Tag: 80s

Music Quest

There was a band in the 1980s called Big Daddy. They did 50s-style covers of top 40 hits. This may sound like a bad idea, but they were great. I especially liked their versions of “Sussudio” and “I want to know what love is”. Their stuff was unsurprisingly on Rhino Records. They had an album called “Cutting Their Own Groove” that was particularly fine.

Anyway their stuff is 581% unavailable. People sell their vinyl albums and their one or two CDs for an average of 70 bucks.

If anyone has digital files of them, or vinyl, or has seen some, let me know! I hunger for novelty.

Westwood Memory (I may have posted this before)

Some time in the late 1980s I was in Westwood Village, which is the part of L.A. just south of UCLA. It had been a big entertainment district, the place to be on Friday and Saturday Night, but was in a steep decline. Most of the fancy stores and restaurants had gone, things were dirty, and most of the pedestrians were lost souls. I was among them, since I was taking the bus from my unsuccessful psychotherapist back to my grimy Hollywood apartment.

It was maybe 9 pm, cold and blustery, and the first drops of rain were moistening the blowing trash so it stuck to people and objects unpleasantly. Coming up towards the bus stop, I came upon this scene:

In the doorway to an office building, one of the local homeless poor had set up camp. He was about 35, dressed in what had once been a decent suit which was torn and stained and shedding buttons. He himself had a mop of blonde hair and a dirty face wreathed in a joyous smile. He had a boom box going full blast and was singing along lustily, with a cap on the ground in hopes that someone would reward this piece of impromptu street karaoke.

The song he was performing? Barry Manilow’s 1976 hit “Looks Like We Made It“.

I still wonder about that guy. He certainly wasn’t seeing the dingy, damp, urban failure in front of him, or the RTD bus or the other bums or me in my jeans & jacket & backpack looking at him in horror. He was in heaven, maybe onstage in Vegas. Maybe he even was Barry. Looks like we maaaaaaaade it! I wonder what happened to him?

Orange County Punk Fans take note

The Strange Reaction mp3blog posted the tracks from Clockwork Orange County, a 1985 local bands compilation. I saw a lot of these acts at the Concert Factory etc. during my LA/OC commuter punker years. I think I know the guy on the cover, actually.

Some of the acts are familiar (D.I.) and others a bit more obscure (Love Canal).

I saw the Scarecrows do a decent cover of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay” in the basement of the Cathay de Grande in about ’85 with less than 10 people in the audience. Then they dropped their mic into the saxophone and things got ugly.

Who’s awesome? mcpino is, that’s who.

Saturday evening I opened my door to see a large, bulbous package on the step. It was addressed to me, but I couldn’t think of anything I’d ordered that would look like a sack of potatoes. I dragged it inside and inspected it. Playa del Rey return address. Who the honk do I know there? Maybe it’s a UNABOMB!

I opened it up and out fell a stack of Spy magazines from 1988 to 1990, with a note from mcpino saying he was just dragging these around from place to place and he hoped I’d enjoy them. GOD DAMN YEAH I WILL.

Ann Hodgman eating dog food! Celebrity garbage! The New York Times fatality column inches calculator! MAKE YOUR OWN TWINKIE! THANK YOU!

This is just plain sad: Bryan Harvey

From Phast Phreddie, via my friend Julie DuBrow:

Dear Friends,

This morning my brother, who works in the Richmond, Virginia area, called and asked me if I knew Bryan Harvey.

I was familiar with The House of Freaks when the group was based in LA, and Gutterball with Steve Wynn; and I ran into Bryan and his wife from time to time when I was down in the Richmond area visiting my brother and/or Stephen McCarthy (of The Long Ryders, who has played in several bands with Bryan since they both moved back to Richmond in the late eighties). Twice I saw Harvey dressed as Presley when he sang in the band Fat Elvis–with McCarthy (it may have been Fat Elvis’ only two shows).

My brother told me that he had just read in the paper that Bryan and his family were found dead in their home.

the rest of the story, as far as we have it