ALLEN GINSBERG / VARIOUS ARTISTS – Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall Of America – CD – AGR-005

Various artists musically interpret poems from The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971 on this 50th Anniversary Tribute to Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America. Featuring Yo La Tengo, Shintaro Sakamoto, Angelique Kidjo, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Devendra Banhart, Bill Frisell, Andrew Bird and more.

Fall of America Poems published by City Lights Books in San Francisco, covers the years 1965- 1971 when Allen is crisscrossing the country, exploring a system of composition by narrating into the portable reel to reel Uher that Bob Dylan had gifted him. In 1965, Ginsberg began planning an ambitious project, a book of thematically connected poems, a collection that “discovered” America in poetry similar to the way Kerouac’ s On the Road had explored the country in prose. The Vietnam War would be a constant presence overhanging Ginsberg’s travel writings like a darkening shadow affecting daily life in the country. It would be a study of contrasts: natural beauty slammed up against an ugliness that rose out of the tensions of violence. The public’ s polarized dialogue over Vietnam and, earlier in the decade, the civil”.

Michael Schumacher, from introduction to The Fall of America Journals 1965-1971

Rough Trade