Brianland

On this weekend 17 years ago — in the heat of the Democratic primary of 2008 between Hillary & Obama — I started BrianHassett.com. Every month since then for 17 years I’ve written at least one new piece for the site. “17” has been a weird number that’s followed me around my whole life from […]

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. Beat & Prankster fans rejoice! A new firsthand memoir has just been released of life with one of the Mount Rushmores of both the Beat Generation & the Merry Pranksters.  That doesn’t happen very often, and there aren’t many options left. Anne Murphy (who later reverted back to her birth name Anne Marie Maxwell) […]

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. Why this Deadhead Beatnik Beatlemaniac loves Pop’s Princess   I’ve been into Taylor Swift since a New York Times profile in 2008 talked about her confessional songwriting and use of social media — at the time, MySpace.  (!)  Her second album Fearless was set to come out (and would go on to win Album […]

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Jack on Film: Take 2 at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac . Here’s a YouTube playlist with great video of the entire Jack on Film show — . =========================================== Here’s a riffing interview with WCAP in Lowell about all things Kerouac — and the new “Jack on Film: Take 2” show — with nearly a hundred photos […]

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You wake up one day and your whole life changes just by the chance seeing of a picture. Much the way it might with a chance spotting of a poster on a bookstore wall. As Jack says, “My books are my children.”  And as Mama always preached — pregnancy can happen in an instant. Unlike […]

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David Amram and I have been performing together since we first started hanging in 1994 after an introduction by Teri McLuhan, Marshall’s daughter.  It was the big NYU Beat conference — I write about it in Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy — I first saw him unloading his congas from his Farm Aid jeep on opening night, […]

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  Stories, videos and photos from the annual Kerouac hometown festival over the last several years I’ve been going. Edie Parker-Kerouac called and told me about the the initial commemorative dedication in July 1988 — which birthed LCK — saying that she, Henri Cru and “Big Tim” Moran were driving up for it, and that […]

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Here’s a little taste . . . My “script” notes for the first dramatic portrayal of Jack . . . . Pull My Daisy (released Nov. 1959) One of the Big Five to focus on MY THESIS HOW THIS IS THE GREATEST BEAT GEN CREATION. Filmed in their prime . . . . Kerouac’s best […]

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The Making of “Jack on Film” . . Believe it or not this whole thing started when I got a call on January 12th, 2021 — six days after the Capitol insurrection (!) and still deep in the pandemic lockdown daze.  A musician friend I’ve known since 1976, Will Hodgson, was home with his kids […]

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The Magic Genie’s Happy Place —  Saturday July 9th, 2022 . The matinee show (4PM) stemmed from a massive reorganization of all my performance pieces — many dating back to New York in the 1980s and ’90s.  A bunch of them still held up — and since nobody’s heard me do them in 20 or […]

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