A very Heavy Metal Christmas in the "90027"

Found photos of a Heavy Metal teenage drummer circa 1977.

When my family lived on Bates Ave in Los Angeles there was a row of bungalows behind our house that sat on a steep incline overlooking our driveway and King Junior High. These tiny 1926 Spanish bungalows would attract actors, musicians, artists and revolutionaries back in the 1970s and 1980s and probably still do today. One of the residents of these bungalows was Rick, an actor who once spent a Christmas Eve with my family as he had nowhere else to go. We welcomed him into our home and he sang "Silent Night" with us at Midnight. He was a casual pot smoker who would sometimes sing “Home Grown’s alright with me, Home Grown’s alright with me, just put it in the grown and let it be”. A couple of years ago I ran into him at Druckers' Jewellery Shop on Vermont. I had not seen him since the late 1970's but I immediately recognized him. I asked him if he remembered that "song" and he belted out the lyrics without missing a beat, but could vaguely remember me and my family. Another memorable resident was a quiet female impersonator that would take the bus from Silverlake to Studio City to perform at the now defunct Queen Mary Cabaret on Ventura Blvd. I once found myself riding on the 81 Ventura bus as he sat across from me. He was very pleasant and chatted with me briefly about the neighborhood and the noise from the Junior High School that kept him awake while he was trying to sleep during the day and then quickly exited the bus on Whitsett Ave in front of the Cabaret. The most famous resident from these bungalows was rumored to be one of the Black Eyed Peas in the early 1990s who was also a John Marshall HS alumni. However, the coolest person that lived here was a Jewish musician from New York named Stuart. He lived there around 1977 or 1978 and his drum set took up his entire living room. He was in his mid-twenties and could pound the skins like John Bonham and Keith Moon combined. Despite our age difference, we became fast friends and he would often talk shop with me about the music business such as his ambitions to be a music producer one day. He lived there a very short time, probably less than a year and he got along well with my parents despite my sister having a wicked crush on him. When he moved out, it was around Christmas time and he left us with a few gifts. Most notably a faux rock garden with a water pump that he had in his front yard. My mother went on to use this rock garden in her Christmas Nativity scene for the next 25 years (don’t ask !). The rock garden still exists today and it sits lonely in retirement in my garage without a Nativity scene to compliment anymore. He also left me two giant posters. One was of an early pre-Tawny Kitaen version of David Coverdale’s Whitesnake and the other was a giant Led Zeppelin poster that hung in my room for years. I still have that Zep poster rolled up and sitting in storage. The corners are dog-eared and are loaded with masking tape residue but it still has its Rock N’ Roll mojo. I unrolled it a few years ago and recalled Stuart rocking on the drums in the back of our house from one of those tiny bungalows on Bates Ave in Silverlake. Wherever you are Stuart, “It's been a long time since I rock-and-rolled, It's been a long time since I did the Stroll, Ooh, let me get it back, let me get it back, let me get it back……”

(A note on these snapshots. These photos are not of the actual Stuart. I came across them one day while shopping on-line for old photos. It features a heavy metal teenage drummer with the exact Led Zeppelin poster that Stuart gave me and for kickers its during Christmas time ! Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised and bought them both)

Greetings from Eagle Rock

Eagle Rock 1924. From an old photo album of vacation photos.

Eagle Rock is a wonderful old neighborhood located along the northern boundaries of Los Angeles and adjacent to its more famous and iconic neighbor, Pasadena. With its postcard picturesque hillsides, vintage craftsman homes and the towering palm trees that line Route 66, it is no wonder that Eagle Rock has been used for numerous television and film locations. Marty McFly from the Back to the Future films would have been a natural speeding down Colorado Blvd in the time ticking DeLorean while Kevin Arnold and Winnie from the television show, The Wonder Years would have been right at home sharing that first kiss behind the Richard Neutra designed gymnasium at the Eagle Rock Recreation Center. Neither one of these pop culture masterpieces were filmed here so there goes my career as a film location scout.

Due to its affordability and close proximity to all things Los Angeles, many blue collar families throughout the decades have purchased their first home here in this community. Many of them have stayed and it is not uncommon to see old timers living in the same house for 30 plus years, raising a family, patronizing places such as the now defunct Eagle Theater, The All Star Bowling Lanes, Ernie's Tacos, Casa Bianca Pizzeria, The Italian Bakery and eventually going through empty nest syndrome during the golden years of retirement. Despite plummeting prices today, homes here are still out of reach for many Angelenos, but Eagle Rock gets many visitors due to its nice selection of eateries, shops and recreational activities. The annual Eagle Rock Music Festival in October, a free single day event that features local live music acts, vendors and food trucks galore attracts thousands of people each year and has helped put Eagle Rock back on the cool bohemian neighborhood map.

One thing is for sure, long before the 134 Freeway, The Eagle Rock Plaza and the old establishments that have stood the test of time and the new ones that have come and gone, the almighty Eagle with its outstretched wings etched in stone on the towering iconic rock has flown high and proud above this great old neighborhood, possibly uttering the words, “There Goes The Neighborhood” with each new wave of gentrification.

Downtown Los Angeles Theaters - My First Trip to the Movies.

The Pantages Theater on Hill Street and 7th in Los Angeles as it appeared in the photo album of a German man who spent June 15, 1927 walking around downtown with his brownie camera documenting the urban landscape. The movie on the marquee is the 1927 silent comedy, “Is Zat So”.

On a Summer Saturday afternoon in 1972 a bridal shower hosted by my mother was about to take place at our Spanish apartment on Kenmore Avenue in Los Angeles. Men were not allowed to be present at this sacred female ritual so my father and I had to find somewhere to go for a few hours. One by one as the middle-aged woman arrived at our front door, they waved goodbye to their male counterparts who sped away in their cars seeking out some kind of diversion for a few hours. Perhaps a walk around MacArthur Park to feed the ducks, or maybe a drink at one of the bars that lined 8th street or perhaps the topless joint on Beverly Blvd and Virgil. My Father twirled the keys to his Chevy Nova in one hand grabbed a potato chip from the spread on the dinning room table with the other, dipped it into the silver dish hosting the chip dip and whisked me away out the back door to where the Nova was parked.

We headed down Vermont Ave, made a left on Wilshire and passed Lafayette and MacArthur Parks along the way. There were teenagers playing basketball on the courts at Lafayette Park and ducks out on the MacArthur Park Lake that day while the corner of Alvarado and Wilshire was busy with weekend shoppers and shifty characters just hanging about. We headed into downtown and ultimately arrived at the historic but dilapidated Los Angeles Theater on Broadway (est. 1931).

My Dad parked the car on Broadway, paid for two tickets, a popcorn and a couple of sodas and we proceeded to enter a smokey theater with sticky floors and a massive set of curtains, for what would be the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, "Death Wish" with Charles Bronson. Of course I do realize that today a movie about a violent vigilante on the prowl in the big city would be an unorthodox choice for a nine year old especially in the highly microscopic parental world of today, but it was being with my father, just us guys, watching Charles Bronson blow away the bad guys as he lured them through the streets of 1970’s New York that made it an experience to remember. One of father and son bonding at the movies with good guys and bad guys fighting it out on celluloid. We could have gone to see something like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" but that was not for us, not for these two cool cats, not on this day, it had to be Charles Bronson in "Death Wish" or nothing at all.

At the end of the movie, Charles Bronson is finally caught by the sniffling detective played by Vincent Gardenia. While being transported by the detective to another city, the infamous vigilante points his hand in the shape of a gun towards a group of thugs and pretends to shoot them as the credits begin to roll. My father and I left the theater, returned home to some left over cake from the bridal shower and I was none the worst for my first experience at a movie theater. I think I turned out pretty good so far 39 years later, it's all in the parenting they say. My father fell asleep in the easy chair later on that night watching the news and I retired to my room to write down what I am writing now. Better late than never.

Mick Jagger turns 68 today.

1983 newspaper clipping of Mick's 40th birthday, recently uncovered in one of my books.

Mick Jagger turns 68 today. In 1983 Mick turned 40 and had always vowed that he would never sing "Satisfaction"past his four decade mark, but today he continues to belt out "Satisfaction" to sold out stadium crowds and father children with 22 year old Brazilian supermodels. Ahh....the power of Rock N' Roll. On that day in 1983 I clipped out his birthday announcement from the newspaper and stuck it in a book where I recently uncovered it. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICK.

The Incredible Shrinking Family Photo Album

It's a Small World. A snapshot from the late 1960s that I recovered from an old dusty box at a flea market.

Ever since the Great White digital camera shark swallowed up all of our film cameras, we now take digital photographs in record numbers. Throw in the cell phone camera which virtually everyone is armed with these days and we have become a very well documented generation. If aliens landed on the most remote area of the Siberian Desert, a weary sheep herder would probably be there to snap a photo with his cell phone camera and have it posted on Facebook later on that day. He would probably make several attempts with his arm extended out as wide as possible to capture the perfect image of himself embraced with the strange creature from another galaxy. “Are you good with this one ?, can I tag you in it ?” he would ask his new friend with the long green limbs and odd shaped head.

A recent trip to Disneyland with my digital point and shoot camera netted me about 300 photos in about 10 hours (aren’t all digital cameras point and shoot?) . The freedom of having inexpensive gigabytes of storage space on my camera allowed me to take multiple photos of Main Street and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle from about every possible angle. After about an hour, I stopped thinking about time and space and stopped thinking creatively. I just pointed the camera and snapped away. We live in times of instant gratification where we retake several self portraits of ourselves until “we” look just perfect. I am just as guilty on all counts. I just looked on my portable USB hard drive where I have “backup-ed” all of my digital photos from the last five years. 800 gigabytes of memories from parties, amusement parks, girlfriends, vacations, dogs and family functions and not one of them on photo paper. I have become lazy with preserving my own documentation.

When we traveled with the point and shoot film camera, our limitations were bound to 24 or 36 exposures if we had a single roll of film, double that if we were high rollers and had two rolls. I recently came across my own personal snapshots from Disneyland excursions in the 1980s and 1990s and I can only count about 20 exposures from each trip. One roll even had the tail end of a day at Venice Beach from the previous month. Flipping through these 4x6 pieces of paper, I realized that both my trips to the Magic Kingdom were well documented with the small amount of images I exposed. Everything was accounted for. There were photos of myself and friends in front of Main Street, The Matterhorn, Toontown and at the soaking end of the Thunder Mountain roller coaster. There were photos of us eating overpriced Magic Kingdom frozen bananas, waiting in line for the submarine ride and even one of myself doing my famous monkey man walk in Tomorrowland. I counted as I snapped photos, planned accordingly and saved the last couple of shots for the Main Street Electrical Parade at the end of the day. I still have these “real” photos in my hand along with many of the Disneyland snapshots that my parents took in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Some are still in the yellowing Thrifty one hour photo envelope along with their negatives, some are in a cardboard box in the garage, others in the back of a desk drawer or carefully arranged in photo album. They are tangible pieces of family documentation and not just a string of digital 1’s and 0’s that compose an image on a computer screen. Film was always enough because we planned diligently for each exposure. Today with digital monsters, we shoot now and ask questions later and arrive home with scores and scores of digital images with only the choice ones making the marquee on Facebook and Flickr. Very few of those snapshots if any, every graduate to a cardboard photo album or picture frame on our desk.

Sadly I don’t think enough of us go through the trouble of printing our digital snapshots. We want to believe that they will always be there for us on the computer until that fateful day when the hard drive crashes instantly wiping out thousands of memories. They reside on Facebook, Flickr and icloud, multiplying like rabbits by the thousands every hour, every day, every month and every year. We blink our eyes and we have more digital images than we will ever know what to do with. Printing them would be too cumbersome at this point. Overzealous photo taking has become a hard drive or a digital storage site that is just taking on way too much water. Our thoughts are, “hey, I will dive to the bottom of the ocean and recover what I want some day.”

I often wonder what will happen to today’s digital photos 10, 20 or 50 years from now. What will the future bring to those candid photos of our graduations, family barbeques, road trips, summer sweethearts or of Larry the one-eyed family bulldog. Will someone ever look in an old dusty box at a flea market and find that fantastic image of an unknown family from another time, posing in front of the Small World attraction ? From my walker at the convalescent hospital will I ever reach to my book shelf and clutch an old photo album of my own personal memories from that Fourth of July weekend in the year 2011 ? Time will only tell.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to load up my flashdrive and head over to the one hour photo kiosk at my local pharmacy.

Clarence Clemons Rest in Peace. Springsteen at the Los Angeles Coliseum 1985

In the mid-1980’s I was just a casual worshiper of the Church of Bruce Springsteen and The East Street Band. I merely listened to the big radio hits such as Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark, and Hungry Heart much like a non-practicing Catholic who only attends service on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. I was still holding on to bands like X, The Blasters, The Ramones, The Who and The Clash in 1985 while the legions of Bruce Springsteen fans around me praised "The Boss" and those legendary five hour shows at The Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1981.

Like most of the events that impact us in our young lives, listening to the experience second hand is never enough, one has to experience the “light” first hand and that is what I was about to do towards the end of The Born in The USA tour in 1985. Four of my classmates from Cal Poly Pomona were planning on attending one of the sold-out Springsteen shows in September of 1985 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and my curiosity started to peak. I needed to find out what this was all about so I took the plunge of 20 dollars for the sole spare ticket that they had. We arrived early in the afternoon on the day of the show and went through the motions of tailgating and decadence in the parking like most concert goers did in that era. When the show finally began we were comfortably nestled among 100,000 worshipers at The Los Angeles Coliseum on the perfect night of September 29, 1985. The band was relentless and beautiful in their showmanship. Bruce’s stage presence was exactly as described to me during all those years of “non-believing” but there was something special up on stage besides the famous New Jersey band leader that caught my attention, a big beautiful saxophone player name Clarence “Big Man” Clemons. The saxophone solos on Born To Run, Jungle Land, The Promised Land, Rosalita and Tenth Avenue Freeze Out were like something that I had never before experienced in my life. The rockabilly band The Blasters had a Saxophone player, but with all due respect that was like a small candle compared to the Olympic Torch that Clarence was blowing. I have no words to describe it at the moment of this writing but lets just say that I was immediately “converted” to the Rock N’ Roll Church of Bruce, Clarence Clemons and the rest of the East Street Band. I went home later that evening completely different than the person who had left earlier that day. Shortly after my conversion, I discovered the 1980 double LP, The River which continues to see constant rotation on my turntable as well as the rest of the East Street Band's catalog which I had largely neglected up until that incredible night at the Coliseum. By the end of the decade, Bruce put The East Street Band on hold while he ventured into a solo career and a Hollywood marriage to Julianne Phillips. Clarence went on to a successful solo career and became a highly sought after element by other musicians including Ringo Starr, Aretha Franklin and Jackson Browne. For ten years, the millions of worshipers waited and waited in the pews of the Cathedral and finally The East Street Band was reassembled in 1999. Hallelujah !!

I had the good fortune to be able to see the reunited East Street Band in almost every Southern California venue over the years including the inaugural event at the Staples Center in 1999 as well as Dodger Stadium, The Honda Center, and those wonderful shows at the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 2007 and 2009. Over the course of those years, Clarence was hobbled with hip replacement surgery and needed a cane and a big stool to support his massive frame on stage, but the Big Man always gave it everything he had on the stage and every show was simply “Magic”. His big beautiful baritone voice was the cornerstone in the song “Out in The Streets” where every member of the band would step up to the microphone and belt out “Meet me Out in the Streets, baaaaaby”. Clarence Clemons passed away today at the age of 69. You are irreplaceable Big Man and I will never forget you. You are forever in the soundtrack of my life. Rest in Peace.

Elvis Costello at The Wiltern Theatre - May 12, 2011

May 12, 2011 - Elvis Costello and The Imposters at The Wiltern Theatre.

June 4, 1978 - Elvis Costello and The Attractions at Hollywood High School. This is the cover of a 45 that was included with the Armed Forces LP.

I was around thirteen years old in the eighth grade attending Blessed Sacrament School two blocks east of Hollywood High School when an up and coming British musician with a iconic American name performed live at the Hollywood High Auditorium with his backing band, The Attractions. I was not in the audience that night as I must have been churning out Pre-Algebra solutions and Hemingway book reports at a record pace during that time and was oblivious to what was happening down the street on Highland Avenue. I had no idea of the significance of that Elvis Costello performance back then nor the number of people I would meet in the next thirty three years who claim to have been at that show. Fast-forward to 2011 to a perfect Los Angeles evening at the deco masterpiece, Wiltern Theatre where Elvis Costello and 2 of the 3 original Attractions plus a new bass player (now called the Imposters) performed an unpredictable epic showcase of hits, obscurities and surprising covers for 2 ½ hours. The show opened with a fast session of familiar songs including “I Hope Your Happy Now“, “Heart of The City“, “The Mystery Dance” and “Radio Radio“. At the conclusion of “Radio Radio“, a song known for its impromptu rebellion way back on a SNL performance, Elvis changed to a black top hat and introduced the largest “Attraction” on the stage, a twelve foot, multi-colored spinning wheel of songs. Elvis’ spinning song wheel first made its debut 25 years ago on his tour bringing a “request only" concert to the stage way before its time. Audience members were hand picked by Elvis and his assistant to spin the wheel and the band performed each song with utmost precision, while only Elvis’ guitar changed to accommodate each song. The selected audience members danced on stage during their song(s), with one memorable “wheel spinner”, a stunning beauty named “Bjork” daring to enter the Go-Go booth up on the stage during the song performed from her spin of the wheel. She almost seemed planted to perform in the Go-Go booth as her hips swayed to the beat of the music while her long hair waved about the cage, but she was just an adoring fan like the rest of us. The wheel produced some songs that probably wouldn’t make it to a regular Elvis show such as “Monkey to Man“, “God Give Me Strength“, “I Want You” and “Earthbound” but the band was committed to each of the songs selected with just a little fudging along the way. Somehow the one song which I wanted to hear the most, “Clubland” from the 1981 album, "Trust", hit the mark on a slow pitched wheel spin and the song immediately commenced with the brilliant piano work by the incredible Steve Naive. Among the hits performed from the song wheel spins were “Watching The Detectives” and “Everyday I Write the Book“, “Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes” and “Tear Off Your own Head ( It’s The Doll Revolution)”. Elvis brought out Susanna Hoffs, Vicki and Debbie Peterson from The Bangles to perform the vocals on “Doll Revolution” much like they did at The Beverly Theater show in 1986. Susanna Hoffs must have been in a time machine for the last 25 years because she looks much as she did during her Walk Like An Egyptian Days. Other surprises included several covers such as “Girl” (The Beatles), “Out of Time” (The Stones), “Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood” (The Animals) and a surprise encore of “Purple Rain” (Prince) all performed with unique Elvis interpretations. Another interesting rendition came with a slowed down and almost unrecognizable version of “Pump It Up” with Elvis hitting the ivory keys on his mega famous radio hit.

The four encores were a show within itself. Among the highlights was the song that started it all for Elvis back in 1977, “Alison“. For the encore, Elvis called back one of the audience wheel spinners who was aptly named Alison , in a moment in time she will remember for eternity. In the midst of “Alison“, Elvis switched over to “Tracks of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson and then beautifully finished his song with every member of the audience singing those soft lyrics, “Aaaaalison…..my aim is true, my aim is true…..”, while the chords quietly came to that famous lyrical end. The final encore couldn’t have been more perfect for this night given the times we live in today , “(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” simply could not be followed with drummer Pete Thomas pounding the skins, Elvis wailing on the guitar with the all too familiar riff and the audience in complete euphoria. Thirty three years from now wherever I am or "if" I am at all, I can say I was in the audience for that unforgettable Elvis Costello performance at The Wiltern Theatre way back in the Spring of 2011.