DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
My Fellow Americans, Life is actually just a microscopic, deluded moment in time, so let's cut to the freakin' chase. One look at our impending election debacle can solidify my case. It has been my contention since birth, that the answer to every difficulty we encounter on this sacred yet demented Stone, can be revealed with ultimate clarity through the ultra neurotic engagements of Music, Art, Literature, Film, Poetry and a good Pastrami sandwich. Why would any sane human spend so must time on a film set (Do you know how long you gotta wait until your 8 second deliverance of an edited beyond repair line gets a chance to become a professional embarrassment etched in time forever? ) or expend so much energy in a recording studio, piecing together another ode to a man or woman who could not care less how much love existed within your digestive tract? It's all about hymns and prayers and a quest for mercy and forgiveness and silence and faith. We were blessed with Charles Bukowski, Gene Chandler, Lenny Bruce, Mitch Ryder and a legion of creative explorers whose influences provided the air we breathe. So Let's Dance! This site shall explore the reaper, find a way to disarm the stench of injustice, discover some true loves and talk it all over before it's all over. So what's the worst that our desires could produce? Failure? So sue me. I'm going to require your assistance in making as much trouble for the grown-ups as possible. Let the record show that my childish heart yearns to disrupt the madness. Join me Ladies and Germs!
With Gratitude For Gena Rowlands, Nancy Sinatra, Jerry Quarry, Leo Gorcey, Arthur Alexander and Joey Heatherton, Your Splendid Bohemian, Rich Buckland.
DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT "THE BEAT GOES ON"- EPISODE 1-THE ROSY DRAMA OF HENRY MILLER -THIS NEW SERIES CAPTURES A LITERARY MOVEMENT GUIDED BY INDIVIDUALISM, LUNACY, INGENUITY AND THE BE BOP NOTIONS THAT ALTERED THOUGHT, VERSE, AND SELF EXPRESSION
Welcome to our new series, “The Beat Goes On,” where we will celebrate the work and enduring influence of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the other writers whom we identify as “The Beats.” - that crop of artists who worked to expand our consciousness, exploring the hidden possibilities of post WW2 America in the 1950s - Other significant names to be explored: Diane Di Prima, Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Delmore Schwarz, Anne Waldman, Carolyn Cassidy, and many others.
We will also include jazz musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie, whose sinuous Bebop lines influenced the expansive prose of Kerouac and poetry of Ginsberg, and comedians like Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Brother Theodore and Dick Gregory with their scathing critique and unmasking of our nation’s hypocrisy beneath the self-deceptive rhetoric of American exceptionalism. And, then there are their artistic children like Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits and Lou Reed…. The list goes on.
First off: we need to define that confusing term “beat”… Once the satirists were able to pin them down, the Beats and their devotees were labelled “Beatniks” (a cold war epithet) and put into a farcical box. This is where I, as a child, first became aware of them through the character of Maynard G. Krebs on the Dobie Gillis show. The child-like, pre-hippie with the dirty sweatshirt and goatee, indelibly played by Bob Denver, later of Gilligan fame. He was a gentle figure of fun, not to be taken seriously.
But, the truth goes so much deeper. Kerouac defined Beat as short for “beatitude” - a state of grace, a codex for the maturing “peace and love” Baby Boom generation coming up - those in search of existence’s deeper meaning beyond the consumerist and war-like American culture being offered as our only option.
Well, boy, do we need them now!
HENRY MILLER INTERVIEW
Our inaugural offering is a 1964 interview with the writer Henry Miller, of TROPIC OF CANCER, TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, and THE ROSY CRUCIFIXION TRILOGY fame, among many others. This is an insightful, in depth look at a artist of gargantuan influence. Miller was interviewed by Audrey June Wood in Minneapolis during a speaking tour; he considered this interview to be one of his best. Miller discourses on some of his favorite books and authors and the struggle of writing well. It was released on Smithsonian/ Folkways Records.
Strictly speaking, Miller was not a Beat - he preceded them, and out lived many of them, making it to 88 in 1980, but he was their spiritual and artistic pathfinder.
Living hand to mouth, on the edge, abroad in Paris, writing free form in a raw, explicit, semi-autobiographical manner, telling the truth about sex, love, art, and struggle - he set the artistic compass for the Beats - as Dostoevsky and Walt Whitman had done before him. They are all part of a chain - a chain of searchers, and we are fortunate to have these lights to guide us on our own personal journeys to self realization.
Please enjoy…THE BEAT GOES ON.
