LIPS: THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL POETRY AND SONG FESTIVAL 10th- 12th November 2007
THE MARQUEE CLUB (Just off Leicester Square, 14 Upper Saint Martins Lane, WC2H 9EF)

ON THE ROAD AGAIN - A BEAT WEEKEND at THE MARQUEE CLUB
Honouring Jack Kerouac on the fiftieth  anniversary of his epoch making book On The Road, celebrating the spirit of Kerouac, Neal Cassady and the Beat Generation with 3 days of bands, poetry, song, comedy, drama and remembrance at The Marquee Club, birthplace of British rock. With a reading of Richard Deakin’s “superlative…utterly  compelling” (TIME OUT Critics Choice) bio-play about Kerouac and Cassady, ANGELS STILL FALLING (Click link for an excert of screenplay).

World class talent from all over of the planet - a beat happening unlike any other.

Featuring David Amram, who introduced music-poetry to New York playing with Kerouac in 1957, Carolyn Cassady (author of Off The Road, wife of Neal, love  of Jack’s life) + live linkup from Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco + songs from Arthur Brown (Fire!), Pete Brown (author of Cream’s White Room, I Feel Free, Sunshine of Your Love) Peter Jagger, Pete Wareham/Seb Rochford. Poets Richard Deakin, John Hegley, Michael Horovitz, New York’s Frank Messina , Ron and Sarah Whitehead, Onetaste’s David Jay and Polarbear, Naomi Foyle, Didi de Paris + more. Comedy from Jeremy Hardy and “Lord Buckley” (CP Lee) + bands T.Mandrake, Tin Cup Collective, Shinerunners & The Interoceters.

Coming home: Ferlinghetti, Horovitz  and Pete Brown all performed at THE MARQUEE CLUB in the sixties…

LIPS was formed in July 2000, in response to a request from the directors of the first New York Underground Music and Poetry Festival (Nov. 2000) and of other previous festivals of verse and song to the poet and writer Richard Deakin to originate a London version of the ongoing series of Festivals that had hitherto encompassed various European countries and the USA. Richard began getting invited to these festivals to perform his poetry and plays after ANGELS STILL FALLING, his bio-play about Jack Kerouac (now being developed as a feature film) was favourably reviewed around the world.  Most of these festivals involved David Amram, legendary classical composer, jazz and world musician, who actually introduced the jazz-poetry format to New York playing with his friend Jack Kerouac in 1957. As part of the LIPS festival David will be discussing his experiences with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, on and off the road, with Carolyn Cassady, Neal's longsuffering wife and perhaps the love of Jack's life, tales of the Tradition being handed down by two "Soul Survivors" of the Beat Generation.

All these festivals have had a common theme and a thread running through them, contemporary performance poetry with a musical background within a Beat heritage. LIPS thought it was time they brought the formula, appropriately modified and reborn, to London, so that the poets and musicians involved could reach London audiences and wail with their fellow spoken word and musical artists in a cross-fertilization of the cultures and countercultures involved - and do it for the first time in the coolest city on Earth. LIPS will make London the focal point of an artistic collision between a a core of major international artists and a small army of young pretenders to the thrones of poetry and song.

We are now reviving the festival at the legendary MARQUEE CLUB, birthplace of British rock, where among many others Jimi Hendrix played his first British gig…