WE ASKED contributors to Rock and the Beat Generation to identify their most memorable moments with a Beat inclination or a related musical flavour from the last year. This is what they shared…
BRIAN HASSETT, performer, Beat historian and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac:
Being a performer, my favorite Beat moments of the year happened on a stage. The first was performing ‘The Power of The Collective’ from The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats to a collective of artists on Long Island who collaborate every year to produce an incredible underground weekend-long multi-stage festival.
But the even better moment was finally pulling off the complex ‘Jack on Film’ show in a beautiful theater at ‘Lowell Celebrates Kerouac’ where we were able to project & discuss every portrayal of Kerouac on the big or small screen – and then have a rockin rollicking conversation with the director of the best adaptation of one of his novels, Big Sur.
To me, the Beats have always been about camaraderie, connectedness and collaboration – and that's why live events shared with fellow Beats in the flesh are always more uplifting and empowering than reading a book or listening to a recording or anything you do at home alone.
To me, the most inspiring Beat creations were when their different voices joined together – from the Six Gallery reading to making Pull My Daisy to the Jack summit in Boulder in 1982 – it's coming together and sharing the love and visions in person that empower and inspire. Here's to more of them in 2024 and continuing for the golden eternity.
STEVE TURNER, popular music journalist, cultural historian and Beat biographer:
I don't have a single moment but I have a string of moments working on my forthcoming book Hydrogen Jukebox: The Influence of the Beat Generation on Rock Music, speaking with musicians, those who knew the Beats, and re-reading all my Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and Ferlinghetti books.
WANG PING, Chinese-American poet, educator and translator:
The most pleasant surprise for 2023 was when I found Gary Snyder's Turtle Island in Chinese, in Xianfeng Bookstore, marked as the most beautiful bookstore on earth, in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province in East China. It was built as a nuke shelter, transformed into the biggest bookstore, with most visitors in China, in the world.
RON WHITEHEAD, poet, performer and National Beat Laureate:
My favorite Rock and the Beat Generation moment of 2023? All of it! I thoroughly appreciate and enjoy every post. Involving my work, I was certainly pleased that you shared my ‘Searching for Jack Kerouac’ video: Searching for Jack Kerouac: You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley
DAVID WILLS, editor of the journal Beatdom:
It's hard to pick a single book because there have been many excellent publications released this year. I very much enjoyed reading Stevan Weine's Best Minds and Pat Thomas' Material Wealth. Both are extremely valuable additions to Beat Studies.
There have been some great chapbooks, too, including Gregory Stephenson's And the Rivers Thereof: Reflections on Riverine Images in the Writing of Jack Kerouac, about Kerouac and rivers, Matz McLaughlin's Ray Bremser book and Kurt Hemmer's study of Gregory Corso in Vermont.
MALCOLM PAUL, who interviewed Liverpool poet Brian Patten and jazz singer Carol Grimes for R&BG this year:
I particularly liked the Steven Taylor review of John Szwed’s biography of Harry Smith, Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith.
The review sparked an immediate interest and I went in search of the book. I think the reviewer’s job is to make the artist portrayed someone we would want to share our precious time via a book, curled up in a chair and learning more about a remarkable, indeed unique, multidisciplinary scholar and artist. Is there anything Harry Smith didn't do artistically?!
Szwed sweats in the biographer’s hot kitchen and Steven Taylor serves up an irresistible dish to the hungry Beat diner: exemplary writing/a full deck of information/stories and insights. With so many interests, it's hard to tag Larry Smith with merely one artistic monicker. Polymath? Ragged genius? Ringmaster of a dozen art forms? ‘Cosmic Explorer’ most definitely...
Szwed does genuine justice to Harry Smith's life and work while Steven Taylor, with his own personal connection to the subject, provides a quite brilliant review bringing this literary symbiosis to our attention via R&BG’s excellent, unequalled webpages. Great work done by all. One of the best biographies I've read and this review made it happen.
SIMON WARNER, editor of Rock and the Beat Generation:
There was, in 2023, a rich pattern of exchange between the Beat writing we know and love and the musical outlets that channel those older literary energy in fresh ways. On the recording front, those synergies were hardly better represented than by a number of CDs which have taken the verbal mastery of Allen Ginsberg and attached that artistic eloquence to new musical settings.
It has taken a little while for the second album responding to Ginsberg’s important collection The Fall of America to arrive, but its release completes a long-term venture overseen by Peter Hale, a significant mover at the Allen Ginsberg Estate, and Jesse Goodman.
The Fall of America II features Devendra Banhart and Thurston Moore. This time, Moore teams up with spoken-word legend Saul Williams. Other contributors include Miho Hatori and Philip Glass, while its opening track is a take on Ginsberg’s ‘Hum Bom!’ from the great Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Los Angeles collective O Future and poet Aliah Rosenthal.
A further Ginsberg recording well worth mentioning is one linked to Pat Thomas’ recently published book Material Wealth. Not only has editor Thomas coordinated multiple items from the poet’s voluminous archives for the new illustrated volume but he has also compiled a companion collection on CD – Material Wealth: Allen’s Voice in Poems and Songs 1956-1996 – to follow early in the New Year.
It has been a pleasure, too, to read and review the much-awaited book on the life and work of composer and Beat legend David Amram. The Many Worlds of David Amram: Renaissance Man of American Music struck me as the most heartwarming of tributes to a figure who has inhabited so many musical styles over 70 years and more. His friendship with Kerouac is well-known but his extraordinary corpus of creativity spans genres and cultures with an alacrity that leaves the reader and listener quite stunned.
Finally, I was delighted to encounter Thurston Moore’s biographical title Sonic Life, Released during the autumn, I look forward to giving that memoir a focused Beat reading in R&BG early in 2024.
My father, Neal, named me after his 2 best friends at the time, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Although Allen was my middle name, Ginsberg would always introduce me as "Allen Cassady." Everyone knew that my first name was John, but they would play along. I have so many stories about Allen, but for another day...John Allen Cassady