A short excerpt from an interview with Domenic Priore...( I like what he says about the SF scene....that LA is where it all started and grew...but we knew that!)
E.C.: First, I want to talk about your new book, "Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood 1965/1966." I know that it is about the L.A. rock 'n' roll scene in 1965/66, but will the layout be similar to Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE! (with its collection of time-period articles and new essays)?
Domenic: Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood 1965/1966 will be similar to Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE! in it's thoroughness, and in that it will expose something wonderful that's been hidden for years behind misunderstanding. Remember, both Pet Sounds and Smile were created in the environment of the L.A. rock 'n' roll scene during 1965 and 1966... and this is just one artist, Brian Wilson. Now magnify that to over a hundred bands who may have had something of their own that holds up to what Brian Wilson had goin' in its own right, be it one or two brilliant 45s or an album such as Love's Forever Changes, things which are easily as good as the ones Brian Wilson did during those years. On an album level, you also have Frank Zappa's first two, Freak Out and Absolutely Free,
...the Doors first two...
but then there were all those sonically amazing garage punk 45s by the Standells, the Bobby Fuller 4, the Seeds the Knickerbockers, the Music Machine, the Humane Society, the Bees, the Electric Prunes... the list goes on and on. The majority of what's on the Nuggets box set, for example, is from L.A. Then there's the Turtles, the Mamas & the Papas, the Association... and the Byrds, who are far more important than anyone's ever really given them credit for, a band influenced by the Beatles and Bob Dylan who ended up influencing the Beatles and Bob Dylan in ways that are always overlooked. Then you have groups like the Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young and Jack Nitzsche doin' "Expecting to Fly" and then the Monkees with Jack doing "The Porpoise Song." Hell, the Rolling Stones recorded "Satisfaction" on Sunset in '65....it was the most creative scene of the decade. Yet everything that comes out of a documentary or book or magazine on the '60s chooses to display the Jefferson Airplane and a bunch of unstylin' San Francisco hippies. The L.A. scene was so far ahead of all that, and far more modern in scope. So my hope is that Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood 1965/1966 will make that obvious, and that the awareness spreads in the same way that Smile is now common knowledge, with jillions of tapes of it circulating, websites and expanded recognition for the work in the mainstream press when new bios are done. Before I did the book on Smile, the general consensus in the public eye was that it was the whacked out failure of a crazy man who couldn't get his thing together and burned the tapes. But now it's pretty obvious that the Smile music is alive and well, and has had a profound effect on contemporary artists, despite the fact that Smile still isn't "out." At least the awareness is there.
-ear candy.com
For full interview....
http://earcandy_mag.tripod.com/1priore.htm
On the singular Importance of LA's SUNSET STRIP--
Moderators: The Freedom Man, TheDoorsMusic
-
jamestkirk
- Senior Member
- Posts: 5816
- Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:11 pm
- Location: The Music Of My Mind
On the singular Importance of LA's SUNSET STRIP--
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
-Aldous Huxley
-
TJSAbass
- Registered User
- Posts: 59
- Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 12:54 am
Domenic is my hero. The SF scene is known because of Rolling Stone magazine. Founders Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason were living there at the time. My take is that SF is over-hyped, and LA is under-hyped. SF had some good stuff going on, no doubt, but the sheer number of great records that came out of LA needs to be known.
