"Spoken-word thrillery comprised of deviant advertising slogans, imagery both powerful and perverse, snippets of overheard conversations, tales of alien-inspired sex and large smart slabs of witty social comment." - Dean T. Moody

15 MP3 Songs
SPOKEN WORD: With Music, SPOKEN WORD: Comedy

Show all album songs: Caught in the Act Songs


Details:
WHITMAN McGOWAN started his public vociferating career reading poems for a dollar each at a Pasadena, California coffeehouse, putting poetry on the menu where he worked. His first featured reading was on a farm in Northfield, Minnesota, his first solo appearance at Tigh Johnny, an Irish pub on the Rue Montmartre in Paris. After that he became known for crafting a pagan anthem, âWhite Folks Was Wild Once, Too,â just reissued on DVD. Since 1985 he has performed extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area and at the first National Poetry Slam in San Francisco in 1990 he was employed as the barker at the front door. Heâs hit most of the blue states and some of the red ones and toured Europe four times, often collaborating with flute player Margery Snyder and electronica artist DJ Louka (Lucalyptus). Heâs also worked with cellist Michael Kott, the late Brion Gysin, guitarists Bob Log III, Steve Westfield and The Dead Kennedyâs East Bay Ray and appeared on the same stage as Californiaâs poet laureate Al Young, San Franciscoâs poet laureate Jack Hirschman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maya Angelou, Attila the Stockbroker, Billy Childish and Lydia Lunch. Along the way, this San Francisco spoken word artiste also garnered the title of nightclub wrestling champion of Dresden, Germany!

The latest anthologies to include him are Poems for the Retired Nihilist (Fortune Teller Press, London, 2005), Public House (Public House Press, San Francisco, 2004), New American Underground Poetry: Volume 1: The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell (Trafford Press, Victoria, B.C., 2005) and Chokecherries (S.O.M.O.S., Taos, New Mexico 2006). Heâs been published in Salon and a hundred other places before becoming a bit of a fixture at his SF local, The Edinburgh Castle Pub, and is well represented in PUBLIC HOUSE, their 2004 anthology. His two spoken word & music CD collections, PO FU (San Francisco: Viridiana, 2000) and CAUGHT IN THE ACT (live performances, Switzerland: Little Records -- http://little.ch/, 2003), combine storytelling, chant, comedy and talksinging. He is on the Web at http://whitmanmcgowan.com/.