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Handsome Family feat. Allen Ginsberg - Hiway Poesy Painted Desert to Albuquerque

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

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    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
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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

“The feeling of driving through the desert at night really struck me. Memories going back to childhood, growing up in west TX. Once I found the tempo of Allen’s voice, the timing just fell into place. And the singing bit formed the perfect B section.”
- Brett Sparks September 3rd, 2020

All proceeds from the sale of this track will be donated to HeadCount.org promoting voter registration and participation in democracy through the power of music. It is part of our tribute project celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-197” New tracks based on these poems will be added every two weeks.

lyrics

from Hiway Poesy L.A. to Wichita

"PAINTED DESERT,
petrified forest
Leslie Howard’s scratchy ’30s image
… eating jurassic steak
Petroglyphs over there the Man in the Moon,
the guy with four fingers …
over there, this is the sun, with two spikes out the North,
two spikes South, two spikes ray East & West

Milky way over here, the Moon,
… and all the animal tentacles
Nebula spiraled “… Roger 1943”
And I hit Julius for eating his avocado cheese sandwich too fast.

Gas flares, oil refinery night smoke,
high aluminum tubes winking red lights
over space ship runways
petrochemical witches’ blood boiling underground—
“Looks like they’re getten ready to go to Mars.”
Approaching Thoreau—
Fort Wingate Army Depot entrance—
and there’s the Continental Divide.
Anti Vietnam War Demonstrator soldiers sentenced
For Contempt of President:
Hard Labor—
Learn thyself in Shell Refinery’s Oil Storage
Seaboard Rackets,

Lying back on the car seat,
eyelids heavy,
legs spread leaned against the table,
Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds rose,
“La illaba el (lill) Allah bu”
Finally bored,
Over a hill, singing Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram
Albuquerque Sparkling blue brilliant
more diamonds & pearls of electricity
running out of power-plants than ever heard of
Turkey or Israel—
intense endless iridescence on black
velvet desert—
Ah what a marvel
orange blue Neon Circling itself Solar System’d
Speed Wash Texaco 19¢ Famous Hamburgers
Lion House Italian Village Pizza ah!
radio warbles Electronic noise
echo chamber vibrations—
Albuquerque streets’ fantastic Neon Stars
collapsing to bright red blinks
Satellite Globes plunging their
tiny lamps in and out—
the eyeball.
* * * *
Space stretching North dotted with silver gastanks
to Sandia Range
Hitchhiking student
supported by National Defense Fund
with his black horn rimmed glasses,
thin blond hair,
“If your country calls you, would you go?”
“If my country drafted me …
then I would go.”
Selfish young american always interested in his own skin
—and blue car speeding along the highway
sticker on back
“I’m proud I’m an American”
right front seat, a 10 gallon hat
driver a fat car salesman—
Sitting icy tipped
distant earth peaks over Hilltops
& here’s an ugly little oasis, used car tractors
fenced off by barbed wire
below roadside—
Evenings cool clear, sharp
brilliant blue stars—
Just what we needed, State Penitentiary!

Two miles off into the brown furze rolling
East of the highway
“This is Ford Country what are you driving?” Be a Ford dealer?

Great snow meadows roof Sangre De Cristo
clouds, North, dipping misty rivulet tails of pointy fog.
………………………………………………………
It’s a hard question …
which would you rescue, your mother-in-law
or the last text of Shakespeare?”

January 28- 29, 1966

Courtesy Harper Collins Publishers / City Lights Publishers

credits

from Allen Ginsberg​’​s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute, track released October 2, 2020
Brett Sparks: Guitar, Electric Piano, Saw
Alex McMahon: Pedal Steel guitar
Rennie Sparks: Percussion
Reading by Allen Ginsberg, ca 1971 Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Ginsberg Collection. Special thanks, Barry Miles
Mastered - Scott Petito at Scott Petito Productions
Published by May King Poetry Music & Handsome Family Music administered by Music of Virtual

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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.
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