Thursday 30 May 2013

KEROUAC CONVENTION TICKETS



The UK Jack Kerouac Convention takes place on the 6th and 7th July 2013

The full weekend is available for the amazing price of only £ 25. This ticket buys you

  • Admission to all presentations
  • Admission to all discussions/ groups
  • A ticket for the play reading BEAT SURRENDER
  • Admission to the Saturday evening - Beat 'Happening' - poetry / music/ dance
  • Admission to every session - over 17 hours of entertainment
  • Free Parking for the weekend

Tickets are limited and available on a first come first served basis. If you can not make the full weekend there are tickets available for just Saturday or Sunday for £15 per day.

You can book your tickets through Rotherham Civic Theatre who have very kindly agreed to handle ticket sales for the conference. Click the link below and go to the section on the left hand side entitled - book tickets

http://www.rotherhamtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/

or telephone the Box Office on 01709 823621

See you there

Wednesday 29 May 2013

HEATH COMMON and the THIN MAN

‘Heath Common is what Jack Kerouac would have sounded like if he came from Manchester’ Congleton Chronicle


We are delighted to confirm that Heath Common and the Thin Man have agreed to play both the Saturday and the Sunday at the convention. More details below

http://www.heathcommon.com/


 

Heath Common is a songwriter, poet and performance-artist from northern England.

Heath Common began his musical career playing in New York City with Robert Lockwood and Johnny Shines – the stepson and close friend, respectively, of the legendary blues musician, Robert Johnson. Following this, Heath Common worked with – and was greatly influenced by – many major figures in the New York ‘Art Rock’ scene of the 1980s and early 1990s. Subsequently, Heath Common formed a duo with the Thin Man before both men went on to work with a diverse number of musicians ranging from the guitarist John Fahey to the British indie act, The Rhythm Sisters. Heath Common continues to work closely with many of the surviving figures from the Beat Movement and he is a published poet.
Heath Common is currently working with The Thin Man who is a songwriter, performer, artist and writer living in Sheffield, UK. The Thin Man formed a long-standing songwriting and performing partnership with Heath Common some years ago when both men were writing under auspices of the legendary music publisher, Charlie Gillett (mentor to Dire Straits, Elvis Costello & Ian Drury amongst many others). Subsequently, The Thin Man performed and recorded with many different people ranging from Fat Boy Slim to the Yorkshire guitar-genius, Bill Nelson.

Friday 17 May 2013

MORE GUESTS ANNOUNCED

Nic Saunders

Following a theatrical collaboration with poet Michael McClure in 2006, 14167 Films have to date produced three films based respectively on the work of McClure, Allen Ginsberg and most recently William S Burroughs. Using the original Beat source material as a starting point, the films have played at film festivals worldwide and won awards at several.

Barry Miles called their work "evocative and stimulating".  Screening as part of the 2013 Jack Kerouac conference are "At Apollinaires Grave", based on the work of Ginsberg and partially shot on location at the real Beat Hotel in Paris, and receiving its first screening in the UK, "One Night at The Aristo", based on a short story by William S Burroughs.  www.14167films.com



Simon Warner is a lecturer, writer and broadcaster on popular music issues and with a particular interest in the Beat Generation. A former journalist - he was a live reviewer for The Guardian in the early 1990s - he published Rockspeak: The Language of Rock and Pop in 1996, and edited the collections Howl for Now, a study of Allen Ginsberg's ground-breaking poem, in 2005, and Summer of Love: The Beatles, Art and Culture in the Sixties in 2008. His latest book, Text and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll, which considers the links between the Beat writers and subsequent rock culture, appeared through Bloomsbury in Spring 2013. He makes frequent contributions to the BBC and wrote and presented the 2010 radio documentary on the jazz poet Michael Horovitz. His obituaries of key members of the American counterculture have appeared in The Guardian and The Independent. Currently he is working on New York, New Wave, a title that will consider the rise of punk in Manhattan in the 1970s.

Thursday 16 May 2013

CAROLYN CASSADY

 
We had hoped to have Carolyn Cassady at the weekend event but she is unable to travel at the moment. So - in true beat tradition we are taking a camera and going on the road to meet with her in two weeks time to film her welcoming people to the convention and recording an exclusive interview to be shown on the Saturday as one of the true highlights of this spectacular weekend.
 
If you have a question you would like to put to Carolyn then please email bookheads1@gmail.com or tweet it at @kerouacbeats 
 
 
 

Carolyn Cassady was a central figure of The Beat Generation. In fact, given that her husband, Neal Cassady, came to San Francisco because of Carolyn, it's easy to make the case that there indeed never would have been a Beat Generation without Carolyn.
Carolyn was an artist and costume designer as well as a wife, mother and homemaker. And, of course, she's most well known as the wife of Neal and friend of Jack, Allen and the rest. The story she tells in her book, Off The Road, is compelling because, in a very real sense, much of the 1950s and 1960s took place in the living room of her home in Northern California.
On April 28th, we celebrate Carolyn's birthday. Carolyn has been living in England for many years now, and she will have a chance to read your tributes to her on this webpage in the coming weeks.