Best LitRock Songs from Issa's Sunday Service
The best LitRock Songs is a spinoff from a feature called Issa's Sunday Service at the poetry blog, Issa's Untidy Hut. The idea is a simple one: once a week, a song is selected that bridges rock and literature in some fashion. Each song is available for listening via the fine folks @ Grooveshark and the songs can be heard in their entirety at the links below . Suggestions are actively being sought, so send any ideas along to lilliputreview AT google DOT com. If your suggestion is accepted, you'll receive the two current issues of Lilliput Review free. Please report broken links to the email above. Listen to all the songs at once on Issa's LitRock Jukebox ...
i. m. Jim Carroll
Week 1: Summertime in England (*) by Van Morrison (Romantic poets, plus Eliot, Joyce etc.)
Week 2: Rejoyce by Jefferson Airplane (James Joyce)
Week 3: The Way by Donovan (Lao Tzu)
Week 4: Persecution & Resurrection of Dean Moriarty by Aztec Two-Step (Jack Kerouac)
Week 5: Desolation Row by Bob Dylan (various and multitudinous)
Week 6: Neal, Jack, and Me by King Crimson (Jack Kerouac)
Week 7: Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream (Homer)
Week 7.5: Hallelujah by Popa Chubby (Leonard Cohen)
Week 8: Mercy Street (*) by Peter Gabriel (Anne Sexton)
Week 9: Kaatskill Serenade by David Bromberg (Washington Irving)
Week 10: I Am the Walrus (*) by The Beatles (Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, King Lear)
Week 11: Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar) by the Doors (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill)
Week 12: Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan (Petrarch)
Week 13: Ophelia by The Band (Hamlet, Ophelia)
Week 14: You Can't Judge A Book ... by Cactus (Literature)
Week 15: Lorca's Novena by the Pogues (Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 16: Babe, I'm on Fire - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 17: San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native) by Fever Tree (Thomas Hardy)
Week 18 Wild Children (*) by Van Morrison (Tennessee Williams)
Week 19: Stuck Between Stations by The Hold Steady (John Berryman, Jack Kerouac, "Sal Paradise")
Week 20: Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits (William Shakespeare, West Side Story)
Week 21 It's Too Late by the Jim Carroll Band (Raymond Chandler)
Week 22 There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave (John Wilmot, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas et al)
Week 23 Paperback Writer (*) by The Beatles (Edward Lear, Frere Jacques)
Week 24 Small Flowers Crack Concrete by Sonic Youth (d.a.levy)
Week 25 Wreck of the Hesperus by Procol Harum (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Week 26 Home I'll Never Be by Tom Waits (Jack Kerouac)
Week 27 White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane (Lewis Carroll)
Week 28 Ramble On by Led Zeppelin (J. R. R. Tolkin)
Week 29 She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby (Poetry)
Week 30 Adam Raised a Cain by Bruce Springsteen (Genesis Book 4, John Steinbeck)
Week 31 Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants (The Argonautica)
Week 32 What Keeps Mankind Alive by Tom Waits (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill)
Week 33 The Stolen Child by The Waterboys (W. B. Yeats)
Week 34 Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones (Mikhail Bulgakov, Charles Baudelaire, Bible)
Week 35 Sartori in Tangier by King Crimson (The Beats, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac etc.)
Week 36 Spell (Footnote to Howl) by Patti Smith (Howl, Allen Ginsberg, Beats, Footnote to Howl)
Week 37 1984 by David Bowie (George Orwell)
Week 38 April by Deep Purple (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land)
Week 39 Pride of Man by Quicksilver Messenger Service (The Bible)
Week 40 Not So Sweet Lorraine by Country Joe & the Fish (I Ching)
Week 41 Undercover of the Night by the Rolling Stones (William Burroughs "Cities of the Red Night")
Week 42 Poor Little Rich Boy by Regina Spektor (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway)
Week 43 Highway 61 Revisited by Johnny Winter (Bob Dylan cover, The Bible, Bertolt Brecht)
Week 44 Sweet Jane by Lou Reed (Poetry)
Week 45 Conquistador by Procol Harum (Percy B. Shelley "Ozymandis")
Week 46 Bullet the Blue Sky by U2 (Bible: Genesis 32)
Week 47 Xanadu by Rush (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan)
Week 48 Haiku by Slapp Happy (Haiku, Issa, Han Shan)
Week 49 Shakespeare's Sister by The Smiths (William Shakespeare)
Week 50 Samson & Delilah - Rev. Gary Davis (Bible)
Week 51 Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny - Frank Zappa (Franz Kafka)
Week 52 Cassidy - Grateful Dead (Neal Cassady)
Week 53 Ghetto Defendent - The Clash w/Allen Ginsberg (Allen Ginsberg, Beat Literature)
Week 54 Sharkey's Night by Laurie Anderson (William Burroughs)
Week 55 A Rose for Emily by The Zombies (William Faulkner)
Week 56 A Fire Down Below - Nick Cave (Book of Malachi)
Week 57 The Weight - The Band (William Faulkner, Bible)
Week 58 My Blakean Year - Patti Smith (William Blake)
Week 59 Bukowski - Modest Mouse (Bukowski)
Week 60 Marat/Sade - Judy Collins (Peter Weiss, Marquis de Sade)
Week 61 End of the Night - The Doors (Louis Ferdinand Céline)
Week 62 John the Revelator - Gov't Mule (The Bible, Book of Revelations)
Week 63 A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum (Canterbury Tales "The Miller's Tale")
Week 64 Who Are You - Tom Waits (Hamlet)
Week 65 Literary Kings - Late July (Literature)
Week 66 Jungleland - Bruce Springsteen & the E St. Band (Poetry, Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Week 67 Story of Isaac - Leonard Cohen (Bible - Genesis)
Week 68 Who Wrote Holden Caulfield - Green Day (J. D. Salinger)
Week 69 A Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed (Nelson Algren)
Week 70 Tobacco Road - Blues Magoos (title of Erskine Caldwell novel)
Week 71 Goodbye Newport Blues by Muddy Waters Band (Langston Hughes)
Week 72 Golden Hair by Syd Barrett (James Joyce, Chamber Music)
Week 73 Under the Greenwood Tree - Donovan (William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy)
Week 74 Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
Week 75 Hey, Jack Kerouac - 10,000 Maniacs (Jack Kerouac)
Week 76 When I Went Out One Morning by Bob Dylan (Tom Paine)
Week 77 Shine on Brighty - Procol Harum (Bible - 3 wise men)
Week 78 Blind by Deep Purple (Poetry, Daedalus & Icarus)
Week 79 Wordy Rappinghood by Tom Tom Club ( Little Red Riding Hood, William Wordsworth)
Week 80 Utterly Simple by Traffic (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)
Week 81 Althea by the Grateful Dead (William Shakespeare, Richard Lovelace)
Week 82 Rabbit Run by Bert Jansch (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)
Week 83 Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds (Book of Ecclesiastes, The Bible)
Week 84 Dandy of the Underworld by T. Rex (Orpheus, Wizard of Oz)
Week 85 A Certain Romance by Arctic Monkeys (Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes)
Week 86 Everyday I Write the Books by Elvis Costello (Literature)
Week 87 Dover Beach by The Bangles (Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot)
Week 88 Animal in Man by Dead Prez (George Orwell, Animal Farm)
Week 89 There, There by Radiohead (The Odyssey, Homer)
Week 90 Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen (Frederico Garcia Lorca)
Week 91 40 by U2 (Psalm 40, the Bible)
Week 92 Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time by The Fugs (William Blake)
Week 93 Stephanie Knows by Love (Poetry)
Week 94 Jason and the Argonauts by XTC (Argonautica, Apollonius, H. G. Wells)
Week 95 Yeats's Grave by The Cranberries (W. B. Yeats, "No Second Troy")
Week 96 The Glass Bead Game by The Thievery Corporation) (Hermann Hesse)
Week 97 Kashmir by Led Zeppelin (Lost Horizon by James Hilton)
Week 98 Bug Dust Powder by Bomb The Bass (William Burroughs + too numerous to note)
Week 99 You're Gonna Make We Lonesome ... by Bob Dylan (Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud)
Week 100 Tomorrow by Patti Smith ( Musical: Annie)
Week 101 Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso) by Sonic Youth (Poem: "Leaky Lifeboat Boys")
Week 102 Get Down Moses by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Moses, Bible, William Faulkner)
Week 103 Jools and Jim by Pete Townshend (Jesus Christ, Krishna)
Week 104 Pilgrim's Progress by Procol Harum (John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress)
Week 105 Enivrez-vous by Stereo Lab (Charles Baudelaire)
Week 106 I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet)
Week 107 Me and Jerome by Sarah Slean (J. D. Salinger)
Week 108 Neal Cassady by Weather Underground (Beats, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg)
Week 109 Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend (Grammar, English drama)
Week 110 Somewhere by Tom Waits (West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet)
Week 111 Dream Gérrad by Traffic (Gérard de Nerval)
Week 112 The Lobster Quadrille by Franz Ferdinand (Lewis Carroll, the Alice Books)
Week 113 Walt Whitman's Niece by Billy Bragg (Walt Whitman)
Week 114 Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie by Belle & Sebastian (Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Judy Blume) Week 115 Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet)
Week 116 He's Gone by the Grateful Dead (Tennessee Williams)
Week 117 Dance of the Hopping Mad by The Raincoats (William Blake)
Week 118 I Zimbra by The Talking Heads (Hugo Ball)
Week 2: Rejoyce by Jefferson Airplane (James Joyce)
Week 3: The Way by Donovan (Lao Tzu)
Week 4: Persecution & Resurrection of Dean Moriarty by Aztec Two-Step (Jack Kerouac)
Week 5: Desolation Row by Bob Dylan (various and multitudinous)
Week 6: Neal, Jack, and Me by King Crimson (Jack Kerouac)
Week 7: Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream (Homer)
Week 7.5: Hallelujah by Popa Chubby (Leonard Cohen)
Week 8: Mercy Street (*) by Peter Gabriel (Anne Sexton)
Week 9: Kaatskill Serenade by David Bromberg (Washington Irving)
Week 10: I Am the Walrus (*) by The Beatles (Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, King Lear)
Week 11: Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar) by the Doors (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill)
Week 12: Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan (Petrarch)
Week 13: Ophelia by The Band (Hamlet, Ophelia)
Week 14: You Can't Judge A Book ... by Cactus (Literature)
Week 15: Lorca's Novena by the Pogues (Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 16: Babe, I'm on Fire - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca)
Week 17: San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native) by Fever Tree (Thomas Hardy)
Week 18 Wild Children (*) by Van Morrison (Tennessee Williams)
Week 19: Stuck Between Stations by The Hold Steady (John Berryman, Jack Kerouac, "Sal Paradise")
Week 20: Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits (William Shakespeare, West Side Story)
Week 21 It's Too Late by the Jim Carroll Band (Raymond Chandler)
Week 22 There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave (John Wilmot, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas et al)
Week 23 Paperback Writer (*) by The Beatles (Edward Lear, Frere Jacques)
Week 24 Small Flowers Crack Concrete by Sonic Youth (d.a.levy)
Week 25 Wreck of the Hesperus by Procol Harum (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Week 26 Home I'll Never Be by Tom Waits (Jack Kerouac)
Week 27 White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane (Lewis Carroll)
Week 28 Ramble On by Led Zeppelin (J. R. R. Tolkin)
Week 29 She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby (Poetry)
Week 30 Adam Raised a Cain by Bruce Springsteen (Genesis Book 4, John Steinbeck)
Week 31 Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants (The Argonautica)
Week 32 What Keeps Mankind Alive by Tom Waits (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill)
Week 33 The Stolen Child by The Waterboys (W. B. Yeats)
Week 34 Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones (Mikhail Bulgakov, Charles Baudelaire, Bible)
Week 35 Sartori in Tangier by King Crimson (The Beats, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac etc.)
Week 36 Spell (Footnote to Howl) by Patti Smith (Howl, Allen Ginsberg, Beats, Footnote to Howl)
Week 37 1984 by David Bowie (George Orwell)
Week 38 April by Deep Purple (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land)
Week 39 Pride of Man by Quicksilver Messenger Service (The Bible)
Week 40 Not So Sweet Lorraine by Country Joe & the Fish (I Ching)
Week 41 Undercover of the Night by the Rolling Stones (William Burroughs "Cities of the Red Night")
Week 42 Poor Little Rich Boy by Regina Spektor (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway)
Week 43 Highway 61 Revisited by Johnny Winter (Bob Dylan cover, The Bible, Bertolt Brecht)
Week 44 Sweet Jane by Lou Reed (Poetry)
Week 45 Conquistador by Procol Harum (Percy B. Shelley "Ozymandis")
Week 46 Bullet the Blue Sky by U2 (Bible: Genesis 32)
Week 47 Xanadu by Rush (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan)
Week 48 Haiku by Slapp Happy (Haiku, Issa, Han Shan)
Week 49 Shakespeare's Sister by The Smiths (William Shakespeare)
Week 50 Samson & Delilah - Rev. Gary Davis (Bible)
Week 51 Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny - Frank Zappa (Franz Kafka)
Week 52 Cassidy - Grateful Dead (Neal Cassady)
Week 53 Ghetto Defendent - The Clash w/Allen Ginsberg (Allen Ginsberg, Beat Literature)
Week 54 Sharkey's Night by Laurie Anderson (William Burroughs)
Week 55 A Rose for Emily by The Zombies (William Faulkner)
Week 56 A Fire Down Below - Nick Cave (Book of Malachi)
Week 57 The Weight - The Band (William Faulkner, Bible)
Week 58 My Blakean Year - Patti Smith (William Blake)
Week 59 Bukowski - Modest Mouse (Bukowski)
Week 60 Marat/Sade - Judy Collins (Peter Weiss, Marquis de Sade)
Week 61 End of the Night - The Doors (Louis Ferdinand Céline)
Week 62 John the Revelator - Gov't Mule (The Bible, Book of Revelations)
Week 63 A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum (Canterbury Tales "The Miller's Tale")
Week 64 Who Are You - Tom Waits (Hamlet)
Week 65 Literary Kings - Late July (Literature)
Week 66 Jungleland - Bruce Springsteen & the E St. Band (Poetry, Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Week 67 Story of Isaac - Leonard Cohen (Bible - Genesis)
Week 68 Who Wrote Holden Caulfield - Green Day (J. D. Salinger)
Week 69 A Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed (Nelson Algren)
Week 70 Tobacco Road - Blues Magoos (title of Erskine Caldwell novel)
Week 71 Goodbye Newport Blues by Muddy Waters Band (Langston Hughes)
Week 72 Golden Hair by Syd Barrett (James Joyce, Chamber Music)
Week 73 Under the Greenwood Tree - Donovan (William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy)
Week 74 Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
Week 75 Hey, Jack Kerouac - 10,000 Maniacs (Jack Kerouac)
Week 76 When I Went Out One Morning by Bob Dylan (Tom Paine)
Week 77 Shine on Brighty - Procol Harum (Bible - 3 wise men)
Week 78 Blind by Deep Purple (Poetry, Daedalus & Icarus)
Week 79 Wordy Rappinghood by Tom Tom Club ( Little Red Riding Hood, William Wordsworth)
Week 80 Utterly Simple by Traffic (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)
Week 81 Althea by the Grateful Dead (William Shakespeare, Richard Lovelace)
Week 82 Rabbit Run by Bert Jansch (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)
Week 83 Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds (Book of Ecclesiastes, The Bible)
Week 84 Dandy of the Underworld by T. Rex (Orpheus, Wizard of Oz)
Week 85 A Certain Romance by Arctic Monkeys (Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes)
Week 86 Everyday I Write the Books by Elvis Costello (Literature)
Week 87 Dover Beach by The Bangles (Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot)
Week 88 Animal in Man by Dead Prez (George Orwell, Animal Farm)
Week 89 There, There by Radiohead (The Odyssey, Homer)
Week 90 Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen (Frederico Garcia Lorca)
Week 91 40 by U2 (Psalm 40, the Bible)
Week 92 Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time by The Fugs (William Blake)
Week 93 Stephanie Knows by Love (Poetry)
Week 94 Jason and the Argonauts by XTC (Argonautica, Apollonius, H. G. Wells)
Week 95 Yeats's Grave by The Cranberries (W. B. Yeats, "No Second Troy")
Week 96 The Glass Bead Game by The Thievery Corporation) (Hermann Hesse)
Week 97 Kashmir by Led Zeppelin (Lost Horizon by James Hilton)
Week 98 Bug Dust Powder by Bomb The Bass (William Burroughs + too numerous to note)
Week 99 You're Gonna Make We Lonesome ... by Bob Dylan (Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud)
Week 100 Tomorrow by Patti Smith ( Musical: Annie)
Week 101 Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso) by Sonic Youth (Poem: "Leaky Lifeboat Boys")
Week 102 Get Down Moses by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Moses, Bible, William Faulkner)
Week 103 Jools and Jim by Pete Townshend (Jesus Christ, Krishna)
Week 104 Pilgrim's Progress by Procol Harum (John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress)
Week 105 Enivrez-vous by Stereo Lab (Charles Baudelaire)
Week 106 I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet)
Week 107 Me and Jerome by Sarah Slean (J. D. Salinger)
Week 108 Neal Cassady by Weather Underground (Beats, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg)
Week 109 Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend (Grammar, English drama)
Week 110 Somewhere by Tom Waits (West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet)
Week 111 Dream Gérrad by Traffic (Gérard de Nerval)
Week 112 The Lobster Quadrille by Franz Ferdinand (Lewis Carroll, the Alice Books)
Week 113 Walt Whitman's Niece by Billy Bragg (Walt Whitman)
Week 114 Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie by Belle & Sebastian (Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Judy Blume) Week 115 Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult (William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet)
Week 116 He's Gone by the Grateful Dead (Tennessee Williams)
Week 117 Dance of the Hopping Mad by The Raincoats (William Blake)
Week 118 I Zimbra by The Talking Heads (Hugo Ball)
If you dig poetry, visit Issa's Untidy Hut, the blog of the print magazine Lilliput Review.
Click the mag's homepage for sample issues with hundreds of poems.
Last Update: 8/28/11
Click the mag's homepage for sample issues with hundreds of poems.
Last Update: 8/28/11
