Various Artists ‎– "The Nova Convention" (Giorno Poetry Systems ‎– GPS 014-015) 1979

Live recording at an historic "summit",'The Nova Convention',a kind of tribute forward slash benefit, for William.S, including alledged counter culture and avant garde performers in New York City in 1979. Sadly,the music section of this convention,which included Suicide, B-52's, Bobby Fripp isn't available,but.....
Frank Zappa IS the talking asshole, and there's a nice picture of him on the inner cover bathing in the light of William Burroughs' credibility ray. Of course we also have  Patti Smith....good isn't she(?),introduced as 'Great'...well as least she and a bunch of hack journalists thought she was.....waxing lyrical about similar asshole, Jim Morrison,with 'jokes' that fall as flat as her terrible adult orientated rock albums.
John Giorno places himself early in the tracklist once more,and everyone skips the needle forward,bouncing off the Patti Smith track like a skimming stone,to the safer ground of Glass,Cage Billy,and Brion,among others,aka the real thing.


Tracklist:

A1 –Terry Southern - Vingette Of Idealistic Life In South Texas 1:25
A2 –William S. Burroughs - Keynote Commentary & Roosevelt After Inauguration 5:52
A3 –John Giorno - Eating The Sky 13:30
A4 –Patti Smith - Poem For Jim Morrison & Bumblebee 11:45
B1 –William S. Burroughs - Benway 3:40
B2 –Philip Glass - Building, Excerpt From Einstein On The Beach By Robert Wilson & Philip Glass 3:04
B3 –Brion Gysin - Kick That Habit, Junk Is No Good Baby, Somebody Special & Blue Baboon 7:06
B4 –Frank Zappa - The Talking Asshole 5:25
B5 –William S. Burroughs - From The Gay Gun: "This Is Kim Carson" & "Just Like The Collapse Of Any Currency" & "The Whole Tamale" 13:27
C1 –William S. Burroughs - What The Nova Convention Is About 2:35
C2 –Ed Sanders - Hymn To Aphrodite From Sappho 8:50
C3 –John Cage - Writing For The Second Time Through Finnegans Wake 14:15
C4 –Anne Waldman - Plutonium Ode & Skin Meat Bones 6:35
D1 –Laurie Anderson & Julia Heyward - Song From America On The Move 12:50
D2 –Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky - Punk Rock, Old Pond; Feeding Them Raspberries To Grow, & Nurses Song 13:00
D3 –William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine & Robert Anton Wilson Conversations 7:10

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Various ‎Artists – "Big Ego" (Giorno Poetry Systems ‎– GPS 012-013) 1978

Is it Ironic that an album called 'Big Ego' is opened by Patti Smith?....HeHeee,i'm like a dog with a bone here..... Seven minutes and fifty seconds of literary references,beat talk,and unaccompanied caterwauling.Truly horrible;but at least she didn't have that awful adult orientated rock group backing her up. I still haven't recovered from buying and then playing 'Horses',it just sounded so...er...'old'!? In fact most of those new york bohemian bands struck me in the same way...including The Ramones(Ironic bubblegum Rock?). The striking exception were 'Talking Heads',something genuinely new with no obvious roots, and to a certain extent, 'Television';mainly because they both dressed straight. But,Like The Ramones and Smith, punk they were not.
Cleveland seemed to have far more 'punk' cred to these ears.
At least we've got some early Philip Glass (yeah that's him,the funny looking one on the cover!?) to raise the bar,followed by lots of interesting and confrontational poetry of course;all this and a Robert Ashley track to get the weird level up a tad.
A evening of Poetry anyone? Shut up and listen for a couple of hours surrounded by an audience with applause hair-triggers, who laugh at the slightest hint of anything 'Clever';an action inferring that they are 'clever' too.The same problem occurs when a singer pronounces his lyrics clearly so you can hear the words,which naturally suggests that he,forward slash,she, must be saying something sickeningly meaningful.Its pop music, get over it! I'm sure whoever's reading this don't give several shades of shite what I think about anything,as much as I could not care less what a pop vocalists view is on any political situation or dogma.I still have no idea what Joe Strummer was going on about,but from what I understand, it was some pseudo-lefty hypocrisy with rhymes kinda stuff.Trying their level best to put the 'Y' in Nihilism.
No other such event demonstrates the manifestation of the human 'Hive Mind' than a poetry performance. The best way to experience it is buy,or download,the record of the event,hitting the pause button to get another smoothie from the fridge,or most likely go to bed.
No...its good really....its just that the punk priestess as played by hippie Smith just pissed me off a tad.

Tracklist:

A1 –Patti Smith - The Histories Of The Universe 7:46
A2 –Philip Glass - A Secret Solo 2:17
A3 –John Giorno - Grasping At Emptiness 9:45
A4 –Laurie Anderson - Three Expediences 3:00
A5 –Robert Wilson & Christopher Knowles - A Letter To Queen 8:00
B1 –Meredith Monk - Education Of The Girlchild, 1972: Biography 8:00
B2 –Michael Lally - All Of The Above (Excerpt) 6:17
B3 –Robert Lowell - Ulysses & Circe (Excerpt) 9:40
B4 –Larry Wendt - How To Cook A Duck 4:44
B5 –Jackie Curtis - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas 2:27
C1 –Ed Sanders - The Fugs: A Monologue 2:12
C2 –William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch(Excerpt) 2:14
C3 –Harris Schiff - 15 Years Passes / Dollar Bill 1:45
C4 –Otis Brown - Boneless Chicken 1:43
C5 –Joel Oppenheimer - Cities, This City 2:45
C6 –The Fugs - Saran Wrap 1:15
C7 –Claes Oldenburg - June Was / Panodramdra 1:15
C8 –Denise Levertov - Homage To Pavese: Woman Alone 3:33
C9 –Ted Greenwald - Friends 2:08
C10 –Anthony J. Gnazzo - Hisnia & Hernia 4:44
C11 –Steve Tropp & Gloria Tropp - Snow White 1:03
C12 –Jim Brodey - Homeward Bound 1:52
C13 –Robert Ashley - Interiors With Flash 3:07
D1 –Eileen Myles - Tuesday Brightness 0:50
D2 –Helen Adam - Apartment On Twin Peaks 5:42
D3 –Anne Waldman - Light & Shadow 6:10
D4 –Joe Johnson - Fly Ho 0:37
D5 –Lorenzo Thomas - Wonders 1:50
D6 –Ishmael Reed - Sky Diving 2:19
D7 –Kenward Elmslie - The Woolworth Song 2:30
D8 –Mona DaVinci - The Last Supper Of Mona DaVinci (Excerpt) 2:50
D9 –Bernard Heidsieck - Canal Street No. 19 2:25
D10 –Steve Hamilton - Promise 3:25
D11 –Frank O'Hara - Poem / Poem 1:45
D12 –Ron Padgett No Title 1:28

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Laurie Anderson / John Giorno / William S. Burroughs ‎– "You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With" (Giorno Poetry Systems ‎– GPS 020-021) 1981

Ahaaa, 'Poets'.don't cha just love 'em?
I sense a ruthless vitriolic attack coming on...but,wait....No,I say. That would be too obvious.That's just what you expect me to do,because I'm clearly a bitter and frustrated failed Poet myself.
Not true children, Not true....I like these poets, and most of the poets,slash,writers who exist within the Giorno Poetry Systems stable.There ain't nothing poncy about this bunch of  vicious malcontents, who use their words like razor blades sectioning major arteries as if they were chilli peppers,scraping out the seeds and throwing away the husks for the dogs to fight over.
Laurie Anderson is ,obviously, 'the nice one' of this particular trio,teetering on the cliff edge of fame and impending chart success.
Whereas the imfamous William Burroughs,had different kind of fame,being the censorship baiting voice of the post hippy generation.Laden with the job of describing the real world as we chose not to see it.
John Giorno was a kind of proto-ranter,whose no-holds barred descriptions of the seedier underbelly of modern existence are delivered with an unappealing nasally whine through a delay echo to increase the uncomfortable nature of his poems,slash, rants to the point of sticking ones fingers in ones ears.Almost as if one didn't wanna hear what Giorno was saying during these relentless verbal barrages.I have to say, Giorno's poems are much better heard when someone else reads them out,just like I thought Bob Dylans songs were better when someone else did them.I now know both of these preferences to be very wrong.
I love the cover art of all these Giorno Poetry Systems albums,with their sharply focused glossy magazine style photography and graphics.Its as in your face and intelligent as the acidic words on this shared double album.

Tracklist:

1 –Laurie Anderson - Born, Never Asked 4:31
2 –Laurie Anderson - Closed Circuits 7:27

3 –Laurie Anderson - Dr. Miller 4:22
4 –Laurie Anderson - It Was Up In The Mountains 2:13
5 –Laurie Anderson - For Electronic Dogs 3:08
6 –Laurie Anderson - Structuralist Filmmaking 1:10
7 –Laurie Anderson - Drums 0:34
8 –William S. Burroughs - Introducing John Stanley Hart; He Entered The Bar With The Best Intentions 2:23
9 –William S. Burroughs - Twilight's Last Gleamings 2:51
10 –William S. Burroughs - My Protagonist Kim Carson 4:56
11 –William S. Burroughs - Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr. Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character 4:13
12 –William S. Burroughs - Progressive Education 7:13
13 –William S. Burroughs - The Wild Fruits 2:26
14 –William S. Burroughs - The Unworthy Vessel 2:45
15 –William S. Burroughs - The Name Is Clem Snide 2:03
16 –William S. Burroughs - Mr. Hart Couldn't Hear The Word Death 2:54
17 –John Giorno - I Don't Need It, I Don't Want It, And You Cheated Me Out Of It 10:40
18 –John Giorno - Completely Attached To Delusion 7:47

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Laurie Anderson ‎– "It's Not The Bullet That Kills You - It's The Hole"(expanded version) (Holly Solomon Gallery ‎– 004) 1977

Think of saxophones in rock and someone always mentions Jazz.Think of violins in minimalism and you think Tony Conrad and Henry Flynt.
Yeah, Laurie Anderson was a minimalist performance artist who played the Violin,rather more in keeping with the Henry Flynt angle than any Tony Conrad one note symphonies;but blending that with minimal electronics and darkly humourous spoken word passages,not unlike Robert Ashley's work around the same time,and this is a record of that time....see what i did?
Being charmingly eccentric looking,and a lady(oh what a novelty,a lady allowed to show intelligence!?),she managed to score one of thee most unlikely top ten hits in the UK charts,with "O'Superman".An Avant Garde work at number two in the charts was,and still is, a rare beast,but i think 'the public' approached it more as a Novelty record than anything weird.After all,you don't get much weirder than a Novelty record.
This unexpected sucess allowed her be more ambitious,and an audience would actually turn up for her huge "United States" multi-media opera.The centerpiece of the show is Laurie's digital aria "O Superman". The William Burroughs inspired "Language is a virus" preceded by "Difficult Listening Hour" where Laurie speaks through a filter that gives her voice a deep Burroughesque edge. Laurie plays with language, objectivity, experimentation and,typically feminine, with logic.
Of course in her early days,before becoming Mrs Lou Reed, poor cow,he used to hang out with Burroughs,Giorno,Ginsberg and all those 'Dial-a-Poem poets in New York and appeared on a few compilations before John Peel in the UK discovered her "o'Superman" single,and success,a 'second album' with a budget,and Peter bloody Gabriel beckoned. Not content with exploiting the indiginous peoples of the third world,our second favourite public schoolboy The first place goes to Joe Strummer of course!) wanted to bland out the avant garde too.
This is Laurie Anderson unsoiled by fame and popular acceptance,the two most terrible blights any artist could be set upon by.

Tracklisting:

1.Self Playing Violin (1974 From The Record Of The Time)(0:55)
2.Is Anybody Home (1976 From Airwaves) (4:19)
3.It's Not The Bullet That Kills You, It's The Hole (1976 From Airwaves) (3:47)

4.Two Songs For Tape Bow Violin (1977 From Airwaves) (4:02)

5.New York Social Life (1977 From New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media)(3:31)

6.Time To Go (For Diego) (1977 From New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media) (2:54)

7.Sh (1977 From The Record Of The Time) (1:13)

8.Tape Bow Trio (Say Yes) (1978 From The Record Of The Time)(2:01)

9.Three Expediences (1978 From Big Ego) (3:01)

10.Songs From America On The Move (1978 From The Nova Convention) (6:59)

11.Dr Miller (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With) (4:18)

12.It Was Up In The Mountains (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With)(2:12)

13.Drums (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With) (0:33)

14.Closed Circuits (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With) (7:25)

15.Born Never Asked (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With)(4:34)

16.For Electronic Dogs (1981 From You're The Guy I Want To Shar (4:07)

17.Walk The Dog (1981 From O Superman 7'')(6:43)

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