClure: From Dark Brown
Michael McClure: From Ghost Tantras
David Meltzer: Baby's Hands
David Meltzer: Rain Poems
David Meltzer: Nerve Root Poem
David Meltzer: Two Poems to My Wife
David Meltzer: Poem for Lew Welch
Kirby Doyle: From Angel Faint
Michael McClure: Grahhh! Michael in the Lion's Den (Lion House, SF Zoo, Summer 1966)
Produced by Bill Belmont
Compiled & Annotated by Ann Charters
Art Direction: Phil Carroll & Jamie Putnam
Package Design: Jamie Putnam
Photos by Harry Redl, Jerry Stoll, Allen Ginsberg & Fredrica Drotos
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