Additional Information

Further documentation of the same Allen Ginsberg performance as in Tapes 140 and 141. Begins with Ginsberg mid-song - with what could be another William Blake poem set to music - ending after a minute. Ginsberg checks that the audience can hear the guitars (‘is Vic audible?’) and then goes into ‘Broken Bone Blues,’ lasting until around 6 minutes in and followed by ‘Prayer Blues’ which lasts until 14 minutes in. After this, Ginsberg puts his hands together in a praying gesture and nods to both of the guitarists, before going straight into a reading in which the repeated refrain is the word ‘Hopeless.’ The poem dwells on individuals’ hopelessness in the face of forces beyond their control and mentions ‘the Third Eye system incorporated.’ This lasts until about 18 and a half minutes in, after which he reads ‘Return to the Country for a Brief Visit,’ a meditation on memory, wilderness and political conspiracy, lasting until the 25th minute. He then introduces another song called ‘Everybody Sing’ but seems to change his mind and instead performs a number about smoking with the words ‘don’t smoke don’t smoke’ repeated throughout. After this, he talks about not having rehearsed with the guitarists and reads another poem called ‘Washington, Indo-China, Peace, Protest, Mobilisation,’ written on May 9th 1970. He follows this with two haikus. The camera work is fairly continuous as with the previous two films. The tape ends part way through the second haiku. The poem starts with the line ‘hot roach’, with Ginsberg miming the action of holding in a take from a joint, after which there is an elongated pause, with the camera zooming in on his face. The image freezes on Ginsberg holding in the imaginary take and the tape ends.