WHAT’S DOING / San Diego County : SAN DIEGO HEARS A NEW GENERATION OF HIP POETS
They will starve you, Negro.
They will make you pay
until pain feels like a privilege,
make you forgive them as they
tighten the noose to your
throat . . .
From “They Will Starve You” by Wanda Coleman
From rap music to performance art, the ‘80s have an obsession with the spoken word. A whole new generation of hip punk poets, such as Exene Cervenka of the rock group X, Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra from the punk bands Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, have occasionally gone solo to express themselves through poetry.
These modern-day versions of the ‘50s beat poets don’t read prose to bongo drum accompaniment, but some now use electronic music and have moved out of the coffeehouses into the rock ‘n’ roll venues such as the Anti-Club and Club Lingerie in Los Angeles and more recently San Diego’s own Saigon Palace.
Vocalist-poet-actor Ivan E. Roth and synthesizer musician-composer Jill Fraser, who are both Freeway Records and Los Angeles recording artists, and poet Wanda Coleman will perform their spoken words Saturday at the Saigon Palace at 9 p.m. (tickets are on sale at the door).
Harvey Kubernik, who brought these poets together, arranges bookings for the artists and formed Freeway Records in 1978 to release spoken word albums. The loquacious 35-year-old native of Los Angeles graduated from San Diego State University in 1973 and has done it all, from hanging out with beats Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski and working with acclaimed singer-pianist-composer Tom Waits in San Diego to being a session musician for Phil Spector and a talent scout for MCA Records.
“When I first started working for MCA, they told me I would eventually be able to make poetry and comedy albums,” Kubernik said over the telephone from his Los Angeles office. “But that didn’t work out, so I started my own label. I knew that if people like Wanda Coleman wanted to put their work on records, I would have to do it.”
He has since put out three double compilation albums featuring the work of Roth, Fraser, Coleman, Cervenka, Biafra, Rollins and other Los Angeles rockers.
“I’ve always been interested in rock lyrics,” Kubernik said. “I was exposed real early to R&B; artists on the radio, and took some rock poetry classes in college which I really enjoyed. I never went in for the kind of poetry you get in high school like Keats and Shelley. This was stuff I couldn’t relate to. The authors were either ancient or dead. I wanted to read living people’s work. That’s why I don’t like to call spoken words poetry. Poetry sounds boring. I like to call it ‘infotainment.’ ”
Not only do Kubernik’s artists strive to write entertaining poetry, but some also go for shock effect as well.
In fact, Coleman said, “When I get done with you, honey, you’ll feel like you were hit with a brick. People have a whole new view of poetry when they get done with me.”
The artist’s work has been described as an odyssey through the black person’s life. Her influences are eclectic, ranging from jazz and blues singers Betty Carter and Billie Holiday to Shakespeare and Bukowski. The Watts-based poet said her work is indicative of the human condition, specifically black American culture.
“The only category I can be put in is that I’m black, female and angry,” she said. “I use the jazz principal of improvisation. I never read my work the same way twice, and I never decide what I’m going to read before a performance.”
Coleman reads her poetry without music accompaniment.
“You won’t need music,” she said. “I am the music.”
Roth, on the other hand, performs his spoken words while Fraser runs her fingers over a myriad of keys and jumps from keyboard to keyboard. The duo have been working together for four years, and were introduced to each other by Kubernik.
When the two aren’t composing musical poetry, Roth is working on the set of a movie. His best-known role was as Willie, a shopping mall psychotic, in “Night of the Comet.” Fraser scores TV commercials (Porsche) and film sound tracks (“Personal Best”).
“Working with Ivan is my first love,” Fraser said. “I think it’s irresponsible to just be commercial and not grow as an artist. But I don’t want our work to become so ivory towered out that we are no longer responsible to the people listening.”
Fraser said she doesn’t think of her music as just an accompaniment to Roth’s words.
“We just hash it out together,” she said. “It’s kind of like writing a song. Working together helps me to free up rhythmically.”
“I’m an information hound,” Roth said. “I’m very interested in the current perspective of America. In my work I draw a lot from living in L.A. Sometimes I think I have too many opinions. I don’t want people to think I’m nagging.”
The team will perform work from “Life Is a Noun,” their latest album soon to be released on Freeway Records, and the word-musical collaboration “Alphabetical Disorders.”
And somewhere behind the scene Kubernik will be there to coach them.