I might have called it Sit Through This (which, I assure the reader, would have encompassed the best the show had to offer). The 60^th Anniversary Celebration of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (not the 50^th, mind you; the 50^th + 10), took place last night at the fabulous Ace Theatre (adjoining the Ace Hotel, downtown).  Why Howl would, uh, howl out for commemoration in 2015 is anyone’s guess.  The poem has not aged particularly well.  Its toxic alloy of generational self-importance and self-pity is more irritating than ever; and to the extent it has influenced successive generations or spawned imitators whether contemporaneous or (more pathetically) closer to this century, the results have been almost uniformly miserable. The event was produced by that legendary music supervisor, producer and impresario (of concerts and ‘celebrations’ just like this one), Hal Willner on behalf of the David Lynch Foundation, which is reaching out for support for its Transcendental Meditation programs that provide instruction in TM techniques to at-risk students, PTSD-afflicted military veterans and other individuals in need at schools and youth and community organizations around the country. 

The cause is a worthy one and I hope they raised truckloads of money. Whether Howl was an appropriate vehicle for the Foundation is another matter. After dealing with the madness of post-war industrial capitalism (and goddess knows there was a lot to drive anyone mad in the 1950s), issues surrounding anal sex, dubious pharmaceutical analgesics, stimulants and enhancements, depression (his mentor’s), and schizophrenia (his mother’s), Ginsberg, like Jack Kerouac and other pals, took to the road (encountering and influencing other far more talented writers) and eventually discovered eastern religions.  (It was a thing people did in the 1960s – the pharmaphobic and homophobic western ones having not worked out so well for most of us.) Although Ginsberg discovered Zen Buddhism along the way and had a lifelong relationship with the Naropa Institute, his own ‘religious practice’ took a sharp detour into Hinduism, with a more specific focus (or fetish?) on Krishna. 

I’m sure Lynch was able to make some connection by the evening’s end, but having sat through more than two and a half hours of this sutra (if you will) of bebop, rap and rant (not a lot of rock ‘n’ roll), folk elegy and lament, meditative tango (a la Piazolla), comic bits and attempted comedy, I was unwilling to sit through the penultimate segment which was an extended reading of excerpts from the poem itself (mercifully not the entirety of it) by Willner himself with Chloe Webb; and so missed Lynch’s appearance and (I assume) his wrap-up. 

There’s a certain recipe for these events which Willner has mastered in loose fashion:  a multi-media or quasi-theatrical preamble that touches on one thematic aspect or another of the program or the program’s (tribute) subject, a lead-in that’s alternately a teasing overture/prelude or a full-blown anthemic statement, the songs, ballads, anthems that fill out the tribute, leavened by comic bits and transitions; and in between those comic segues are bits that may have only the most glancing relationship with the subject or be seemingly arbitrarily intersected with some bit of ‘tribute’ material, etc.  As Willner productions go, this was at best only partially successful; but the formula is durable.  There is something endearing about seeing a performer long absent from public stages, screens and speakers giving heart-felt voice to something of personal importance; or alternatively, taking a flying leap for the fun (and generosity) of it into an unexplored creative domain.  The evening began with an animation of “dancing scribbles” (and wobbling lightbulbs) by voice-over god Ken Nordine – “bits and pieces of the free and easy flow of all the places your mind can go.”  The musicians were not all introduced, so I have no idea who the trumpet player was who then played over rhythm/percussion tracks synthesized via a laptop and keyboards by someone who referred to himself as Mocean Worker.  The tracks were layered over Allen Ginsberg’s own voice.  The effect was something like a bebop-Girl Talk duet – which turns out to be an excellent idea.  It’s a real pity Gregg Gillis was not around to act as Allen Ginsberg’s filter during his lifetime.  We were alas also reminded that Ginsberg frequently comes off as Burroughs-lite.  “Go fuck yourself and your atomic bomb.” 

Then a banjo player started strumming against a rear-view projection of a desert highway receding into the distance.  I guess that meant we were officially ‘on the road.’  He was joined by a couple of guitarists.  I couldn’t understand a lot of the song, but he sang about ‘red ruby lips’ and ‘green, green grass’ (there was little of it on screen) over essentially the same dessicated backdrop, and how ‘loving was a killing thing,’ closing by asking us, “Did you ever feel real pain?”  (‘Does this act count?’ I wondered.)

True to the tribute spirit of the thing, Petra Haden sang something about ‘not hiding the madness’ in a dress that looked like green malachite, but closed on an astral (or maybe lunar) note.  This being a Hal Willner evening, Amy Poehler and Chris Parnell (“we’re the people who talk”) were then brought out to duet-riff on Ginsberg’s “last song” (“Battle of the Skeletons” apparently set to music by Paul McCartney and Philip Glass).  That was funny for a minute or two. 

Beth Orton seemed to echo that open road sensation in her rendition of “Call Me the Breeze.”  She followed that up with “I Never Saw the Sunshine,” which probably came closer to the keening (koaning?) the occasion seemed to demand.  As an improvised response to Howl, I thought it was ingenious; and – let’s face it—it was fabulous just see and hear Beth Orton again.  She was accompanied by Petra and Sam Amidon and a great pedal steel player who – you got it – went unintroduced.

That’s a hard act to follow – but Lucinda Williams managed.  Then Williams herself is simply unique.  Whether you were taken by her material or not (“When I Look At the World” and “Unsuffer Me”), she has a compelling, enveloping presence that commands attention.  She has a way of always sounding half-crocked that’s sort of irresistible – not that “Unsuffer Me” was.  I thought it came off somewhere between a dare and a taunt.  If only Allen Ginsberg had been around to hear it before he became more ubiquitous than Al Sharpton. 

Van Dyke Parks, a genius composer/producer/impresario in his own right – and not infrequent collaborator with Willner (as he collaborates with almost every great talent) paid tribute to Ginsberg with a reading/chanting of a Ginsberg-esque poetic litany by Ginsberg’s colleague, champion and fellow Beat, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (“I Am Waiting.”).  So was the audience – and wanting – for it to end.  Parks reminded me of Carl Andre in his plaid flannel Pendleton type shirt and bib overalls; and I could only wonder about a certain type of genius (and there’s no question that the word applies to Parks) and their insistent presence in a word they so manifestly reject.  Why wouldn’t they just hole up in a studio like Brian Wilson (or like the reclusive vampire music  genius played by Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive)?    

At this point, there was a break (though no real intermission), while they pulled a grand piano on stage for the evening’s centerpiece – Nick Cave, fantastic as always – who (backed up by the Section Quartet and Lori Singer on a second cello) played “The Mercy Seat” and “Love Letter” – which seemed to reference “Kaddish” more than “Howl.”  But then leave it to Cave to make his own decision as to which poetic milestone to celebrate – and damn anyone to tell him differently. 

There were other high points in the evening – which was otherwise noticeably lacking in momentum and electricity.  Devendra Banhart – and what seemed like an entire chorus as well as pretty much the entire roster of instrumental personnel for the evening – delivered on the latent promise of the evening’s earlier ‘Girl Talk’ moment, bringing a furious, insistent, yet joyous energy to the stage; and I can’t help thinking that if he’d had only three or four more numbers of his own, might have turned the evening into a thundering dance party.  Courtney Love was spellbinding in the only truly Howl-worthy moment of the evening, spilling all of herself onto the stage in a song from Nobody’s Daughter, “Letter to God,” which, like so much of the best Hole/Love material, touches on some of the darkest, most existential ‘koans’ human experience has to torment us with.  This would have been an effective closer – and I can’t imagine why it wasn’t, unless Love herself insisted on the placement, assuming (wisely) that the audience was unlikely to sit through more. 

But there was.  More.  Terry Adams.  Before that, Lori Singer (that was okay).  And Tim Robbins, who looks more and more like Garrison Keillor, and whose performance made me think he was auditioning to replace him on A Prairie Home Companion – which may have inadvertently indicated what was missing from the evening (mitigated only by Love’s searing performance) and possibly from the contemporary A Prairie Home Companion, itself:  the spirit of William Burroughs.  Note to Willner, Lynch, and director Matt Piedmont:  the 60^th anniversary of Naked Lunch is only four years away.