Thank you avmurray for your wonderful illustration.


I had the wonderful idea of combining poetry and music, and not finding anything out there, started setting about to build my recording studio to do exactly that. To combine poetry with music, which was inspired by the Alan Parsons Project, "The Tales of Mystery and Imagination." My ideas generated a lot of local interest, but failed in generating the required commitments I needed; and piece by piece, how sell that equipment in order to keep my house. Another failure of mine was in trying to talk those bands in including spoken poetry into their sets. They felt poetry had no place in rock music, which left me thinking, "Don't they read the lyrics they sing?"

When I discovered that someone actually was able to execute my ideas about combining poetry with music, I would find old ghosts of rock and roll, treading softly upon my grave.

Ray Manzarek, is most known for being the keyboardist for the Doors, but I knew him first for his independent solo work, "The Whole Think Started With Rock and Roll, and it's Now Out Of Control." The library got so tired of me taking it out, they stamped, "Withdrawn," on it and gave it to me. Later, I discovered the realm of Doors music outside of their hits and found that, to me, it is Doors music that speaks to me with its interwoven depths of pure poetry.



When I discovered he put music to poetry, I immediately purchased the CDs and was introduced to Darryl Read and Englishman, known as the father of the punk Rock movement and knew Ray though a solo music CD he produced in the states. Those two albums are,"Freshly Dug," and "Bleeding Paradise."

I have not yet purchased the new poetry/music CD with Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure, titled, "The Piano Poems: Live from San Francisco," but I will have a copy. They are also out on a DVD titled, "The Third Mind."

Darryl Read also produced a MP3 album titled, "All The Ghosts of Rock 'n' Roll."

A little You Tube research revealed this video clip, that has an example of combined music with poetry.

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