Giorno Poetry Systems
Due to an overwhelmingly exciting find, we're thrilled to shine some light on Giorno Poetry Systems, one of the most important imprints dedicated to the meeting of poetics, radical music, and technology. Featuring rare and important recordings by Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Diamanda Galás, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, and Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Charlie Morrow, Rene Ricard, Kathy Acker, Eileen Myles, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Coil, Einstürzende Neubauten, Swans, and a near countless number of others, we've managed to get our hands on a handful of original, sealed copies of more than half of the label's output issued between 1974 and 1989 - a number featuring covers by seminal artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring - this a rare chance to acquire a piece of history and embark upon an immersion into one of the most groundbreaking efforts that the 20th Century bore witness to.
Raspberry / Pornographic Poem
** Original copies of this rarity. Few copies available, still sealed ** John Giorno’s first album, self-released in an edition of 700 copies, features a dozen or so fellow luminaries from the New York avant-garde. Among these are Robert Rauschenberg, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer and the poet and singer Patty Mucha, who had been a member of the pre-Velvet Underground art-rock band The Druds along with Andy Warhol, on occasional vocals, and La Monte Young, on saxophone. When the disc was released,…
Disconnected (The Dial-A-Poem Poets)
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** Volume two of the series, again a double-LP, with many of the same participants as the first volume plus the likes of Greg Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Paul Blackburn, John Ashbery, and Charles Amirkhanian. "As album covers go,this must be one of the worst ever?...or one of the best ever? Maybe even the Best ever? A disco shirt clad John Giorno, knealing on a beach in the surf as if bathing in…
Biting Off The Tongue Of A Corpse
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** The third in the Dial-a-Poem Poets LP series. Features many of the same artists included on previous volumes plus, for the first time, Kenneth Koch and Gary Snyder. Since 1962, John Giorno has been disseminating his streetwise, pioneering poetry to audiences worldwide. He lifts his poems off the page, delivering them through rhythmic performances; paintings, prints, and installations; and in LPs, mixed with music. Among …
A d'Arc Press Selection
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** As collectable a Burroughs artefact as it is a Giorno one. On the first LP, William Burroughs reads satisfyingly lengthy extracts from The Wild Boys, Junkie, Naked Lunch and an early draft of Cities of the Red Night, which was not published until 1981. On the second LP, John Giorno reads three signature poems: ‘Suicide Sutra,’ ‘Eating Human Meat’ and ‘Subduing Demons in America.’ The material featured regularly in the per…
Totally Corrupt (The Dial-A-Poem Poets)
** Original copies of this rarity. Sealed! Few copies available ** Volume five of the series, again a double-LP, with Anne Waldman, John Giorno, William S Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg & John Cage all gracing the iconic cover, sitting in business attire at a boardroom-style table. Including readings from them, and Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Ed Dorn, Jackie Curtis, Frank O’Hara, Maureen Owen, Charles Bukowski Ken Kesey, Tony Towle, Jack Spicer, Peter Orlovsky, Taylor Mead, Michael McClure "Don't yo…
A Kulchur Selection
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** The third in the Dial-a-Poem Poets LP series. Features many of the same artists included on previous volumes plus, for the first time, Kenneth Koch and Gary Snyder. Since 1962, John Giorno has been disseminating his streetwise, pioneering poetry to audiences worldwide. He lifts his poems off the page, delivering them through rhythmic performances; paintings, prints, and installations; and in LPs, mixed with music. Among …
Big Ego
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** The seventh in the Dial-a-Poem Poets LP series. Iconic cover featuring Giorno posing with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and two children in a park. It also features Robert Ashley's “Interiors with Flash” a study for what would become 'Automatic Writing' "Yet another fine album title from Giorno Poetry Systems, which could apply to any organisation or person applying any form of censorship on the already dead forms of med…
The Nova Convention
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** In 1978, Semiotext(e) founder Sylvere Lotringer approached John Giorno about organizing a tribute to William S Burroughs, bringing together European and American academics for a series of seminars, celebrating the writer as a "philosopher of the future", someone who best understood postindustrial society. Giorno was more interested in a counterculture event that would feature musicians, poets, novelists and artists along…
Sugar, Alcohol, & Meat (The Dial-A-Poem Poets)
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A pioneer of performance poetry—one of the leading cultural trends of the nineties—John Giorno has fashioned a signature style of intense, highly amplified, repetitive verse, with subtle shifts of phrasing, volume, and pitch to alter time and sense. Giorno has also been crucial to expanding the range of avant-garde poetry and music via new media technologies - and this compilation, also including five John Cage's tracks, …
You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With is a double album released in 1981. The album is a collaboration by Laurie Anderson, John Giorno and William S. Burroughs, recorded during their "Red Night" spoken word tour of 1981.[Most of Anderson's material came from her performance piece, United States, and live versions of some tracks, such as "It Was Up in the Mountains", would also be included in her later 4-LP release,…
Who You Staring At? (LP)
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** Side one of this disc is a recording of Glenn Branca’s score for choreographer Twyla Tharp’s Music for the Dance Bad Smells, played by Sonic Youth co-founders Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore. Side two presents the original line-up of the John Giorno Band. The same line-up, without bassist Philippe Hagen, also feature on another 1982 GPS album, Life Is a Killer, whose other contributors include Ornette Coleman Prime Time me…
John Giorno, William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa
You're A Hook** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A Dial-A-Poem Poets life-centering collection of different ensembles of speakers with and without instrumental music. Works by Amiri Baraka, William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Jayne Cortez, The Four Horsemen (B.P. Nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton, Rafael Barreto Rivera), John Giorno, Brion Gysin, Rose Lesniak, Ned Sublette.
"Mutant Disco was the big thing downtown, and Giorno wanted a piece of it. The irritating ran…
A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A legendary compilation with contributions from no less legendary figures/bands like William S. Burroughs, Sonic Youth, Diamanda Galas, Michael Gira, Coil and many others. "Each year, Giorno and his friend William S. Burroughs put out a compilation featuring themselves and the musicians most admired among the New York loft set. This year he and Burroughs are joined by Coil’s tromping and pulsing instrumental “Neither His …
Smack My Crack
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A legendary compilation with contributing musical artists include William S. Burroughs, Tom Waits, Butthole Surfers, Chris Stein, Einsturzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galas, Nick Cave, Swans, John Giorno Band, and Chad & Sudan. Cover art by Gary Panter. "This is a crazy compilation of varying degrees of outsider musicians and poets. It’s a polarizing collection of names – you’re either into Swans or you’re not. You either get…
Like A Girl, I Want You To Keep Coming
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** “Like A Girl, I Want You To Keep Coming” (this was a feminist-approved project/title just in case anyone will be scandalized) came at the tail end of label’s existence and is more music-focused. It features some big names in the tracklist including New Order (doing Velvet Underground cover), Debbie Harry, omnipresent David Byrne, Live Skull, Henry Rollins and William Burroughs + Karen Finley on the literary side of thing…
The Dial-A-Poem Poets
** Original copies of this rarity. Few copies available ** The first of several releases documenting John Giorno’s dial-a-poem project. The album was released at the height of protest against the Vietnam war and of confrontation between the US establishment and radical domestic organisations such as the Yippies and the Black Panthers. Running along the bottom of the front cover is the message: “At this point, with the war and the repression and everything, we thought this was a good way for the …
Life Is A Killer
** Original copies of this rarity. Factory sealed. Few copies available ** A Dial-A-Poem Poets life-centering collection of different ensembles of speakers with and without instrumental music. Works by Amiri Baraka, William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Jayne Cortez, The Four Horsemen (B.P. Nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton, Rafael Barreto Rivera), John Giorno, Brion Gysin, Rose Lesniak, Ned Sublette.
"Mutant Disco was the big thing downtown, and Giorno wanted a piece of it. The irritating ran…