Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67481 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

The cover is deceiving. If you were a teen in 1965, you need to see this book!

It's amazing how many music styles melded on one stretch of road in one city during just a two-year period! This is not an ordinary road but the main one - Sunset Strip (actually Sunset Boulvard) - and not just any city. It's HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA!

Sure there were hard rock bands - the image you get from both the title and the cover photo of this fascinating book - but there were also the Beach Boys, The Mamas and Papas, Petula Clark and lots of small comedy and folk clubs. This was the music I gravitated to during 1965 and 1966 and I found lots to reminisce about on as I read and looked through this book. Of particular interest to me was the section on Teen TV shows which emanated from the LA scene. Though, growing up in the Philadelphia area, I was more of an American Bandstand viewer, we did get Lloyd Thaxton in the afternoon and, of course, Shindig! in the evening. Then there was the T.A.M.I. Show film - which still has never been legitimately been released on home video - and it was filmed there. Fiore devotes a large section to this and I learned things we "kids" on the East Coast never knew. Just looking at the picture, and reading the captions, was an experience.

I can certainly recommend this - as a memory jogger - to anyone who was a teen in 1965-66 and it'll definitely be a must for anyone who watch Rock and Roll television in Southern California in the 1960s.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

Great Read, Coulda Been Shorter
I loved this book because of the way it put me right on the Sunset Strip in the mid 60s, making me feel like I was sitting at Canter's Deli with Gene Clark and then dancing to The Byrds at Ciro's later that same evening. I also love the argument it makes about San Francisco's elitist attitude about its own 60s bands, versus those of L.A. Ask me to choose between The Grateful Dead and Love, between Moby Grape and The Byrds, between any SF garage band and The Seeds or The Music Machine, and I'm going with the Hollywood "cream puff" act every time. The book also makes you feel the tragedy of the collapse of the Sunset Strip nightclub scene, after the police effectively shut it down because some influential people in town didn't like the idea of the Strip being a place for teenagers to hang out and dance to groovy music. You get to know what a magical time and place the Strip was in 65-66, and it makes you want to be there. The only complaint I have is that at times Priore is too expansive, too exhaustive - it's hard to care after a while when he gives you countless details about every band who happened to be around the Strip through the mid-60s. That's a minor quibble, though, because if you don't want to read all that detail, you can skip over those sections. Otherwise, this is a great book which definitely and delightfully puts you in a cool time and place. And I love the Sunset Strip mid-60s street map at the beginning of the book.

Great History Of 1960s L.A. Rock Scene!
This book has everybody from The Beach Boys,Jan&Dean,Johnny Rivers,The Byrds,Love,to Frank Zappa&The Mothers of Invention. For the most part,Priore gives the reader a comprehensive history of the Los Angeles music scene. From surf to psychedelia,it's all here packed with interesting anecdotes and pictures. There are a couple of points to quibble about. First,a few of the picture captions mis-identify some important L.A. figures.There is a picture that is supposedly Johnny Rivers but clearly is not. In the section of the book that chronicles the Byrds,he states that producer Gary Usher had his Sagitarius partner Curt Boetcher singing lead vocals on the songs "Natural Harmony"&"Draft Morning" when in actual fact it was Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. Still,it's a fun book that will be even better if they correct these aforementioned mistakes for later printings.