Name: Allen Ginsberg on Letterman, June 10, 1982
Uploaded: 2017-03-27T15:46:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Allen Ginsberg on Letterman, June 10, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Allen Ginsberg on Letterman, June 10, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-27. Transcript available.

my thanks to the folks who just scurried in here and cleaned up we have a fine
show for you tonight
alan ginsburg is going to join us in a moment or two also bud greenspan and
more do's and don'ts
with frank and fred uh oh and of course the bird lady from queens the woman she
actually has uh
actually has birds with her as i guess you would expect of a bird lady and she
does tonight we'll
look at her birds so um my first guest tonight is a great american poet who
came to the attention
of most americans back in 1957 when the epic poem howl was put on trial for obscenity
in san francisco
25 years later he is still exploring words and sounds his latest field of
activity being rock music
please welcome alan ginsburg
is this uh rock and roll music why don't you tell me of your involvement with
uh with that first of all
sir well i've been uh singing a mantras for a long time probably last time you
saw me on television i
was going om or ah and that extended itself to uh mama mama mama and that
extended itself to uh putting
blake to music and uh doing some tibetan style mantra chanting now let's get
back to the mantra or mantra
now what exactly are we dealing with there what does that do for a person when
you do that a measure of
the breath actually like uh uh so it's uh focus on breath despite the uh
amusement of the audience
yeah or with the amusement of the audience now or the amusement of the audience
of your own mind
bringing your awareness back to to something that's going on all the time
anyway for breath so that what
that does is forces you to concentrate on a function of your body and therefore
you you don't think of
other things is that the deal well you then your mind wonders but then you have
the possibility of
coming back to the place where you are here in the television studio with this
space this is meditation
is what we're talking about right yeah basically so it's a function of
meditation uh an outward sign
let us say okay and then this application toward rock and roll music uh i
interrupted you there i'm
sorry well poetry's always been on the breath anyway words are on the breath
music's on the breath when
you're singing uh language and ideas come out on the breath so they're impalpable
in the mind nonetheless
you are you can articulate them and make them rock and roll so to speak and
make rock and roll of
your philosophy philosophical thoughts but and now you're actually doing this
with other rock and roll
groups or you're just doing it in your living room was it well i did my in the
bathroom in the bathroom
begins in the bathroom has all great genius ideas but then it moves out and i
was working this year
earlier with the clash so i'm they have a new record out that i'm going to sum
up
mix some political verses with mantra actually gatte gatte paragatay parasamgatay
bodhi sva highest
perfect wisdom mantra so mick jones and joe strummer said more sanskrit they
wanted that sort of like
voice of god in the background on a rock and roll number this is very mystical
all of this isn't it
no more the actual voice so i mean it's actual so it's just real breath yeah
there was something i did
want to talk about there was one side mantra oh you did want to talk about yeah
this which we prepared
i don't know if you folks can see this uh let me hold it for you yeah uh i work
out in boulder
colorado at naropa institute which is a buddhist oriented meditation secular
school and this summer
march 23rd to july 23rd to august 1st we're going to have 25th anniversary
celebration of publication of
carowax on the road great novel 25 years ago published like a kind of literary
bombshell in
america did you ever read that no i didn't ah just a kid well okay what the
great thing about it was
that the sound was great just like mantra the the sound that he heard in his
ear was absolutely marvelous
so so it was a uh a line like going through the mexican border and coming up
into the u.s i saw a snowy
hair old bum on the roadside who had the prophetic word and that if any was
whoa so it's like one long
sentence with uh with a sort of basically compassionate theme as its uh
projection yeah now this this was
the beginning of an important time for america right well i think it began that
movement toward
recognition of an ecological fresh planet consciousness that has led to what
will be taking place this weekend
in new york the great un disarmament conference and a huge mass assembly of
people
i think in a few days from the day that we're talking there'll be uh maybe a
half million or a
million people out on the streets of new york in an anti-nuclear manifestation
which seems to be
approved of now finally even by the president now you're going to also be doing
something there
not unlike what you were doing earlier with the mantra and so forth i think i'm
going to
find a group let's tell you what let's pause here and uh you'll you'll explain
what you're going to
do when we return with uh alan ginsburg
thank you welcome back uh alan ginsburg is here you're going to sing for us
yeah uh and what is
this we're going to hear here this is a song called capital air which is about
national politics in a
blakey and mode blake being a 18th century poet prophet uh done in a sort of
punk new wave manner
byproduct of working with dylan and working with the buddhists and working in
meditation and at
the same time reading the newspapers and having my own imagination and you're
going to uh with the
aid and assistance okay terrific so anything else we need to say about this or
is that well i hope you
can hear the words dylan told me when you and so we should the sound man lady
should listen is always
mix the consonants so you can hear the consonants clearly that's dylan's advice
mix the voice above
the music okay there's a lot of punk musicians or rock musicians don't
understand because they're not
so interested in the words all right so we're always interested in that all
right should we do that yes
i don't like the government where i live i don't like dictatorship of the rich
i don't like bureaucrats telling me what to eat i don't like police dogs sniffing
around my feet
i don't like capitalists selling me gasoline coke
multinationals burning amazon trees to smoke
big corporations take over media mind i don't like the top of that is not a
rough in guatemala bank fine
i don't like kgb gulag concentration camp i don't like the maoist cambodian
death ban
15 million were killed by stalin's secretary of terror
he has killed our old red revolution forever
200 billion dollars inflates world war in united states every year and they're
asking for more
russia's got as much in tanks and laser planes
give or take 50 billion we can blow up everybody's brains
tyranny in turkey or korea 1980
i don't like right-wing death squad democracy
police stayed here at nicaragua yesterday
they said please come to keep the secret police all for me
no communism no capitalism yeah
everybody lying on both sides
yeah yeah yeah
the bloody iron curtain of american military power
is a mirror image of russia's red double tower
jesus christ was spotless but was crucified by the mom jesus christ
law and order herons hired soldiers did the job
well our power is fine but innocence has got no protection
the man who shot down lenin at a hero worshippers connection
tomorrow on the song is that the world has been a horrible fix
scientific industry
police in every country armed with tear gas and tv
secret matches everywhere bureaucratized for you and me
jurors and police together build a lower class reach
propaganda murder manipulate the upper class state
you can't tell the difference between the turkey and the provocateur
there's a feeling confused the government's in there for sure
aware aware wherever you are no fear
trust your heart don't ride your paranoia dear
breathe together with an ordinary mind
armed with humor need an open lighten whoa mankind
we'll be right back
uh...
hello i'm larry budd melman why am i laughing
because your continued patronage it's made melbourne bus lines
the most successful bus lines i've ever owned
melman ride my buses and keep me laughing