Jack: King Off and On the Road (Kerouac)
. For some reason, I remembered that dog's name as the name of some famed writer who'd written a book called On the Road
, which I hadn't yet read but my young mind vaguely associated with the film Easy Rider
. Hadn't read a whole lot of literature at that time in my life - but I was intrigued enough by that dog to visit the local library and investigate his namesake further.
Jack Kerouac
Since then, in college, after college, before prison, in prison, I read lots of Kerouac. Enthralled I was.... The Dharma Bums
, Visions of Gerard
, Dr. Sax
, Mexico City Blues
, you name it.... But then I kinda put him behind me in the 21st century. "All things must pass away," as George Harrison sang. And to paraphrase the Who, a part of me died before I got old. Did it? Then I recently discovered a CD called Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness
at a nearby library. It features a wild ménage of artists reading, singing, and even wringing Kerouac's poetry. 25 tracks in all.... Right now, I'm listening to Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore's live performance of Jack's "The Last Hotel" on that CD. Makes me want to STFU.... Warren Zevon, Michael Stipe, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Morphine, Joe Strummer, Allen Ginsberg, Steven Tyler, Hunter S. Thompson, Jeff Buckley, William S. Burroughs, John Cale, Robert Hunter, and even Richard Lewis are among the other contributors - all Jacking, Kerouacking, all over this CD.One of my favorite tracks on the disc finds Maggie Estep and the Spitters interpreting Kerouac's "Skid Row Wine." And I've uploaded that track here for your listening pleasure. Just click the little triangle thingy in the black box to hear the podcast (if you received this blog via e-mail, you can click the Media link in your message).
Played: 1946 | Download | Duration: 00:05:51
["Skid Row Wine" (words by Jack Kerouac, music by Maggie Estep, Mark Ashwill, Tim Bradee, Louis Echavaria, Bill Bronson) Published by Duluoz Publishing, Inc. (ASCAP). Maggie Estep appears courtesy of Mouth Almighty / Mercury Records. Track is copyright 1997 by Rykodisc.]
Jack Kerouac was no ordinary dog. And though this über-dog has had his day, his day is not done - by a long shot. Here is the text to "Skid Row Wine," followed by links where you can buy the CD Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness
(and other Kerouac works I recommend) from my Amazon bookstore. I could have done a lot worst than sit
In Skid Row drinkin wineTo know that nothing really matters after all
To know there’s no real difference
Between the rich and the poor
To know that eternity is neither drunk
nor sober, to know it young
and to be a poetCoulda gone into business and ranted
And believed that God was concernedInstead I squatted in lonesome alleys
And nobody saw me, just my bottle
And what they saw of it was emptyAnd I did it in cornfields & graveyards
To know that the dead don’t make noise
To know that the cornstalks talk (among
One another with raspy old arms)Sitting in alleys diggin the neons
And watching cathedral custodians
Wring out their rags neath the church stepsSitting and drinking wine
And in railyards being divineTo be a millionaire & yet prefer
Curlin up with a poorboy of tokay
In a warehouse door, facing long sunsets
On railroad fields of grassTo know that the sleepers in the river
Are dreaming vain dreams, to squat
In the night and know it well
To be dark solitary eye-nerve watcher
Of the world’s whirling diamond
- Jack Kerouac
(Remember: a percentage of every purchase keeps this CrisisChronicles site up and running.)
good poem.
On the Road is the book that made me try marijuana. the book impressed the heck out of me when i was 17. reread it at 60 and found it to be a sad book about shallow people. followed that re-reading with burrough's naked lunch. that one still sears the soul.
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I first tried marijuana at 17 - but I guess it depends on your definition of "tried." I was on a Greyhound bus coming home from Marine boot camp at Parris Island. During a brief stop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this dude who'd been riding with me asked if I smoked. I said yes, though I didn't, because I didn't want him to think me square. So he produced a joint, fired it up and invited me to take a hit. I pretended to do so, made some sort of sucking sound with the thing at my lips, but was too scared to actually inhale. Seriously....
Maybe that's why I wanted so badly to buy into Bill Clinton's whole "yes, but I didn't inhale" business. LOL. It doesn't really matter to me if he did inhale - but it does matter that candidates in general feel they must lie because having inhaled once upon a time might make them less electable.
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oh! i LOVED that. wonder why it doesn't show it was played?
anyhow... i'm reminded of "junkman's obbligato" and, to a degree, a carl hiaasen character named "skink".
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The quote at the end of this is the code I live by. I've loved to "Jack" a loooong time. Still do.
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pugzz, you crack me up. pun intended
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OY VEY!!
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Wow, from A Pope to Skid Row.
Reminds me of a legless guy who got around on a board with wheels in New York who came up to us begging us to buy him a bottle of skid row red wine so we went across the street and came back with it. He rolled into the bushes and I think drank it down in one gulp and fell asleep in the grass. Unforgettable
sight to this day.
Jack King off? Yeah, Jack is a nickname for John. Jack the Ripper, Jack Daniels, Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick, Jack Jump Over the Candlestick. Jack of all trades, master of none. Jack of Spades, Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Hijack a plane, be a terrorist, jack up your car when the tire goes flat, (not jack off lol) Naughty, naughty JOHN JACK OFF.
What does the Minister have to say about all of this?? Are we going naked to mass or simply going to funk off in church today? GOK
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Don't forget the Jackson 5 and Full Metal Jacket.
The latter is a film by a director with what strikes me as a similarly suggestive name - and I don't mean his first name - although on second thought Stanley is a company that manufactures drills.
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LOL to Pugzz and thanks to mb!
"Junkman's Obbligato" is a great piece by Ferlinghetti (anyone else interested can read an online version of it here: http://members.aol.com/Lizardwing/index12-6.html) - and you're right. I want to say it and Kerouac's "Skid Row Wine" were written around the same time - but will have to look that up to be sure. I remember you and Smith recommending Hiaasen to me in comments on an earlier blog - but I still haven't read anything by him. So many books, so little time....
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Well THIS was worth waking up to! Never even made to TheSpazz this am, opened email, clicked on the Tao...and have been here for over an hour.
Excellent work John. My son loves Kerouac and introduced ME to him!
Out of the mouths of babes...
Will purchase all Nick's K related gifts through you...
Hugs,
S.
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How very kind of you, Suzette! On all counts....
Thank you so much, and I'm glad you've enjoyed it!
You and Nick are fortunate to have each other. Makes sense that a cool mom would have a cool son....
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"In the Thomas Wolfe boardinghouse in Asheville...rooms he once slept in... typewriter he once used...his books and clothes and photos...one early photo looking exactly like a young Jack Kerouac-set me to musing, high on Mexican grass-Sweepingvision of America in "Look Homeward, Angel", seen by the young Eugene Gant as he rode a train through the American Dusk-'to flash upon the window and be gone'-Wolfe's place, said Maxwell Perkins, was all America-So with Jack-Kerouac's vision a car vision, seen from the windows of old autos speeding cross-country-the same Wolfian old pre-War America, now all but gone, invisible, except in Greyhoud bus stations in small lost towns...And Jack's Lowell, Mass., a mill town and Asheville like a mill town after the mills moved South early in the century, carrying Canuck ghosts with them...Wolfe and Jack drinking together now in eternity...omniverous insatiable consumers, of life, which consumed them both too early...Wolfe's stone angel akin to Jack's stone Stations of the cross in Lowell graveyard, angels of mercy...Both never happy abroad, never happy expatriates-Wolfe drunk in Berlin, Jack stoned on a Mexican rooftop or staggering by the Seine...And which of them would know his brother?...Look Homeward, Jack."
Look Homeward, Jack:
Two Correspondences, number 2
by Ferlinghetti from "Wild Dreams of a New Beginning"
i tried to find this online, and couldn't, so... i'll take the fall if someone wants to sue
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Excellent... perfect, even.... Thank you!
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What can I relate to in this blog? I have read "Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe and I met William S. Burroughs who gave a talk at the Plaza Hotel in New York for a crazy convention of the Italian Freudians who invited all sorts of writers and psychologists. It was amazing to hear so many wild eyed people there who all smoked cigars and had their gay playboys with them. (Handsome young guys dressed to the teeth.) Is W. S. Burroughs any relation to you, J?
Has anyone met Ken Kesey? He was the talk of my colleagues who have a lot of stories about him...another wild man!!
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In the joint, a friend of mine starting telling people W.S. was my uncle as a joke. It spread like wildfire... and years later, certain folks still wanted to believe it, despite my protestations to the contrary.
I've got a few W.S. Burroughs books here: Naked Lunch, Exterminator!, and My Education. And I've read quite a few others I've borrowed from libraries over the years. By Wolfe, I have Of Time and the River, The Hills Beyond, and A Man in Full. Never read Bonfire of the Vanities - though I think I saw the movie many years ago (but I couldn't tell you what it's about anymore).... And loved Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the only thing I've read by him.
I would have loved to have been there with you to meet my "Uncle Bill." I'm sure you already know that the character "Bill Lee" in Kerouac's work was modeled after William S. Burroughs. In fact, WSB used the "Bill Lee" character in some of his own fiction as well.
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"bonfire of the vanities" is one of my favorite books. biting satire. the movie version? i'm not surprised you don't remember it. it was terrible.
i met kesey once, but i didn't know it at the time.
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Gotta read it then....
Helen met William, you met Ken. Now I'm wondering if anyone's met Jack.
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This sample track is fabulous. Man o man, tho, I don't want to feel that angst all the time. I be angst-ed out, I was a fire spider too long on the star shine blasted diamond.
Maggie E has a Courtney Love kinda voice.
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...i couldn't decide who she sounded like! ...it is perfect in my head now!! ...courtney love--yup!
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My first thought was Linda Perry, for some reason.
But Lady and you are right - quite Courtneyesque - especially on the bridge where Maggie sings "Sitting and drinking wine / And in railyards being divine."
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I've probably listened to it at least thirty times this week - far more than any other one "song."
I'm not nearly as enamored of angst in myself as I was as a young lad, when I saw it as a creative dynamo. Still find it interesting in other artists much of the time, though....
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....the older i get, the less angsty and more antsy....
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That seems to describe me as well... lol.
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