A Howl that went unheard for over 50 years
February 15, 2008 12:11 PM Subscribe
For more than 50 years, it was believed that the first recording Allen Ginsberg made of Howl was in Berkeley in March 1956. Now, an earlier recording – made on Valentine's Day 1956 at Reed College, Portland, Oregon – has been found. Reed have made it – along with seven other poems Ginsberg read the same night – available here. (Click on "Allen Ginsberg reads ..." for drop down menu; apologies for crappy quicktime interface.)
Hang on, what happened to all my tags? I swear they were there when I posted ... Will try and add them in again, sorry about that.
posted by Len at 12:56 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by Len at 12:56 PM on February 15, 2008
A Howl that still goes unheard.
Can't get it to play in either Firefox or Safari.
Crappy quicktime interface indeed.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:25 PM on February 15, 2008
Can't get it to play in either Firefox or Safari.
Crappy quicktime interface indeed.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:25 PM on February 15, 2008
It would be really swell if someone would download the files and upload them in a more user-friendly environment.
(Please and thank-you.)
posted by Sys Rq at 1:40 PM on February 15, 2008
(Please and thank-you.)
posted by Sys Rq at 1:40 PM on February 15, 2008
Well, the direct link to the unedited version is this. It launches QT Player just fine, but all you get is an eternal "configuring" message.
I'm thinking it's their server that's the problem.
Trying to download the file to disc just give me a "File not found" error. Go figure.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:51 PM on February 15, 2008
I'm thinking it's their server that's the problem.
Trying to download the file to disc just give me a "File not found" error. Go figure.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:51 PM on February 15, 2008
Well, the direct link to the unedited version is this. It launches QT Player just fine, but all you get is an eternal "configuring" message.
I'm thinking it's their server that's the problem.
Trying to download the file to disc just give me a "File not found" error. Go figure.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:51 PM on February 15, 2008
I'm thinking it's their server that's the problem.
Trying to download the file to disc just give me a "File not found" error. Go figure.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:51 PM on February 15, 2008
Slightly OT: Reed has always had a slight bias toward Apple / Macintosh formats. Maybe because Steve Jobs dropped out of the college in the 70's and has always been a generous donor. I graduated a year too early to get a free mac — it would have made typing up my thesis a heck of a lot easier
posted by Araucaria at 1:56 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by Araucaria at 1:56 PM on February 15, 2008
I had no problem whatsoever with any part of that site. kwitchyerbitchin'
posted by Rumple at 2:16 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by Rumple at 2:16 PM on February 15, 2008
Well it didn't work for me either so kwitchyerbitchinaboutmahbitchin'
posted by phearlez at 2:51 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by phearlez at 2:51 PM on February 15, 2008
I
An angelheaded sysadmin is scattering semen freely to whomever clicks on the weblink looking for an angry fix!
II
Moloch eats the QuickTime streams. Despairs!
III
The Internet is with you in Rockland.
posted by mistersquid at 3:01 PM on February 15, 2008
An angelheaded sysadmin is scattering semen freely to whomever clicks on the weblink looking for an angry fix!
II
Moloch eats the QuickTime streams. Despairs!
III
The Internet is with you in Rockland.
posted by mistersquid at 3:01 PM on February 15, 2008
MATHOWLIE
For Cortexamyn
I
I saw the best minds of mefi generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
clicking themselves through the blue pages at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who affluent and smug and middle-class and high sat
up writing in the moleskine blackness of
momma’s basement floating across the streets of suburbs
contemplating beans,
who bared their brains to MeTa under the Grey and
saw Steve Colbert’s retorts recycled on AskeMe’s
green, deleted,
who passed through universities with radiant blue eyes
hallucinating Apple and Prius tragedy
among the snarkers of blogs,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
hacking obscene odes on the facebooks of the
school,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear whacking
their monkey to Manga and listening
to Neutral Milk Hotel,
who got busted by their fellow nerds returning from
Portland with mp3’s of Britney in their Zune ,
who spat fire at meetups or drank lattes in
Mecha, banned, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with faves, with fugs, with jrun errors, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward Poland
Canada & Portugal, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between …
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to blue to Bligh to the BoingBoing,
last battalion of ironic conversationalists writing
down the planes off iphones off conveyors
off Obama State out of the tubes,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in italic recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Banhammer cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen 404 leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of flickr
fuck all,
suffering Eastern croissants and NSFW bone-grind-
ings and migraines of square-eyed snark-with-
drawal in Network's clique furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
flameout yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who sequestered carbon in hybrids hybrids hybrids racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in Vermont’s
night,
who studied Corticular St. Jess of of the Matt telep-
athy and ban kabbalah because the gray in-
stinctively vibrated at their fingers at work,
who loned it through the stalls of macworld seeking vis-
ionary lifehack angels who were visionary lifehack
angels,
who thought they were only mad when NickySkye
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Madam of Ju
Ju Jive on the impulse of winter meepzorp street
light Tuscan towns,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through myfaves
seeking taz or sex or Migs, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took shit
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of overthought leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared with miko investigating Givewell boards
with big pacifist
eyes sexism in their dark flags and ethereal incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their funfur protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Bushism,
who distributed favorites in Union
Square typing and undressing while the sirens
of moderation wailed them down, and wailed
down flags, and the backchannel fairies also
wailed,
who spoke down trying in white gymnasiums nekkid
and trembling before the machinery of the
arcives,
who bit detectives in the neck and LOLed with delight
in pyjamas for courageous pecking but their
own wild blogging pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and page-
views,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by cyber
motorcyclists, and typed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atavar and chatroom
love . . . . . . .
posted by Rumple at 4:12 PM on February 15, 2008 [135 favorites] tl;dr
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:43 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:43 PM on February 15, 2008
Great post, Len! I'll take this opportunity to pimp my own "Howl" post from October. I think they go well together.
posted by amyms at 5:50 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by amyms at 5:50 PM on February 15, 2008
Oh, now Rumple, you shut the fuck up you did not just do that girl.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 6:49 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by Turtles all the way down at 6:49 PM on February 15, 2008
while we're in the business of pimping our own howls...
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:10 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:10 PM on February 15, 2008
God. Damn.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:29 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by middleclasstool at 8:29 PM on February 15, 2008
Wow. This reminds me of my first "win" on MetaFilter. (Scroll up for the FPP, down for the win.)
Thanks, peacay!
posted by trip and a half at 9:39 PM on February 15, 2008
Thanks, peacay!
posted by trip and a half at 9:39 PM on February 15, 2008
That's not just good - that's all kinds of good. Thanks, rumple, for your brilliance.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:38 PM on February 15, 2008
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:38 PM on February 15, 2008
Hey, I'm a Reedie. On Wednesday (the 52nd anniversary of the recordings) a professor here gave a reading of A Supermarket in California, Howl, and A Footnote to Howl, preceded by a few snippets of the recordings. Thanks for the link - I hadn't seen that the full recordings were online.
The tape was found last year by someone doing research in the library archives, and apparently it was labeled something like "Snyder/Ginsberg 1956 - Tape 2". No one knew what had happened to Tape 1 or what was on it (more Ginsberg? Snyder? oh the suspense!) until Wednesday morning when an alum walked into the archive with a cassette copy of Tape 1. It's Snyder. I hope they eventually release everything online. Or at least let me rip a copy from the archive.
It's odd to realize that I'm sitting right here, about two hundred yards away from where these recordings were made all those years ago. Makes me hope that people will give a shit about what I do here in college 52 years from now.
PS: Any other Reedie MeFites about?
posted by anarcation at 3:33 AM on February 16, 2008
The tape was found last year by someone doing research in the library archives, and apparently it was labeled something like "Snyder/Ginsberg 1956 - Tape 2". No one knew what had happened to Tape 1 or what was on it (more Ginsberg? Snyder? oh the suspense!) until Wednesday morning when an alum walked into the archive with a cassette copy of Tape 1. It's Snyder. I hope they eventually release everything online. Or at least let me rip a copy from the archive.
It's odd to realize that I'm sitting right here, about two hundred yards away from where these recordings were made all those years ago. Makes me hope that people will give a shit about what I do here in college 52 years from now.
PS: Any other Reedie MeFites about?
posted by anarcation at 3:33 AM on February 16, 2008
I love the Beats. They taught me to live with a blend of utopianism and utter hopelessness, and a love for the word as art. I'm pretty damn impressed by what Rumple just did there, too.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:48 AM on February 16, 2008
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:48 AM on February 16, 2008
MetaFilter: a blend of utopianism and utter hopelessness.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:29 PM on February 16, 2008
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:29 PM on February 16, 2008
I'm a Reedie, class of 82. Or rather, I'm an "attrit." I left Reed after three years and eventually transferred to UC Berkeley, thereby (as the old joke has it) raising the GPA at both schools.
posted by ottereroticist at 10:07 PM on February 19, 2008
posted by ottereroticist at 10:07 PM on February 19, 2008
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