Corporate Sponsors See to It That the Beats Go On

Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” was a key book for the Beat movement, which was started half a century ago by a small group of writers and artists who used their unfettered creativity to challenge the literary and cultural status quo. So it makes perfect marketing sense that the bicoastal celebration “Beatfest 2002” would be co-sponsored by a car company, along with a giant bookstore chain and corporate nightclub the Knitting Factory, which launched the event’s eight-day Los Angeles run on Saturday.

Such Beat icons as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs certainly had an appreciation for ironic juxtapositions, so maybe they would have been amused by how performers in the main room were framed by a trio of logos on stage, as if appearing on a Fox TV channel.

Although the artists weren’t always directly connected to the Beats, most paid their respects somehow, with headlining singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt telling a particularly memorable tale of once meeting Ginsberg, who reproached the paraplegic musician for crashing his car while drunk.

Unfortunately, Chesnutt’s hourlong solo set only occasionally featured such striking moments, like the wistful image of dancing with Isadora Duncan in a cafe. The guitarist’s squeaky voice and the languid, bare-bones presentation proved less interesting than the songs’ underlying sense of melancholy and wit.

Singer-songwriter Michael Penn offered no commentary on the Beats, but provided a more compelling batch of tunes about human foibles and romantic fragility.

Following sets by spoken-word artists Iris Lord and Jerry Quickly, composer and multi-instrumentalist David Amram best reflected the Beat spirit. An early associate of Kerouac et al, Amram, 71, offered a freewheeling half-hour of music and talk. When he encouraged listeners to act on their own impulses and perfect their art for art’s sake, he neatly underscored that despite whatever establishment logo gets slapped on it, the true Beat Generation lives on.