I’ve loved Van Gogh since the big Metropolitan Museum of Art show “Van Gogh in Arles” in 1984 and the “Saint-Remy and Auvers” show in 1986, and reading his Dear Theo book of letters to his brother around the same time. Those shows and that book changed my life by showing me first the dedication a serious artist has to his work, and what a body of work could look like, and secondly how it could change a room and a person’s life. Which was also connected to another artist I identified with, Jack Kerouac, who similarly created one vast body of work, that when taken in totality, is knee-buckling in its vastness and awe-inspiring in its beauty.
If you haven’t heard, this movie is largely hand-painted with oils in Van Gogh’s style.
It’s like the “Red Roses, Green Gold” musical I saw last month in New York with my same two Art Adventure-mates Sky and George Walker in that it takes existing works (songs in that case, paintings in this) and builds a story around them.
In Loving Vincent, they’ve tapped into a 2011 Van Gogh biography that explores whether he in fact committed suicide or perhaps it was something else. Whether that book and its conspiracy-theory propheteering nonsense contains a shred of fact is beside the point here — because it makes for a fun dramatic mystery that the narrative of the movie is based around.
I also likened this movie to On The Road — the 2012 adaptation of the Kerouac classic. When first seeing that movie, it was fun in that as each new scene would open, you’d realize, “Oh, it’s THAT scene,” and then settle in and enjoy the visual dramatization of some moment you’d only read on a page. Similarly, here we go from one Van Gogh masterpiece to another without any idea of what’s coming next.
If you’ve spent any time at all appreciating Van Gogh’s works — particularly his last years in Arles, Saint-Remy and Auvers — you’ll recognize every scene and work — which suddenly come to life. Crows leaping out of corn fields, trains chugging by in the distance, candle lights flickering their illumination, smoke wafting up in the face of colorful storytellers, and faces that were once static coming to life with voices and mannerisms we could only imagine while standing in a museum or flipping pages of an expensive art book.
The movie also uses flashbacks to convey the backstory, which are shot in live-action with actors, then run through a filter that makes them look like black-&-white/ sepia Van Goghs from his early “Potato Eaters” phase. [EDIT: see first comment below.] This has the effect of not only telling the story and giving faces to young Vincent and his brother Theo etc. but also gives the viewer a respite from the blazing colors of the moving canvases, not unlike the white walls of a museum give your eyes a rest before you move to the next eye-popping landscape or portrait.
The movie is sadly missing Madame Ginoux (one of whose portraits is on permanent display at the Met) but Dr. Gachet coming to life in brilliant blazing blue with facial expressions in oils to rival the most subtle actor is a cinematic explosion to rival Star Wars — except in Van Gogh’s explosive oils.
The fading transitions back & forth from the sepia to the full-color action makes you feel like the acid is just kicking in every time. Suddenly a black & white world is swirling in dizzying colors and people become moving paintings and colors appear where there were no colors before.
Artists like to control their work. They have visions and work hard to execute them exactly as they see them. That’s where discipline and practice and trial-&-error come into any effective artist’s work. And painters have the blessing of not having rote copyeditors or album “producers” or ego-maniacal studio heads messing with their work.
But once their bodies have stopped ticking and their hands stopped creating … the life’s work is done.
I think in 2017, a century after old Vinnie bit it in a wheat field with crows, he would be happy to see the “Loving” repurposing of his work in this way, just as I believe Jerry Garcia would get a kick out of his songs being reenvisioned as a musical, or Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady would appreciate how George Walker & I are bringing their words to life on a stage.
There are those rare artists in history who transcend their medium and their era to become something that is the world’s, that is bigger and even more transcendent than the works they first created. If you can create a painting that can become a movie, or songs that can tell a grand unified story, or create characters on a page that can become alive on a stage, you have left the world a rich fluid palette more valuable than any single “masterpiece.” Few artists create such lasting multi-medium works, but we are lucky to be living through a time when innovation and reflection allow us to experience some of the greatest works of the past in entirely new ways while still truly reflecting the original vision.
I like to think of Vincent, Jerry and Jack sitting back and rejoicing in a corner booth at a cafe/bar in heaven, looking from on high as us mortals still dab their wet palettes, still expand the songs they left behind, still bring their characters to life.
I think that’s what any artist wants to bestow to this world. Not just what they got finished before they checked out, but to know that all their hard work with accompanying depressions and addictions and rejections actually produced the inspiration for others to build upon their constructions.
Creating great somethings out of vast nothings is hard enough to generate appreciation in others. But when your work can become new work, you have become a Great Creator, a God, a deity of art, turned water into wine, paint into people, air into emotions, and hard work into eternity.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Behold — a re-imagining of the Hunter-Garcia songbook. New life. New arrangements. New band. New set. New stage. New story.
If you’d like a fresh way to approach Grateful Dead music — go to this show.
If you like the Dead and theater — go to this show.
If you like the Dead and musicals — go to this show.
If you’re not sure — go to this show.
Just as the Grateful Dead broke pretty much every rule there was in showbiz — their music and this production turns a New York theater show into a dancing concert. However long you’ve been going to the theater, you’ll be breaking the rules you’ve learned to live by. This isn’t hushed-in-your-seat passive theater going. This is a collaboration between band & audience, just like Grateful Dead shows were since their birth at the Acid Tests. You’re encouraged from the opening to sing along and get up and dance. Which, once one person breaks the ice, a Dead show breaks out. 🙂
By my count there were at least 17 classic Dead songs used to tell the tale of a kooky crazy saloon set sometime in the nebulous Old West. There’s a narrator — Jack Jones, the Doodah Man — who’s kinda like the Stage Manager in Our Town helping guide the audience through the Twelfth Night-like comedy of interconnected couples and conflicted love and bad intentions and double crossings — but really it’s all just a vehicle to reinvent Robert Hunter’s rich storytelling lyrics in a playful, funny, high-energy dramatization.
Original Merry Prankster George Walker and myself (and others) caught the third-ever staging of this (outside of rehearsals) and were lucky enough to talk to pretty much everyone involved from techies to the producer, from Jeff Chimenti the musical director to the on-stage stars, and there’s very much a feeling of the Grateful Dead themselves in their earliest days. The clay is still wet, the canvas not fully painted, and the arrangements still in organic growing glowing flux.
This is eight relatively unknown musician/actors who are sculpting something new out of something established and familiar. All of them are good, but Scott Wakefield is the father-figure both in the show, and probably off, and has a mid-career Rip Torn vibe with under-the-surface dangerous energy goin’ on. Debbie Christine Tjong as Bertha is a firecracker with a little of Shaky Willie’s Shrew and Kathy Griffin’s petite explosions. The mother–daughter characters played by Natalie Storrs and Maggie Hollinbeck do a touching show-stopping duet on Brokedown Palace. And Brian Russell Carey as the clueless comedic foil Dudley has the audience laughing out loud just about every time he opens his mouth. But the breakout to these eyes was Michael Viruet in the central character of Mick Jones — not unlike Berger in Hair, the bad guy / good guy, the Neal Cassady of this sidways adventure.
The choreography is positively playfully Twyla Tharp. And the set and prop design is someplace between M.C. Escher and Dr. Seuss, with a cameo by Bart Simpson on skateboard.
And the seconding of musicians is second to none. I don’t think one of them played less than five instruments all night. Besides the eight voices, a partial list I noticed included — a violin, acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, accordion, ukulele, upright bass, drums, upright saloon piano, electric guitar, electric bass, conga, cajon box, tambourine, chimes, cowbell, shakers, and a cello!
Besides all the full songs, there were a bunch of Deadly instrumental mood-setters sprinkled throughout, and no two were ever played by the same lineup. And if that ain’t turn-on-a-dime unexpected Grateful Dead, I don’t know what is.
The old-timey instrumentation reminded me of Phil Lesh’s recent collaboration with the String Cheese Incident — the original jugband / bluegrass music that Garcia & Hunter were born out of. Authentic. Timeless. Americana.
The costumes (especially the skeleton suit and Garcia’s American flag top hat detail) and broad staging is top-notch New York theater, but performed in a little one-block alleyway playhouse down in the Village, infused with that neighborhood’s spirit and grassroots organic non-uptown mindset. When I lived around the corner in the ’80s, I second-acted Balm In Gilead there about 15 times just to experience Laurie Metcalf’s 14 minute monologue. It’s as cool an Off-Broadway experience as you’re gonna have, on an ancient New York lane and street (both called Minetta) you might not even know exists, which also includes Serpico’s apartment from the movie.
Gratefully, this is not Cats or The Lion King — but more a Prankster Production — except with money and rehearsals and pros behind it.
What it is, is Fun.
Occasionally there’s a smidge too much exposition of a too convoluted plot that’s ultimately unimportant — cuz it’s the exuberant freshly-delivered songs and their productions and the joyous Spirit of the whole thing that you’re gonna take away from it.
Do it with friends. Make a night of it in the Village. And get the special dancing seats if you’re so inclined, wink wink.
Other than extreme purists who can’t listen to this music without Jerry, I can’t imagine a Deadhead walking out of this theater without a beaming Cheshire grin on their face. Cuz that’s all I saw all night.
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Bumping into some of the cast on the streets of Village
after they finished at the Minetta and
we finished our Jack & Neal show at The Bitter End.
It all started on September 5th, 1957 when a certain book got published . . .
Or no . . . it all started in April 1951 when a guy sat down at a typewriter with a long scroll of paper so he didn’t have to stop writing every 11 inches . . .
Or no it all started when Neal Cassady came to New York, Christmastime 1946 . . .
Which really flips back to Denver’s Hal Chase coming to Columbia University and telling all his new soon-to-be-Beat writer friends about this catalytic conman he knew from Colorado . . .
Which waves back to Twain’s playful Huck or Shakespeare’s pranksterish Puck or eternity’s Irish luck . . .
But what I can tell you for sure is this — pretty much all the Merry Pranksters — from their Perry Lane / Stanford writers’ birthplace to the Bus-painting bohos of Ken Kesey’s house in La Honda — had read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road . . . before collectively taking their own Road trip with the real life Dean Moriarty hero of the book, Neal Cassady.
As Kesey used to say when asked how someone becomes a Prankster — “We just recognize each other.” And one of the traits — one of those recognizable admission requirements — was that you’d read On The Road.
As Kerouac & Grateful Dead scholar Dennis McNally opens the Cassady/Acid Test chapter in his definitive book on the Dead et al, A Long Strange Trip, “Neal Leon Cassady was ‘Dean Moriarty’ in On The Road, a fundamental document of the cultural odyssey that all the members of the Grateful Dead would travel.”
They had also all heard of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl because of the internationally reported on obscenity trial in 1957 that was extra prominent in the local West Coast newspapers, although not many of them had actually read the book, and none of them cited it as a breakthrough work for them. But it sure made everybody aware there was some chit goin on.
Nowadays there are over 50 Kerouac-written books in print, and gawd-knows how many biographies … and Allen books … and books by members of the Beat Generation who were never known of in the late ’50s and early ’60s. But back then there was really only one book.
It’s hard for us in the present to imagine a world with only one Beatles record — but effectively that’s what it was for pretty much all the original gelling Pranksters and Dead. It wasn’t “Beat” like we know it now — not a group show at the Whitney or de Young, or the latest hardcover collection, or multiple major motion pictures. It was one book. Even though by the early ’60s, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Big Sur and more were in print, not one of the living Pranksters has ever mentioned to me any one of them being read in their pre-Bus-trip years. It was an On The Road mindset that changed everything. It was a way people were beginning to think. “It wasn’t a club, it was a way of seeing,” as Prankster bandleader Jerry Garcia phrased what “Beat” meant to him.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
At this point this story goes very in-depth with quotes by Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Robert Hunter, Paul Krassner, Ken Babbs, Dennis McNally, Robert Stone, Sterling Lord and Paul Foster,
plus new interviews with Wavy Gravy, Mountain Girl, George Walker, Anonymous, Roy Sebern, Mary Microgram & Kesey biographer Robert Faggen —
One other connection that I have no proof of — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true — is that the central character in the central book of Kesey’s canon is the same central character in the central book of Kerouac’s canon. The Chief tells us Randle’s story, and Sal tells us Dean’s.
Knowing of Kesey’s association with Cassady, I assumed for years that Randle Patrick McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest was based on Cassady — until I found out it was written and published long before Neal ever showed up in Ken’s driveway on Perry Lane in 1963 — the reason for his unexpected arrival never disclosed to Kesey or anyone else, although Dennis McNally says of Cassady and that moment in A Long Strange Trip, “He’d read One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and felt a spiritual kinship with Randle Patrick McMurphy, and indeed there was a bond.”
McMurphy was a charismatic good-looking fast-talking Irish jailbird conman and master manipulator who had a way with women. He instigated road trips, and stole a boat for a joyride in place of a car. He had the gift of gab and unflinching confidence. He loved to play and goof and get away with whatever he could between the cracks. He sure seemed like Dean Moriarty in On The Road to me. “McMurphy” & “Moriarty” even sound alike. And not fer nuthin but Jack Nicholson coulda played both with manic aplomb. 🙂
Kesey told Faggen in the Paris Review interview, “The Irish names — Kesey, Cassady, McMurphy — were all together in my mind as well as a sense of Irish blarney. That’s part of the romantic naiveté of McMurphy. But McMurphy was born a long time before I met Neal Cassady. The character of McMurphy comes from Sunday matinees, from American Westerns. He’s Shane that rides into town, shoots the bad guys, and gets killed in the course of the movie.”
And indeed, both Cuckoo’s Nest and Road end on sad notes for their heroes. Or antiheroes. Yet their lives as recounted lifted them to legend.
And legend and myth are a big part of it. “It happened even if it isn’t true,” Kesey would say with his leprechaun twinkle. Or there’s his oft-quoted, “To hell with facts! We need stories!” Kerouac called his collected work “The Duluoz Legend” — unabashedly mythologizing and fictionalizing his real life. Playing with reality is both an author’s and a Prankster’s mission. As is having fun and Adventure — and capturing it. As is “tootling the multitudes” and practicing “first thought best thought.”
Kerouac wrote on an endless scroll. Kesey filmed an endless movie. Both were shaking up the conventions of America, which by 1964 was still not much different than 1954. The Beats were the blooming and the Pranksters the fruition. The Beats were the sprouts from the garden earth and the Pranksters the flowers that turned black & white to color and became something you could wear in your hair and turn round from square.
Kerouac captured the discovery of America by post-WWII modes and means . . . and the Pranksters turned it into a Bus with beans. Kerouac made literature fun … and the Pranksters made living funny. Kerouac opened up possibilities and the Pranksters closed the deal.
On The Road was the cardkey pocketbook you needed to pull out of your back pocket to get through the door of The Bus. Neal Cassady was the guy who drove Kerouac on the most important Road trip of his life, then did exactly the same for Kesey — in case anyone missed the obvious. Kerouac lived through and captured the birth of BeBop, and Kesey created the Acid Tests that birthed The Grateful Dead and the psychedelic revolution. Kerouac and Kesey are next to each other in most alphabetical lists of great 20th century authors — but they were also 1, 2 in a much bigger chronology. And so much of the world is still On The Road and On The Bus.
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Here’s the first time the book appeared before a microphone . . . unexpectedly at a small club show in Toronto just before the Fall On The Road 2017 tour began . . .
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
To find out about how this is all playing out in live shows and where you can see them — go here.
For The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — go here or here.
For reaction to The Hitchhiker’s Guide … check out here, here and here.
For a Hitchhiker’s excerpt about first meeting Ken Kesey — go here.
George Walker & Brian Hassett first met in Boulder Colorado in July 1982 at the historic Jack Kerouac On The Road 25th Anniversary Conference — where Hassett ran the projector for their multimedia “Cassady” show — and then hung again the following month at Ken Kesey’s home in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.
Flash-forward to 2015 and Walker is given a copy of Hassett’s new The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac (about that very summit in Boulder!) and “read it cover-to-cover as soon as I got it – and loved every minute of it!”
This led Walker to read numerous other Beat and Prankster stories on Hassett’s website, prompting him to write, “I often wonder why I go on this damn thing [the internet] and then every once-in-a-while I find something like this!”
The following summer of 2016 they met up for the first time in 34 years on the tour for the “Going Furthur” film they both appear in.
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Walker was holding court with a half-dozen people behind the theater when Hassett first walked up after all these years, prompting him to blurt out to his crowd, “Now here’s somebody I look up to!”
An hour after they first saw each other again — already jammin deep
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Followed by a side “trip” to the Church of Sacred Mirrors (COSM)
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They next came together at the Merry Prankster / Twanger Plunker Family Reunion in May 2017 where Hassett opened the weekend festivities with a spoken word / theater performance, after which Walker said in bug-eyed amazement — “I’d never seen you on a stage before! That was unbelievable, man!”
That afternoon, hanging in their mutual friend Spirit’s motorhome,
Walker mentioned he could bring Neal to life real well, prompting Hassett to say, “Well, we should do something together. You read Neal and I’ll read Jack. We could do that ‘IT’ part from On The Road where they’re sitting in the backseat talking like crazy,” and Walker’s face was bouncing up and down, “Yes Yes Yes!”
The next day, 15 minutes before the show, Walker read that part of On The Road for the first time in 30 years . . . and was Neal from the opening line of a cold read-through.
He’d first spontaneously channeled his good friend Cassady back in 1973, reading him aloud at fellow Kesey/Cassady pal Ed McClanahan’s house, whereupon everyone stopped what they were doing and listened to their old friend appear in the room. Walker says he’s been trying to find a way to bring Cassady to life on a stage ever since.
Hassett has been performing Kerouac since at least 1994 when he started producing, hosting and performing in a series of Kerouac-inspired shows in Manhattan, L.A., Amsterdam, London, Toronto and elsewhere. Although duetting with countless others over decades of shows, he’s never had a stage partner until now.
The duo flourished because it was loving magic from the first moment they got near microphones.
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And since things had gone so well the first time, they did it again on the outdoor stage the next night.
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And since that had gone so well, and Hassett was already booked to do his “Beat Café” show at the world-famous Beat Museum in North Beach San Francisco on Friday June 2nd to kick off the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, that became the first Hassett–Walker full show.
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Which brought more people into The Beat Museum than any event they’ve ever put on in their history (other than a memorial for a fallen giant). And for the first time, the duo improvised on stage in character as Jack & Neal.
The show killed.
Here’s most of it on video. Part 1 — with Jerry Cimino’s intro, The Shindig Sutra, the poem intro to the “The Power of The Collective” from The Rolling Stone Book of The Beats, and excerpt from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Jack Kerouac, and the start of the “IT” section from On The Road . . . 😉
Here’s part 2 with the rest of the “IT” section duet, then Brian performs the bus trip chapter from Jack Kerouac’s Pic — only the second time it was ever performed anywhere — then George tells the story of the 1964 Bus trip across the country and about the last time Jack & Neal ever saw each other, at the Prankster party in Manhattan . . .
And here’s part 3 where Brian and George improv as Jack & Neal bumping into each other at The Beat Museum —> the Nebraska road section from On The Road . . .
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Walker, Hassett & Mountain Girl (Carolyn Garcia) in the Haight, June 2017
Hassett was also booked at the landmark Tsunami Books in hometown Prankster headquarters Eugene Oregon, which then became the second Hassett–Walker show.
Mountain Girl introduced the pair . . .
with her daughter Sunshine Kesey and Ken Babbs in the audience laughing and clapping, the show prompting Tsunami owner Scott Landfield to blurt out, “You just had that audience entranced for two hours. That doesn’t happen. You can’t do that with just spoken word.”
The show killed. Video to follow.
Which prompted the duo to book a Portland show, and with a week’s notice, packed the classic Kerouacian American roadhouse, The Rosebud Cafe, which turned out to be the real birth of the duo. For the first time, in a venue far far away, they both found their voice and rhythm on a whole ‘nuthur level.
The show killed. Video to follow.
Which segued into the climax of the West Coast Summer of Love Tour in the home of the very first Acid Test — Santa Cruz.
Hassett, Roy Sebern, Walker, John & Jami Cassady, Angela Chesnut
And they were joined by Neal & Carolyn’s only son John Allen Cassady . . .
Gate 403 — Sun. Oct. 1st 7PM — Brian solo sneak-peak show with Trevor Cape & The Field (403 Roncesvalles) — Toronto, Ont., Canada
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — Sat. Oct. 7th — 2 shows — 12:30 George & Brian / Jack & Neal duet at Jack’s old Pollard Library (401 Merrimack St.) — and 4PM Brian Hassett’s Road Show at The Old Worthen (141 Worthen St.) — Lowell, Mass. — admission: Free
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — Sun. Oct. 8th — 1:30 — the Amram Jam — upstairs at The Old Worthen (141 Worthen St.) — Lowell, Mass. — admission: Free
The Bitter End — Sun. Oct. 15th — Doors 4:00 – Show 4:20–7:30PM — 147 Bleecker St., Greenwich Village, New York City — including special guests Gerd Stern, Levi Asher, Aaron Howard, Toronto’s Trevor Cape, and Tico Chango the 3D UV visual artist — admission: Free
The Woodstock Mothership — Sun. Oct 22nd — 7PM — (6 Hillcrest Ave.) — Woodstock, N.Y. — plus the great Beat poet Andy Clausen – admission: Free
The Colony — Mon. Oct. 23rd — 8PM — (22 Rock City Road) — Woodstock, N.Y.
Harmony Music Wok & Roll — Tues. Oct 24th — 8PM — (52 Mill Hill Rd.) — Woodstock, N.Y. — admission: Free
Keystone Harvest Test — Sat. Oct. 28th (4:20PM) and Sun. Oct 29th (3PM) — (The Homestead — 1230 Beaver Run Dr.) — Lehighton, PA — admission: $45 — tickets available here
Junction City Music Hall— Fri. Nov 3rd — 8PM — (2907 Dundas St. West) — Toronto, Ont., Canada — with Trevor Cape & The Field — admission: $10
Friday Oct 6th — 12:30PM — “Jack & Neal Ride Again” — at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — at the Pollard Library – 401 Merrimack St. — Lowell, Mass.
Sunday Oct 8th — 6:00–9:00PM — “Jack on Film Take 2” — Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — The Luna Theater – Mill Number 5 – 520 Jackson St. — Lowell Mass.
Thursday Oct 12th — 7:00–10:30PM — “Jack & Neal Ride Again” — followed by a jazz trio — Berlin in NYC — 25 Avenue A — Manhattan
Friday the 13th — Prankster Acid Test in Manhattan featuring George Walker, Brian Hassett and The Mighty Manatees Band from Pennsylvania — show details coming soon
Wednesday Oct 18th or Thurs the 19th — 7:00–10:00PM — “Jack & Neal Ride Again” – likely including Will Hodgson and some Manatees — The Dharma Bums tavern — New Hope, PA
Friday Oct 20th — Pennsylvania Acid Test — private location in the Worcester area
Friday Oct 27th — Toronto Beats & Prankster Acid Test — PENDING
= = = = = WEST COAST – SUMMER OF LOVE TOUR – 2017 = = = = =
3. Brian Hassett’s Beat Cafe — The Beat Museum, San Francisco, CA — Fri. June 2nd, 2017
Jerry Cimino intro
Brian: Shindig Sutra excerpt
Brian: Rolling Stone Book of The Beats — The Power of The Collective poem
Brian: “The Prankster Address” (for M.G.) Brian: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac— start of San Francisco chapter (27)
Duo: On The Road — “IT” passage
Brian: Kerouac’s Pic — Bus / Road chapter
George: Story of the final Jack-Neal meeting in New York in 1964 —>
George reading excerpt from his Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind about Jerry Garcia & Neal Cassady on the road
Duo: improv on Jack & Neal bumping into each other at The Beat Museum —> the “Nebraska” road trip passage from On The Road (debut) Brian: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac— climax of San Francisco chapter
4. Kerouac & Cassady Ride Again — Tsunami Books, Eugene, Oregon — Sat. June 17th, 2017
Mountain Girl intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
George: Trouble Ahead Trouble Behind — ending (debut)
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guide — ending – arriving at Kesey’s (ch. 28-29)
Duo: On The Road – “Hinkle’s Party” (debut)
George: storytelling
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guide — Babbs’s house —> Kesey’s Bus (ch. 30)
Duo: improv —> “Nebraska” from On The Road
George: Spit In The Ocean Kesey tribute — buying the first Bus story
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guide climax & ending poem (ch. 31-32)
Duo: improv —> Kerouac’s “Hearing Shearing” —> On The Road – “Driving South” from New York (debut)
5. The Walker Estate, Scappoose, Oregon — Wed. June 28th, 2017
Duo: On The Road “IT” — with Lee Taylor on tenor sax
Brian solo: Be The Invincible Spirit You Are (debut)
6. Rosebud Cafe, outside Portland, Oregon — Thurs. June 29th, 2017
Albert Kaufman intro
Duo: On The Road “IT” — with Lee Taylor on tenor sax
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guide— how it began (ch. 1)
George: Trouble Ahead Trouble Behind
Brian: Al Hinkle–Neal trapeze circus story —>
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guide— in Oregon & On The Road (ch. 2)
George: “Poem For Neal” (debut)
Duo: improv —> OTR “Nebraska”
7. Radius Gallery, The Tannery Arts Center, Santa Cruz — Mon., July 3rd, 2017
John Leopold intro
Duo: On The Road – “IT”
Brian: Hitchhiker’s Guideexcerpt, Carolyn/Jan/Edie (ch. 21)
George: Trouble Ahead — opening
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Jami Cassady: Off The Road excerpt
George: Trouble Ahead — ending
Duo: improv —> On The Road — “Nebraska”
John Cassady: two pieces from his Visions of Neal chapbook
Brian: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — Neal Cassady tribute by Grateful Dead members (ch. 13)
Duo: improv —> OTR – “Driving South”
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= = = = = NORTHEAST – FALL 2017 TOUR = = = = =
Unannounced Pre-Tour Pop-Up Show — Grateful Sunday with Trevor Cape & The Field — Gate 403 Club — Toronto,Canada — Sun. Oct. 1st, 2017
Trevor Cape intro
Brian with Trevor Cape & The Field: How The Beats Begat the Pranksters — opening & closing (debut)
Brian with Trevor Cape & The Field: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — On The Kesey Bus
8. Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — Walker & Hassett Present Kerouac & Cassady — Pollard Library, Lowell — Sat. Oct. 7th, 2017
Steve Edington intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Let’s Go To Italy” (debut)
Duo: The ’64 Party in New York — Jack & Neal’s last time together (debut)
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Duo: On The Road — “Mexico” (debut)
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz” (debut)
Duo: On The Road — improv —> “Nebraska”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South”
10. Lowell Celebrates Kerouac — The Amram Jam — The Old Worthen, Lowell Mass — Sun. Oct. 8th, 2017
Brian — with David Amram Quartet (Kevin Twigg, Rene Hart, Adam Amram): The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — “Song Of The Road I Sing” (ch. 32) How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — “Be The Invincible Spirit You Are” (ch. 14)
George — with Amram Quartet: “Poem For Neal” —> Kazoo – Jazz – Jam
11. Kerouac & Cassady Ride Again — The Bitter End, NYC — Sun. Oct. 15h, 2017
Brian: Beats Begat Pranksters — opening & closing
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Brian: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — Abbie Hoffman–Gregory Corso Showdown
Duo: On The Road — “Road North” (debut)
Duo: On The Road — “Driving NYC to North Carolina and back” (debut)
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — “Be The Invincible Spirit You Are”
Aaron Howard, with Ghost Lee Pat: “Safari”
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Levi Asher / Marc Stein: “Fisherman’s Wharf”
Duo: On The Road — improv —> “Nebraska”
Gerd Stern & George Walker: The Joan Anderson Letter, Neal Cassady, The Beats & The Pranksters
Duo: On The Road — improv —> “Chicago Jazz”
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South”
Trevor Cape & The Field — musical climax — The Other One (with George Walker on Axe-o-phone) —> Road Trip —> Uncle John’s Band —> The Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion —> Not Fade Away
12. The Mothership, Woodstock, NY — Sun. Oct. 22nd, 2017
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Nebraska”
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz”
Brian: How TheBeats Begat The Pranksters — opening & closing
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Andy Clausen: “My Name’s Neal Cassady, What’s Yours?”
George: Beats Begat Pranksters — meeting Neal
George: “Poem For Neal”
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
13. The Colony, Woodstock NY — Mon. Oct. 23rd, 2107
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
14. Harmony Wok & Roll, Woodstock, NY — Tues. Oct. 24th, 2107
Mike Platsky intro
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South”
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving NYC to North Carolina and back”
Brian: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac — First Arriving at Kesey’s Bus (ch. 30)
George: Truncated Trouble — (from Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind) — debut of new performance version
15. The Keystone Harvest Test, Lehighton, PA — Sat. Oct. 28th, 2017
Uncle Joe intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Duo: The ’64 Party in Manhattan — Jack & Neal’s last time together, including accounts by Allen Ginsberg, Ken Babbs & Ken Kesey
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — opening & closing
George: Truncated Trouble — (from Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind)
Duo: improv as Jack & Neal —> On The Road — “Nebraska”
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
The Keystone Harvest Acid Test on video — part 1 — “IT,” “New Orleans,” the ’64 Party in Manhattan, How The Beats Begat The Pranksters
The Keystone Test — part 2 — George’s Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind, “Nebraska,” and “Hinkle’s Party” . . .
16. The Keystone Harvest Test, Lehighton, PA — Sun. Oct. 29th, 2017
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Brian: Kerouac on Record — “The Grateful Dead: Jack Manifested As Music”
George: Neal Cassady August ’48 letter on spirituality
George: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — First Meeting Neal
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — Be The Invincible Spirit You Are
17. Kerouac & Cassady Ride Again — Junction City Music Hall, Toronto Canada — Fri. Nov. 3rd, 2017
Trevor Cape intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving NYC to North Carolina and back”
George: Truncated Trouble — (from “Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind”)
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — opening & closing
Duo: On The Road — “Nebraska”
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz”
Brian: Kerouac on Record — “The Grateful Dead: Jack Manifested As Music”
George: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — First Meeting Neal
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — Be The Invincible Spirit You Are
encore:
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South” — with Trevor Cape & The Field (debut of duo with a rock band)
18. Kerouac & Cassady Ride Again — Iroquois Ridge Public Library, Oakville, Ontario — Thurs. Nov. 9th, 2017
Justine Gerrior intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — opening & closing
George: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters — First Meeting Neal
Q & A — “Do you see the Prankster / Beat scene alive today?”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving NYC to North Carolina and back”
Q & A — “Did Neal talk about Jack?”
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz” (debut of amalgamated version)
19. The Bloomington Writers’ Guild Presents “The Brian Hassett Road Show” — The Blockhouse Bar, Bloomington Indiana — Thurs. May 16th, 2019
Duo: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
20. The Merry Pranksters / Twanger Plunkers Family Reunion — Wonderland, Bloomington Indiana — Friday May 17th, 2019
Opening Ceremonies:
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz”
21. The Merry Pranksters / Twanger Plunkers Family Reunion — Wonderland, Bloomington Indiana — Saturday May 18th, 2019 Kerouac & Cassady Ride Again:
Brett Chamberlain intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
Duo: On The Road — “Hinkle’s Party”
Duo: On The Road — “Go To Italy”
Duo: On The Road — “Nebraska”
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Duo: On The Road — “Driving South”
22. A Beat Prankster Party — with George Walker & John Cassady — The Beat Museum — San Francisco, CA — Thursday, June 20th, 2019
Jerry Cimino introduction
Brian: On The Road with Cassadys — “The Scroll Auction”
George & Brian: On The Road – “IT”
George & Brian: On The Road – “Road North”
George & Brian: On The Road – “Driving South”
George Walker: tells Neal story
Jerry Cimino: “America” by Allen Ginsberg
Brian on Al Hinkle
George Walker, Brian Hassett & Niko Van Dyke: On The Road – “Hinkle’s Party”
John Cassady — Neal by the bus stop story; the Go-Kart Story; Midget car races
Brian & John: growing pot; Neal couldn’t fix anything; Amsterdam; High Times parties; Anne Frank House; Rembrandt’s house
Brian: On The Road with Cassadys – “The Queen & The White Knight”
John on going back to 29 Russell St.
Brian: On The Road with Cassadys – intro tribute to John
Brian & George: The ’64 Party
George’s birthday — “Happy Birthday” to George
George on Neal’s last birthday (Feb. 8th, 1967)
Brian: Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock – climax
source: video review
23. The Beatniks Coffee House, Chico, California Wed. July 3rd, 2019
Brian & George — On The Road — Road North
Here’s the little 6-minute clip of it on Facebook video —
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24. The Rosebud Cafe, Scappoose (Portland), Oregon, Tuesday, July 9th, 2019
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
George: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind — the abbreviated poetry version
Duo: On The Road — “Chicago Jazz”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters – with a cameo by George on the Perry Lane part
Benzedrine inhaler / Al Hinkle stories
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Duo: The birth of the full “’64 Party” piece, beginning with George & Kesey’s ’63 drive across the country
Brian: On The Road with Cassadys — “I Knew / Not Knew Neal Namaste”
“The Grateful Dead: Jack Manifested As Music”
Duo: On The Road — “New Orleans”
Brian: Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock — climax
Here’s the full show — thanks to the mighty Simon Babbs —
25. Outside Kesey’s Furthur Bus, Oregon Country Fair, Veneta, OR, Saturday, July 13th, 2019
26. Quiet Camp Stage, Oregon Country Fair, Veneta, OR, Saturday July 13th, 2019
Duo: On The Road – IT
Duo: On The Road – Chicago Jazz
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27. Beatniks Coffee House & Espresso Joint, Chico, California, Tuesday, June 16th, 2019
Great intro by Randy Turley
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
George: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind — abbreviated poetry version
Duo: On The Road — “Road North”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters – with a cameo by George on the Neal showing up on Perry Lane part
Dedicated to Cathy Cassady who was seeing her first show —
Brian: On The Road with Cassadys — Carolyn Haiku; and I Knew / Not Knew Neal Namaste
Duo: improv riffing — the ’63 drive —> the ’64 Party
Dedicated to the painter Philippo LoGrande —
George: improv storytelling about Neal in Mexico
Duo: On The Road — “Mexico”
Duo: On The Road — “On The Road with Memere”
Brian: Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock — climax
29. Kerouac, Cassady, Kesey & Company, Beyond Baroque, Los Angeles, CA, Sunday, July 21st, 2019
Richard Modiano intro
Duo: On The Road — “IT”
George: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind – abbreviated poetry version
Duo: On The Road – “Road North”
Brian: How The Beats Begat The Pranksters – with cameo by George on the Perry Lane part
Duo: On The Road – “Driving South”
Brian: Holy Cats! Dream-Catching at Woodstock — climax
World Premiere of – “The Pranksters Drive to The Beat Party” – with S.A. Griffin and a cast of contemporary Pranksters
Here’s the full show from the audience handheld liv stream on Facebook by Lonnie Coulter . . .
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30. MeloMelo Kava Bar, Santa Cruz, CA, Friday, July 26th, 2019
Brian: The Prankster Address
Duo: On The Road – “IT”
Duo: On The Road – “Hinkle’s Party”
George: solo storytelling about ’63 New York trip
Duo: On The Road – “Go To Italy”
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31. The Pranksters’ original stage under the Redwoods in back of Kesey’s famous house in La Honda, CA, Monday, July 29th, 2019
Brian: The Prankster Address – from the front porch (video to follow)
Duo: On The Road – “Driving South”
Duo: On The Road – “Chicago Jazz”
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George Walker
George Walker —
a natural storyteller and author of Trouble Ahead Trouble Behind about a fantasy road trip with Jerry Garcia and the ghost of Neal Cassady, and a contributor to the all-star All About Kesey tribute, Walker was there the day Ken bought the original Bus, and became its chief mechanic, as well as one of its drivers along with Neal Cassady on the legendary 1964 trip across America chronicled in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. An active participant in all the early Tests — the puddle The Grateful Dead were born out of — he became one of Cassady’s closest friends through the last years of his life, including taking several road trips to Mexico and elsewhere together. Although his ironic Prankster name was Hardly Visible, he was just the opposite, remaining intricately involved in every Prankster production and Bus trip over the decades, including The Cassady Show; playing the Tin Man in Twister; at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1997; on the Where’s Merlin? tour through the U.K. in 1999; as well as staring in and helping create both the original Prankster movies, The Merry Band of Pranksters Look For A Kool Place and North To Madhattan, and being the live touring Prankster face of the 2016 Going Furthur documentary.
George on teaming up with Brian —
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Here’s a cool interview on Facebook from December 2017 where between roughly the 33 and 44 minute marks George talks about our on stage partnership and new book . . .
For a great movie featuring lots of George Walker, check out Alex Gibney’s masterpiece “Magic Trip” about the legendary 1964 Bus trip across America . . .
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Here’s where Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir talk about George on Tom Snyder’s The Tomorrow Show when he took a Grateful Dead flag and scampered up the Great Pyramid to plant it at its peak during the band’s trip there in ’78 —
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And here’s George as the flag model 🙂 . . . then the actual pyramid-climbing flag-planting escapade captured on a handheld 8mm by the Dead’s dentist pal —
George Walker: “I saw the flag pole up there. We’d actually climbed up it two or three times already. We were young and athletic then. I asked Jerry [Garcia] if he had a Dead flag we could hoist up there. And he opened up his guitar case and had this flag in there with his guitar. He handed it to me, and I never let it out of my hands until we climbed up and flew it. The top pole was really slippery and I had to get help getting up the last part.”
And here he is joyously riffing the story of how The Bus came to be . . . at the Kesey memorial at the San Francisco Library . . .
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Brian Hassett —
author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac about the historic 1982 Kerouac summit, and contributor to The Rolling Stone Book of The Beats and the upcoming Kerouac On Record, Hassett first began producing multi-band multimedia Acid Tests in 1977. He continued in show production, touring with Yes in 1979, and working in the office with Bill Graham putting together The Rolling Stones tour in 1981. He produced the concerts at NYU in Greenwich Village for many years, including a massive Acid Test with Country Joe, Rick Danko, Paul Butterfield & the Joshua Light Show in 1982, which actually won him the Programmer of The Year at the university. He became close friends with Edie Kerouac (Jack’s first wife), Henri Cru (Remi Boncoeur in On The Road), and Carolyn Cassady (the love of both Jack & Neal’s life). He inducted Kerouac into The Counterculture Hall of Fame in Amsterdam, and co-inducted Neal Cassady along with Carolyn and John Cassady. He produced and hosted the 50th anniversary of Kerouac writing On The Road shows in April 2001 in both New York and L.A. (along with S.A. Griffin), as well as numerous Kerouac-themed shows in New York & elsewhere in the 1990s and early 2000s. He’s been a fixture at the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival the last several years, and regularly opens the Prankster Family Reunion each summer.
Here’s a Tribute to Neal Cassady put together by Hassett featuring David Amram, Wavy Gravy, and Pranksters George Walker, Ken Babbs, Mary Microgram and Anonymous —
Here’s Hassett’s tribute to his friend Carolyn Cassady, the longtime wife of Neal —
Here’s Hassett with Kerouac’s principal musical collaborator David Amram and his trio doing a written and musical portrayal of each of the Beat primary writers — excerpt from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac —
Yeah — it can still happen. To anyone anywhere anytime. Me mid-50s, she just over 40.
We’d met a year earlier at a Prankster Family Reunion. I thought she was stunning. But she had this boyfriend. It was one of those couples that didn’t seem to make sense. You’ve known some. They seem more like opposites than a pair. But you never know, cuz you’re not there.
She bought my book and read it non-stop in one day at a music festival.
People around her were protecting her. “Don’t bug Sky, she’s reading.”
I didn’t really know much about her. Just that she was cool and pretty, with long wavy hair, and really liked my book.
By the next family reunion (this year) there she was again, and so was the boyfriend, except they sure didn’t seem to be very together. Don’t think I ever saw them within touching distance of each other the whole weekend. But still — I’m not a guy on the make. Not chasin chicks. I’m married to my work, and happily so. In fact so much so, I can sometimes be blind to overtures.
Next thing you know, it’s the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. San Francisco. Gotta be there. In fact, I get booked for a show at the world famous Beat Museum in North Beach — on the first Friday in June leading into the historic summer — and the night preceding two Dead shows at nearby Shoreline Amphitheatre, which I’ve always wanted to go to since first hearing it was being built with Bill Graham as a major consultant.
At that same Prankster Family Reunion this May, I’d fallen in with a new stage partner. Never had one before in my life. A duo! George Walker. Original Merry Prankster. A guy who was not only “on the bus” but on The Bus on their historic ’64 cross-country trip with Neal Cassady at the wheel. George & Neal ended up becoming fast friends and did many road trips just the two of them, including down to Mexico multiple times, where they’d spend months living together carousing and Adventuring.
He was a big fan of my writing, but had never seen me on a stage before. I’ve opened the last couple of these Prankster Reunions — delivering the keynote address, the mood-setter, the vibe overture, all with a healthy Beat flavor. After this year’s opening show, we were hanging, and he was raving about my performance, so I said, knowing his closeness with Neal, “We should do something together — like, you read Neal and I’ll read Jack. We could do that part from On The Road where they’re sitting in the back of the car talking about the ‘IT’.” And his face lit, eyes bright, head nodding, “Yes yes yes!”
“We’d just need two copies of the book . . . “
That night I grabbed the one I had and started reading the “IT” passage, making performance notes in the margins — when it hit — “You’ve gotta go photocopy these pages and blow them up so you can write all over them and give George his own copy.” And that’s what I did the next morning. And when he & I sat down to go over it 15 minutes before showtime — he hadn’t read this part of On The Road in 20 or 30 years — he absolutely was Neal from the first freakin line on a cold read-through!
Needless to say, we killed.
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And since it’d gone so well, he said he’d join me on stage at The Beat Museum. “We’ll bring Jack & Neal home.”
So a whole bunch of Pranksters came to S.F. that first June weekend, including Mountain Girl and Anonymous sitting in the front row — and more people packed in there for any event the Beat Museum ever put on [other than a memorial].
And a bunch of the Prankster girls were so excited about their Night At The Museum that they got themselves all dressed up extra pretty.
And boy did they look great! Especially Sky!
Pre-show / pre-couple photo captured by our brother Gubba.
The show killed of course . . .
then we all went over to the secret hideaway alleyway bar, Spec’s, right around the corner from the museum . . .
and had a spectacular after-party until closing time.
Sky had also brought for me some tie-dyed pants and shirt she’d custom colored for me.
See . . . sometimes I’m clueless.
Anywho, the next day, the Shoreline Dead show, I wore them, and her and her Prankster sisters spotted me from about a football field away as soon as we got out of the car, and came running across the tarmac like Charlie’s Angels playing out the comic classic TV/movie running scene.
There was this huge party in the parking lot for hours before the show, a bunch of us ending up at Kesey’s Bus for all sorts of hugging reunions and crazy shenanigans non-stop all afternoon . . .
And we sat together at the show . . . her, me & George already becoming a somewhat inseparable trio.
It was a Grate show, of course . . . a Friend of The Devil … China Cat … Eyes … Wheel . . .
Then we all retired back to the Red Vic, this artists’ hostel right on Haight St. near Golden Gate Park, where a bunch of the Pranksters including Sky were staying.
It was your regular post-show dosey-doe mayhem — including a twisted game of Twister — but I had to get home cuz tomorrow at the crack of noon we were all meeting at the corner of Haight & Ashbury for a parade to Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park to celebrate the Summer of Love.
I went out on the street, but there wasn’t a car to be seen let alone a cab in the 3AM darkness. (Plus, my Canadian cell phone to call one didn’t work in America – long story.) Sky saw me through the windows pacing back and forth along the sidewalk, and thought, “Oh no, he’s looking to leave.” If a cab had appeared, or my phone worked, none of the rest of this story would have happened.
It was starting to seem like I was stuck there, and I had to be a couple blocks down the street in 9 hours, so, I knew Sky was staying in a group room with four people, but I asked her anyway if I could crash over beside her. And she said, “Yeah, I think I can squeeze you in.”
We eventually hit the room, and her space was up on this large raised loft bed, with everyone else below. I followed her up the ladder, and the second we were beside each other we started kissing — slow and soft and delicate at first but quickly the latent feelings we each had for the other became obvious. This wasn’t some random convenient hook-up. I was kissing her neck and jawline and she was shuddering to the touch — two people who’d been longing to be in each other’s arms for a long time. There was definitely something. “The Unspoken Thing” . . . no explanation needed.
We did what couples do . . . even with at least four people in some level of sleep (or trying to) just below us.
The next day, we went to the noon Summer of Love parade / march — this huge group of assembled hippies and pranksters walking out into the middle of Haight Street and stopping the traffic, creating an impromptu protest parade right down the middle of the street leading all the way to the park just like they did in this neighborhood 50 years ago.
On the way we bumped into Jami Cassady and the Kerouac biographer Gerry Nicosia, so they all fell in with us, and suddenly we had one of my favorite things — a bunch of Beats and Pranksters in the same place!
Then, the funny thing was — and this is an important part of this story — I’m an idiot. We get to the afternoon hang spot at the base of Hippie Hill, and Sky and I are holding hands and generally entwining our bodies as we lay in the grass while people read poetry or sang or riffed in a very organic authentic Beat/hippie scene. And Jami notices us, so when we got a moment alone, asked, “Soooo . . . what’s this?!” with a big smiling teasing Prankster twinkle.
We didn’t get too much one-on-one time cuz it was a multitudinous crazy scene of all-star San Franciscans running amuck in the Summer of Luck, so when her & Randy were leaving, I walked them part-way out of the park, and along the way told them my dilemma that Sky was going to the second Dead show tonight, which I didn’t have a ticket for and didn’t really wanna go to [see “idiot” above] and I asked what they thought I should do. Jami encouraged me, but Randy got positively bug-eyed surprised that I’d be asking the question. “With that girl?! I’d go!!” he said, nodding in an are-you-crazy? way.
I dunno — sometimes in life you have to hear somebody tell you something even if you already know it.
Like the no cab on Haight — I wonder how life would be different if I didn’t get this bit of coaching right when I needed it?
Before we left the park I’d bought a ticket.
It was another Grate show, of course, with a Help —> Slip —> Frank —> Scarlet —> Fire —> Drums —> Other One — but as the magic continued to unfold — in the first set they dropped a They Love Each Other!
I mean — we already knew we liked each other, but just like hearing the coach’s voice articulating my reality a few hours earlier, here was the band unmistakably singing our theme-song to us, putting into words our sentiments before we had.
And we’re dancing side-by-side in perfect swaying synch, with particular knowing eye contact on “Lord, you can see that it’s true.” And everyone could. Just behind us were a few of her Prankster sisters cheering her on every time she’d turn and look at them while I was still looking ahead. Apparently there was a bit of a cheerleading squad behind us.
Another key moment came when we were sitting down as Drums started, and she leapt up, gushing, “This is my favorite part!” — causing me to blurt out for the first time — “I love you!!” Fortunately she didn’t hear me as her head was already up in the music and we got to save that magic moment for a little while longer.
That night, back at the ol’ Red Vic, we rather quickly retired to the room, in part to make sure we commandeered the biggest bed in the space, and jumped right on it and started makin out like crazy! All our clothes still on you understand — but just goin for it! We could hear all sortsa people comin and goin and talkin and I-don’t-know-whating beyond us, but we were so far away in each other’s eyes and lips it barely registered.
Then all of a sudden I felt this tapping on my shoulder, and it turned out about half-a-dozen glowing blazing Pranksters were standing around our bed! “Hey you two! Get up!” somebody said. “We got a room for you.”
What?! Just to tell you what kind of friends we have — one of these Pranksters had actually rented an extra room called “The Summer of Love Room” — the most romantic couple’s retreat in the building — just to give it away to someone if something like Sky & I happened (!)
So we get up from the bed, all tustle-haired and wuzzle-clothed, as the Pranksters backed out into the hallway and formed this impromptu line from our door to that one — the second cheerleading squad of the night! In the daze of the moment, all I saw were these beaming happy faces lining the whole hallway, as one of them handed me the key and said, “Have fun!”
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The next day, our Prankster brother Dr. Turley was driving his massive RV from the Haight up to his place in Chico, with a stop in Mill Valley at Sweetwater to meet up with the Kesey Bus. Not unlike the gifted room, our RV mates all agreed Bri & Sky needed to “take a nap” in the back bedroom.
And thus began the Adventure . . .
which, in this particular moment, led to us having the most amazing long-form sex with all the drapes and windows wide open on all three sides surrounding us in the back room through The Streets of San Francisco until soon the Pacific Ocean breeze was blowing over us as we passed alongside the flickering pulsating bright orange cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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“The greatest moment of my life,” I heard not long after.
“You better write about this.”
And we’ve done nothing but keep going Furthur ever since.
I remember when I first saw the long-in-the-works Beat Generation documentary “The Source” at its premiere in Manhattan with McClure, Amram and all these other luminaries and we all went to the afterparty at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and everybody was freaking out that finally a serious long-form Beat documentary got made!
Well, that night just repeated itself 15 years later in Toronto — at the International Premiere of the definitive Grateful Dead doc “Long Strange Trip.”
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The director Amir Bar-Lev (above) and his extended crew have been working on this for the last 14 years (!)
Martin Scorsese executive produced. Trixie Garcia and filmmaker Justin Kreutzmann were very involved, as were all the living band members. And it includes basically all the “lost” / home-movie footage that’s ever been found.
This was only the sixth theater where it was shown on a big screen — and will be again in a nationwide one-off on May 25th which I highly recommend any Deadhead make the point of seeing if it’s in your town.
It’ll be streaming on Amazon Prime starting June 2nd — the same happy day I’m headlining at The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Amazon Prime is a Netflix kinda thing, that they told me is $80 a year, and has all this original programming plus expedited shipping on everything you buy from Amazon. If you don’t see it in a theater on May 25th, or in screenings in NYC & LA that weekend, your only way to see it is with this online subscription. There’s no DVD release planned at this point.
And just to get back to the Beat thing — this epic opus opens and closes with Jack Kerouac (!)
“Say what?!”
Not to give anything away — as the director joked, “don’t tell anyone, but the hero dies in the end” — but the last quote in the movie, Garcia’s sign-off moment, he says something like, “Kerouac broke open the doors for me — and I hope the Grateful Dead have been able to do that for other people.”
This is what I’m on about.
Here’s these filmmakers spending 14 years making this tremendous love-filled soulful take on the Dead — recognizing and making prevalent Jerry’s deep connection to Jack Kerouac. And they even found an early photo of Robert Hunter in a plaid shirt that you would swear was Jack himself!
As I write in my book, the very last question Jerry was ever asked on camera, in an interview for the Silicon Valley Historical Society, was about Neal Cassady. And he riffs rhapsodic — “I got to be good friends with him. He was one of those guys that truly was a very special person. In my life, psychedelics and Neal Cassady are almost equal in terms of influence on me.
“Neal was his own art. He wasn’t a musician, he was a ‘Neal Cassady.’ He was a set of one. And he was it. He was the whole thing — top, bottom, beginning, end, everything. And people knew it. And people would be drawn to it. He was an unbelievable human being— the energy that he had, and the vocabulary he had of gestures and expressions — oh boy he was funny. Phew! I really loved him,” were the last words Jerry Garcia ever said on camera.
And now here — his very last line in the definitive Grateful Dead documentary — is him citing Kerouac as “breaking open the doors.”
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Besides that — which is really the whole puckin key as far as I’m concerned . . . 😀
Deadheads Unite!
This is gonna blow your mind!
The first two hours cover basically up until the ’75 hiatus … and then there’s a nice “set break” before another two hours of basically ’76 till ’95.
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This was made in complete collaboration with David Lemieux (above, post screening) the Canadian Deadhead who took over from Dick Latvala as the Dead’s official audio/visual archivist. Besides all the extended family members’ cooperation and inside insights, it was also made with a non-Deadhead editor & other key krewe who helped keep the perspective from being too insider.
One of the first comments in the Q&A with the director afterwards was a Toronto Hot Docs Film Festival regular saying he was not into the Dead at all but was blown away by the doc. Several of the advance reviews in places like Variety and Vanity Fair were written by non-Deadheads who stated the same, and were similarly blown away.
Also in the post-screening talk, Amir said how part of the film’s motivation was as sort-of “marriage therapy” — that this was for people who “got it” who needed to explain it to their loved one who didn’t. 🙂
And they achieved their objective.
I sure wish my Mom was alive to see this.
Oh, and another thing — it focuses on the music! It makes me wanna puke whenever I hear “music people” dismiss the music this band made.
It was formed by — and was a practicing amalgam of — a bluegrass player (Jerry), a blues singer (Pigpen), a jazz & classical composer/player (Phil), an R&B drummer (Bill), and an alt-folkie (Bob).
Then add in that they were born out of Ken Kesey’s acid tests, and had Neal Cassady as their driving headlight, and you’ve got an engine that’s a Bus that’s a circus that’s a movement that’s done nothing but grow till this day. And it’ll be bigger tomorrow. (Especially once more people see this! 🙂 )
There’s a lot of time devoted to the whole musical progression from their flukey formation and manic morphing —> the studio world, then the learned dedicated focus that produced the Workingman’s Dead / American Beauty masterpieces, and how it all played out from there.
I (and others in the theater) were brought to tears more than once — including the Morning Dew story from the climax of the Europe ’72 tour, and the writing and playing of The Days Between that Dennis McNally rightly calls “the last Garcia-Hunter masterpiece.” Heavy stuff.
Then there were tons of seat-shaking rounds of laughter, including Hunter explaining the lyrics to Dark Star; the very British Sam Cutler’s various takes on things (one of them, roughly, “In America, people actually go ‘in search of America.’ No one in England goes ‘in search of England.'”); Warner Brothers’ Joe Smith explaining how he never “got it;” Al “Althea” Franken explaining how he did; and Deadheads goofing on clueless local reporters who showed up trying to ‘get the story.’
Something else that’s extraordinary and I appreciated was the storytelling. The filmmaker spoke of it in the Q&A when asked about why some person or moment in their history wasn’t dealt with, then he and I talked about it afterwards. It’s all about the storytelling, man — what you leave out, what you put in, how you arc, how you work themes and build suspense and pace mood. A hundred different directors would make a hundred different movies. And boy, I’m sure glad this guy made this one.
Something specific I loved was his ease with breaking strict chronology. He would follow a trail on, say, sound systems, and then loop back to an earlier period to start another thread. It’s to his credit that he knew he could play with time. After all, as Kreutzmann says in the film, “It’s not about keeping the time, it’s about keeping the feeling.”
There’s also a nice tribute to Bear, and a lot of footage and stories about The Wall of Sound.
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When asked about how much more unseen home-movie type footage there was, the director said pretty much everything that was any good that they uncovered or was in the archives made it into the movie. (see, also: Hours, 4)
Plus, there’s a fabulous use of still photographs in all different manner of creative collages to tell the story. Even for hardcore lifelong Deadheads like myself and the whole row of people I went with, there’s oodles of stuff you’ve never seen or heard before.
I was lucky enough to experience this on what the director said was the best screen and sound system it’s ever been shown on — the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto. It was my first night out of the house since the election 5½ months ago (!) and the hardcore Deadheads in this town, led by Trevor Cape, set up a whole Dead scene with hanging tapestries and a six-piece band playing in the second floor lounge leading into the theater for an hour before the screening. Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart.
Also, a guy I know, Steve Silberman, does some excellent storytelling himself about how an average kid from New Jersey discovered the band — sort of standing in for all who found their way to the sound & the furious party. He also does a brilliant rap on how a Dead show’s crowd was like a Tibetan mandala with all these different pieces that make up the whole. There’s the ones who every night go to The Phil Zone where they can hear and see him best. Then there’s the Jerry people. Then there’s the spinners out in the hallway. Then there’s the Wharf Rats who are supporting each other through their sobriety. Then there’s the tapers . . . and on and on with all these different groups that come together to make up the whole.
And I’m even in the damn thing! Front & center at Radio City Music Hall in full Steal Your Face make-up dancing to Not Fade Away!
Somebody made a cool comment in the movie about the irony of — “The most ephemeral band in history became the most recorded.” These guys were living in the moment for 30 years, only concerned with the next note played, and not with their official photos or albums or anything else built to last, and yet they created something that has an ever-present ever-growing worldwide life of its own.
Classic Albums made a Grate doc in 1997, “Anthem to Beauty,” about those transitional studio years — but there’s no doubt this is the show we’ve all been waiting for. Deadheads will be throwing house parties around screenings of this for the rest of time, but even more importantly, it achieves the collective filmmakers’ objective of telling the story non-Deadheads will get.
For more on The Grateful Dead and Jack Kerouac & The Beats — check out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac or at Amazon here. It’s got the most detailed exploration of the connection between the Dead and the Beats ever in print.
If I ding (or worse) my coffee cup (or whatever) and cause a spill on the table (or wherever) my split-second reaction is an infallible indicator of my state of mind and life.
This also applies to any other accident from your car to stubbing your toe to any kind of mishap one experiences in life.
There’s three types of instant reaction:
1) You laugh at the absurdity of it, the silliness, the test of it. If your life is going well, if you’ve got all of your shit together, “spilled coffee” makes you laugh at yourself and circumstance.
2) You’re not bothered — it’s just something that happens and you clean up the mess unaffected one way or the other.
3) You yell a curse word in anger, maybe throw or kick something, or lash out at in anger.
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Someone might ask you, or you might ask yourself, if you’re happy (centered, grounded, in control, in love with your life, as ol’ JK would say) and you can give any kind of answer to that: what you think they want to hear, what you want to tell yourself.
But in that unexpected moment where you have a mishap / accident — and before you have time to think about it — that’s your real true reaction, the real true measurement of your mental well-being. You don’t have time in that split second to remember what some self-help guru or religion or philosophy taught you. In that split-second you either (basically) laugh or curse.
I monitor like a hawk this reaction in myself. The majority of one’s reactions are probably in the middle — you just take it in stride, neither too upset nor laugh, but simply clean it up and keep moving forward.
BUT — when I curse I know something is really wrong in my soul —in my approach — in the equilibrium in my life. You can’t b.s. this reaction. In regular life moments you can come up with all sorts of rationalizations and explanations convincing yourself you’re happy — but if you catch yourself cursing at life’s minor misfortunes you really need to get off the field and sit on the bench until you’ve got yourself back to that happy centered place.
When I let out a little (or big) laugh at the misfortune / accident — I know I’m in The Zone.
And when “in the zone” it’s a time to go furthur — push yourself — go that other place — take chances — swing for the fences. It’s a real-life occurrence you can observe in sports — when an athlete gets on an inexplicable hot streak and everything he or she does works for a period of time. It can also be the case with an artist in any medium — when they’re channeling the Spirits and can almost do no wrong creatively. Bob Dylan said he doesn’t know the person who wrote those songs circa 1964–66. There are times when all the mental / spiritual / physical forces are lined up and the flow is pure and uninterrupted. Ideally, that’s where one strives to live all the time — and when I find myself laughing at spilled coffee (or any other misfortune) I know I’m in that zone.
Conversely, when I get angry at a slight slip, and metaphorically, or worse, literally, throw the coffee mug across the room — I know it’s time for a “time out.” This little moment is the Spirits’ way of showing you you’re off your game. Getting back on your game is the subject of countless books and philosophies and prolly religions, too, and every person has to find their own way. But “spilled coffee” is God or nature’s way of sticking a thermometer into your life and taking your mental health temperature. And I pay close attention to the results of every such test.
And P.S. —
This is not to be confused with “don’t cry over spilled milk” which is a lesson about not worrying about something (small) that happened in the past. That’s also a lesson to learn and internalize. What I’m talking about here is a thermometer. An instantaneous measurement of mindset that you can’t fake because it happens naturally and without planning.
15 minutes before this show I was lying on the ground behind the Cassady’s booth trying not to lose consciousness. . . .
An hour into it I was running around the stage playing Gregory Corso on a football team. The build from wounded wobbly to careening comedy is completely crazy.
Everything had been going more-than-well. I’d done two killer hour-long shows the day before [see them here or below], then gone to the kick-off of the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well 50th anniversary all evening, and despite the non-stop madness, was holding up quite well — until I helped move some boxes of books just before showtime sparking one of my dizzy/pass-out spells. I’ve seen doctors about it, and they tell me I have to get horizontal as soon as it happens or I’ll lose consciousness. It was one of those.
This past month I’ve been editing & posting all the filmed shows on file from the last two years since The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac came out — and by flukey happenstance / karma / fate this was the final one revisited.
It’s by far the weirdest craziest strangest Beatest of them all. I look like hell, and feel older than Ferlinghetti! . . . but then gather strength & steam as it progresses — in fact, beginning surprisingly a minute in when the “opening announcement” gets not one but two big laughs. 😀
I appreciate a good drama — be it the stage the page or the screen — and love “the arc.” But this is the only time I’ve ever done a show where it happens without being written into the script — from barely conscious … to sustained needle-pinning laughter. It’s real-life reverse aging — where the character gets more youthful with each passing moment. But it’s all natural / real / improvised and unrehearsed.
To me, this is my most Dead-like show. It’s so weird, and so easy if you’re not inclined and don’t know there’s a pay-off coming to turn it off. But this crazy thing happens . . . it just sorta builds and gets into its own groove and wild blossoms bloom . . . I can’t explain it, like you can’t really explain a Dead show. But this is the closest I ever came to executing one.
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Tate Swindell, B, Jerry Cimino, Gerd Stern, Levi Asher, James Stauffer
Sunday, June 28th, 2015, The Beat Shindig, San Francisco
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Here’s the Cassady panel from the day before — featuring Jami Cassady, the great Al Hinkle, myself, and hosted by Levi Asher . . .
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Or here’s the funny interview with Gerd Stern about the infamous “Joan Anderson / Cherry Mary letter” . . .
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Or here’s a playlist of the Woodstock Mothership show on the same day but the next year . . . 🙂
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Or here’s a playlist of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac show in 2016 including the killer first-time-ever “Pic” . . .
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Or here’s a playlist of all the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac clips from 10 different shows over 2 years . . .
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Or here’s the group piece we did from the book release party at the Kettle of Fish in New York featuring Jami Cassady, Levi Asher and Walter Raubicheck . . .
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Or here’s the opening of the Merry Prankster family reunion in 2016 . . .
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For more on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac check out these reviews & reactions.
In the days leading up to This Great Spirit Gathering in Central Park, The news reports were predicting 20,000 people or something. I was thinking, “This is going to be a LOT bigger than that!”
I entered The Park up by the big Reservoir, and on the Perimeter Drive that circles around inside the Park there’s this ……….ten-person-wide parade ………………..of vegetarian yoga-sitting Buddhist whippets …………………………all power-walking to Dalai-Land.
But when we get there, the entire section of the Park that contains the Dalai’s East Meadow ………. is already full of people, ……………….. shut down, barricaded off by fences, ………………………… and an unfaltering uniformed line …………………………of New York’s Worst.
Gushing around the East Meadow ………. is a sudden Flash Flood of people ………. overflowing the banks of the melting-pot amphitheater lake-size bowl.
The half of the roadway closest to the barricades has become this ………. Standing-Room-Only balcony ……………….. 30-people-deep ……………….. straining to see just a sliver of an angle of anything ……………….. that even resembled a stage, ………………………… or a tent, …………………………………. or the top of a speaker tower.
So it was either, “Tip-toe through the Taoists” for hours, ………. or “keep movin’ on.”
That, and the slobbering bridles of the Four Horses of the Millennium Bucking into the back of your head as the Giuliani Spiritual Police ……….. hollered at us ……………….. “Keep it moving.”
It’s okay for a half-a-million Fat Frat Southern Cowboys ………. to come to the Park for Garth “Pepsi” Brooks But get a few thousand Buddhists together and it’s
“Noooooo . . . ………. We gotta impose a little order here. ……………….. We don’t want any of you ………………………… God-damn …………………………………. Buddhists ………………………………………….. freely assembling …………………………………………………… in a park!”
Then as I look over at the amphitheater bowl, ………. At all those placid and pacific people in the Sea of Dalai, There’s this big bulking crowd that was STILL – ………. already posed in tomorrow’s newspaper –
But you could see, if you looked long enough, ………. a gentle, subtle, tiny, barely-traceable ……………….. trickle of people ………………………… rippling in from the left.
So I let myself go with the current along the river Drive ………. like a poppedcycle stick ……………….. whippin’ past tree-lined banks, Naturally flowing around the site ………. down the hill And sure enough there’s this bridge ………. over the river K-why not? ……………….. bridging the field and the food stands.
There’s a half-dozen half-dozin’ cops caught coppin’ a yak ………. and they . . . seem to be . . . letting people pass!
Yass!
As I floated through the phalanx flashing my
Laminated All-Access Prankster’s Twinkle
There he was! ………. the little orange and red-cloaked bald & giggling man!
And then OHHH! My God! There’s the big bald & giggling man ………. on the Giant Screen!
Holy Drive-in Gurus, Batman! ………. It’s “I Love Lamy!” on the Jumbotron!
But there he is for real! The Dalai Rama!
Sitting in a big Captain Kirk chair in the middle of the stage, ………. one camera shooting-straight at him from the waist up ……………….. “just like Elvis”
A brilliant yellow bed of shimmering van Gogh sunflowers ………. wrapped all around him like he was already in heaven, Except he was still here! ………. Bouncingly buoyant in his perch …………like a little seven-year-old child in a fat first-class seat …………………on his first airplane ride.
And man, . . . It was in-fect-ious!
There’s this powerful charge when a master of the spirit ………. plays to a packed house outdoors.
Everyone is unified simply by making the Journey.
I did Mass with the Pope in Central Park, A freedom rally with Nelson Mandella in Amsterdam, And danced to Dylan at Woodstock, And there’s this tangible energy transformation that takes place when ………. “10,000 people, maybe more“ ……………….. get together in one place.
First of all, it burns India ………. in a way you can never forget.
Spend a day with a global guru in a temple like Central Park with all the summer volunteers and extra-credit-motivated students buzzing with the same energy-charge you’re channeling with it flowing right out of the ground and the whole field lights up like a flame scorching the soul for fun and forever.
And everyone, without saying a word, is reverentially quiet.
A cell-phone rings but is turned off without looking.
No one sparks a butt — in a tension-free crowd of thousands.
Nothing is heard save the stray whispering of an “Excuse me,” ………. as someone balletically tip-toes through the blankets and jack straw legs ………. in a slow-motion Twister dance on shoe-sized grass squares ……………….. making their way back to their loved-ones ahead.
And with a crowd like this,
What one of these Spirit Giants can do!
By first drawing us in,
then drawing us out,
Bringing us out of ourselves ………. to dance beneath the diamond sky ……………….. with a half-a-million strong.
Aretha did it in Washington at Clinton’s Inaugural, ………. raising a million Bubba’s off their picnic-blanket-butts ……………….. to shake it under in the national sun, And here we were with the Salvation Dalai warming up New York City!
So he welcomed everyone as soon as he began,
He said it didn’t matter what religion we came here as:
we were all striving for the same things.
He called it “secular ethics.”
Yeah!
“Secular ethics”
Why didn’t I think of that?
And the whole time he was being really funny ………. and open ………. and laughing ………. and making fun of his broken English,
so he introduced his translator who stood by him the whole time and whenever he would hesitate on a word the translator would lean over with whatever was stuck on his tongue.
I wish I could have a “translator” travel with me all the time!
Talk about close couples finishing each other’s sentences, ………. here’s this guy ……………….. who can do it on the fly, ………………………… finishing the Dalai Lama’s thoughts …………………………………. on stage, ………………………………………….. on demand.
And then the Dalai would go, “Yes-yes-yes,” ………. and then try to say the word in English . . . ……………….. ” . . . life – styyyle – yesssss.”
And all afternoon he had this simple innocent brilliance about him.
He was making these huge points about ………. your mental attitude being within your control and how all of us have the power to change that in ourselves, and he’d be going, ………. “I know, it is verrrry-difficult. ………. Verrrrrry, very difficult.
You try to sleep and there are . . .” and he waves his hand around in the air looking for a word.
And the translator doesn’t know and tries whispering a few words to him, then all of a sudden — ………. “ALARMS!!! There are Alarrrrrms, yeeeeesss. ………. They start to go off — and you cannot sleep! ………..And there are Engines of Fire that race past your window, ………………………… and it is very-very bad. Yes . . . ………. Life is very-difficult. ………. But we must keep Positive Mental Attitude.”
He almost had this Lenny Bruce-thing going on, ………. Using humor to convey the larger spiritual points, ………. Performing “shows” to articulate the truths ………. With humor as the medium to keep us alert and attentive ………. As he simultaneously tuned us clearly into the Channel.
And then he goes on and tells how he was taken from his parents when he was young, and then lost his whole country when he was 15, and my own problems sure seemed a lot smaller after that!
Here was this guy laughing away in his Captain Kirk chair, ………. telling us that he was no different than any of us, ………..and that if he can change his mind and stay positive — ……………….. and not only that ……………….. but also pick people up and carry them with him — ………………………… it sure made me want to pick up my own game.
And as with any great artist, ………. the audience doesn’t just sit by passively and soak in his mastery — ………. but instead we become engaged, ………. making us all think, and see the world in ways we never would have thought of –
And I suddenly imagined myself standing at a concert, ………. But I was in an upper tier, ………. and my seat was right behind a pillar so I couldn’t see the stage.
Then I realized all I had to do is take one step to the side, ………. and suddenly I could see everything.
You just take one tiny step and your entire perspective changes,
And then he says –
“Be a garden of love that others can grow in and out of.”
“The best thing you can do is allow someone else to spring from your heart.”
And he suggested:
………. “Be self-confident without conceit.”
………. “Have self-reliance without pride.”
And after this whole two-hour odyssey where he pulled the camera way up ………. into the outer spaces of consciousness ……………….. giving us all a guided tour of the psychic universe ………………………… and now suddenly he was saying, “Goodbye!”
And you’re realizing it’s over and scrambling, ………. “Geez, did I get it? What the heck was the point again?”
And right at that point, after all the different lessons he’d taught us, ………. he says,
……………….. “But the most important thing
………………………… is to be a nice, warm-hearted person.”
There he was, so kindly,
………. without asking,
……………….. gently telling us what we needed to hear.
Following the November 2016 election I knew it was time to get my own house in order. A year had been lost to a losing campaign, added to five years of On The Road domino-tumbling madness that had passed since my mother had passed in 2011, and there was a lot of work left undone on the homefront.
Since I first saw the treasures of Tutankhamen in London as an 11-year-old I’ve been in love with archeology, and have practiced it from the deserts of Arizona to combing through mounds of mounds in old Beats’ apartments in New York City. But now I was digging through the layers of my own life.
A few years ago I unexpectedly began an extensive reconstruction of 1982, unearthing old journals and photographs and files and notes and letters as I wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac about the historic Beat summit I attended that summer. Spent years on the project, all told, as the process spun off to events in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and a thousand other far-flung locales — which then all tumbled into the unprecedented Presidential primary and campaign of 2016.
After years of combing through records for the book, and unearthing 64 photographs among other gems, I was quite sure everything from that life-altering experience had been uncovered. How wrong I was!
You know your junk drawer? Every home has one … or three. The catch-all basin for the occasionally useful flotsam of domestic life. I’ve still got one in my original office desk that I began using in the summer of 1981 when I moved into Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s apartment on Washington Square North. That desk is now in the garage in Canada, and while pawing through it the other day, I came across all sorts of old employee badges from the World Trade Center to Rockefeller Center, and folk festivals from Vancouver to Bear Mountain . . . and upside-down at the very bottom of the drawer I lifted up a plastic-covered one and saw —
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I was sure everything in this homebase excavation site had been uncovered. Then BOOM! It was 1982 all over again!
“Have to put this in the next edition,” I thought, as I stopped whatever I was doing and just let the new gem shine in front of me for a few beers of reflection.
A couple days later, the supply inventory mission had moved on to textiles. The old uniforms of war & peace. The past pants of a much younger man. The parent’s clothes that had been too close to home when it was still too close to their passing.
In the “Hiding Out In A Rock n Roll Band” chapter of the book where I take the reader to the Grateful Dead’s shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre during the Kerouac conference, there’s a paragraph about an important subculture within the subculture —
And then on a whole other level — there’s countless tourheads strolling the scene holding up gorgeous hand-dyed / hand-lived t-shirts for sale, who quickly flipped them around so you could see the back as well. Asking 15, but they’ll take 10. Some are printed with classic all-purpose Dead lines — “The bus came by and I got on” — and others are customized just for these shows with “Dead Rocks” or “Mountain Dew” along with the dates.
Of course in retrospect I always wished I’d gotten one at those shows — they were so historic and fantastic — and with the book coming out had become some of my favorites of the 120 I saw with Jerry.
Feature my surprise (to use an old Henri Cru phrase) when I went through a drawer of ancient t-shirts from my rock n roll touring days and in between some Yes and Jefferson Starship employee shirts this fell out —
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The next edition of the book is certainly going to have a few more photos in it! 😀
This was of course call for another stop-work sit-down-and-stare in disbelief at something else that somehow made it into my blue road backpack that summer — survived all the way back to Vancouver — then all the way to New York — then at some point into a long unexamined drawer at my parent’s place.
1982 lives! 😀
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I don’t know about your house, but in ours we always had stashes of stuff crammed in every conceivable corner. It may have started with parents who grew up during the Depression who’d never throw anything out if they had one square inch to store it in. This is the materiel supply & support outpost that I find myself padding around in now that the familial soldiers have left the battlefield.
A favorite stash spot in the three houses they had since I was a kid was underneath the basement stairs. I’m sure it starts with good intentions, but over time it becomes a crammed jigsaw puzzle of items squeezed together with no space in between, and no hope of accessing anything. By the time I started the long process of unpacking this final covered wagon I found old shotguns, plastic swizzle sticks from bars in cities they lived in in the ’50s, cookware unused since The Beatles were still together, dog collars from pets that died in the ’70s, Hot Wheels, Legos, Spiderman comics, Hardy Boy books — all in an endless Christmas-morning-revisited series of surprises.
After days of diligent digging, I finally pulled out the final trunk at the very back. And boy was it one crazy treasure chest of weird stuff! A top hat collection, plastic toy knights, Creepy Crawlers molds, bags of bizarre old matchbooks, silver goblets — and right on the bottom were a bunch of those big green Lego foundation pieces that you’d build a house or whatever on. And I noticed they seemed to be sitting on something — not quite flat on the bottom of the trunk. As I reached down through the bags of stuff and felt what was under there, my fingertips touched a piece of what seemed like packing cardboard. And I felt a little more and there was a second one. I thought, “No way!” . . . didn’t even allow myself to go to where this might be going. “Don’t even think it.”
Perhaps this is a good time to refresh one little passage from the end of the book — when Kesey and I are sitting at the big round dining room table in his house —
We’re talkin’ about my route outta there, and I said, “Oh yeah, I gotta make a sign. Do you have any cardboard?” And we go find a nice piece because — as internalized now — selecting the right size, quality and cleanliness of your cardboard is essential. As is scripting the calligraphy, of course. So, I pulled out my trusty elMarko pen still with me since Portland, and started making the sign, and Kesey says, “No, no, you’re doing it all wrong.”
And he goes and gets s’more cardboard n says with faux anger, “Gimme that,” and yanks the pen away and starts drawing this wild “Home to Vancouver” sign with a giant cartoon thumb. Ha! “That’ll get me home!” I smile, as I hold it up like a rehearsal for my roadside attraction.
I made it home with all of the books he gave me, and to this day still have everything, including the conference poster, my holy notebooks, the cassettes, the ancient-even-then Kodak Instamatic X-15 camera, Brother Tom’s t-shirt, and that cool old John Lennon Rolling Stone issue I carried with me everywhere that Ken read from and I had him sign — but speaking of signs, my Mom didn’t cotton too well to me hitchhiking, and one Christmas I went home and that Kesey sign wasn’t there anymore.
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Then — BOOM!
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There it was!!
I hadn’t laid eyes on it in neigh-on 30 years and was sure it was gone for good.
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And just to go Furthur with that sign-making story in the book — the main thing Kesey didn’t like about what I scripted was the big peace sign I put on it. I think he thought it indicated a flakey hippie. For me, it was my lucky soul-symbol. And as you may have read in the book, I had unbelievably good luck on the multiple hitchhiking trips thus far.
You can see it in the couple surviving sign shots from the trip —
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With the legendary Cliff Miller on the left
Full moon in Nevada skies, Aug. 4th, 1982
So, after Kesey draws on it and hands it back to me, there must have been a Flair type black felt pen handy, because you can see I had the balls to override the master — drawing a little peace sign up in the corner because I was not about to abandon the mandala that got me this far. And once I drew it on, tiny as I did, he said from across the Big Table, “Oh, that’s okay. Small in the corner like that’s alright.” 😀
And speaking of corners . . . paging Forensic Files — the perp left partial fingerprints at the scene! In the upper left corner is a super-distinct left thumb print (I’m guessing as that’s exactly where you’d hold up the sign to show it to me across the table with his freshly inked fingers). There’s also a couple others — but that upper left one is clear enough to putcha away for life!
And although I stood up to the old man (who was actually younger at the time than I am now!) with my peaceful intentions, young Luke also learned from old Obi-Wan — because the other piece of cardboard my fingers felt underneath the green Lego was the sign I used on the final leg home to Winnipeg. And unlike every other hitchhiking sign I ever made — there’s no peace sign.
“Just to Winnipeg” — in its new place high on a wall with some scored New York street signs and a Dr. Seuss book tower. 🙂
I’ve been writing and thinking about memory ever since stumbling down this rabbit hole back to 1982. It’s fascinating how one item / photo / remembrance can cause to be retrieved a ton of other thought-erased files from the organic hard drive at the top of our temples.
Not long after my fingers gripped this cardboard for the first time since it was assumed lost in the ’80s, I flashed back to how it came to be where it was.
When my folks were moving out of Winnipeg, and trying to reduce costs, although they trucked a lot of childhood memories out to B.C., they drew the line at my cool collection of old foldover Rolling Stones and other Crawdaddy, Creem and Circus magazines, a collection of course I salivate at the thought of today.
The last night before the movers arrived, I’d been out carousing with my friends for one last send-off, came home late as usual, and this unsealed box was at the bottom of the basement stairs. Buzzed as I wuz, I flipped the flaps to treasure the treasures that weren’t making the trip, and there in the mix were the two hitchhiking signs my mother didn’t approve of.
“These are important,” I remember thinking. She didn’t know. I barely did. But a hitchhiking sign drawn by my hero Ken Kesey didn’t belong in the leave-behind box. And since all the moving boxes were taped and she would recognize these things if she found them unpacking on the West Coast, I opened the tickle trunk and managed to hide them on the bottom underneath the Legos — probably the same way that copy of the Declaration of Independence was hidden safely and forgotten behind that painting bought at a flea market in 1989 — the very same year this was hidden away.
In the Spirit of Discovery — may finding buried treasure and having Christmas mornings of surprises be a part of your and all of our lives forever.
