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96.
An open reel tape recording of Allen Ginsberg and Alexander Trocchi performing a routine from “The Naked Lunch”, as well as Ginsberg reading from “Nova Express”, chanting a Buddhist mantra, and reading 8 poems, the last of which is accompanied by “Sono-Montage”, an electronic tape piece by Rosemary Tonks.
Quarter inch tape on a 10.5-inch plastic spool. Duration 63.12; 7.5 ips. The recording was made at an evening event held at The Studio, Swiss Cottage, north London, on May 25, 1965, part of the Hampstead Festival of the Arts.
The first part runs for just over 6 minutes and features Ginsberg and Trocchi performing the ‘Bradley the Buyer’ routine from “The Naked Lunch”, a skit lapped up by the audience, with Trocchi playing it straight and Ginsberg hamming it up, his raspy drawl mimicking Burroughs (possibly the only recorded instance of Burroughs’ friends publicly reading a routine from his most famous work).
Ginsberg follows this with a reading from “Nova Express” (approx. 15.00), introduced by him as “an astronomical paraphrase of a sequence which was in Naked Lunch… and then repeated once more for a page and a half, chopped up and cut up to make a sort of a prose poem out of it, very concentrated and intense.”
The tape’s third part (approx. 6.00) features Ginsberg chanting “Om Ah Ra Pa Tsa Na Dhi” (also sung by him at Better Books six days before), which he introduces as “a concrete poem, a Tibetan mantra, taught me by a young girl from New York who had spent a long time with Tibetan monks in the Himalayas. The cymbals are bought in Times Square, the mantra is learned in Times Square.”
The fourth and final part, lasting 30 minutes or so, consists of Ginsberg reading eight poems in chronological order, beginning with “A Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour” (1948) and closing with “The End” (1960), the latter part of which is accompanied by Rosemary Tonks’s tape piece, “Sono-Montage” (just over 4 minutes). The other poems are: “An Atypical Affair”; “The Green Automobile”; “Love Poem on a Theme by Walt Whitman”; “Over Kansas”; “Fragment 1956”; and “An Old Poet in Peru”.
The evening was organised by Rosemary Tonks (the cut-glass tones of her “high tin English voice” can be heard briefly on the recording in response to a request from Ginsberg to turn up the house lights), and the promotional flyer (included here) announced it as “Constructions in Poetry and Sound with Kinetic Art”, including “works by Medalla, Salvadori, Takis, Camargo, Soto” (Signals gave the event a brief announcement in its seventh issue).
The flyer’s 10-line statement, presumably written by Tonks (its slightly fearsome tone reflects her reputation), begins: “We are not giving you Satie’s white music, the conformity of prepared piano, venerable jazz ossibuchi, or dead as mutton avant-gardisms watered down from la belle époque. We are offering you poems and sounds: modern poems enclosed in modern sound constructed in a laboratory from the texts, and arising out of them.”
The modern sound she refers to is the recording of a thudding heartbeat, processed with deeply aquatic reverb, as if from the depths of the seabed. Her tape piece pulsates rhythmically below Ginsberg’s somewhat drunken and melodramatic rendition of “The End” (and the audible amusement this elicits from the audience), its electronic beat sometimes appearing to put his timing off.
Titled “Sono-Montage”, Tonks’s tape composition had first aired two days earlier, billed as ‘a poetry reading with Electronic Sounds’, at the London Central School of Speech and Drama, an event attended by George MacBeth, who suggested Tonks produce a Radiophonic Workshop version for the BBC; the 30 minute programme that resulted was broadcast on June 21, 1966, edited and produced in part by Delia Derbyshire, whose friendship with Tonks was later fictionalised by Tonks in her novel, “The Bloater”.
It seems possible that this is the master tape, from which copies were edited, sold and distributed by John Cassidy and Fred Hunter (Intersound Recordings). Stanford University holds an edited copy (a typed label on the box states Intersound & Living Discs), and its duration is about 16 minutes shorter than the tape here and doesn’t include four of the eight poems read by Ginsberg.
Edited tapes were made available by Intersound almost immediately after the event, as referred to in a Typed Letter Signed from Lee Harwood to Fred Hunter, dated May 30 (also included here): “could I have 2 copies of the reading at 71/2ips. And yes would very much like the Trocchi/Ginsberg reading as well as Ginsberg’s solo angelflight”, before adding, somewhat cryptically: “& ref the unbelievable Tonks - not a word will I breath [sic] in that direction - not never.” Harwood, whose own recordings were subsequently issued by Intersound Recordings on tape and by Stream Records on vinyl, continues: “expect I’ll see you at AG’s reading on Thursday I.C.A. Also Ferlinghetti at Better Books on Wednesday evening. As Lionel Kearns says - ‘Lee, you can’t wave a stick for readings these days.”
Just over a fortnight after the Hampstead evening, the Royal Albert Hall hosted the International Poetry Incarnation, an event inspired by Ginsberg’s visit to London and the biggest poetry reading ever held in Britain.
Tape digitised and transferred to CD; original box slightly worn, with handwritten notes, probably in Fred Hunter’s hand. Flyer worn and dampstained. Letter (approx. 143 words), signed “Lee”. Near Fine (together with hand-addressed envelope, postmarked 'London 31 May 1965'). Provenance: The Fred Hunter Archive.
