![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/ginsberg_material_wealth.jpg\")
I will admit right up front that I approached this album with some trepidation. Strictly speaking, Allen Ginsberg was a poet, not a musician. And where his work did cross over onto the musical realm \u2013 or so I had (unfairly) assumed \u2013 it was of a piece with the music of The Fugs. You know, the guys who gave us \u201cCoca Cola Douche\u201d and It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest<\/i>. That is to say: grimy, confrontational, not terribly tuneful, and just plain weird-and-arty.<\/p>\n
For those reasons, I didn\u2019t expect to find a great deal to appreciate on Material Wealth<\/i>, a new title billed as the soundtrack of the book of the same name. Not really being immersed in the world of poetry as such, I assumed also that I wouldn\u2019t have much of value to add to the conversation about the album. And as I\u2019ve mentioned before, that metric is a fundamental one I apply when deciding what to review (or not).<\/p>\n
But I had been encouraged by a friend to check it out anyway, and to bring an open mind to the experience. This I did, and I am very glad I did. Because Material Wealth<\/i> is much more appealing than I might have expected.<\/p>\n
The album opens with 1984\u2019s \u201cHum Bom,\u201d a track that \u2013 to the uninitiated \u2013 might initially call to mind Bob Denver\u2019s Maynard G. Krebs character. It\u2019s Ginsberg declaiming poetry while a drummer provides percussive accompaniment. But give it a moment and it\u2019s much more than that. First of all, the drummer is no less a giant than Elvin Jones. And the declamatory recitation is an anti-war poem with a questioning message that (sadly) is timely no matter when one listens to it. It\u2019s vintage Ginsberg: serious in its message, yet playful in its execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cBirdbrain\u201d dates from 1981, and features the poet backed by The Gluons. It\u2019s a slice of melodic indie rock a la<\/i> the Batman<\/i> theme, with tight vocal harmonies, and Ginsberg serving up some topical\/historical social commentary. Even those with a limited knowledge of poetry will know what \u201cHowl\u201d is. This recording is a 1983 recitation of the 1955 work, and the poem has lost none of its power in the intervening years. It\u2019s great to hear its author reciting the work.<\/p>\n
The jaunty Americana of \u201cGoing to San Diego\u201d dates from 1971, and it sounds like what it is: Ginsberg and Bob Dylan with a rickety-but-right Americana ensemble. The recording is of a piece with The Basement Tapes<\/i>. The poet sounds remarkably like Dylan as he \u2013 yes, actually \u2013 sings. \u201cGrey Monk\u201d is a 1969 recording of Ginsberg reading the William Blake poem. The music is a kind of Western take on Ravi Shankar; here the music does in fact recall The Fugs. Tough sledding, but worth a listen.<\/p>\n
John Sinclair passed away earlier this week, so Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky\u2019s \u201cPrayer for John Sinclair\u201d takes on a deeper meaning. It\u2019s a meditation, and demonstrates that while Ginsberg isn\u2019t most people\u2019s idea of a singer, he can<\/em> sing in tune and hold a note while delivering his poetry. \u201cPut Down Yr Cigarette Rag\u201d is more of that rickety jug band folk, this time from \u201876. It features some nutty lyrics that \u2013 if you listen closely \u2013 have a serious message. \u201cDo the Meditation Rock\u201d features Ginsberg backed by Dylan again, and it\u2019s a jaunty, catchy tune.<\/p>\n One of the oldest archival recordings on the set, the poet\u2019s reading of \u201cAmerica\u201d dates from 1956. \u201cKaddish\u201d is a reading from a decade later. It demonstrates that nobody reads Ginsberg like Ginsberg. A brief reading about Ken Kesey finds the poet sounding more relaxed than on any of the other tracks; it\u2019s a tone and delivery one might not readily associate with him. Too bad it\u2019s not longer.<\/p>\n \u201cRaghupati Raghava\u201d is bleating vocals and eastern instrumentation in a Beatles-in-Rishikesh vein. \u201cThe Ballad of the Skeletons\u201d is the fruit of a remarkable collaborative effort involving Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye and Marc Ribot. For all that talent, it\u2019s a spare affair best characterized as three chords and a poet.<\/p>\n A heartfelt tribute to Neal Casady, 1971\u2019s \u201cOn Neal\u2019s Ashes\u201d is a brief yet moving spoken word piece. The collection concludes with a 1984 folk tune in a campfire style, \u201cGospel Noble Truths.\u201d Taken as a whole, Material Wealth<\/em> stands as a useful survey of the breadth of Allen Ginsberg\u2019s many gifts. It certainly isn\u2019t pop music, but it shows that in some ways his work isn\u2019t all that far away from that of Woody Guthrie. In his own way, Ginsberg was more than a poet: he was an American troubadour with weighty topics on his mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I will admit right up front that I approached this album with some trepidation. Strictly speaking, Allen Ginsberg was a poet, not a musician. And where his work did cross […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30,49,65,71],"tags":[2824],"class_list":["post-27405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-folk","category-new-release","category-review","category-spoken-word","tag-allen-ginsberg","cat-6-id","cat-30-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-71-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27415,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405\/revisions\/27415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}