May 2012
1 post
May 24th
October 2011
3 posts
English Alan & his bag of tapes
Fall 1970 It felt fine being a retired record pirate. We hit the market when it was hot, launched some music that got on people’s radar and avoided contact with the law. Being underage had its benefits. My albums were on display in any shop I patronized yet few knew I was the guy responsible for their existence. Other bootleggers chased press attention and notoriety. Being LA and all,...
Oct 25th
Hippies
Summer 1970 I hated them all. Well… ok not the early ones. Not the girls who burned bras and incense and and dragged blankets to the love in, total strangers at Griffith Park who threw beads around your neck and told you that they loved you. I liked them. It’s later hippies that I came to disdain. Radicals and potheads and all their rules of conduct. I remember a Charles Manson...
Oct 25th
Grinding out hits
Spring 1970 By age seventeen I had put out four pirate albums, each a bigger seller than the last. I had also stopped going it alone. Success with my first Dylan album, the now notorious Basement Tapes, had brought me a new partner. Ed K was owner of The Auditory Odyssey and one of my very best customers. Intrigued every time I carted records in from the trunk of my car, Ed had offered to let me...
Oct 25th
April 2011
16 posts
Walking talking pirate
Summer 1969 I emptied out my savings account and pulled my cherished Wollensak reel-to-reel off the shelf, detachable speakers and all. I needed $400 to press five hundred copies of my Bob Dylan album and I didn’t have enough cash. My friend Clay (with the car) picked me up, and off we went to a pawn shop where my tape recorder got me the needed funds. I took the Dylan tape up to Dave’s...
Apr 17th
First bootleg album
Summer 1969 My idea of putting out a Bob Dylan album by myself got ridiculed by everyone I talked to. You’re no record company, the naysayers said, it’s illegal. Buzzkillers, the lot of them. No vision. I got talked out of my grand scheme.  Then I was beat to the punch. The first underground album appeared. “Great White Wonder” was a double album of unreleased Dylan...
Apr 17th
The Bob Dylan basement tapes
Summer 1968 LA’s mainstream punk radio KROQ-FM Radio was once 1960s freeform hippie radio KPPC-FM. And man, did they play some crazy shit. Especially after midnight.  I’ll say this about the hippies, they liked their radio inscrutable. I set my reel-to-reel to its slowest speed to get eight hours of recording and ran it all night long, catching everything they played and giving...
Apr 17th
"Our World"
Summer 1967 Jerry Garcia liked to joke that the Summer of Love really only lasted about two weeks. He said it was as if someone opened up a window, and suddenly we could see a whole new world in front of us, big and bright and free. Filled with rhythm and peace, and oh! the love was gonna flow. Then the window slammed shut. And that was the end of it. If that’s the case, I’d peg the beginning...
Apr 17th
Love & 8th grade
1967 When The Doors’ album came out it pulled our attention away from Love, who to that point had been the favorite band of my eighth grade homeroom.  The Doors was the first band I saw perform as a live act before they had an album out, and now hearing the difference between the two was startling. At The Cinnamon Cinder they’d been a little boring, if riveting to look at. Their debut...
Apr 17th
Record Paradise
1966, ‘67 Here it is, the cradle of Los Angeles’ Anglophilia (the love of all things British and Rawk).  Lewin Record Paradise was the only LA shop that sold the rarest of musical treasures, English import albums. They stocked music you couldn’t find anywhere else, every obscure band you could possibly think of, memorabilia, displays, records and posters and a Carnaby Street sign...
Apr 17th
Private school girls
Christmas 1966 I can’t let the semester end without a quick shout to the two most energizing girls of Campbell Hall middle school, Diane (“Dino”) and Cathy. Dino was an all around groovy person to hang with but Cathy (above right) was my love. My eighth grade crush. Cathy and I bonded over “Aftermath”. I was Beatles, Cathy was Stones but both of us agreed that the...
Apr 17th
Cinnamon Cinder
Fall 1966 The Cinnamon Cinder was a teen nightclub located in Studio City, on Ventura Blvd in a spot that now houses LA Fitness. It was owned and run by local deejay Bob Eubanks, soon to achieve greatness as host of TV’s Newlywed Game.  The Cinder wasn’t our bag. It operated a time warp away from the goings on of fall 1966, it had more the aura (stench) of the 1950s. The closest their...
Apr 17th
Like Elvis
Christmas 1965 I rode my bike to and from school each day, a straight shot down Laurel Canyon Blvd, two miles door to door. At the halfway point stood a thirteen year-old’s breakfast: The Big Donut Drive In. Every morning I loaded up on five or six of those glazed beauties, finishing them off as I no-hands steered it though the rest of my ride. The trip home offered a better stopover: a...
Apr 17th
LA/ for hicks
1965 LA was a backwater. Ever see a picture of the Sunset Strip in the ’60s?  It was small town America. Maybe that’s why we preferred our own local TV dance party, The Lloyd Thaxton Show, to the big city East Coast alternative, Dick Clark. Lloyd was our guy. He was a midwestern transplant like everyone else in Los Angeles secretly seemed to be.  His pace was slow, he acted kind and nice. And...
Apr 17th
First concert
Summer 1965 The Beatles at The Hollywood Bowl. Another landmark for this thirteen year old and I didn’t even know I’d get to attend until the afternoon of the show, when my stepsister’s friend had issues and sadly had to give up her ticket. They always said you couldn’t hear The Beatles for the screaming but it wasn’t true, not this night at the Bowl.  You heard...
Apr 17th
The future
1964, 65 The New York World’s Fair. They took me for my thirteenth birthday, summer 1965.  I’d been reading and collecting articles about it for over year, had sent away to New York (the actual city) for a guide book and I read every page, every word.  By the time of our visit I could visualize all six hundred of the fair’s acres, could find all the pavilions, knew their exact locations. I...
Apr 17th
Kennedy dies
Winter 1963 We were midway through third period in my sixth grade class when the announcement came across the school’s speaker system. President Kennedy had been shot. I attended a private Episcopal school, Campbell Hall. It was expensive and heavily Republican. I remember being surprised that my teacher was so taken aback with the news; she always complained about the Kennedys. At...
Apr 17th
This was Cinerama
Summer 1963 I rode my bike to Sunset and Vine to watch the Cinerama Dome go up. You could witness each level of creation, from its beginnings as a bombed out weed-filled lot to the ceiling’s geodesic tiles finally being pieced together. Judging from the carpeting alone this theater was going to be unrivaled. When the seats eventually got bolted down you knew it was time to plan for a...
Apr 17th
1 note
Frightening 50's
1958-1962 The time between Buddy Holly and The Beatles was a cultural dead zone to me. The mood was dark. Wannabe Fonzie’s raced their hot rods up and down my street at night, encouraged by their ex-Army dads. My corner of the world was the San Fernando Valley. Former desert, now boomtown, its growth was driven by soldiers returning home from World War II to new homes waiting to be...
Apr 17th
First record, age 5
Winter 1957 By the time I was four years old I’d been trained by my teenage aunt, “Tia”, to tune the family radio to LA’s reigning rock station KFWB. My aunt was a decade older than me, and fourteen year olds always want to hear the hits. Tia knew all the rockers, was enraptured by the Everly Bros, and she got that interest embedded in me pretty quickly. I liked everything she liked...
Apr 16th