Fourteen of the 25 tracks on this 79½-minute disc are drawn from
Jack Kerouac's poetry book Pomes All Sizes; the rest come from his novels (nothing from On the Road, though) and letters, with some unpublished work is also included. The readers range from Kerouac's contemporaries, William Burroughs,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and
Allen Ginsberg, and literary offspring like
Hunter S. Thompson, to such poet-rockers as Jim Carroll and
Patti Smith, and a long list of rock stars including
Michael Stipe,
Steven Tyler, and
Eddie Vedder. Kerouac was not a fan of rock music, instead preferring bebop jazz, so the closest tracks to what he himself would have preferred are associate producer and
Sonic Youth member
Lee Ranaldo's excerpt from a letter to John Clellon Holmes, accompanied by saxophonist
Dana Colley,
Warren Zevon's "Running Through -- Chinese Poem Song," accompanied by pianist
Michael Wolff, and Matt Dillon's "Mexican Loneliness," with a jazzy sax and bongo accompaniment. (Kerouac probably wouldn't think much of the
Joe Strummer background music tacked onto his own reading of excerpts from "MacDougal Street Blues.") But the closest to Kerouac's own sense of how his work should be read is comedian/actor Richard Lewis, who recites the previously unpublished "America's New Trinity of Love: Dean, Brando, Presley." The selections present a good sampling of Kerouac's literary concerns, and, whether appropriate or not, the recordings demonstrate his extensive influence. ~ William Ruhlmann