From the author of Listen Whitey! The sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 and Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary comes the next installment in Pat Thomas’ chronicling of the counterculture.
Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg will be published by Powerhouse Books (distributed by Simon & Schuster) on December 1, 2023.
The book is a visual treasure trove of previously unpublished historical paperwork, vintage graphics, photographs, and ephemera that documents Ginsberg’s life experiences as a young man, breakaway poet, expansive spirit, curious intellectual traveler, and a relentless enthusiast of provocative yet spiritual pursuits of writing, art, music and culture.
More than just an exploration of Ginsberg’s personal ephemera – it includes Allen’s interactions with Bob Dylan, Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, Diane di Prima, Amiri Baraka, Arthur Russell, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Terry Southern, and Henry Kissinger.
Poet and close friend of Allen, Anne Waldman, wrote the introduction to Material Wealth.
More details can be found here:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Material-Wealth/Pat-Thomas/9781648230363
Book events in the United States will be announced soon for early next year – and Thomas has been scheduled to appear at the Horses Hospital gallery in London on March 7th and 14th, 2024 with special guests and an appearance at Connolly Books / New Theatre in Dublin on March 12 with Mike Scott (Waterboys) and Irish poet Eamon Carr. Thomas will be accompanied at all events by Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Estate.
Also, coming on February 1st 2024 – a CD soundtrack –released by Heyday Again (distributed by Real Gone records) titled:
Soundtrack to the Allen Ginsberg book
Material Wealth
Allen’s voice in poems and songs 1956-1996
Pat Thomas was the reissue producer of 2016’s 3-CD The Last Word On First Blues which gathers Allen’s 1971 to 1984 rock, blues and folk singing/songwriting and the reissue producer of the 2017 The Complete Songs Of Innocence And Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg – his 1970 album of William Blake poems set to music and sung by Allen with additional recordings of the era including Buddhist mantras.
In 1994, Rhino Records released a 4-CD boxset Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Songs & Poems 1949-1993 assembled by the late great Hal Willner that gathered together an unprecedented and definitive collection of Allen’s poems and singing. Long out of print, this forthcoming single disc both draws from and adds to that bible of bop prosody. This new Material Wealth CD will compactly explain to people, this who the heck Allen Ginsberg was!
A lifetime of Allen Ginsberg’s love, spirituality, passion, politics, culture, art in poem and song. The soundtrack to the book Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. These classic, yet rare, and some previously unreleased poems and songs are a bible of bop prosody from one of the Holy Trinity of the Beat Generation. The CD track listing is:
Hum Bom (1984) with Elvin Jones
Birdbrain (1981) with The Gluons
Howl (1983) written 1955
Going to San Diego (1971) with Bob Dylan, David Amram, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky
Grey Monk (1969) words by William Blake / music by Ginsberg
Prayer For John Sinclair (1971) with Peter Orlovsky
Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag (Don’t Smoke) (1976)with Arthur Russell, Jon Sholle, David Mansfield, Steven Taylor
Do the Meditation Rock (1982) with Bob Dylan, Arthur Rosato, David Mansfield, Steven Taylor
America (1956)
Kaddish (1964) For Naomi Ginsberg 1894-1956
First Party At Ken Kesey’s With Hell’s Angels (1995) written 1965
Raghupati Raghava (1971) with Arthur Russell, Peter Orlovsky, Jon Sholle, Moruga
The Ballad Of The Skeletons (1996)with Paul McCartney, Phillip Glass, Lenny Kaye, Marc Ribot, David Mansfield words by Ginsberg / Music by Ginsberg, Glass, McCartney
On Neal’s Ashes (1971)
Gospel Noble Truths (1984) with Peter Orlovsky, Steven Taylor, Mark Kramer
