Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales [PA] by William S. Burroughs

Pros: Excellent follow-up to Dead City Radio. Intelligent with catchy music.
Cons: If I use the title in my review, the web site will yell at me.

This album is truly a joy, and after all the pain Burroughs had to go through back in the fifties to get Naked Lunch published in America, it's almost lamentable to see one of his final projects get a big fat warning label on the cover for using the word...

Pros: An inimitable performance by America's greatest writer.
Cons: Poorly recorded title track.

This is one you can stick in your hi-fi and appreciate on a number of levels. As far as Burroughs' performance goes, I personally don't think it gets any better than this... The reading of the title track in particular is superlative - the weight given to each word could not be replicated by anyone else, living or dead, and that includes imitators. This is a man who is (remains) as engaging and challenging to hear as he is to read, a man who had as sophisticated an understanding of the power of the Word as any philosopher of language, linguist or writer in this or any other era. Unfortunately, the woolly bass lines are not as well recorded as they could have been on the title track... but for the most part, this will be of interest to both Burroughs' fans and to music fans. And yes I agree that on the whole this is not up to Dead City Radio, or even Seven Souls (by Bill Laswell/ Material, released 1988).