Jim Lyons 
Under the Grandstand [EPUB ebook] 
‘The Five O’Clock Rainbow” & “Eclipse and His Shoes Blues”

Those who have lived not just witnessed – the efflorescence of a pivotal culture moment never see the world through veiled eyes again. Jimmy Lyons was there, devising wholly original inventions of words and music while the Beats, the neo-folk troubadours, the post-bop jazz shooting stars, and the tie-dyed psychedelic rockers were scorching through the underbrush and opening new paths of creativity as alternatives to the increasingly bottom line-driven mainstream. Lyons, though, wasnt content to find a niche in one countercultural movement or another. He kept moving, observing, and writing new poems, stories, and songs. But he never gave up on the wry sophistication of the classic American popular song. Indeed, he has dedicated himself to infusing the same hallowed forms perfected by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and others, with his singular fantasias of ingeniously colored and textured wordplay.

These plays have a subtext only Lyons can provide, derived from what he calls the rituals of the road and the the circular rhythms of the race track, the beats and pulses of everyday American life that rarely raise a ripple on the surface of American culture. Lyons hears the screams and dreams of his countrymen and woman; from them he creates new modes of expression. He has been changed by each of his open-hearted an open-eared encounters, and this body of work is his way of making those changes sing and swing. Derk Richardson

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Jimmy Lyons is a spoken word performance poet and pioneer in the Sound Experience of music and poetry who started his career in Greenwich Village, New York, sharing stages with Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Allen Ginsberg and other creative spirits. He was termed by the ‘King of the Beats’ Jack Kerouac and Beat original Bob Kaufman as ‘The Jazz Man’ and A Pure Sound Poet’!

Jimmy was arrested performing at the Gaslight. The charge was that he was a cabaret performer. He went through the courts of New York City and won the right to expand the art boundaries and definition of poetry. Documented by photos and his work in major books as a part of the developing American Poetry movement and later a part of the West Coast Wordhustlers publication; at a seminal point in his life Jimmy also became a playwright in the famous Actors Studio where James Dean, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro studied. He became a composer and lyricist whose musical ‘Eclipse’ was being prepared for Broadway starring Christopher Walken. Jimmy has written several documentary film scores and his poetic songs have been recorded by Johnny Mathis, Nana Mouskouri, The Lords and others in the US, and His own album ‘Night’s Music’ is popular in Europe.

Since returning to California, he has performed his sound poetry at Keystone Corner and many festivals, notably Ken Kesey’s Hoo Haw and is a favorite at the ‘Beat and Beyond’ and other Santa Cruz Poetry Festivals.