John Giorno John Giorno: C or D, S/D

John Giorno is not strictly a musician. He is a performance poet; however, recordings of his poetry are interesting to me primarily for their quasi-musical value. (As poetry on the page, I cannot find much to like about his work.) His delivery is somewhat similar to that of an evangelist, and in some of his recordings he very effectively makes use of overdubs. I think every line is repeated at least once in his work. Generally he writes about gay/junkie NYC bohemian life from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, which could be boring, but it isn't. I get the impression that not much of his recorded work is still in print, which I think is a shame. Also, he runs Giorno Poetry Systems, which releases a lot of material by others, as well as some of his own (but maybe not enough).