Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes and the Sound of Los Angeles,
by Bar-
ney Hoskyns, follows the twists and turns of the SoCal music scene from the Beach Boys
to Black Flag.
Early Rock, Folk & Funk
California's first homegrown rock-and-roll talent to make it big in the 1950s was Richie
Valens, whose 'La Bamba' was a rockified version of a Mexican folk song. Dick Dale (aka
'The King of the Surf Guitar'), whose recording of 'Miserlou' featured in the movie
Pulp
Fiction,
topped the charts with his band the Del-Tones in the early '60s, influencing every-
one from the Beach Boys to Jimi Hendrix.
When Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had their Northern California fling in the early '60s,
Dylan plugged in his guitar and played folk rock. Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Hold-
ing Company developed their shambling musical stylings in San Francisco, splintering
folk rock into psychedelia. Emerging from that same San Francisco mélange, Jefferson
Airplane remade Lewis Carroll's children's classic
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
into
the psychedelic hit 'White Rabbit.'
Meanwhile, Jim Morrison and the Doors and the Byrds blew minds on LA's famous
Sunset Strip. The epicenter of LA's psychedelic rock scene was the Laurel Canyon neigh-
borhood, just uphill from the Sunset Strip and the legendary Whisky a Go-Go nightclub.
The original jam band the Grateful Dead stayed together until guitarist Jerry Garcia's
passing in a Marin County rehab clinic in 1995.
The country-influenced pop of The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt became
America's soundtrack for the early 1970s, joined by the Mexican fusion sounds of Santana
from San Francisco and iconic funk bands War from Long Beach and Sly and the Family
Stone, who got their groove on in San Francisco before moving to LA.
Punk, Post-Punk & Pop
From the late 1970s to the mid-'80s, LA band X bridged punk and new wave, while local
punk radio station KROQ rebelled against the tyranny of pop playlists. San Francisco's
punk scene was arty and absurdist, in rare form with Dead Kennedys singer (and future
San Francisco mayoral candidate) Jello Biafra howling 'Holiday in Cambodia.'
