DOG EARED SAINTS AND DEAD GUYS' SOCKS

Spoken word poetry album by Kevin M. Hibshman and C.F. Roberts

C.F. ROBERTS-Dead Guy’s Socks

Heaven
Cicero 2
Disembodied Tirade 2
The Walk: Grace and Vulgarity
Cityscape
Ghetto Head
1991
Zen Carousel
2 AM
Disembodied Tirade 4
The Walk: One More Stab of Entropy
Scorched (Fragment)
Dead Guy’s Socks
Disembodied Tirade 5
Notes x my Suicide Trip pt.1
Simple Blues Decline
In Hate
Pug Hates his Nakedness
The Pink Music Note Candy
The Walk (Epilogue)
Burnt Sunflower

KEVIN M. HIBSHMAN-Dog Eared Saints

Amnesia
Somber Red
To Die by Someone
After Reading Rimbaud
Crestfallen Angel
Riot Worship
Afterbirth
Scab
Acid…Yes?
Psycho/Splat
Pig Dialect
Sloth
The Dog-Eared Saint
If Only
A.D. ‘92: Pray for Survival
Derelict
Monastery
Chrome Melting
Talk
Stop (Fire is the Question of our Time)
Where Murder Lives
The Bullshit Age
Adrenaline
Frostbit Lizard Kiss
Grace Me
Give me Language, Language!
The Fire Poem
The Dream had Died…
Earth Returns
Palm the Dark Mandala
Ten per Cent
Angel

We produced this cassette-only album (quit laughing—they were sort of a thing at this time!) in 1993—-I think—-I’m pretty sure…we still had a booklet that had all the pertinent info back then—-hell if I can find that now! I recorded my half with help from Mike McAdam, my bud and SE Apocalypse Krew collaborator. I can’t speak as to Kevin’s process except that it was much cleaner than mine….you can hear a bunch of weird audio snafus on my end, little glitches where you hear between takes chatter or bits we edited out. I was fuzzy as to what, exactly, was on this….you only get a few short excerpts from the lengthy prose piece, “The Walk”, and you all need to be thanking your lucky stars for that, as I’m pretty sure we taped the whole ungodly thing!!! “Cicero 2” is a very old piece that opened my very first chapbook, 1991’s MASSACRE ANNEX—it fell by the wayside in the ensuing years (as did most of that chappie)---I now regard it as bald-faced misogyny and more or less disown it. The Disembodied Tirades were excerpts from a now-lost manuscript called RED, WHITE, BLACK AND BLUE, which I wouldn’t mind revisiting, but as the years progress my hopes for that are just growing dim….”Scorched” is a prose piece that was partially lost and it was part of a collaborative maxi-chap I did with Alred Vitale called FAIRYTALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST, for his Yorkville Press—”Ghetto Head” is another from MASSACRE ANNEX—in fact I think it’s the only one off that collection to survive, later appearing in my one full lengther, THE MEAT FACTORY. The “title track”, “Dead Guy’s Socks”. was one that had gotten me some recognition at local slams, and was about me receiving hand-me-downs from a literal dead man. Other poems here, like “In Hate”, “Zen Carousel”, and “Notes x my Suicide Trip Part 1”, have not surfaced in years or possibly decades at this point.
There’s this concussive noise at the very end of “Burnt Sunflower” that sounds like some heavy object (a door? A ceiling? Goes with the poem…) being brought down and some tinkling background noise that could be glass breaking…neither Mike nor I have any idea how it got there, nor do we know what it is. Whatever the case, it’s an excellent ending to my segment, so—-we’ll call it a fortuitous accident.
I’m less qualified to comment at length on Kevin’s portions, but I’ll relay my notes such as they are. He is, of course, welcome to chip in on the comments however he would like.
I was a big fan of Kevin, his poetry and his spoken readings since I first checked out his great zine, DISTURBING DREAMS AND DRIED BLOOD (later rechristened FEARLESS)...personal favorites I requested here were “The Dog Eared Saint” and “Chrome Melting” (with its ominous refrain of “Aught 6…August 6….August 6…” “Riot worship” (the title of a one-off zine we would later collaborate on) was relatively new at the time….other favorites of mine are “Earth Returns”, “Monastery”, “If Only”, “Palm the Dark Mandela”, “Where Murder Lives”, “Amnesia”, “Give me Language, Language!”, “Crestfallen Angel”, “After Reading Rimbaud” and many others….finding these and hearing them again is like returning to old friends. And now, dear, put-upon listener, the journey becomes yours as well.