The producers of this album came up with the incredible idea of layering Burroughs' voice over a haunting backdrop of Americana music, along with several pieces composed especially for this project. Burroughs reads excerpts from the likes of Naked Lunch, Cities of the Red Night, and Exterminator! The resulting effect is staggering, and very similar to Burroughs' writing technique. This is considered by many to be one of the few worthwhile spoken word recordings out there.
Dead City Radio is a bleak, darkly satirical portrait of a disillusioned America coping with the sins of its past and lingering obsessions of its present.
The zenith of this album is A Thanksgiving Prayer. Burroughs' scratchy, attention-grabbing voice drawls out a long list of indictments against America in a mock-prayer, while backed by a disturbing patriotic piece played by the NBC orchestra. "Thanks for Kill a Queer for Christ stickers....Thanks for laboratory AIDS..."
This was followed by the clever, though different, album, "Spare A*s Annie and Other Tales."(the automated censors have forced me to edit the title)
For more Burroughs Spoken recordings, I suggest this site:
"http://ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html"
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GENERAL INFORMATION ON THIS ARTIST
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS (1914-1998) is often considered a member of the 1950s Beat literary movement for his close ties to Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferhlinghetti, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, although his writing, influence, and style reach far beyond the borders of that small community.
He is best known for co-developing with Bryon Gysion the Cut-up method, a literal application of the montage technique to the printed page. Pages and sequences of words are cut-up, then juxtaposed to form a purely visual pattern, thus breaking the traditional associations between words.
His most famous novel is Naked Lunch, a hallucinogenic semi-account of his life as a junk addict. It is here that the world met the world of Interzone, an elusive world of junkies and queers.
Burroughs primary theme in all of his writing was control, namely various methods, both real and extremely fictitious, whereby human beings manipulate and abuse one another. His primary method of relating to this idea was through his own harsh experiences with drug addiction, a problem that haunted him for most of his life.
Burroughs has been credited as the inspiration for a slew of artists, especially in the music industry, including the likes of Kurt Cobain and is considered the grandfather of 80s punk.
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BURROUGHS HAS A HUGE CULT FOLLOWING ON THE WEB, AND YOU CAN SAMPLE MANY SELECTIONS OF HIS WORK, PLUS READ COMMENTARY, BIOGRAPHIES, AND ANYTHING ELSE YOU COULD ASK FOR FREE.
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TO HEAR SOUND RECORDINGS OF BURROUGHS AND HIS WORK, CHECK OUT THESE SITES
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS UBUWEB SOUND POETRY
http://www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html
THE GHOST OF WILLIAM BURROUGHS
http://www.netherworld.com/~mgabrys/william/prev.html
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
INTERZONE
is a COLOSSAL web ring that is amazingly easy to navigate. The most informative and useful sites Ive seen related to Burroughs.
www.inter-zone.org
THE WSB INTER-WEB-ZONE
http://www.hyperreal.org/wsb/
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Hanging With Friends