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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Robert Ashley ‎– "Wolfman" (Alga Marghen ‎– plana-A 20NMN.048) (2003)

Ok then, who invented Harsh Noise as entertainment?...I thought it was AMM,but turns out Robert Ashley, he of catatonic spoken word operas fame, beat them to it by a couple of years. The track "Wolfman (1964) could have been a early Merzbow out-take!? A fucked up mess of tape,voice and feedback that should have scared the living bejeezuz out of any Beatles fans.
Then he had a go at very early 'Ambient',with his 40 minute long tape collage "The Bottleman". This was the best part of 20 years before his dialogue operas for TV started taking shape.
The the late fifties and early sixties this was an extraordinary glance into an unimaginable musical,or non-musical future.
Now every fucker does this for home entertainment with their Granny on the effects table.

Tracklist:

1.The Fox (1957) electronic music and voice
characters adapted from a folk song by Burl Ives (5:15)

2.The Wolfman (1964) tape, voice and feedback
produced at the University of California at Davis by Composer-Performer Edition
first performed at Charlotte Moorman's "Festival of the Avant-Garde", New York, fall 1964 (18:10)

3.The Wolfman Tape (1964) tape-speed manipulation and mixes of many layers of "found" sounds
used as "sound environment" by Bob James for a jazz improvisation (ESP Records, 1965) (6:01)

4.The Bottleman (1960) tape composition with contact microphones, loudspeaker, vocal and other "found" sounds
composed for a George Manupelli film of the same title; single-projection version (43:30)

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Robert Ashley ‎– "Private Parts" (Lovely Music, Ltd. ‎– LML 1001) 1978

This is like listening to an out of body experience as described by a semi-catatonic Robert Ashley floating above the scene like a distant drone, recording and listening to everything thats happening, or not happening, beneath the clouds below.
This would later serve as the foundation for the composer’s seven-part televised opera 'Perfect Lives', and he mumbles at length the inner workings of two characters, a man and a woman, anonymous to us and probably also to each other. Words circling meaning like gliding albatross' at altitude but never arriving at a conclusion,which are always disappointing. What’s explored by these drawling monologues, seems to be everything that isn’t happening....an inversion that skulks and slithers among the shadows,remaining as elusive as a not-quite-remembered dream.The foundations, like life are built on emptiness but also its interesting just how riveting that emptiness can be.Emptiness can fill any hole.
Tracklist:

A1 The Park 21:32
B1 The Backyard 23:56

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Robert Ashley ‎– "Automatic Writing" (Lovely Music, Ltd. ‎– VR 1002) 1979

The only album I know of that uses Tourettes syndrome to compose music,involuntarily, or automatically as the title suggests.
Ashley used his own involuntary speech that results from his mild form of Tourette's Syndrome as one of the voices in the music. Ashley was rightly intrigued by his involuntary speech, and the idea of composing music that was unconscious;the unconscious verses the Conscious.It took five years apparently to get enough speech that he felt was truly involuntary,but with enough control so as to make the piece coherent.Satisfied that the recorded speech was unconscious enough ,this was then translated into French and performed alongside the recorded voice of Ashley.
In the background there seems to be the muffled music of a party in another room,which kind of suggests how Tourettes can put the sufferer outside of society.Not so much outsider music, but music about outsiders.
The two Bonus tracks are worth the price of admission alone.Taken from a couple of compilations that Ashley donated work to."Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" describes ambiguously consensual oral sex with the thousand-yard stare delivery of a trauma survivor. Which is...dare i say...a bit Rude!
Great,great,Stuff.

Tracklisting:

1.Automatic Writing (46:01)

Bonus tracks:
2.Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon (10:15)
3.She Was a Visitor (5:56)

DOWNLOAD automatically HERE!

Robert Ashley ‎– "In Sara, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Men And Women" (Cramps Records ‎– CRSLP 6103) 1974

A minimalist electronic exploration of the music and sound of Language, is I guess how yer average avant-gardist would explain this one away.

A member of the 'Sonic Arts Union',along with Alvin Lucier and others,Robert Ashley specialized in using dialogue as an instrument.Clearly an influence on Laurie Anderson.

Bob just keeps babbling on for the entire length of the album name-dropping various historical figures and frequently inserting words like "ironically" and "very titanically" against a backdrop of bubbling synths sounds.A great album to clear out parties!

I like most anything with weird talky bits in it,so as this is full to the brim of weird talky bits,so i must like it? If this came on at aparty in an attempt to get rid of me,it wouldn't work....i'd be there for a further 40 minutes,then drunkenly demand that we play "I Am Sitting In A Room" by Alvin Lucier; after that, i may leave,unless I had drifted into a coma by then,discovering inner space?

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