Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness
Not yet at least, and not the way a few rock stars, two movie stars, a comedian, four Beat poets, a few folkies, and more pay tribute to the writings of Jack Kerouac with both voice and music in the VOICES/Rykodisc release,Kerouac — kicks joy darkness.  Kerouac’s writing style broke through the doldrums of the post-war period.  A literal overnight success following the 1957 review of On The Road by the New York Times, he was heralded by critics as The Next Big Thing.  The incredible attention bestowed on him by the worldwide press made him a superstar, but to devastating effect: the world wanted him to be the spokesperson for the Beat generation, he wanted to write.  In the end, his fame overshadowed his writings and his talent, and dogged him to his death.  While his poetry, essays, and other works have been published in approximately 20 different books, few of his fans have ventured beyond the world of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise in On The Road.And what a shame.  Kerouac wrote brief-limned snatches of poetry (he called them "pomes"), in addition to his long, breathless fiction (which he considered poetry even though his stories often accumulated millions of words over hundreds of pages).  Within his many notebooks, Kerouac emulated the energy and bop joy he found in great jazz solos by writing "choruses" of poetry he called "blues.”  He detailed intricate recountings of dark, yet playful passages from his dreams in short snippets of thought-bursts he called "dreams."  He also took long excursions in articles, some of them published within the pages of Esquire and Playboy.Each of these styles find their voice onKerouac — kicks joy darkness, thanks to producer Jim Sampas.  Rather than weighting the release with well-worn passages from Kerouac’s famous fiction, only carefully selected pieces intended to represent Kerouac's many styles and methods of writing were chosen for the album.The project gained momentum when Sampas produced an evening of Kerouac readings featuring Morphine's Mark Sandman and Jim Carroll at the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The performances proved that the experiment of mixing Kerouac and rock music would work.  Lee Ranaldo, of Sonic Youth, came aboard as Associate Producer, and served as MC at a Kerouac concert at New York's Town Hall in 1995.  This was the site of the first recording session which included poetic luminaries Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, among others.  The last session was recorded at the very last minute when the mastering process was halted so that Matt Dillon and bassist Joey Altruda could get to New York City to lay down their performance.Kerouac — kicks joy darknessbegins with an original piece of bop poetry by Morphine entitled “Kerouac,” moves on to Lydia Lunch as she spits out her rendition of "Bowery Blues" and then finds Michael Stipe, backed by the wheezy, cheezy sound of a Vox Jaguar Organ, rumbling out his version of Jack's pome, "My Gang."  Spoken word artist Maggie Estep enlisted the lower eastside group, The Spitters, to rip out a wrenching "Skid Row Wine” -- probably the most in-your-face performance on the album.   This is not standard spoken word where the music acts as an innocuous bed: guests including Come, Helium, Jeff Buckley, and Anna Domino insure otherwise.  On kicks joy darkness, the intercourse of words and music is dynamic and invigorating, with the tracks veering upward in volume and fury.  This is not your father's Kerouac.The four unpublished Kerouac poems featured on this compilation are a rare treat.  The largest work, entitled "America's New Trinity Of Love: Dean, Brando, Presley," is read triumphantly by comedian Richard Lewis.  Lewis did his homework: he rented videos of Jack, he read Kerouac’s work over and over and he re-listened to Jack's albums (recently reissued in a box set by Rhino) before going into the studio and laying down his indefatigable and expansive version of Jack’s perceptions of men, women, and a new way of loving.  Lewis brings an actor's sensibility to drag emotion and character out of the unspoken sub-text to create a performance full of spontaneous energy and crackle.The unpublished dream "Us kids swim off a great pier" is rendered by Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.  Tyler has delightfully expanded his hard-rocking range to recreate the lazy, hazy days of a youthful summer, adding in a layer of scat-singing to his spoken word performance.Lawrence Ferlinghetti was given an unpublished dream, "On a sunny afternoon..." to read during the 1995 concert of Kerouac readings at New York's Town Hall.  Ferlinghetti, besides being a poet and contemporary of Jack's was also a friend, cohort, and instigator as well as Kerouac's publisher. Ferlinghetti's intimate understanding of Kerouac's dreams leads to his crisp reading of the magical moment caught in prose.  During that same concert, Allen Ginsberg was set to read all ten choruses of the unpublished "Brooklyn Bridge Blues."  Unfortunately, when being faxed to the poet that evening the last pages of the poem stuck together and only nine choruses arrived at Ginsberg's office the day of the concert.  Ginsberg notes the missing chorus before making his performance and when he concludes, the unfinished piece hangs mysteriously in the air.  Singer-songwriter, Eric Andersen signed up for the project just days later.  The 10th chorus was offered to him if he could bring his DAT recorder to the top of The Brooklyn Bridge and read it there.  His performance caps the 79 and a half minute release, finishing the poem cycle started by Ginsberg earlier in the program with a resigned and earnest delivery, blowing a blues over cars as they speed to the city and away toward Brooklyn over Roebling's bridge.