Gang of young bop musicians including Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, and Frank Ocean pull together for Yahoo! On The Road Festival
And now, a previously unpublished excerpt from Jack Kerouac’s first draft of On The Road, allegedly inspired by Yahoo!’s traveling musical festival, Yahoo! On The Road, which hits a red-glowing, neon-winking city near you soon:
“Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was hip-hop, and Jay-Z, vigorous, virile, and so necessary, blasting the mic for everything it had in waves of power and logic and big pimping. Then had come Justin Timberlake, a kid in Mickey Mouse’s woodshed in Orlando, rocking bodies among the Britneys, Christinas, and Goslings, making them cry rivers on rainy days and coming out to watch the old swinging Jackson and Wonder and the rest. Frank Ocean, from LA, that gloomy saintly goof in whom the history of rap, soul, and R&B were wrapped; he wears his thick-soled shows so that he can’t feel the video sidewalks of “Forrest Gump.” Here were the children of the American bop night—along with Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Trey Songz, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and others on various dates with lineups to be determined, lonely as America, a throatpierced sound in the night going ‘You’re crazy for this one, Rick. Dates below!’”
[h/t Pitchfork]
5/3 New York, NY
5/4 Philadelphia, PA
5/5 Washington, DC
5/7 Columbus, OH
5/9 Detroit, MI
5/11 Chicago, IL
5/13 Madison, WI
5/15 St. Louis, MO
5/18 Houston, TX
5/20 Dallas, TX
5/23 Denver, CO
5/26 Seattle, WA
5/28 Boise, ID
5/31 San Francisco, CA
6/11 Berlin, Germany
6/13 Munich, Germany
6/18-19 Cannes, France
6/21 Milan, Italy
6/29 Madrid, Spain
7/3 Paris, France
7/9-14 London, England