Friday July 23rd 7:30pm

By Falling James

Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts is a “traveling poetry supershow” of spoken-word performers and musicians that started in San Francisco in 2008 and is finally making its debut in L.A. The series presents adventurous modern-day poets in bars and venues where the early Beat poets used to hang out, in the hopes that the lingering spirits of the elders will inspire their progeny’s new work. Given its long history as a SoCal literary vortex, Beyond Baroque seems to be an ideal setting for “tapping the mystic voices and drumming the Beat haunts from their tombs in Los Angeles.” This seventh edition of the series features the longtime local poet Ellyn Maybe, appearing with a band (!), and veteran wordsmith Michael C. Ford, whose “arsenal of commando language” blows apart every last standing irrational political pie-ball cowboy who continually threatens National Nirvana.” Meanwhile, former Ringling Sister Iris Berry (Two Blocks East of Vine, pictured) leavens her tales of heroin misadventures and gangster boyfriends with a punk rock perspective and gallows humor. The show also includes Jim Bolt, Mike the Poet, Rachel Kann, Brenda Petrakos, Gary Justice, host Mani Suri and special guests known only as the Mystery Poets. (Link to LA Weekly Events)

Video by: Nisey Jay and Riccardo Spinotti

“Fans of spoken word CDs and lovers of slam poetry with a nerd-girl edge should seek this CD out as soon as they finish reading this review, as should anyone curious to see the highs to which this blended art form can aspire. I cannot recommend Rodeo for the Sheepish enough.” – JoSelle Vanderhooft for Pedestal Magazine

///This video was a contribution to Ellyns online zine http://www.rodeowrite.com/ please visit and contribute your own work to the Rodeo!

Harlan Steinberger of Hen House Records wasn’t pursuing a reputation as one of the best poetry producers of the Los Angeles poetry and music scene, but today not only is he one of the best, he is also an innovator of a whole new budding genre in music.

Poetry’lectronica has been born – and the great news is, it’s pop music!

As the producer of Ellyn Maybe’s album of poetry and pop electronica, “RODEO FOR THE SHEEPISH”, Harlan Steinberger presents a clever and magical interpretation of a poet’s body of work. Steinberger has accomplished what not many others before him has ever done. He has produced a radio friendly showcase of poetry and pop- electronica in an album that, with most of it’s tracks might easily be played on pop radio.

The record is just about everything a pop record is. It’s got hooks, choruses and clever lyrics, it has a beat you really want to dance to. It has perfectly “out of the box” sound hooks that because of it’s sound – is catchy, just like a few pop hits in the past have had, such as the syncopated vocal musings that Michael Jackson innovated. It’s rhythmic and hip, easy to listen to, and once again, the best part is – it’s poetry! – and it’s pop!

Never before has anyone been able to conceptualize the spoken word so clearly and unaffectedly as Harlan. His compositions beneath the spoken word are produced with natural layers of sound symbiosis, occurring as easily as if it were simply a continuation of the initial creative process begun by the poet.

During Hen House Studios’ beginnings Harlan was involved in the recording of 150 bands in 5 years, due to Harlan’s desire to meet, work with, collaborate and shoot video with as many bands as he could. That way he could meet the stand out talent, and was able, as a producer and engineer, to choose which artists he might like to work with in the future.

The numerous different bands of Los Angeles, no doubt left sounds of many genres and music effects technologies with Harlan’s inner Pavlovian, which would later subconsciously or consciously, contribute to his now finely tuned 2nd nature of instincts that a good producer of music should have,

But beyond that, the early experience of producing and especially the engineering of one hundred and fifty LA bands in five years, became coupled through Harlan with a serendipitous entry into producing poetry and eventually laying it down with pop electronica,

Together, these two factors blended to create an even more unique flavor of music producing. And while it is said that Harlan Steinburger is a talented and very good music producer, beyond that, it can be safely said that Harlan Steinberger is one of the great producers of Poetry and Music, and perhaps the only producer of poetry’lectronica, a whole new brand of pop.

Still, just like his work, he comes off as natural and unaffected as his sound, yet still genuinely enthusiastic about a genre of music that has had minor hits but at most were presented as novelty pieces, such as Gil Scott Herron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”.

Harlan is not in a premeditated pursuance of poetry and pop music, but instead he has come to be who is becoming, much like a sidewalk vendor who might have one day rolled up a piece of salty beef, put it in a long roll of bread and invented, The Hot Dog.

“I haven’t really given it that much thought, I’m just doing it. The only thing I can say is that when I close my eyes and listen to spoken word, I imagine it’s a lot like people who score movies for a living, they’re basically looking at a visual, and maybe listening to the dialogue, I don’t know…. and they hear something in their head.

Well ,with Ellyn (Maybe), she comes in and reads first to record the poetry, I tell her do a nice performance but this is not what’s going to end up on the record and then I sit there and listen to the poem over and over again and I get a sort of…. vision of a sound in my third eye.

I try to recreate those sounds by the sounds that are being inspired by the cadence, the timbre, the natural words…”

Today Hen House Records is a record label that has recorded, produced and distributed a variety of spoken word and music records. In the many serendipitous circumstances that have shaped Producer Harlan Steinbergers role in the LA Poetry & Music scene, many of the albums came by accident, but all of them have come nothing short of great.

Photo Credit: Joanne Qualey Baines

About.com Guide

(Hen House Studios, 2009) Ellyn Maybe got her moniker because she was too shy to commit when she signed up for the open mic list—“Ellyn,” she’d write, “maybe.” She’s an LA phenomenon, published by Henry Rollins, the lovechild of Gertrude Stein and Allen Ginsberg, a lyrical poet in hippie couture, a one-of-a-kind. Now, with Rodeo for the Sheepish, she shows she’s ready for Las Vegas. Brilliant settings by producer Harlan Steinberger, superlative vocal backtracks by Tommy Jordan—all of a sudden, she’s gone Motown and you can hear the sheer force of Poetry vs. Pop music in an arena the size of Radio City Poetry Hall. Humor, poignancy, universality, individuality—like all great artists, how she does it is a mystery, but Ellyn Maybe is for real.