There are plenty of great spoken word recordings of Allen Ginsberg out there in the universe in which he delivers one or another of the poems which have made him deservedly famous in American letters. Some that are not so great too, works that by contrast to his greatest writing are more histrionic than historical. But in balance, Ginsberg’s legacy is well-represented in spokenword recordings, and readily available online these days.
As for his dalliance with musical accompaniement — either on his own with a squeezebox or zither — or accompanied, by some famous musicians and by some essentially unknown folks, there is much forgettable material to wade through. Rather than disparaging any individual recordings, of which there are more than a few, it’s our preference to mention a few standouts that are in our view quite exceptional, and well worth hearing.
Here’s a cull we made, enjoy!
1996 WICHITA VORTEX SUTRA, Allen Ginsberg & Phillip Glass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-arPnTm0ZFI
This is a performance the two gave on the 25th of March, 1996 at the legendary Arc Theater in Prague. The concert began with a solo performance by Glass at the piano of Ginsberg’s Wichita Vortex Sutra (1988), arguably among his greatest works. “To conclude the evening, Philip Glass and I performed the first piece that we did together, a portion of the longer poem and the last scene in the two-act opera Hydrogen Jukebox. It was written ten months after I was expelled from Prague as King of the May, and was an attempt to speak up in poetry to end the United States war in Vietnam.”
1995 BALLAD OF THE SKELETONS, Allen Ginsberg & Paul McCartney
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr5Y4XQO7xQ
a truly superior blues-romp on stage between Ginsberg and Paul McCartney, who shows his facility for jamming in front of a crowd and bringing the best out of his collaborator in terms of energy and style. Here is Ginsberg iterating a playful, if minor, rhyming ditty that is a winning experience if only to see how two very different popular figures were able to let down their personae and wail. An evening of poetry and performance at The Royal Albert Hall in 1995 entitled ‘The Return of the Reforgotten’.
VISIONS OF NAOMI PART 2, Allen Ginsberg & Bill Evans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwxedTV6-BU
VISIONS OF NAOMI PART 4,Allen Ginsberg & Alice Coltrane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6BVXimo0rM
Two of six parts from Ginsberg’s tender and touching tribute to his mother Naomi, from a playlist belonging to Aficianado Joe, in which recordings of Ginsberg are set to music of some awesome musicians, including Bill Evans, Alice Coltrane and Ennio Morricone
RADIO POET!QUE: A Spoken Word Radio Review 