Geometry.Net - Authors: Kesey Ken

The Other Ones
An article by Stuart Levitan about the creation of the band named after the song about ken Keseys epic 1964 journey across America in a bus marked Further and the reactions of the Deadheads.
http://www.stuartlevitan.org/theother.htm

Extractions: The Other Ones on Tour by Stuart Levitan Published in Isthmus, July 18 1998 It used to go like that, now it goes like this. Bob Dylan, 1966 I have seen the future of rock, and it sure seems a lot like the past. The Dead live. When Jerry Garcia died in August 1995, the spectacular musical experience and cultural experiment known as the Grateful Dead came to a crashing and crushing close. Deadheads now knew to their soul that every silver lining had a touch of gray; that those special times of freedom and discovery could never come again. Or could they? Not that it’s the Grateful Dead; collectively, the band had retired the name as a performing entity (maintaining a production and merchandising presence). And they passed on "Formerly the Warlocks," a famous name from their past. But a new name was easy – "The Other Ones," after the song about Ken Kesey’s epic 1964 journey across America in a bus marked "Further." Then the Deadheads jumped into the fray, burning up conference lines and chatrooms with rumor and innuendo about who was in and who was out. Some Bay area zealots waged a vociferous campaign for Steve Kimock, founder of the Deadish band Zero; they, and many others, were stunned that the nod seemed to be going to journeyman Mark Karan. Hard to tell which upset some people more – that Bay area native Karan now lived in Los Angeles, or that he had recorded commercials and played with the Rembrandts (but not, thankfully, on the "Friends" theme.)
Www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/obituaries/11KESE.html
kesey Bibliography (Martin Blank);
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/obituaries/11KESE.html

Extractions: en Kesey, the Pied Piper of the psychedelic era, who was best known as the author of the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," died yesterday in a hospital in Eugene, Ore., said his wife, Faye. He was 66 and lived in Pleasant Hill, Ore. The cause was complications after surgery for liver cancer late last month, said his friend and business associate, Ken Babbs. Mr. Kesey was also well known as the hero of Tom Wolfe's nonfiction book about psychedelic drugs, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968). An early flowering of Mr. Wolfe's innovative new-journalism style, the book somewhat mockingly compared Mr. Kesey to the leaders of the world's great religions, dispensing to his followers not spiritual balm but quantities of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, to enhance their search for the universe within themselves. The book's narrative focused on a series of quests undertaken by Mr. Kesey in the 1960's. First, there was the transcontinental trip with a band of friends he named the Merry Pranksters, aboard a 1939 International Harvester bus called Further (it was painted as "Furthur" on the bus). It was wired for sound and painted riotously in Day-Glo colors. Neal Cassady, the Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," was recruited to drive. The journey, which took the Pranksters from La Honda, Calif., to New York City and back, was timed to coincide with the 1964 New York World's Fair. Its purposes were to film and tape an extended movie, to experience roadway America while high on acid and to practice "tootling the multitudes," as Mr. Wolfe put it, referring to the way a Prankster would stand with a flute on the bus's roof and play sounds to imitate people's various reactions to the bus.
Salon :: :: People :: Feature :: Appreciation: Ken Kesey, By Sean Elder :: Page
Inc. 1992 (543); Hinckle,W. If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade.
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/16/kesey_apprec/

Extractions: Word of Ken Kesey's death came in under the radar last weekend, which is surprising considering the way the ebullient author rode into the American circus. It's easy to imagine him playing his own best-known character, Randall P. McMurphy, the bull-goose loony in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," or see him as Hank Stamper in the 1971 film version of "Sometimes a Great Notion," just by squinting a little at Paul Newman. But when I think of Kesey, I think of him on top of that bus, the same old International Harvester he left to the weeds outside his Oregon farm instead of the Smithsonian Institute. Here's one of the luminous snapshots captured in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," the book that chronicled the 1964 cross-country trek of Kesey and his Merry Pranksters with the same love and attention to detail Stephen Ambrose employed to limn the voyage, toward a different frontier, of Lewis and Clark. "Going through the steams of southern Alabama in late June and Kesey rises up from out of the comic books and becomes Captain Flag. He puts on a pink kilt, like a miniskirt, and pink socks and patent leather shoes and pink sunglasses and wraps an American flag around his head like a big turban and holds it in place with an arrow through the back of it and gets up on top of the bus roaring through Alabama and starts playing the flute at people passing by ..."

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