When I first saw Mike Sal he was standing in a pond, by far the tallest creature in a class of new swimmers, looking like 1980's basketball star Larry Bird--and almost as out of place as a yellow taxi in the middle of a frozen lake at an ice fishing time. Holding his elbows, he was helping his friend Meggan (who would return from Morocco shortly after what became our collaboration on this project), teaching my young son and daughter at Sargent's Pond, Vermont. When I asked, I learned he was into music and had not long ago graduated from Hampshire College. (This told me a lot about him, even if it does not describe him much to you.) What I did not know then is that he would become my producer, recording engineer, and the composer of the sounds which would underscore my first spoken word CD (which I am tempted to call "a recorded book" with music). The session which produced these tracks happened relatively spontaneously and the improvisation became a call and response between Mike's tracks and my poems, sometimes the other way around. In a couple hours, one after another, the tracks came together as an improvised ongoing conversation. Allen Ginsberg (Beat Poet and, famously, the author of the landmark "Howl" published by City Lights Books - and later put on trial), was my teacher in graduate school at Brooklyn College. I had traveled to India, among other stops, a few months prior and Ginsberg had me reading from my travel journal in his kitchen. He liked the scrawled draft of "Chant". "Sing it!" he insisted. Indeed I'd heard the last stanza as sung, in a language I only partially understood. "Chant", along with "To The Lady In Pink Standing On Top The Bridge" and other poems, became part of my first book, These Are My Shoes, published in 1991. One of the first readings of "To The Lady In Pink" was at the original Knitting Factory. Since then, although I enjoy giving readings, my poems have stayed on the page in small editions such as Minor Roads, A Big Yellow, Instruments, Between Ourselves, Finding It and To day --- Minutes only (dedicated to my 2002 dialog with Iraqi exiled modernist writer Saadi Yousef). To this music I began to hear these poems anew=)7to spin Pound's "make it new." It was all a surprise to me, and one track compounded another. You know when you meet a stranger and then proceed to sit down for a long conversation which seems to last a fraction of the time? The time flew--and I never could have anticipated this outcome. =)6Peter Money, poet. http://petermoneypoetry.com Music: Mike Sal (Salvatoriello) studied at Hampshire College and has composed a large body of original music. As a producer (Kix Kreative), Mike has worked in hip-hop, pop, opera, rap, rock, R&B, independent film, and now spoken word. He counts as home the Shire (NH), East Cleveland (OH), and Burgos Spain. For more information on Kix Kreative, please visit the site www.myspace.com/kixkreative or send an email to kix@landofadm.com.
Tracks (approximately 40 minutes):
B L U E S Q U A R E Poems by Peter Money, copyright 1991, 1997, 2000, 2007 Music by Mike Salvatoriello, copyright 2006, 2007 Production recording, engineering, mixing: Mike Salvatoriello/ Kix Kreative, ADM Boutique Studio, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 2006; mixing at ZAC Recording: Atlanta, Georgia, 2006 =)6 2007. Additional musicians: Brian Peck (bass guitar on "Chant"), Ryan Abraham (electric guitar on "Chant"), Owen Grenich-Young (flute on "String Version"), Shane (drums on "An Idea of the Old"; additional percussion by Mike Salvatoriello); keyboards: Alex Haynes-Buob on "Wowing The Gods of Ephemera", altered from the orginal). Original compositions, guitar, background vocal, keyboards,: Mike Salvatoriello. Peter Money's vocals appear in "Chant"; Peter Money's humming appears in "Ontology As Phenomenology", "The Mollusk" and "After 'First There Is The Need by Charles Reznekoff'". Many of the poems on this recording were first (or later) published in little magazines including Lactuca, Web del Sol, Art/Life, Lame Duck, Chiron Review, among others. Our thanks to all who made this possible.