Brianland

THE BIRTH OF A TRILOGY . I never expected any of it. A few years ago, a few people asked me on a Facebook group to tell them about a Kerouac gathering I was at back in 1982, and my response to the question became a book . . . in eleven days, it took. […]

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. Ten years ago this month BrianHassett.com was launched. I’ve published at least one new story every month since it was birthed — except once! when I unexpectedly fell in love & went on tour in the same month (June of last year).  🙂  One thing about writing — you never know what’s gonna connect with […]

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How The Beats Begat The Pranksters . Beat Carolyn & Prankster Babbs, Boulder ’82 . 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 […]

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Falling in Love in the Summer of Love . 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 […]

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. 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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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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. Lesson One going into the streets of Cleveland — as hipped by my poli-warzone-brother Mitch — If you hear fire crackers, don’t assume they’re fire crackers.  Get behind cover. Roger that. Mitch and I met in 1983 thru him being a music reporter in Winnipeg and me managing to some success one of the […]

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. On The Bus and On The Road . . “Put your good where it will do the most,” …….. as Ken Kesey said, and Wavy Gravy recounted in the luminous new documentary, Going Furthur. This movie is really funny — and not in a you-had-to-be-there way.  A huge part of the Merry Band of […]

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A Secret Space of Dreams . . Somewhere in the Universe, Pranksters are gathering. It’s fireworks, calliopes and clowns, And everybody’s dancin’ . . . On fifty acres through country woods, with ponds and trails and fields and split-rail fences and immaculate stables and barns in fresh but classic rusty red . . . Now […]

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Front Row for The Revolution . Photo by Jeremy Hogan . It all started waking up on New York et al election day in Ken Morris’s house in Cleveland the day after we pre-scouted the city for the upcoming Republican Implosion.  I mean, Repugnant Convention.  There were 3 different messages in my in-box about a […]

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