Complete 20 tracks and liner notes booklet with poems.
Includes unlimited streaming of Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$13.98USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
The track listing for the vinyl is as follows:
Side A
1) Scanner - Elegy for Neal Cassady
2) Shintaro Sakamoto - Manhattan Thirties Flash
3) Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo - Hum Bom
4) Ed Sanders (The Fugs) - Memory Gardens
5) Mickey Hart - First Party at Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels (Drones Du Jour)
6) Howie B with Gavin Friday - Death On All Fronts (America is Falling)
7) Disco Pusher - A Prophecy
Side B
1) Angélique Kidjo - Uluru Song
2) Bill Frisell - Over Laramie
3) Andrew Bird - Easter Sunday
4) Devendra Banhart - Milarepa Taste
5) Yo La Tengo - Bayonne Entering N.Y.C.
6) Lang Lee - Pain on All Fronts
Includes unlimited streaming of Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
$19.98USDor more
about
It’s interesting how a city can retain its shape and style throughout the decades while it goes through changes in an imperceptible way. The Chicago Allen wrote about looks and feels so much like the Chicago I know and live in today. Starting with “Midwinter night” and then name dropping “Clark and Halstead,” how many midwinter nights have I known and felt so deeply in this city? But the poem is more than just feeling the vibe of Chicago (as we all know Allen hits us in the myriad realms). I think of how he proclaims,
“Is this tiny city the best we can do?
These tiny reptilian towers
so proud of their Executives”
In those lines there is the hope for a different kind of America than the weird American Experiment he knew and we know all too well. He calls the towers tiny. The towers that famous European architects crafted after the city burned down. It’s an odd thing to say but one that begs for a new way of being. I chose this poem because Chicago is my home but also because this poem, written in 1967 feels like it almost could have been written today. It hums science fiction electric, aware of the emergent technology of the moment and the invading politics of the day.
(Sara Goodman of ethereal_interface)
lyrics
An Open Window on Chicago
Midwinter night,
Clark & Halstead brushed with this week’s snow grill lights blinking at
the corner
decades ago
Smokestack poked above roofs & watertower
standing still above the blue
lamped boulevards,
sky blacker than th’ east
for all the steel smoke
settled in heaven from South.
Downtown—like Batman’s Gotham City
battleshipped with Lights,
towers winking under clouds,
police cars blinking on Avenues,
space above city misted w/fine soot
cars crawling past redlites down Avenue,
exuding white wintersmoke—
Eat Eat said the sign, so I went in the Spanish Diner
The girl at the counter, whose yellow Bouffant roots
grew black over her pinch’d face, spooned her coffee with knuckles
puncture-marked,
whose midnight wrists had needletracks,
scars inside her arms:
“Wanna go get a Hotel Room with me?”
The Heroin Whore
thirty years ago come haunting Chicago’s midnite streets,
me come here so late with my beard!
Corner Grill-lights blink, police car turned
& took away its load of bum to jail,
black uniforms patrolling streets
where suffering
lifts a hand palsied by Parkinson’s Disease
to beg a cigarette.
The psychiatrist came visiting this Hotel 12th floor—
Where does the Anger come from?
Outside! Radio messages, images on Television,
Electric Networks spread
fear of murder on the streets—
“Communications Media”
inflict the Vietnam War & its anxiety on every private skin
in hotel room or bus—
Sitting, meditating quietly on Great Space outside—
Bleep Bleep dit dat dit radio on, Television
murmuring, bombshells crash on flesh
his flesh my flesh all the same.—
The Dakini in the hotel room turns in her sleep
while War news flashes thru Aether—
Shouts at streetcorners as bums
crawl in the metal policevan.
And there’s a tiny church in middle Chicago
with its black spike to the black air
And there’s the new Utensil Towers round on horizon.
And there’s red glow of Central Neon
on hushed building walls at 4 A.M.,
And there’s proud Lights & Towers of Man’s Central City
looking pathetic at 4 A.M., traveler passing through,
staring outa hotel window under Heaven—
Is this tiny city the best we can do?
These tiny reptilian towers
so proud of their Executives
they haveta build a big sign in middle downtown to Advertise
old Connor’s Insurance sign fading on brick building side—
Snow on deserted roofs & parkinglots—
Hog Butcher to the World!?
Taxi-Harmonious Modernity grown rusty-old—
The prettiness of Existence! To sit at the window
& moan over Chicago’s stone & brick
lifting itself vertical tenderly,
hanging from the sky.
Elbow on windowsill,
I lean and muse, taller than any building here
Steam from my head
wafting into the smog
Elevators running up & down my leg
Couples copulating in hotelroom beds in my belly
& bearing children in my heart,
Eyes shining like warning-tower Lights,
Hair hanging down like a black cloud—
Close your eyes on Chicago and be God,
all Chicago is, is what you see—
That row of lights Finance Building
sleeping on its bottom floors,
Watchman stirring
paper coffee cups by bronzed glass doors—
and under the bridge, brown water
floats great turds of ice beside buildings’ feet
in windy metropolis waiting for a Bomb.
January 8, 1967
(Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers)
Renowned poet, world traveler, spiritual seeker, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human and civil
rights, photographer and songwriter, political gadfly, teacher and co-founder of a poetics school. Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) defied simple classification.
Ginsberg parlayed his fame and network of connections into a modestly successful career in music....more
supported by 43 fans who also own “An Open Window on Chicago”
Me and my friend used to go on drives all the time, and a lot of the time i asked what he was playing, and a majority of the songs were from Yo La Tengo. And since i went and listened to And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out i was fan. Never thought i’d buy one of their records for myself. violetstain
supported by 42 fans who also own “An Open Window on Chicago”
Magic in its purest form. I love Floating Points, I love Pharoah Sanders, I love The London Symphony Orchestra. It's a match made in heaven, and the result is absolutely gorgeous. I have loved this record since its release, and realized I don't own it for some reason. So its time to change that. 9.5/10 honestly could become a 10/10 on an indepth vinyl relisten. angrypizza98
This album by Kenyan electronic producer rPH and poet Kins of Spade reflects on the impact of religion in their lives and society. Bandcamp New & Notable May 12, 2023
supported by 36 fans who also own “An Open Window on Chicago”
Sonic Youth is one of those bands where you easily run out of superlatives to describe what they created. This could've easily come off as a cynical cash-grab by a band that had broken up 11 years prior to the release of this record, but that's not what this is. Some of my favourite Sonic Youth instrumentals. sentient meat
