The Literary Kicks Summer Poetry Happening

from Brian Hassett:
July 21st, 1999
The Bitter End, New York City

It went really great. Sold out and all that. People were sitting cross-legged on the floor in the standing room area by the bar, and one of the owners told me that was the first time he'd ever seen that. It was sweet, impromptu, and very Beat.

In fact the club actually called the next day to make sure everything went all right, and how many gigs do you think they do that after?! They said we could come back anytime and we probably will.

And speaking of Will, Hodgson was really one of the highlights.

My favorite mental picture of the night was seeing the band line-up -- stage right being David Amram on grand piano, Daniel Srebnick on tenor sax, with The Mighty Manatees in the middle, then with John Cassady on electric guitar with Ted The Fiddler on stage left.

Bob Holman shook the seats and rattled the rafters with pretty much that line-up, and then there were all these other musical variations that assumed themselves during the night.

The New Yorker wrote about it, we were the pick of the day in Time-Out New York, one of the picks of the week in New York magazine, a highlighted show in NY Press, and a nice long listing in the Village Voice described our “arsenal of writers, poets and musicians.”

The show started about 7 and didn't end till 2 am, at which point we all went across the street and had a big chow with Dave Amram in a late night diner just like that famous diner photo that's now on the cover of The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats. Then a bunch of us went back to Cassady's room at the Chelsea for a final roundup till 7 am.

For the whole first set we had the audience in the palms of our hands with about 200 people absolutely packed in and around every table. Rolling Stone editor Holly George-Warren read in her sweet Southern accent from her just-released Book of the Beats, and her husband Robert Burke Warren closed the first set as he and The Manatees rocked out on “Rave On,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Fever.”

The David Amram Trio opened the second set with a special LitKicks / Bitter End “Pull My Daisy,” and Hersch Silverman wrote & read a new poem entitled “The Literary Kicks Summer Poetry Happening” that played with the styles and works of a bunch of the performers.

Levi was doing most of the hosting, as the two of us traded off all night. We made a pretty natural duo on the stage and off the stage and you'll probably see us tootling the multitudes again.

John Cassady's reading/talking/playing was a real highlight for everyone. He'd read about a sentence of this letter from Neal which would then remind him of some other story and off he'd zoom with some eminiscence of zooming around with his dad, until finally he and the band broke into a rockin' lead-filled version of Chuck Berry's “Nadine.”

Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth did a great original piece with a taped background, and Richard Hell, looking like a rock star with his black shades and loud red shirt, jammed on some funny, playful, riveting prose.

Ron Whitehead and his fiancé Birgitta gave a touching, heart-felt dual performance, and Breath Cox was there looking great, reading great and torquing the vibes. Garry Best was up from Key West with his usual guidance, and Marie Countryman was down from Vermont being the best all-round audience shusher and performer pep coach you could hope for.

Charlie Plymell read with rock ‘n' roll backing and got so inspired he started dancing on the stage in between the multiple guitar players at several points during the night.

We made a two-camera digital shoot that Levi's going to edit and release on DVD.

I didn't read anything. I told a story instead -- part of the screenplay. My Mom was there from Oakville so I worked her into the tale, telling it as a true story in first-person, and everyone really believed it happened, coming up afterwards and telling me they came from divorced parents too and knew exactly what I was talking about, and asking me what albums my dad played on. Pretty funny.

The next day the woman from the new Beat documentary The Source said the room was electric, and that's about the simplest, most accurate description of it. There's been a flood of calls and emails since, so it really did seem to affect, warm and inspire some people -- like a great book brought alive with music and voices in a seven-hour sweeping spontaneous epic.

Keep ya toasted on the next one.

--Brian

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