From Newsgroup: rec.music.dylan

Added to rec.music.dylan for archival purposes, from the Rolling Thunder Logbook(Sam Shepard):

On The Road To Lowell

Allen's in the front, in the nondriver position. Some people who sit in
that position, who know how to drive a car, sit differently from those
who don't. Allen's on of those who don't. He sits sort of sideways,
black,
graying curls jumping like little springs over his ears, head bent low
over Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, stacks of other Kerouac's falling off
his
knees: Dr. Sax, Visions of Cody, Dharma Bums - all flowing picture words
of
places we're heading straight into. First glimpse of Lowell off the edge
of
freeway is the opposite of what you'd call romantic. Smoking black brick
skeleton buildings, stacked-up clapboard houses, dirty little parks,
brown
gymansiums. We swing off with Allen carrying on a running narration.
Kerouac leaping through his childhood. We're being followed this time by
a
reporter from Rolling Stone in a red Galaxy. Driver Jack does a few
fancy hangtails and leaves the sleuth behind. We pull up at Nick's
Lounge,
a depressing little Massachusetts bar owned by Kerouac's brother-in-law,
Nick Sampas. Inside there's some kind of police blowout going
on for a local candidate for mayor or governor or something. Hard-ass-
looking beer drinkers. Everyone juiced in the middle of the day.
Crepe-paper decorations, spaghetti a la carte, garlic bread. The place
is
really loud and in different circumstances would make even a redneck
paranoid. Everything's set up for us though, and the Sampas brothers
greet
us with genuine hospitality and good cheer. Nick Sampas is built a green
quarter horse and talks like you're clear across the room even when
you're
standing right next to him. Tony is the opposite of his brother.
Tall, thin, soft spoken and somehow immediatley puts you in mind of
William Burroughs. He chain-smokes and talks about his memories of
Jack. On the wall, lost in among dozena of snapshots of other locals,
is a color Polaroid shot of Kerouac and a girl taken right there in
Nick's. Taken about a month before he died. He looks very soused and
bloated. we're treated to big plates of spaghetti and cold beer as we
run down the different locations we want to hit with Tony. Tony smiles
as he hears the names, as though each brought its own special picture
to mind.

We head out in Tony's big station wagon with the heater turned on
full blast. Halfway to the cemetery to visit Kerouac's grave, Tony
pulls out a tape recorder and a special tape."This thing was recorded
at the bar. I don't think anyone outside the family's evr heard it."
He snaps the cassette inot place and suddenly there's the voice of Jack.
Speaking like a ghost over time. Ginsberg listens with a smile.
There it is, right inside a station wagon, captured in his hometown,
the rasping whacked-out voice of Kerouac hisself. He's obviously
ripped on something because the associations are nonstop, sometimes
lilting into a old cowboy song, sometimes beating out the rhythm of
language on his knees, trains, drunks, brakemen, California,"the
midnight ghost, good codeine, howlin' round the bend, jockeys all
ride away in cadillacs, files full of potatoes, Santa Clara Valley,
Morgan Hill, dippin' into the past, cement factory, looks like
Kafka, lettuce bowl of the world, all ya gotta do is git an airplane,
fill it with mayonnaise, fly over and drop it, now you shoot up toward
the high school." We swing into the graveyard through black iron gates,
fresh graaves being dug, old names on rock:"Maloney,"

"O'Keefe,"

"Killmarten," "Benoit," "Ti-Jean." We stop.

LOWELL NOTES

Kingdom of childhood
hometown-innocent
roots-Dr. Sax-origins of the prophet
language
birth and death in same place
rebirth
life after-kingdom after death
dream of world outside
escape to bigger world
return to safety of small world
escape death
protection through religion
superstition
Catholic
religion/fear
escape through travel
Ambrose Bierce
Lafcadio Hearn
speaking in tongues
miracle

LOWELL LOCATIONS

Grave
Library
High School
Mill Co.
Baptiste Church(what saint will deliver us?)
Moody St. Bridge
Textile Lunch
Orphanage
Grotto
Castle(Dr. Sax)
Birthplace
Nick's Lounge
Pool Hall(play for high stakes-souls and sings sins)

SINGING ON THE GRAVE
October-Lowell
(On the opposite page is a photograph of Bob looking down
very pensively on John L. Kerouac's grave.)

Allen quotes from Kerouac's favorite Shakespeare:" How like a
winter hath my absence been....What freezings have I felt, what
dark days seen!/What old December's bareness everywhere!"
It's right close to the time of the year he died in. Trees
sticking up naked, blankets of blowing leaves. Dylan and Ginsberg
perched close to the ground, cross-legged, facing this tiny marble
plaque, half buried in the grass: "'TI-JEAN' [little Jack], JOHN L.
KEROUAC, Mar. 12, 1922-Oct. 21, 1969 - HE HONORED LIFE - STELLA HIS
WIFE, Nov. 11, 1918-." Dylan's tuning up his Martin while Ginsberg
causes his little shoe-box harmonium to breathe out notes across the
lawn. Soon a slow blues takes shape with each of them exchanging
verses, then Allen moving into an improvised poem to the ground, to
the sky, to thte day, to Jack, to life, to music, to the worms,
to bones, to travel, to the States. I try to look at both of them
head-on, with no special ideas of who or what they are but just to
try to see them there in front of me. They emerge as simple men with
a secret aim in mind. each of them opposite but still in harmony.
Alive and singing to the dead and living. Sitting flat on the earth,
above bones, beneath trees and hearing what they hear.

DYLAN'S HANDS

(On the opposite page there are two photographs, one of Sam Shepard,
Ginsberg and Dylan with Dylan playing the harmonium,and a second one
of Dylan and Ginsberg with Dylan playing the guitar. Both of them are
right next to the Jack's grave.)

White, wrinkled, double-jointed little finger. Long nails hovering
overe Allen's harmonium like a tentacle animal. Weathered, milky
leather hands that tell more than his face about music and where
he's been. Ancient, demonic, almost scary, nonhuman hands.
(A photograph of Dylan with dark glasses on.)

STATIONS

Catholic Grotto, Lowell, Mass.: Huge cement crucifix bleeding down
from a hill overlooking the playground of a French orphanage. Behind
it, the river swirling under the Moody Bridge. Dylan peering up at
Christ face. "What can you do for a guy like that?" Portugese kids
released from class, swarming through glassed-in sculptures of the
Stations of the Cross. Southsea-island language hitting the cold air.
Old frenchman soothing his rosary between flat fingers, kneeling in
front
of the blue Virgin. Ginsberg and Dylan lighting prayer candles
in a cave. Cameras tracking them through the playground. Little kids,
like insect life, buzzing all around them. Basketballs whizzing
past their heads. Kids, shipped in from the voodoo culture,
from the fat sunny ocean to the cold white East Coast. Other rich
kids shipped from Manhattan. Catholic culture. Dormitories on the sixth
floor lined with aisles of neat little white pint-size beds. Crosses
all over the green walls. Short basin sinks and toilets. Nuns walking
into the camera. Walking into the empty room with a bearded bald man
walking in slow motion, arma crossed on his chest, and a dwarf-like
caballero sitting on a bed, staring out a blowing window. No talking.
Just sitting and walking. Just the whirring of the sixteen millimeter
and the shuffle of the Nagra.

LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS

Now, in the face of burned-out Kerouac, Cassady, and all the other
ones who went over the hill, this life seems like a miracle. Still
ongoing. Ignoring all that. Respecting it but not indulging in remorse.
Allen and Dylan singing on his grave. Allen, full of life, hope, and
resurrection. Poets of this now life. This here life. This one lived
and living.

"Dead and don't know it. Living and do. The living have a dead

idea."

Kerouac, Mexico City Blues

Test post, good article on Kerouac, Ginsberg and other Beat poets and
Bob
Dylan.

This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=657882201#657882201

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.music.dylan

From the Rolling Thunder Logbook(Sam Shepard):

On The Road To Lowell

Allen's in the front, in the nondriver position. Some people who sit in
that position, who know how to drive a car, sit differently from those
who don't. Allen's on of those who don't. He sits sort of sideways,
black,
graying curls jumping like little springs over his ears, head bent low
over Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, stacks of other Kerouac's falling off
his
knees: Dr. Sax, Visions of Cody, Dharma Bums - all flowing picture words
of
places we're heading straight into. First glimpse of Lowell off the edge
of
freeway is the opposite of what you'd call romantic. Smoking black brick
skeleton buildings, stacked-up clapboard houses, dirty little parks,
brown
gymansiums. We swing off with Allen carrying on a running narration.
Kerouac leaping through his childhood. We're being followed this time by
a
reporter from Rolling Stone in a red Galaxy. Driver Jack does a few
fancy hangtails and leaves the sleuth behind. We pull up at Nick's
Lounge,
a depressing little Massachusetts bar owned by Kerouac's brother-in-law,
Nick Sampas. Inside there's some kind of police blowout going
on for a local candidate for mayor or governor or something. Hard-ass-
looking beer drinkers. Everyone juiced in the middle of the day.
Crepe-paper decorations, spaghetti a la carte, garlic bread. The place
is
really loud and in different circumstances would make even a redneck
paranoid. Everything's set up for us though, and the Sampas brothers
greet
us with genuine hospitality and good cheer. Nick Sampas is built a green
quarter horse and talks like you're clear across the room even when
you're
standing right next to him. Tony is the opposite of his brother.
Tall, thin, soft spoken and somehow immediatley puts you in mind of
William Burroughs. He chain-smokes and talks about his memories of
Jack. On the wall, lost in among dozena of snapshots of other locals,
is a color Polaroid shot of Kerouac and a girl taken right there in
Nick's. Taken about a month before he died. He looks very soused and
bloated. we're treated to big plates of spaghetti and cold beer as we
run down the different locations we want to hit with Tony. Tony smiles
as he hears the names, as though each brought its own special picture
to mind.

We head out in Tony's big station wagon with the heater turned on
full blast. Halfway to the cemetery to visit Kerouac's grave, Tony
pulls out a tape recorder and a special tape."This thing was recorded
at the bar. I don't think anyone outside the family's evr heard it."
He snaps the cassette inot place and suddenly there's the voice of Jack.
Speaking like a ghost over time. Ginsberg listens with a smile.
There it is, right inside a station wagon, captured in his hometown,
the rasping whacked-out voice of Kerouac hisself. He's obviously
ripped on something because the associations are nonstop, sometimes
lilting into a old cowboy song, sometimes beating out the rhythm of
language on his knees, trains, drunks, brakemen, California,"the
midnight ghost, good codeine, howlin' round the bend, jockeys all
ride away in cadillacs, files full of potatoes, Santa Clara Valley,
Morgan Hill, dippin' into the past, cement factory, looks like
Kafka, lettuce bowl of the world, all ya gotta do is git an airplane,
fill it with mayonnaise, fly over and drop it, now you shoot up toward
the high school." We swing into the graveyard through black iron gates,
fresh graaves being dug, old names on rock:"Maloney,"

"O'Keefe,"

"Killmarten," "Benoit," "Ti-Jean." We stop.

LOWELL NOTES

Kingdom of childhood
hometown-innocent
roots-Dr. Sax-origins of the prophet
language
birth and death in same place
rebirth
life after-kingdom after death
dream of world outside
escape to bigger world
return to safety of small world
escape death
protection through religion
superstition
Catholic
religion/fear
escape through travel
Ambrose Bierce
Lafcadio Hearn
speaking in tongues
miracle

LOWELL LOCATIONS

Grave
Library
High School
Mill Co.
Baptiste Church(what saint will deliver us?)
Moody St. Bridge
Textile Lunch
Orphanage
Grotto
Castle(Dr. Sax)
Birthplace
Nick's Lounge
Pool Hall(play for high stakes-souls and sings sins)

SINGING ON THE GRAVE
October-Lowell
(On the opposite page is a photograph of Bob looking down
very pensively on John L. Kerouac's grave.)

Allen quotes from Kerouac's favorite Shakespeare:" How like a
winter hath my absence been....What freezings have I felt, what
dark days seen!/What old December's bareness everywhere!"
It's right close to the time of the year he died in. Trees
sticking up naked, blankets of blowing leaves. Dylan and Ginsberg
perched close to the ground, cross-legged, facing this tiny marble
plaque, half buried in the grass: "'TI-JEAN' [little Jack], JOHN L.
KEROUAC, Mar. 12, 1922-Oct. 21, 1969 - HE HONORED LIFE - STELLA HIS
WIFE, Nov. 11, 1918-." Dylan's tuning up his Martin while Ginsberg
causes his little shoe-box harmonium to breathe out notes across the
lawn. Soon a slow blues takes shape with each of them exchanging
verses, then Allen moving into an improvised poem to the ground, to
the sky, to thte day, to Jack, to life, to music, to the worms,
to bones, to travel, to the States. I try to look at both of them
head-on, with no special ideas of who or what they are but just to
try to see them there in front of me. They emerge as simple men with
a secret aim in mind. each of them opposite but still in harmony.
Alive and singing to the dead and living. Sitting flat on the earth,
above bones, beneath trees and hearing what they hear.

DYLAN'S HANDS

(On the opposite page there are two photographs, one of Sam Shepard,
Ginsberg and Dylan with Dylan playing the harmonium,and a second one
of Dylan and Ginsberg with Dylan playing the guitar. Both of them are
right next to the Jack's grave.)

White, wrinkled, double-jointed little finger. Long nails hovering
overe Allen's harmonium like a tentacle animal. Weathered, milky
leather hands that tell more than his face about music and where
he's been. Ancient, demonic, almost scary, nonhuman hands.
(A photograph of Dylan with dark glasses on.)

STATIONS

Catholic Grotto, Lowell, Mass.: Huge cement crucifix bleeding down
from a hill overlooking the playground of a French orphanage. Behind
it, the river swirling under the Moody Bridge. Dylan peering up at
Christ face. "What can you do for a guy like that?" Portugese kids
released from class, swarming through glassed-in sculptures of the
Stations of the Cross. Southsea-island language hitting the cold air.
Old frenchman soothing his rosary between flat fingers, kneeling in
front
of the blue Virgin. Ginsberg and Dylan lighting prayer candles
in a cave. Cameras tracking them through the playground. Little kids,
like insect life, buzzing all around them. Basketballs whizzing
past their heads. Kids, shipped in from the voodoo culture,
from the fat sunny ocean to the cold white East Coast. Other rich
kids shipped from Manhattan. Catholic culture. Dormitories on the sixth
floor lined with aisles of neat little white pint-size beds. Crosses
all over the green walls. Short basin sinks and toilets. Nuns walking
into the camera. Walking into the empty room with a bearded bald man
walking in slow motion, arma crossed on his chest, and a dwarf-like
caballero sitting on a bed, staring out a blowing window. No talking.
Just sitting and walking. Just the whirring of the sixteen millimeter
and the shuffle of the Nagra.

LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS

Now, in the face of burned-out Kerouac, Cassady, and all the other
ones who went over the hill, this life seems like a miracle. Still
ongoing. Ignoring all that. Respecting it but not indulging in remorse.
Allen and Dylan singing on his grave. Allen, full of life, hope, and
resurrection. Poets of this now life. This here life. This one lived
and living.

"Dead and don't know it. Living and do. The living have a dead

idea."

Kerouac, Mexico City Blues

Test post, good article on Kerouac, Ginsberg and other Beat poets and
Bob
Dylan.

This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=657882201#657882201

Of course Sam Sheppard passed away a year or so ago so we'll have no
additional feedback from him about these events.

May he Rest in Peace.

EfOA
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