Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 372

June 29, 2018Simon Pettet

 

“In a climate of fear and hysteria..” – It’s always revealing and instructive to “get to see the files”. We featured a lengthy post on Allen’s FBI files some years back (courtesy the pioneering work of Shawn Musgrave and Muck Rock). Another tenacious investigator. S.P. Sullivan is to be commended for just recently uncovering William Carlos Williams’ files – “He was one of Jersey’s most famous poets. The FBI worried he was a Communist”.  Sullivan’s full report (just published, by Inside Jersey magazine, and on-line at NJ.Com) may be accessed  – here

[Allen Ginsberg in Uncle Sam … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 368

June 1, 2018Simon Pettet

June 3 – this Sunday – is Allen’s birthday. To celebrate the Howl Happening Gallery in New York City has organized once again it’s now-annual event.  This year it features David Amram, Ed Sanders, Hettie Jones, Eileen Myles, Simon Pettet, and Peter Hale (manager of the Ginsberg Estate), amongst others. The event will be hosted and m-c’d   by Ginsberg’s “right hand man“, his long-time secretary, the poet Bob Rosenthal (whose long-awaited memoir, Straight Around Allen, is due out this Fall). There’ll be a film presentation, and an energetic group-reading of “Howl” (“I saw … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 356

March 9, 2018Simon Pettet

Beyond Beat, the five-day Los Angeles Beat  convention continues. Among the highlights tonight, a group reading of “Howl” (also a performance of Gregory Corso’s “Bomb”, and a poetry reading by Neeli Cherkovski and Paul Vangelisti). Tomorrow (Saturday) will include a “Punk and Beat” panel  (with V. Vale, Jerry Casale, and S.A.Griffin), a panel on Bob Kaufman, and a showing of Billy Woodberry‘s documentary on Kaufman, And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead.  Sunday includes Steve Silberman (on the Legacy of “Howl”), a “Howl” panel (with Steve Silberman, Marc Olmsted, and … Read More

Neal Cassady’s Birthday

February 8, 2018Simon Pettet

[Neal Cassady (1926-1968)] – Photograph by Herb Greene via The Grateful Dead Archive Online]

Neal Cassady‘s birthday today, born February 8, 1926 in Salt Lake City.

In Denver tomorrow, the David Amram Quartet will headline the 9th Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash at the Mercury Cafe, featuring music, poetry and reminiscences celebrating the life and the legend of Neal Cassady,

The following day, February 10th, at the Alamo Drafthouse/Sloan’s Lake, there will be a special screening of the film Magic Trip  (2011) detailing Cassady and Ken Kesey’s 1964 adventures (Cassady driving the bus with the Merry … Read More

David Amram Remembers Jack Kerouac

November 12, 2017Simon Pettet

[David Amram and Allen Ginsberg with Jack Kerouac and Larry Rivers at a diner –  during the making of Pull My Daisy, 1959 – Photograph by John Cohen]

Continuing our celebration of his 87th birthday

David Amram Remembers Jack Kerouac

This initial piece was originally written in 1969 for Evergreen Review, and published early in 1970 at the request of publisher Barney Rosset as an obituary for Kerouac

I used  to see Jack often at the old Five Spot in the beginning of 1957, when I was working there. I knew he was a writer, and all musicians knew … Read More

David Amram’s Birthday

November 11, 2017Simon Pettet

[David Amram performing “Waltz After the Fall” via jackshalom]

David Amram celebrates his 87th birthday today

Recipient of the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from Kansas City’s Folk Alliance International.

Written and narrated by Scott Alarik, here‘s the video made specially for that occasion

and here‘s Nick Foster of Boulder, Colorado’s eTown interviewing David (from a couple of years back)

Here’s another interview  (from March of last year)

Here’s David from back in 2011, performing and talking about Kerouac

Offbeat -Collaborating With Kerouac, his memoir, was first published in 2002

His earlier memoir, Vibrations  The … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 337

October 13, 2017Simon Pettet

[Herbert Huncke and Louis Cartwright, at Indian restaurant banquet for Hanuman Press, November, 1989 Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, (c) The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

This coming Wednesday, next Wednesday, October 18th, at The Beat Museum,  “Huncke and Louis” – A Film Screening with Laki Vazakas, a rare chance to see Vazakas’ tender and intimate documentary on the legendary Herbert Huncke  and his longtime friend and companion Louis Cartwright.  Tate Swindell will be on hand, joining Laki in a discussion of the film, after the event, and meditating on Huncke’s remarkable life and work.

Kerouac Celebrations last weekend in Lowell… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 335

September 29, 2017Simon Pettet

William Blake and the Age of Aquarius, a stunning new show opened this past week at the Block Museum at Northwestern (Evanston, Illinois). Above is a reproduction of the catalog cover. The exhibition, curated by Northwestern University art professor, Stephen F Eisenman, is a breakthrough exhibit, exploring, for the first time,  “the impact of British visionary poet and artist William Blake on a broad range of American artists in the post-World War II period”  (notably, (but by no means confined to), Allen Ginsberg and fellow members of the Beat Generation – Allen as promoter and propagandist, conduit and curator, … Read More

Thursday November 24 – Thanksgiving

November 24, 2016admin

A Thanksgiving poem (from 1957) SONG OF THE FEAST   (for David Amram) What feast of thee, blue wild body! My relatives from the mire      wait outside thy plumage gate! The raging cock, release!              HAIL THANKSIVING! Here the fox-spoon, ye ol’ fudder bucket! An here the geese-bowl, ol’ gowdy! Yez, dare the shaker-pep an the shaker blee-ack, too! C’mon, bring o’er the radiator-soup! Now we is a eatin, now we is a eatin— Play the radio flea, ol’ fane Yez,now we is a eatin an a listening, eatin an a listening — Hey, blink, pass down the bread sink — Ah, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 239

October 9, 2015admin

Kerouac Festival in Lowell this weekend. Here are all the details. Among the highlights…..David Amram, Pamela Twining, Andy Clausen  and here‘s Andy Clausen reading “My Name’s Neal Cassady What’s Yours?” (Andy narrates the story of his meeting with Neal Cassady, an excerpt from his “The Last Days of the Beat Generation.”) Watch Jonah Raskin on C-Span on his book American Scream – Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and The Making of the Beat Generation

Regarding the Howl Celebrations featured here last week – The Six Gallery reading at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane (which … Read More