I love beat lit. I met Ginsberg on the streets of the lower east side. I have a copy of Ferlinghetti in the truck and I am currently reading Kerouac’s On the Road – the Original Scroll (fantastic!)

Now, 50 years later, WBAI won’t read the poem ‘Howl’ on the air because it contains “obscenities”. ‘Howl’ was the subject of freedom of speech court actions 50 years ago and literature won.

I used to listen to WBAI a long time ago. They are a bunch of commies, but are a great station and air all kinds of experimental stuff, but I can’t get them up here in the burbs.

The feds will fine them hundreds of thousands of dollars for reading what is one of the great poems of all time. The conservatives would love to fine WBAI out of business. This is garbage.

Here’s the opening lines of ‘Howl’.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz …

I wanted to name a blues band Angelhead, but someone else did it first (and second and third).