Pop Music Reviews : Doubleheader Spans Poetic Generations

Transcendence and intergenerational commingling were the main themes of the music and spoken-word doubleheader Thursday at the Coach House.

Michael McClure, the Beat poet who emerged in San Francisco in the ‘50s, led off with interpretive piano support from his partner on the spoken-word circuit, Doors alumnus and ‘60s classic-rock icon Ray Manzarek.

They won cheers, especially for Manzarek’s commanding performance, which included some crowd-pleasing Doors quotations and gave needed emotional colors and shapes, along with a bit of humor, to McClure’s dramatically rendered but excessively abstract poetry.

Lee Ranaldo, the Sonic Youth singer-guitarist who deserves much of the praise or blame for putting the noise into rock’s noisy ‘90s, cleared most of the 150 or so occupied seats as he read his prose and verse against a maelstrom of echo effects and highly amplified electronics and guitar dissonance. The exception was his plaintive solo-ballad rendition of a Sonic Youth song, “Wish Fulfillment.”

Even surrounded by noise, his personal reflections were often poignant and offered a fascinating angle on some of the key thematic notions underlying one of modern rock’s most influential bands. The best found him coping in private moments with pressures of everyday life; hence the need, met by Sonic Youth, to break on through to another side.