JOHN PIETARO
My blogs
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Industry | Arts |
| Occupation | Writer, Poet, Musician, Spoken Word Artist |
| Location | Brooklyn, NY, United States |
| Links | Audio Clip |
| Introduction | John Pietaro, writer, poet, journalist, performer. Columnist/Critic: NYC Jazz Record. Curator: West Village Word at Cafe Bohemia NYC. Director: Dissident Arts Festival. Contributing Writer: Z, the Nation, the Wire, many others. Recent credits: poetry collection: THE MERCER STANDS BURNING (Atmosphere Press 2020), poetry chapbook SMOKE RINGS (2019), chapters for Harvey Pekar/Paul Buhle SDS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY (2007 Hill &Wang) and IL BIGLIETTO 2 edited by Italian poet Erika Dagnino. In 2013 self-published volume of contemporary proletarian fiction, NIGHT PEOPLE. Current: BENEATH THE UNDERGROUND. As percussionist/spoken word artist worked Amina Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Karl Berger, Fred Ho, Ras Moshe, many more. Front-man: WHISPERS and THE RED MICROPHONE. Member: Authors Guild, Academy of American Poets, National Writers Union, Jazz Journalists Association. |
| Interests | Fomenting progressive uprising, one essay, one poetry reading, one piece of music, one cultural awakening at a time! |
| Favorite Movies | Casablanca, Citizen Kane, the Sweet Smell of Success (also has a brilliant jazz score by Chico Hamilton), Laura, the Woman From Shanghai, Rope, the Maltese Falcon, Downtown 81. Good, dark horror films are always welcome: the Haunting, the Innocents, Psycho, the Shining, Session 9, more. |
| Favorite Music | Improvisational music, modernist composition, jazz, songs of revolution, No Wave, punk rock, 1960s and '70s pop. The songs of Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren and Phil Ochs are continuously important as are recordings of the Beatles, John Coltrane, King Crimson, Adrian Belew, Woody Guthrie, the Clash, Television, Blondie. Others who will always make a great impact on me are composers Hanns Eisler, Kurt Weill, Thelonious Monk, Erik Satie. The Modern Jazz Quartet. Drummers Hal Blaine, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Cliff Leeman, Ed Blackwell, Bill Bruford, Clem Catini, Earl Palmer, Gary Chester. Jaime Muir. Boom, s-boom, b-tah, b-tah! Oh yeah, Mmmm hmmmm. |
| Favorite Books | The list would go on far too long! Brecht, John Reed, Langston Hughes, William Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Mike Gold, Jack Kerouac, Zora Neal Hursten, Franz Kafka, Joan Didion, Cornell Woolrich, Edna St Vincent Millay, Dashiell Hammet, Kenneth Fearing, Saul Bellow, members of the League of American Writers, history books of Howard Zinn and Paul Buhle. |