When I was 19, I thought I would move to San Francisco, go to open mike poetry readings and see Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg on the sign up sheet. I figured I’d read at the same readings where they read, they’d notice me, and that’s how I’d become a famous poet. But it didn’t quite work that way. Most of the people on the open mikes were wingnuts with a pen, some paper, and a lot of free time. Aside from Jack Micheline, Julia Vinograd, and Jack Hirschman, there were few well-published writers that read at the open mikes. Writers that I associated with San Francisco, such as many of the Beat writers, lived in other cities by the time I got here. The writers who did live here didn’t seem to get out much. The events at Litquake are much the way my 19-year-old self imagined San Francisco writing events would be.
Litquake events are just that: EVENTS. They’re more than readings or signings, they often have the feel of something bigger. Even if it’s at a venue such as Porch Light, the crowds will be more populous than normal. Litquake’s Pub Crawl turns tiny bar readings in the Mission district into a crowded walkaround neighborhood of poets and readings.
I went to Between the Bridges last Friday, this year’s festival kickoff event at the Regency Ballroom. It was a night spotlighting musicians inspired by literature. What better theme for a literary festival than “irony?” That’s what I could figure, as they chose to open a literary festival not with writers, but with musicians. I enjoyed much of the music from Penelope Huston, Jill Tracy, and Dan Hicks, who performed songs inspired by specific pieces of writing. But in a festival already cramped for space, the coordinators chose to devote their prime hours to musicians who don’t really need more promotion, like Lars Ulrich, co-founder of Metallica, a band that has sold 90 million albums at last count.
Why include a hippie blowhard like The Doors’ Ray Manzerek? Does he have anything to do with literature? He babbled on in a “Reverend Lovejoy” type voice inspiring the well-dressed woman sitting next to me to exclaim that she wanted to beat him with her shoe, and then do something to him I can’t print here, but if you know what a “Cleveland Steamer” is — that’s close. Naming his band after an Alduous Huxley reference (almost 40 years ago), doesn’t make him literary.
Session musician and former Green on Red band member Chuck Prophet ridiculed literature altogether. He said that he had started some books before, but never finished one. Great, Chuck, thanks, this is an event ABOUT books, now get off the stage. I would’ve been more excited staring at a metronome. Mark Eitzel, who stated plainly that his music had nothing to do with books, at least admitted to having read a few.
