Various Artists ‎– "Better An Old Demon Than A New God" (Giorno Poetry Systems ‎– GPS 033) 1984

Fuck me!Is that Sting and Andy Summers of the Police getting a Photo Opportunity with Burroughs?...I think i'm gonna be sick!.....and a boringly and thoroughly Mardy Lou reed.....i know how he felt.

Christ!
There's a few persons in that cover photo who would love to be a New God.Attention seeking wannabes always have to ruin things don't they?
Just look at those absurd alternative pop stars straining at the leash to cosey up to counter-culture icons Giorno and Burroughs.....Jim Carroll????? What? How can you respect anyone who names their group after themselves?
Then there that dick'ead from a Glam Rock group who thought they were the Rolling Stones,flexing his counter-culture cod-piece. I was always on the side of Whispering Bob Harris after he called them Mock Rock when they played on UK TV.
Awww,poor lickle child runaway Lydia Lunch looks unhappy at that big bad old world,like a sulkier Toyah Wilcox grafted onto the body of Kevin the Teenager...bless her.
Richard Hell's on this too, the poundland Bowie as if Bowie only had a small ego, with his spikey hair cut, and someone else's torn clothes....so he invented Punk Rock according to himself in the third person,and now he wants his ball back. Dickie Meyers always regarded oneself as a poet,but at least he had the common sense not to turn up for the photoshoot....probably off his pretty face on paracetamol and codine writing his next experimental pamphlet.
Yeah, I don't like these twats...is it that obvious? Don't get me started on Psychic TV!?
Dickhead pop non-Stars aside, there are a few,very few, great tracks on this flawed compilation,not the least Anne Waldman's "Oh-ho- Plutonium",which could have been a Disco Dancing classic on the "Desperately Seeking Susan" soundtrack that one. Whereas this album should have been called "Desperately Seeking William" as in W.S.Burroughs, and bathe in his art-cred radiation.
The worst track has to be Richard Hells cringworthy counter-culture by numbers irony bypass and naked application to join the NYC art elite;during which he reveals what we all suspected.....he just don't posess either a sense of humour or self-irony at all.Its track number 9 for a reason.
Then we've got Lou Reed looking like he's at someone elses party on the inner sleeve.
Its grovelling shit like these offending tracks that makes me wonder why I listen to rock music at all.Just cock a lazy eye at that party that the art-rock elite are invited to,but you ain't! This is entertainment kids!?
I suppose one could also accuse the actual poets, or artists, on here of using the silly alt-pop stars for similar reasons.....but...Nah!...they deserve at least a small percentage of the spotlight......if thats what they wanted.Mainly to shift some units I suspect?


Tracklist:

1 –David Johansen - Imaginatin' Cocktail 2:43
2 –John Giorno - Exiled In Domestic Life 4:06
3 –William S. Burroughs - Dinosaurs 5:52
4 –Psychic TV - Unclean 5:48
5 –Lydia Lunch - What It Is 1:30
6 –Meredith Monk - Candy Bullets And Moon 4:12
7 –Jim Carroll - A Peculiar-Looking Girl 6:22
8 –Anne Waldman - Uh-Oh Plutonium 3:39
9 –Richard Hell - The Rev. Hell Gets Confused 2:21
10 –Arto Lindsay - Alisa 2:30

DOWNLOAD these new god wannabe's HERE!