Kerouac's Blues

Jack Kerouac published his “Mexico City Blues” fifty years ago, in 1959.

The poems never really worked for me, on the page. Out loud, or with a jazz accompaniment, some of the 242 choruses really hit the mark, but "non stop ad libbing" can become tiresome and then "the gig is shot".

I much preferred his prose works, like “On the Road” and “Lonesome Traveller”.

In his introductory note to “Mexico City Blues”, Jack wrote, “I want to be considered a jazz poet, blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday.”

In truth, I preferred Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind” (Hutchinson, London, 1959) and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, but I still dig the last line of the 231st Chorus. It’s stuck with me for fifty years:

“When rock becomes air
I will be there.”

There's something memorable about this line too (104th Chorus):

"I'd rather be thin than famous".


My colleagues presented me with Jack's 3 CD boxed set when I left Sweden. I often play them here in Greece.

It didn't really matter to Jack what people thought of his blues choruses: 


"And if you don't like the tone
       of my poems
You can go jump in the lake."

(From Desolation Blues, 11th Chorus; Book of Blues)

Check out Tom Waits's two interpretations of a Kerouac lyric in the songs "Home I'll never be" and "On the Road".

Kerouac himself attributes the lyrics of these songs (the original blues) to an old blues singer he met in Des Moines:

"His songs were those mysterious rumbling, rambling blues that you hear with low-register guitar and unknown words rising out of the Deep South night like a groan, like a fire beyond the trees" ("The Rumbling, Rambling Blues", Playboy, January, 1958).

Kerouac "Home I'll Never Be" and YouTube version

And remember Jack's words:

“Take a chorus, it’s free! Blow one for me!"

Tom Waits talks about Kerouac, and sings

Kerouac, On the Road to Desolation

Bellou, Vamvakaris, Tsitsanis... and Tsipouro

A most enjoyable evening was spent last week up in the Zagori, in the company of new friends from Thessaloniki, Kostas and Brigitte, who are restoring an amazing old house in the Upper Village.

We drank local tsipouro, cracked open some walnuts from the tree in the garden, and listened to old 78rpm and 45rpm records on the gramophone. Luckily we all shared the same taste in Greek music: Sotiria Bellou, Markos Vamvakaris, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Grigoris Bithikotsis.

There’s nothing like the sound and the feel of old 78s, of classic rebetika and laika songs like “Trexe, manga, na rotiseis (“I Derbederissa”), “Apopse kaneis bam!” or even 45s like “San pethano sto karavi”or “Stou Belami to ouzeri”. Gail Holst wrote, in “Road to Rebetika”, of Bellou’s version of “If I die on the boat” that “it makes my hair stand on end, although I must have listened to it a thousand times.”

You can keep your CDs and I-Pods! Give me a scratchy old 78, any time. It’s the same with the blues. Unless you’re heard Blind Willie Johnson or Howlin’ Wolf on the original 78s, you’ve never really heard them as they were heard by their original listeners.

It’s convenient to have them on I-Pod too, I admit, although they’re not the ideal lullabies!

Zagori Villages, Deutsche Welle Report

Before I set out on my travels, here's an item I enjoyed that was broadcast on Deutsche Welle on 19 January 2009.

Scroll down to listen to the radio report on the Zagori villages, with comments from Jo and Vassilis Mouchas:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3951925,00.html

A Corfiot view of the English

Nicander Nucius (Nikandros Noukios), the Corfiot traveller, visited England in 1545 and 1546.

I don't know if his views were (are?) representative of what Corfiots think of the English:

“The race of men indeed is fair, inclining to a light colour; in their persons they are tall and erect; the hair of their beard and head is of a golden hue; their eyes blue, for the most part, and their cheeks are ruddy; they are martial and valorous, and generally tall; flesh-eaters, and insatiable of animal food; sottish and unrestrained in their appetites; full of suspicion.”

How many British residents speak Greek?

Reading Charlemagne's notebook blog on the topic of 'The Disaster of Monolingual Britain' (The Economist blog, Saturday, 26 September), I wonder how many British residents of Corfu would claim to speak operational Greek? Have a look at
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2009/09/the_disaster_of_monolingual_br.cfm
Also worth a look, on the European Day of Languages (26 September) are the following statistics:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=STAT/09/137&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Viscount Kirkwall was shocked that so few British officials knew Greek, back in the times of the British Protectorate.

It's lucky we don't have to take language examinations in order to live on Corfu . Yet.

CORFU HOSPITAL

Apparently New Democracy has invited the citizens of Corfu to the official opening of the new hospital at Kontokali, at 11am on Sunday 27 September, just a week before the general election.

Bravo! I'm glad to know it's finally open! Work started in 1996. The current website of Corfu Hospital (www.corfuhospital.gr/index.htm) has this to say (click on Union Jack for English version) :

"In the future it is programmed to relocate the Hospital in a new building installation in the region Kontokali in Corfu, which will contribute in the confrontation of increased needs and new challenges".

Looking for news on the web about the official opening celebration of the new hospital, all I could find was an item on YouTube from March 2009. One doesn't know whom to believe or trust.

In the end one can only believe the evidence of one's own eyes.

Like everyone else in Corfu, I hope a fully-equipped and properly staffed new hospital will open its doors to patients soon. The Corfiots have been waiting a very long time. They deserve it. It's a long way to Ioannina or Athens when you're seriously ill.

Watching the local TV channel on Friday night, one might be forgiven for thinking that this official "opening" of the new hospital is largely a matter of unpacking boxes of equipment before packing them up again- until such a time as the hospital is really in a proper state to start functioning.

UPDATE DECEMBER 31st 2010. I am receiving some positive reports from friends in Corfu that the new hospital is up and running and very impressive. Bravo! Happy New Year!

This is very encouraging