| Description: | Slowscan vol. 34, a beautiful orange vinyl release, presents the listener with a cross section of William Levy?s controversial audio works. They range from high priestess of porn Annie Sprinkle reading Levy?s poem ?Blood? to various works for radio, such as an excerpt of ?Europe In Flames?, a successful 1987 radio play in collaboration with Willem de Ridder. Radio has occupied a special place in Levy?s work since his African American nanny turned him onto ?race music? in Levy?s hometown Baltimore, where in the early 1960s Fat Daddy?s bawdy radio shows found further willing and appreciative ears with Levy and his friends. Several decades later, on the other side of the Atlantic, Levy edited ?Certain Radio Speeches of Ezra Pound? for Cold Turkey Press, co-authored the epistolary ?Sing a Round for Ezra Pound & Other Ranters on the Radio?, wrote ?Lend Me your Ears: Some New Orality Echoes? and published the manifesto ?Radio Art? and the magazine ?Radio Art Guide?. Moreover Levy loosely modelled his alter ego Dr. Doo-Wop after Fat Daddy to host his own radio shows. The Dr. Doo-Wop Radio Shows ? a tribute to which is included on this LP ? were broadcast weekly from Amsterdam from 1987 to 2007 and are currently being re-broadcast by John Sinclair for Radio Free Amsterdam. On other tracks of the LP Levy is heard reading poems such as ?Fantasy Affair? and performing live on various occasions. All rare recordings directly from Levy?s archives and beautifully packaged for Slowscan by Johnny Van de Koolwijk in a limited edition of 250 copies.
Levy?s b/w portrait on the front of the sleeve was taken by Indra Tamang during Levy?s visit to Charles Henri Ford at the Dakota in 1979 or 1980. A portrait by Michael Oetker in front of the Viennese prison where Levy had just visited his friend Otto Muehl is printed on the back of the sleeve with liner notes by Ben Schot. Those liner notes conclude that the LP is ?as mouthwatering to collectors as the smell of St Lawrence on the grill must have been to the hungry population of the slums of Rome?.William Levy (January 10, 1939 ? April 22, 2019), also known as the Talmudic Wizard of Amsterdam[1], was an American writer, editor and former radio personality, plus the author of such works as The Virgin Sperm Dancer, Wet Dreams, Certain Radio Speeches of Ezra Pound and Natural Jewboy.
Before leaving the U.S. in the autumn of 1966 aboard the R.M.S Queen Mary, Mr. Levy attended the University of Maryland and Temple University and taught in the literature department at Shippensburg State College, in Pennsylvania. In the sixties and seventies, he was founder and chief-editor of many magazines such as: The Insect Trust Gazette, International Times, Suck, and The Fanatic. Recently, he served as European Editor for American glossy fanzines High Times and Penthouse magazine and as an associate editor of Amsterdam zines Het Gewicht, Ins & Outs, La Linea and Atom Club. Mr. Levy has been a regular contributor to Andrei Codrescu's Exquisite Corpse and Libido, and additionally published his own Transactions of the Invisible Language Society series. His meditation play Europe in Flames was also featured at the Festival of New Radio in New York. In 1998, Mr. Levy was awarded the Erotic Oscar for writing at London's Sex Maniac's Ball. Until his recent retirement from radio and for 20 years non-stop, Mr. Levy's alter-ego, Dr. Doo Wop, could be heard weekly spinning groovy music across Amsterdam's airwaves.
Until his death following a long illness, Levy lived in Amsterdam with his wife, the literary translator Susan Janssen (translator of many works of Charles Bukowski and of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby). |
