John S. Hall
| John S. Hall | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Charles Hall September 2, 1960 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet, author, singer, lawyer |
| Genre | Performance poetry, spoken word, free verse |
| Literary movement | Avant-garde, absurdist, postmodernist |
| Website | |
| www |
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John S. Hall (born John Charles Hall September 2, 1960) is an American poet, author, singer and lawyer perhaps best known for his work with King Missile, an avant-garde band that he co-founded in 1986 and has since led in various disparate incarnations.
John S. Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Manhattan's West Village. He recalls being "very quiet and shy" as a child, and a social outcast as an adolescent. In 1978 he graduated from Stuyvesant High School.
In the early 1980s, Hall began participating in the Lower East Side poetry scene. He read his poems at such venues as Speakeasy and ABC No Rio. According to performance poet Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Hall "became an easily recognizable figure in the scene: pale, bald, dressed mostly in black and white, with wire-rimmed glasses and a porkpie hat."
Hall has long been a vocal opponent of slam poetry, taking issue with such factors as its inherently competitive nature and what he considers its lack of stylistic diversity. In a 2005 interview by Aptowicz, he recalled seeing his first slam, at the Nuyorican Poets Café:
Despite his reservations about slam poetry, Hall has performed alongside slam poets on such television programs as PBS's The United States of Poetry,MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged, and HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry.
Hall performed in at least two musical groups before co-founding King Missile. One was Purple Sunshine, a "hippie band" Hall started because he "was really into hippies and LSD, and tuning in and dropping out, and all that stuff." The other was You Suck, which Hall says was inspired by a band led by punk musician Mykel Board:
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