Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all



Two Selections from Ed Sander's bio in verse of Allen Ginsberg:

The Record Plant Sessions

This led to some memorable recording sessions beginning on November 9, 1971 at the Record Plant in NYC

Dylan brought a pal from woodstock with him the singer/guitarist Happy Traum also in on the session were Jon Sholle, David Amram, Ginsberg, and a number of poets including Gregory Corso, the Russian bard Andrei Voznesensky, and others

The filmmaker Barbara Rubin was on hand
and I was there too
my book on the Manson group, the family, had just been published

I remember someone was playing on a milk crate with wires stretched across it like a psychedelic psaltery.

There was a second session on November 17 Allen improvised an early version of "CIA Dope Calypso"
with Dylan on guitar

There were other tunes, including "going to san diego,"
an anthem urging
everybody to go to san diego
and protest Richard Nixon
(after Kent State and the secret bombing of Cambodia) --san diego was at that time the site of the Republican Convention though later it was moved to Miami Beach

They also recorded Allen's "September on Jessore Road"
which he was just putting in final form
in these temporary moments
in the quick flow of the Seventies

Early 1982

At Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland studio
on 8th St. in the Village
the Clash were recording

Ginsberg spent a few days with them
helped them write three or four tunes
His suggestions they tested
on empty tracks
to gauge their floow

The bard loved the ambience of
successful rockers
and couldn't resist the urge to teach
bringing Gregory Corso's newest book for instance,
and the City Lights classic Clean Asshole Poems by
Petere Orlovsky.

The album was called Combat Rock
and the bard, not always so modest
did not ask for
publishing royalties on the
tunes he helped doctor.