Twenty years ago, the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street was a very different place. Given that there were no 'specialist' record shops to speak of in Guildford, and certainly none in Woking, this was the nearest or most convenient place I could go to find records that were well off the mainstream. I remember it as an expansive cavern with rack after rack in every genre. Now it's a tourist trap selling chart hits, blockbuster DVDs and PlayStation peripherals at highly elevated prices.
The Virgin Megastore in 1985 or '86 was where I bought this record, and a few like it. I suppose I started with Laurie Anderson, and via her found William Burroughs, and then the rest of the NYC scene: Ginsberg (also via Dylan, of course), Patti Smith's spoken word stuff, and John Giorno. All these Giorno Poetry Systems records were imports, and you had pay handsomely for them: £7.99 in this case, which was a lot of money then. (Sorry, I know I've been going on about money a lot recently — I'll stop now.)
The highlights of this album turned out to be Frank Zappa reading Burroughs — Frank's deep voice and droll delivery is rare in matching up to Burroughs own readings, and Jeremy and I could imitate every phrase of The Talking Asshole, including the bit where he trips over his words — and Allen Ginsberg's beautiful Father Death Blues. A few years before he died, Ginsberg was interviewed by Jeremy Isaacs on BBC2, and at the end he performed this, accompanying himself on an old harmonium. Memory can't be trusted, but memory tells me it was an even better version. [Later: ah, hooray, it's on YouTube.]
Details of this album as part of the Giorno Poetry Systems discography
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