Brianland

Storming the Bastilles with Lungs Full of Nectar . Pamela Twining, Andy Clausen, & Brian Hassett — photo by Shiv Mirabito, at the Woodstock Shivastan Poetry Ashram, 2016 Two new books in poignant prose by poets of the streets just came out from insiders looking at the life and times of the Beat Generation — […]

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Al Hinkle — Hero of The Humble . Gracious Giant, Gentle Giant. A Literary Giant’s Character for Eternity — Still alive in every copy of On The Road in every country In The World, The lovable affable portable — Big Ed Dunkel, The Everyman in the car, man. Not a Cassady — Not a Kerouac, […]

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“The Last Man Standing” is no longer standing . Update — A memorial tribute will be held to Al at the Cafe Stritch (374 S. 1st St.) in San Jose, CA — on Sunday, January 27th, starting at 5PM.  All are welcome. . Here’s a riff with visuals . . . . . The last […]

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You Tell Me . . We were talkin’ about gettin’ together, ol’ John Cassady and me.  Seen each other off and on, and he even stepped up to the mic at one of the George Walker & Brian shows last year, but we hadn’t really shared any serious duetting theatrics in some 17 years.  (There’s […]

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. Fall  Shows  2018 . In celebration of the new On The Road with Cassadys, & Furthur Visions and the just-completed Beat Trilogy.   Friday Sept. 28th 8PM “The Hammer & The Hassett” with Robin “The Hammer” Ludwig the mighty blues master who I’ve done shows with for 20 years from Amsterdam to CBGBs to On The Road‘s birth […]

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Tom Wolfe Made Me Cry  . We’ve had a flood of famous & important people dying the last few years.  2016 was the recent one most think of as the mass kill-off year that had us all praying for it to end — which it did, sadly, in November, with democracy and decency being cremated […]

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An excerpt from my upcoming book (Sept. 2018) — On The Road With Cassadys & Furthur Visions —  This bit is about 2001’s 50th anniversary of Kerouac writing his On The Road scroll — and a show we put on for the occasion in L.A. on the day he finished it, April 22nd, after one held […]

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. 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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. I love Loving Vincent. 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 […]

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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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