Customer Reviews

Readings By Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation

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If you've read any of Kerouac's books, and likely if you're reading this review and considering this purchase, you have - then you are truly in for a treat.

This is an excellent Spoken Word disc.

Hearing Kerouac reading his own words, the wonderful cadence of his voice, the slight Massachusetts accent coming through, the improvised jazz be-bop, and even the very crisp noise registered when he turns the page of his ever present notebook - this is the Kerouac you've wanted to hear since you first read "On The Road".

He expounds on San Francisco, Allen Ginsburg, Jazz and Be-Bop, and impressively The Beats.

Hearing him describe the "beat" in the opening track, the tempo he uses, the tonality in his voice, you'll hear what the "Beat Generation" is all about.

The excellent liner notes and packing, some of which are presented as postcards, indicate this recording was made sometime in 1958 or 1959 and Mr. Jack Kerouac is at his prime.

This is a treasure, a real gift for the Kerouac fan.

I strongly suggest you purchase this excellent recording. The production values are very high. The sound is crisp and clean.

Thank you Verve Records for this real historic find.

Since I read On The Road, Kerouac has changed the way that I viewed prose and poetry. It is here in these recordings that I heard the voice of Jack himself. Often humorous--at times even daring to be silly, he shows how literature isn't dead and dusty meant to be spoonfed to school-children--But it breathes, slides jumps from the soul to the tongue to soul of others. These works are pieces of Jack's vision of the "American Night." They are real, gritty, and intense. Unedited, and bleeding. No cliches. No reliance on sentiment. So if your ready for real art, put down that Tom Clancy novel, and check this CD out for yourself.

The words seem to flow from an other wordly source much as mantras flow from the mouths of tired old bhikkus. It's nice to hear Jack himself read his works not some later day rock musicians posing as "literary types" who probably read On the Road once just to tell their friends they are "hip." You can get stoned from this CD alone.

I was prepared to like the content; I've been a Kerouac fan for 40 years. What blew me away was the packaging. Included are postcards describing the various tracks, with photos and quotations. The combination of the tracks and the way the CD is packaged make it irrestible. What a great gift for a fan this would be!

Almost certainly (benzedrine?) charged by something illicit in the bloodstream Kerouac here rumbles and clear throatedly gives a word-slinging embrace to the microphone, there's power in these words, he punctuates it by stops and hesitations you can hear the paper rustling as he moves on. It was my first time hearing his voice and as that tired whiskey broken tone carried over the jazz and the beautiful women I can again understand the allure of beat again.