Allen Ginsberg Live in London is a DVD film of Allen Ginsberg reading his poetry, singing songs and performing a Tibetan meditation live on stage in London on Thursday 19 October 1995, at megatripolis club-night, at Heaven nightclub, London.
Filmed and edited by Steve Teers, of Diva Pictures, the film was recorded as part of an archive record for 'megatripolis', the underground psychedelic club-night which ran at Heaven nightclub from 1993 to 1996. The DVD sees Ginsberg reading a selection of his work from the 1970s White Shroud Poems era to 80's Cosmopolitan Greetings and 90's new and unpublished poems. Ginsberg was on stage for almost an hour, performing under theatrical lighting in front of about 1000 people. Dressed in blue shirt, red braces and slacks, Ginsberg was reading on stage at a single microphone with assistance from poet Tom Pickard for the duration of the performance, also occasionally playing harmonium. He was initially introduced by Lee Harris who had also booked him for the event. Ginsberg performed William Blake accompanying himself on the harmonium as a singalong finale.
This was Ginsberg's last public stage appearance in the United Kingdom.
The film premiered in Covent Garden, London in June 2005, and was later released on DVD, officially released with the permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd.
The film has been shown at numerous arts festivals. It was shown at a 50th anniversary celebration of "Howl", Ginsberg's iconic protest poem on 1 November 2006 in Bloomsbury, London, where live readings from Adrian Mitchell, Michael Horovitz and Aidan Dun also took place along with a screening of Wholly Communion, Peter Whitehead's famous film of the 1965 Royal Albert Hall poet meet.
The DVD film was released initially through major stores and remains available through amazon and its website. It is a fine alternative tribute to Ginsberg's mastery of performance poetry.
Famous quotes containing the words allen ginsberg, allen, ginsberg, live and/or london:
“who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“White man tells me—hunh—
Damn yo’ soul;
White man tells me—hunh—
Damn yo’ soul;
Got no need, bebby,
To be tole.”
—Sterling Allen Brown (b. 1901)
“All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks,
bodies, consciousness, shoe, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—‘Paranoia’ into hospitals.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“We try to go back. You know I’ll probably die just a few miles from where I drew my first breath. That would have seemed like a horrible prospect to me, back when I was young and ambitious and gonna set the world on fire. But there’s comfort in knowing you’re gonna go full circle, end up where you started out. I’ve said before that I want to live my last days where folks know when you’re sick and care when you die.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)