Mickey Hart feat Allen Ginsberg - First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels / Drones Du Jour

from Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute by Various Artists

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Complete 20 tracks and liner notes booklet with poems.

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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

$19.98 USD or more

about

While there was some crossover between the Beats and the Hippies, nothing and no one connected the cultures to the extent that Ken Kesey did.

He was an undeniable literary force and took a lot of the ideas that were cultivated by the beats and brought them out into the real world. He made that struggle for complete and total freedom a tangible force.
I chose to compose a score to ""First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels,” because of that connection and because that’s the intersection where I first crossed paths with Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and the beat community at large.

I was struck by the honest realism of this poem. While most people tend to reflect the brightness of the era, Ginsberg didn’t shy away from the darkness. He writes the scene in all its complexity, the busts of excitements and Dionysian excesses as well as darker images, such as the sculpture of the hanged man.
He forces us to recognize the children sleeping in the bed and the police cars parked outside, red lights revolving in the trees.

Mickey Hart, January 2021

lyrics

First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels

Cool black night thru the redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers

credits

from Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute, released February 5, 2021
Allen Ginsberg - Voice (Recorded Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor Michigan, October 15, 1969)
Mickey Hart - Drone / The Beam

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Allen Ginsberg New York, New York

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

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