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Angelique Kidjo, Yo La Tengo, Bill Frisell, and Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart are among the artists featuring on a 50th-anniversary musical tribute to beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971.
Sonic Youth bandmates Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Andrew Bird, Devendra Banhart, Gavin Friday & Howie B, the Fugs’ Ed Sanders, and more also appear on the album, which boasts musical interpretations of poems from Ginsberg’s 1971 book; some tracks feature the late poet reciting his works accompanied by the new music.
“In 1965, Ginsberg began planning an ambitious project, a book of thematically connected poems, a collection that ‘discovered’ America in poetry similar to the way Kerouac’s On the Road had explored the country in prose,” Michael Schumacher writes in his introduction to The Fall of America Journals 1965-1971. “The Vietnam War would be a constant presence overhanging Ginsberg’s travel writings like a darkening shadow affecting daily life in the country. It would be a study of contrasts: natural beauty slammed up against an ugliness that rose out of the tensions of violence. The public’s polarized dialogue over Vietnam and, earlier in the decade, the civil rights movement, convinced Ginsberg that America was teetering on the precipice of a fall.”
Tracklist:
1. Scanner - Elegy for Neal Cassady (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (4:18)
2. The Handsome Family - Hiway Poesy Painted Desert to Albuquerque (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (5:16)
3. Shintaro Sakamoto - Manhattan Thirties Flash (3:43)
4. Lee Ranaldo; Thurston Moore - Hum Bom! (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (4:02)
5. Aliah Rosenthal - War Profit Litany (1:42)
6. Ed Sanders - Memory Garden (4:27)
7. Mickey Hart - Drones Du Jour (First Party at Kesey's with Hell's Angels) (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (1:23)
8. Ethereal_Interface - An Open Window On Chicago (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (4:22)
9. Howie B; Gavin Friday - Death On All Fronts (Ameirca Is Falling) (4:00)
10. Disco Pusher - A Prophecy (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (3:28)
11. Kaya Project - Wales Visitation (5:55)
12. Angélique Kidjo - Uluru Song (2:33)
13. Bill Frisell - Over Laramie (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (1:20)
14. Andrew Bird - Easter Sunday (3:42)
15. Devendra Banhart - Milarepa Taste (2:03)
16. Yo La Tengo - Bayonne Entering NYC (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (8:14)
17. The Good Ones (Rwanda) - Falling Asleep In America (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (1:17)
18. Steven Taylor - Continuation of A Long Poem Of These States (2:05)
19. Lang Lee - Pain On All Fronts (feat. Allen Ginsberg) (5:36)
20. Social Animals - Falling Asleep in America (Roses Smell Sweet) (2:26)