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The Beat Generation
"The Beat Generation"
Various Artists, 1992

     Rhino Records have a great track record when it comes to finding lost audio treasures. Their box sets are the best around, and the main source to go to for forgotten parts of popular culture. In the early 90's, there was a Beat Generation revival among Generation X'ers. Rhino tapped into this current and put out one amazing three-CD set which includes a thoughtful and well researched set booklet. There were many elements to Beat culture, and this set touches on them all. On the music side, there are classic bop and post-bop tunes from Dizz, Bird, and Mingus. There are comedy and Beat culture-via-the-mainstream bits that, although humorous, show what happens when corporate America gets hold of a marketing tool. There is the inclusion of neo-Beat singer Tom Waits, beyond-Beat word jazz man Ken Nordine, and a stunning report on the Greenwich Village scene by none other than Charles Kuralt. The best parts of the set, by far, are the spoken word cuts from the key figures of the Beat movement: Kerouac, Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Lenny Bruce, all in their own voices. The Beats were more than coffee housers who snapped their fingers to bad poetry. This was an inclusive cultural movement that help change the direction of music, the perception of literature, and created the philosophy of cool that served Americans through the neurotic atomic age and beyond.
 

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