Word: ginsberg
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...Ginsberg and friend sing the "Introduction" with mad abandon accompanied by guitar and flute. The melody is so natural and tailored to the poem that it becomes easier to believe that Blake did sing this happy song into Ginsberg's ear, except that Ginsberg claims this particular tune for his own musical talents...
...Introduction" fades into "The Shepherd," a devastatingly simple lyric poem, that like all of Blake's songs, is nevertheless rich in its suggestive power. Ginsberg's music is sweet and flowing but the song is almost spoiled by Peter Orlovsky's bleating voice. Ginsberg solos on "The Echoing Green" and the results here are much better. On the next cut, "The Lamb," Ginsberg and Orlovsky join voices again, and turn what is probably Blake's most popular poem into a tripped-out nursery song. This song expresses the essence of Blake's vision of innocence. Man is Child gently watched...
...SONGS on the second side are more somber in mood, and on the whole, Orlovsky's unearthly voice works to the better advantage on them. "Ah! Sunflower," one of "Blake's" original musical compositions, is not as prettily done by Ginsberg as it was by the Fugs on their first album, but after a few listening it seems more appropriately, if less melodically, tuned on Ginsberg's record...
...Sick Rose" is one of Blake's finest poems, and it is also the short masterpiece of this album. With guitar and organ, Ginsberg performs the song with an exotic, perhaps Arabian, sound. Its simple imagery takes on allegorical power subtly symbolizing the corruption that disillusioning experience tells us must lie in every rose. Gnisberg says it nicely: "What's the Rose? Genital Flowers? Body Life? God? What's the Worm? Cancer Syphilis? Mind Time? Death?" The song suggests all of this, and much more...
...rest of the poems were compiled. At first, the poem seems out of place because of its explicit metaphysical concerns and its lack of concrete visual images. However, the poem raises an essential question that mystics have been asking themselves for a long time. Granted both Blake's and Ginsberg's belief in the illusory nature of the universe, and the transience of the ego in any one incarnation, how then does one relate to other men and society? The poem is the voice of man's eternal soul speaking to the mortal body...