Today, Kramer shares his brand new LP, ‘Words & Music, Book One’, via Shimmy-Disc/Joyful Noise Recordings. Alongside the release, he has shares the album’s focus track, ‘At Apollinaire’s Grave’ with words by Allen Ginsberg, music by Kramer, and a music video by Ryan & Debbie Hover.

Each track on the LP features ambient music composed by Kramer and described by him as “…liquid foundations for the words to float upon. The music must never come between the listener, and the words. The words come first”.

“The words are theirs. The music is mine. Together, they’re yours.”

Speaking of ‘At Apollinaire’s Grave’, Kramer wrote:
“‘At Apollinaire’s Grave’ has always been one of my favorite poems by Allen Ginsberg. I’d seen/heard him read it at St Marks Church more than once in the 1980’s (including one time
in particular, when Gregory Corso was heckling him from the crowd), but I had never heard this Library of Congress recording of him reading it until Michael Minzer sent it to me. When Allen and I were working together at Noise New York in 1987 on a song called ‘Dear M’, I had told him that I’d wanted to compose music for his ode to Apollinaire, but we’d just never got around to it, as our respective schedules just never coincided. He was their hardest working poet on earth, always accessible to any young writer or poet, looking for guidance. And now he is gone. But his words will never die, and the gentle thunder of his voice rings eternal. Few poets wielded the kind of power Allen possessed. He was Zeus tossing words of lightning down from Olympus, like so many raindrops. I was lucky enough to have been caught up in a few of those storms, at least for a little while.

This piece from my ‘Words & Music, Book One’ LP has been in-the-making for almost 40 years. I hope it speaks to you, just as Allen always spoke to me…with Love”.

He continued, writing about the new record and it’s concept:
“John Giorno died in 2019, but with his Dial-a-Poem Poets project, he kept poetry alive like nobody’s business. His Foundation has since resurrected the archive online so that anyone can listen to his seemingly never-ending treasure trove of historical audio. I was lucky enough to have spent some time with him in the early 1980’s when I was a member of The Fugs, and I often found myself surrounded by those whom Allen Ginsberg called, “..the greatest minds of my generation”. Giorno felt it was important to juxtapose the works of well-known poets beside lesser-known ones, and Ginsberg and the other gods of that scene were in full agreement. Promoting the works of writers whose work they felt strongly about was a big part of those Dial-a-Poem poetry LPs, and it’s a big part of my own decision to launch this series.

It all began with a commission from Michael Minzer for me to compose music for Gregory Corso’s ‘Army.’ Once I’d put music beneath that extraordinary voice, I simply couldn’t stop.

With Minzer’s help, I secured the rights to one of my favorites of Allen Ginsberg’s poems, ‘At Apollinaire’s Grave’, and set that to music, as well. I asked Terry Southern’s son Nile if he would contribute something from his father’s archives, and he enthusiastically agreed. Then I invited some of my favorite living writers, both young and old, to contribute recordings of their own. I think the Dead would have approved.

Ed Sanders (who’d ushered me into that scene) once told me that when he came to NYC, it was easy to go into a cafe or to St Marks Church and hear Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg, Snyder, Waldman and all the greats, reading their poetry. He said that even if you were just “a nobody, like I was”, you could just walk right up to them and start a conversation. They were totally accessible. So I was shocked when Sanders went on to tell me he didn’t approach any of them, not even once, til he’d been going to their readings for nearly ten years.

“For almost a decade, I went to every reading, every lecture, every panel discussion. But I never went near them. Not even once”, Sanders said. “For ten years, all I did, was LISTEN.”.

It took me four decades since I first listened to ‘Big Ego,’ the Dial-A-Poem double-LP I’d found so long ago in the $2 bin of a Woodstock used record shop, but … better late than never. I finally made ‘Words & Music, Book One’.

The words are theirs. The music is mine. Together, they’re yours. And they’re on vinyl, where they belong.

One last thing; Following John Giorno’s trailblazing work to preserve the words and voices and sounds of the world’s greatest poets, there was another man whose love of the spoken word led him to devote huge swaths of his own life to creating audio works that brought these great poets and their words to a wider audience, via music; my dear friend Hal Willner, who died of Covid-19 in early 2020, when the pandemic was only just starting to look ugly.

Hal was one of the greatest record producers of his generation, and he was (and IS) the living link between Giorno and his Dial-a-Poem Poets, myself, and this series of vinyl LP’s I call ‘Words & Music’. This debut LP in the series is dedicated to him. To Hal. In Loving Memory.

I’m working on Book Two”.

PRE-ORDER here!

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