Brianland

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

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Taylor Swift, the Grateful Dead and The Beat Generation

November 30th, 2023 · 28 Comments · Grateful Dead, Kerouac and The Beats, Music

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

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Imaginestock

September 18th, 2023 · 13 Comments · Merry Pranksters, Music, Real-life Adventure Tales

Imaginestock . photo by Christy Worsoe . Imagine, if you will, a place where music and love fill the air, and every person works for free to build a utopian kingdom. Imagine a secret island hideaway whose location is only shared to people who’ve earned an invitation by a lifetime of good deeds. Imagine a […]

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First Live Shows After the Pandemic Lockdown

July 31st, 2022 · 1 Comment · Brian on YouTube etc., Kerouac and The Beats, Poetry

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

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Kerouac’s 100th birthday celebration in Lowell

March 20th, 2022 · 25 Comments · Kerouac and The Beats, Real-life Adventure Tales

. Everybody’s known for ages that Jack Kerouac’s 100th birthday was coming up on March 12th, 2022, but it was still the dark Covid times, and I hadn’t been On The Road in over two years — not since the New Hampshire Democratic primaries in February 2020 — plus I was really in no mood […]

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Beatles post Get Back Lessons and Reflections

January 30th, 2022 · 3 Comments · Movies, Music

Some reflections on The Beatles post Peter Jackson’s masterpiece, and some fun facts picked up along the way . . . It was so much the blending of the four compatible yet different personalities that was key to their creativity and longevity. And that there were four different individuals for people to identify with and […]

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Beat Versus Beatnik

March 3rd, 2021 · 29 Comments · Kerouac and The Beats

21st Century Beatniks versus Hieroglyphic Caricatures . There’s long been a debate about the word “beatnik” — originally coined by a sensationalist San Francisco gossip columnist in 1958, playing on the Yiddish suffix “nik” and the first Russian satellite launched in September ’57, colloquially known as “Sputnik.”  Jack and Allen & company hated the word […]

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Ode to Neal

October 31st, 2019 · 14 Comments · Kerouac and The Beats

. Neal Cassady — by Carolyn Cassady (courtesy of the Cassady fam) . From Dean Moriarty . . . to Dead immortality, The street-kid who read . . . was a legend in bed, But more than the lays . . . he inspired a blaze In the hearths of the writers . . . […]

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Woodstock 50th Anniversary in New York

August 23rd, 2019 · 28 Comments · Music, Real-life Adventure Tales, Weird Things About Me, Woodstock

A Festival of Festivals . I said somewhere on social media leading up to the Woodstock 50th that it should and would be experienced by people in different ways all over the world. “Friends not corporations create Woodstock.” There was no required location or situation. As Jerry Garcia said of the Beats — “… it […]

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The Grateful Dead: Jack Kerouac Manifested As Music

April 28th, 2018 · 10 Comments · Grateful Dead, Kerouac and The Beats

. The Grateful Dead were Jack manifested as music. Their essence was born of the road and adventures.  They worked in improvisational music like spontaneous prose. They broke every rule of showbiz … then broke every concert record there is — just as Kerouac broke every rule of grammar — then had over 50 books […]

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Red Roses, Green Gold theater review

October 17th, 2017 · 13 Comments · Grateful Dead, Movies, New York City

New Hunter-Garcia Musical comes up Roses . . 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 […]

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