DIE ON ME

DIE ON ME by GREGORY CORSO  - with Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg & Hal Willner Shimmy-2033 (Release Date November 7, 2025) The 1st pressing is limited to 111 hand-numbered LPs on 150gm black vinyl, available exclusively HERE in the Shimmy-Shop & on Bandcamp.  A Crystal-Clear vinyl pressing is also available.  A download link for the LP is included with each Vinyl purchase, with a (digital only) BONUS: 5 tracks not included on the original CD release.  Originally released on CD in 2002, this LP features archival recordings dating back to 1959 alongside recordings made by Hal Willner in January 2001 (Jan 7th - 10th). For the first time ever on vinyl, ‘DIE ON ME’ has been re-mastered & newly edited by Kramer. Within this historic collection are the last voice recordings of the legendary Beat poet Gregory Corso. Intimate and raw, he muses on his life in conversation with friends Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, and the legendary Chicago writer Studs Terkel, discussing and reciting some of his most beloved poems. The recording process illuminates Corso’s thoughts on his own work in deeply revealing detail. No other spoken-word LP shines a brighter light on its subject.   Marianne Faithfull playfully incites him to tell stories, and upon his request, graces him with her own recitations of his poems.  This LP is a unique compendium collecting the works of the single most underappreciated master of American poetry, produced by the late great Hal Willner. Corso's closest friend Allen Ginsberg told Kramer, “People say that I’m the greatest American poet of the 20th Century. I tell them they’re wrong. GREGORY CORSO is a far greater poet.”  Gregory Corso died on January 17th, 2001 at the age of 70, just a few days after many of these historic recordings were completed. Corso’s ashes were laid to rest in Rome on May 5th, 2001 at the foot of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave in the Cimitero Acattolico. John Keats lay nearby. Jacket photographs by Allen Ginsberg (Paris, 1957) Courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Estate.                                                        Corso's grave photo by Kramer                                                         In the words of Hal Willner, excerpted from the original liner notes* (2002):  “Michael Minzer and I had been trying to produce a Gregory Corso album for years. For our series that featured Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, as well as Kathy Acker and Terry Southern, Gregory was someone we needed to include - besides, he was always my favorite poet to listen to. He had a wonderful, romantic, and beautiful voice; his readings never lost the sense of the unexpected and dangerous.” …  “Somehow the record that emerged is (in my opinion) incredibly beautiful, moving, sad—but not depressing, and often funny. Not to sound silly, but I felt that we had help with this record from some unknown source that guided and directed it. Just writing about how the record was made makes it even more amazing to me that it got done at all- and I’m very proud that it came together in this way. …” *The complete original liner notes are reproduced on the LP's Inner Sleeve. -------------------- Dave Cantrell from STEREO EMBERS writes: "... First released a year after the poet’s death in 2001, Die On Me features tracks that span from 1959 to mere days before his passing, as is the case with the track we preview today, a fact that can’t help but bring an unsurpassed pathos to what we hear. Gently enhanced by original producer Hal Wilner’s score, the poem unspools with a touching – and frankly, unmatched – candor that almost feels foreign when heard inside our current world’s daily, decidedly unpoetic, noise, and as such presents like a balm spoken by a mere immortal come to visit us and ground us once again in the messy purity of human existence. No bombast, no hollow pride, and, most importantly, no fear. Just the voice of a particular truth the kind of which is, alas, too often sorely missing from our collective consciousness in our current moment. Given that, its (first ever) vinyl reissuing by Shimmy-Disc on November 7th is something close to an act of mercy, offering this (and fourteen other tracks which include the passed immortal presences of Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, Peter Orlovsky and Studs Terkel) like, well, an offering to the ineffable, a sense that, inevitably given its authorship, rather reverberates like a spiritual echo throughout the visual treatment Kramer’s given it here. (Video on YouTube) Entrancing, moving, inimitable, not to mention inspiring considering the brink Corso was speaking from when this reading was captured, among whatever more one could say about this recording, the humanity inherent, the fearlessness in the voice of the poet, neither resigned nor defiant, is simply deathless."