1. Just in from Rykodisc: the very cool track list for a new Jack Kerouac tribute CD, due to be released March 18. Check out this lineup! The name of the CD will be “KICKS JOY DARKNESS.”
Morphine – Kerouac (original piece)
Lydia Lunch – Bowery Blues
Michael Stipe – My Gang
Steven Tyler – Unpublished dream: “Us kids swim off a gray pier…”
Hunter S. Thompson- Ode To Jack (original piece)
Maggie Estep & the Spitters – Skid Row Wine
Richard Lewis – Unpublished essay: America’s New Trinity of Love: Dean,
Brando, Presley
Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Helium – Unpublished dream: “On a sunny
afternoon…”
Jack Kerouac & Joe Strummer – MacDougal Street Blues, Cantos Dos
Allen Ginsberg – Unpublished: Brooklyn Bridge Blues (Choruses 1-9)
Eddie Vedder & Hovercraft – Hymn
William Burroughs & Tomandandy – Old Western Movies
Juliana Hatfield – Silly Goofball Pomes
John Cale – The Moon
Johnny Depp & Come – Visions Of Cody (excerpt): “Madroad driving…”
Robert Hunter – Visions Of Cody (excerpt): “Around the poolhalls of Denver”
Lee Ranaldo & Dana Colley – Letter to John Clellon Holmes
Anna Domino – Pome On Doctor Sax
Hitchhiker – Mexico Rooftop (excerpt)
Patti Smith with Thurston Moore & Lenny Kaye – The Last Hotel
Warren Zevon & Michael Wolff – Running Through – Chinese Poem Song
Jim Carroll with Lee Ranaldo, Lenny Kaye & Anton Sanco – Woman
Matt Dillon – Mexican Loneliness
Inger Lorre & Jeff Buckley – Angel Mine
Eric Andersen – Brooklyn Bridge Blues (Chorus 10)
2. I really feel like a part of Beat history now. Steve Silberman, an editor at HotWired, interviewed Allen Ginsberg online a couple of weeks ago, and after the interview made Allen sit through his first-ever tour of the World Wide Web. Now, I’ve known for a while that in Allen’s personal pantheon computers stand somewhere between Central American CIA operatives and stale bagels with week-old lox … but I’ve always wondered how he would react to my site if he saw it. Well, Literary Kicks was the first site Steve took him to, and you can read about the experience in Steve’s intro to the transcript of the HotWired chat session.
3. “A Coney Island of the Mind,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s collection of poems, has long been one of the most popular books of Beat writing. Soon, I hear, there will be a follow-up volume,
beguilingly titled “A Far Rockaway of the Heart”. Since Far Rockaway is in my hometown of Queens, I’m particularly pleased by this …
4. There are several new Beat Generation sites on the web, and while I’m still struggling with time limitations in terms of checking out and linking to all the worthy sites out there, I’ve tried to keep a fairly up-to-date list on my Beat Generation page. Some notable links I’ve added or updated lately:
David Eads’ How To Speak Hip, Robert Cecil’s Beat site, and Christopher Ritter’s impressive Bohemian Ink. There’s also a new 1997 Dharma Beats roster — this is part of the Cosmic Baseball Association, one of the more charming and unusual sites on the web. Enjoy … and happy new year, everybody.
