Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 403

February 1, 2019S P

Lawrence Ferlinghetti – San Francisco, November 1996 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg

Lawrence Ferlinghetti will be one hundred next month, his novel Little Boy will be published on March 19, five days before his 100th birthday. Read Jonah Raskin on “Lawrence Ferlinghetti on The Cusp of 100 – Friends and Co-Workers Reflect on the Poet-Publisher’s Legacy”

Interesting news on the Kerouac front – Sean Daniels has adapted Kerouac’s unfinished long-lost novel The Haunted Life into a play that will premiere at Merrimack Rep from March 20 to April 14

and keeping our focus on William Burroughs (we’ve been featuring him a lot of late), big celebrations next Tuesday at City Lights Books in San Francisco – it’s William Burroughs birthday.

and next Friday, it’s Neal Cassady’s birthday. Jello Biafra (originally front-man for The Dead Kennedys) will be among those doing the celebrating. From Jon Solomon’s Westword preview piece:

Jello Biafra – photo by Allen Ginsberg

(c) The Estate of Allen Ginsberg

“Biafra would crash at Ginsberg’s apartment whenever he was in New York City. “It was the most comfortable piano bench I’ve ever slept on”, he recalls. “And you never knew who else was going to be hanging out in the kitchen when I emerged blurry-eyed from the other room. It was amazing”.

Allen Ginsberg on attending the hit musical Rent in1996 – “I couldn’t figure out who was doing what to whom, who was a junkie and who wasn’t, who had AIDS and who didn’t. It was too loud and ponderous; you couldn’t understand the words.”  (Jonathan Mandell has a sweet piece in DC Theatre Scene about taking him to see the show.

Steve Silberman on Allen in 1994, throwing out the first ball for the San Francisco Giants – “When some baseball exec asked Allen if he was a sports fan, he sighed, “I’m a four-eyed sissy” (and) “You might be amused to note that I sang “Dark Star” that day when he asked me why people were so into the (Grateful) Dead...Allen liked it! He said, “Hm, “transitive nightfall of diamonds” – I wonder where (Robert) Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist) got that”. I said some combination of acid and T.S.Eliot.”

signed baseball  & Allen throwing in the pitch – Photo © Michael Macor / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris

 

Ryan Dart Trio bassist Sean Hicke went solo this month with his album Sunflower Sutra (yes, inspired by that “Sunflower Sutra“), recorded with Chris Hobson and mixed and mastered at Rarefied Recording in North Park, Seattle. Listen to the title track – here

and, speaking of Washington State, congratulations to Paul E Nelson for his recent compilation, American Prophets. His 1994 interview with Allen is available – here

troubling news – ninety-years-old, the indomitable ruth weiss, (dubbed by writer Herb Caen, “the goddess of the Beat Generation”) suffered three strokes Wednesday January 23rd. She’s currently recovering at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Send her your healing thoughts please.