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Various Artists - Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968
| Pitchfork |
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At some point in the mid 1960s, the kids started hanging around on Sunset Strip, which at the time was still home to many of the restaurants that once boasted famous Hollywood patrons. To curtail the invading counterculture, the city imposed a strict curfew, and cops clashed with longhairs in a series of small riots that galvanized the hippies rather than dispersed them. The skirmishes inspired Buffalo Springfield to write "For What It's Worth" and Four-Leaf Productions to bankroll the teensploitation flick Riot on Sunset Strip, featuring a theme song by local group the Standells. It begins mundanely enough: "I'm going down to the Strip tonight, I'm not on a stay-home trip tonight," sings drummer Dick Dodd over Tony Valentino's snarling guitar lick. But the song's hard beat is more of a billy-club swing than a hip shake, and the lyrics become increasingly serious, as he laments the Strip has become "just a place for black-and-white cars to race. It's causin' a riot!" More pointed and angry than the square film that bears it title, the song depicts Los Angeles as a tensed city on the brink of chaos and violence, and the Standells could just as well have been singing about Watts or any of the race riots that made the curfew clashes seem polite and placid by comparison. "Riot on Sunset Strip" kicks off Rhino's 4xCD set Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968, setting the scene for the 100 tracks that follow. Local bands were drawing inspiration from the sights all around them, whether it was sirens on a cop car or sirens dancing in the clubs. For them, L.A. was the center of the universe, if not the entire universe itself, and these groups-- some of whom, in true Nuggets fashion, lasted no more than a 45 or two-- established a particular dialogue with the city that projected well beyond Sunset Strip and reverberated around the Valley. Arthur Lee details just such a trippy travelogue on "You I'll Be Following", a bouncy number from Love's debut with killer harmonies and his electric vocal. Kim Fowley's hysteric "Underground Lady" tries to capture the scene in the surreal slang of the times, and on "Los Angeles", one-time Byrd Gene Clark calls it the "city of the doomed," although you might swear he's singing "city of the dunes."...full text |
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| Guardian |
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As yet another way of telling the high 60s story, this is a good one: 101 tracks from Los Angeles during that peak moment between 1965 and 1968, when the city of sun, smog and riot made its move to dominate American pop. Buy it from Buy the CD Various Artists Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 Rhino, Box set 2009 During those years, Los Angeles developed a creative youth culture - centred around the Sunset Strip - that matched anything in London or San Francisco. This was shut down by the police at the end of 1966 after weeks of teen protest - hence the set's opener, the Standells' deliriously exploitative Riot on Sunset Strip. Where the Action Is! begins with the club groups - the Byrds, Love, the Leaves, Buffalo Springfield, the Seeds and the Doors - before taking a tour through LA's further-flung garage bands. Plenty of garages in SoCal, right? The third disc concentrates on "The Studio Scene", while the fourth covers psych to country rock (Van Dyke Parks, the Dillards, Gene Clark). As usual in these affairs, well-known tracks are mixed with rescued obscurities (by Stephen Stills, Tim Buckley and the like). It's a good trip: journeymen rub shoulders with geniuses, go-go boots are worn with buckskin, the pigs are taunted, and an era evoked. It's sunny and warm out there, but the shadows are lengthening....full text |
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| Prefixmag |
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Track list Disc 11 Riot On Sunset Strip (The Standells) 2 You Movin' (The Byrds) 3 You I'll Be Following (Love) 4 Dr. Stone (The Leaves) 5 Go And Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield) 6 Zig Zag Wanderer (Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band) 7 Gentle As It May Seem (Iron Butterfly) 8 Candy Cane Madness (Lowell George & The Factory) 9 If You Want This Love (The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band) 10 Baby, My Heart (The Bobby Fuller Four) 11 All Night Long (The Palace Guard) 12 It's Gonna Rain (Sonny & Cher) 13 For My Own (The Guilloteens) 14 Take A Giant Step (The Rising Sons) 15 One Too Many Mornings (The Association) 16 Time Waits For No One (The Knack) 17 Take It As It Comes (The Doors) 18 Pulsating Dream (Kaleidoscope) 19 Tripmaker (The Seeds) 20 The People In Me (The Music Machine) 21 Saturday's Son (The Sons Of Adam) 22 Eventually (The Peanut Butter Conspiracy) 23 Swim (Penny Arkade) 24 The Third Eye (The Joint Effort) 25 Girl In Your Eye (Spirit) Disc 21 Jump, Jive & Harmonize (Thee Midniters) 2 Back Up (The Light) 3 To Die Alone (The Bush) 4 Get On This Plane (The Premiers) 5 Little Girl, Little Boy (The Odyssey) 6 Hideaway (The Electric Prunes) 7 Listen, Listen! (The Merry-Go-Round) 8 She Done Moved (The Spats) 9 Grim Reaper Of Love (The Turtles) 10 See If I Care (Ken & The Fourth Dimension) 11 He's Not There Anymore (The Chymes) 12 Back Seat '38 Dodge (Opus 1) 13 Eternal Prison (The Humane Society) 14 Revenge (The Others) 15 Come Alive (Things To Come) 16 Acid Head (The Velvet Illusions) 17 Guaranteed Love (Limey & The Yanks) 18 Love's The Thing (The Romancers, aka The Smoke Rings) 19 Underground Lady (Kim Fowley) 20 Pretty Little Thing (The Deepest Blue) 21 You're Wishin' I Was Someone Else (The Whatt Four) 22 Hippy Elevator Operator (The W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band) 23 That's For Sure (The Mustangs) 24 Tomorrow's Girl (Fapardokly)(Merrell & The Exiles) 25 Everything's There (The Hysterics) 26 Our Time Is Running Out (The Yellow Payges) Disc 31 Action, Action, Action (Keith Allison) 2 The Rebel Kind (Dino, Desi & Billy) 3 High On Love (The Knickerbockers) 4 Fan Tan (Jan & Dean) 5 Halloween Mary (P.F. Sloan) 6 Somebody Groovy (The Mamas & The Papas) 7 Daydreaming (Thorinshield) 8 Just Can't Wait (The Full Treatment) 9 Yellow Balloon (The Yellow Balloon) 10 The Times To Come (London Phogg) 11 No More Running Around (The Lamp Of Childhood) 12 Little Girl Lost-And-Found (The Garden Club) 13 Mothers And Fathers (The Moon) 14 My Girlfriend Is A Witch (October Country) 15 Montage Mirror (Roger Nichols Trio) 16 Flower Eyes (Pasternak Progress) 17 Come Down (The Common Cold) 18 Jill (Gary Lewis & The Playboys) 19 Daily Nightly (The Monkees) 20 Night Time Girl (Modern Folk Quintet) 21 Don't Say No (The Oracle) 22 Tin Angel (Will You Ever Come Down) (Hearts And Flowers) 23 Rainbow Woman (Lee Hazlewood) 24 Poor Old Organ Grinder (Pleasure featuring Billy Elder) 25 Baby, Please Don't Go (The Ballroom) Disc 41 Sit Down I Think I Love You (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay) 2 Splendor In The Grass (Jackie DeShannon with The Byrds) 3 November Night (Peter Fonda) 4 Roses And Rainbows (Danny Hutton) 5 Lemon Chimes (The Dillards) 6 Here's Today (The Rose Garden) 7 I Love How You Love Me (Nino Tempo & April Stevens) 8 Words (Demo) (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart) 9 (You Used To) Ride So High (The Motorcycle Abeline)(Warren Zevon & Bones Howe) 10 Life Is A Dream (Noel Harrison) 11 Los Angeles (Gene Clark) 12 Once Upon A Time (Tim Buckley) 13 Darlin' You Can Count On Me (The Everpresent Fullness) 14 I'll Search The Sky (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) 15 Come To The Sunshine (Van Dyke Parks) 16 Heroes And Villains (Alternate Take) (The Beach Boys) 17 She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune (Jesse Lee Kincaid) 18 Sister Marie (Nilsson) 19 Last Night I Had A Dream (Single Version) (Randy Newman) 20 I Think I Love You (Del Shannon) 21 Change Is Now (The Byrds) 22 the Truth Is Not Real (Single Version) (Sagittarius) 23 Marshmallow Skies (Rick Nelson) 24 You Set The Scene (Love) 25 Inner-Manipulations (Barry McGuire)...full text |
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