Brianland

the Best in Kerouac & the Beats, Adventure, Politics, Music, Movies, Poetry & other Lifejoys

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Long Strange Trip – Grateful Dead doc review

May 2nd, 2017 · 16 Comments · Grateful Dead, Movies

. Let There Be Songs To Fill The Screen . . 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 […]

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Finding Kesey

January 29th, 2017 · 13 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me

Finding Kesey . 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 […]

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac – reviews and reactions Part 3

December 10th, 2016 · 10 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Weird Things About Me

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac Reviews & Reactions — Part Three . Here’s the first round of incoming reviews. Or here’s a whole second round. .  I am bathing in the pages. Your book is a page turner of improbable adventures and characters — one crazy one after another.  The writing is high spirited and […]

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Gary Hart rally 1984 Washington Square

September 11th, 2016 · 12 Comments · New York City, Politics, Real-life Adventure Tales

How Rock Concerts Led To Politics . For most of ’80s I lived in Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s palatial apartment on Washington Square North.  The NYU Program Board from where I ran the concerts was in the Loeb Student Center on Washington Square South — about a 3-minute walk away — if you didn’t dawdle […]

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“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” reviews and reactions

December 15th, 2015 · 18 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters

David Amram, Jami Cassady, Al Hinkle holding the book, Levi Asher and the author after the Cassady Family panel at the Beat Shindig in San Francisco . This is an excellent book about Uncle Jack, and also a heartfelt outpouring of love for Mom and Dad, and the Grateful Dead, too.  I just got done […]

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Beat Shindig San Francisco June 2015

August 16th, 2015 · 18 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Real-life Adventure Tales

. Shindig Sutra . aahhh — San Francisco — home of everything holy. Home of the Beats, home of The Dead, home of the wild.  The United States of San Francisco.  The city that makes its own rules . . . and that’s that. Of course we’re coming home.  To the Museum that Jerry built. […]

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Hitchhiker Reactions

July 26th, 2015 · 8 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac  . Reviews, feedback, and other buzzes over the transom . . . . Brian Hassett had the presence of mind to pack a good old cassette recorder in his rucksack back in 1982 when he was alerted to the Jack Kerouac Conference being staged in Boulder, Colorado.  The real […]

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Grateful Dead Farewell in Chicago

July 11th, 2015 · 20 Comments · Grateful Dead, Music, Real-life Adventure Tales

  I saw the best minds of many generations, dancing, hysterical, naked … at the Farewell send-off of the Gratest live band in history. While The Grateful Dead were breaking the all-time attendance records for Soldier Field stadium in Chicago — I was seeing them in a small venue from about 5th row center.  I […]

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Ken Kesey at The Jack Kerouac Conference

April 19th, 2015 · 11 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Real-life Adventure Tales

Then Along Comes Kesey . .  Excerpted from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” available now.   I was well into Jack — and this whole conference kicked that up a few dozen notches — like it did everybody else — but The Chief and The Boys (the Grateful Dead) — those were the magic […]

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The Grateful Dead at Red Rocks

March 7th, 2015 · 19 Comments · Grateful Dead, Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Music, Real-life Adventure Tales

. With all the energy peaking over The Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary shows, here’s a little excerpt from my upcoming book — “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac” — that shows part of why we keep coming back. These shows at Red Rocks in ’82 were part of the largest gathering of Beats ever assembled, […]

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