Sunset Strip - 2012 - 6/10
Glossy, shallow, but fun documentary of Sunset Strip, focusing primarily on the club scene.
Doc traces the earliest beginnings, when Sunset Blvd was a narrow lane running from Hollywood to Beverly Hills.
Then goes from nightclub era to music clubs to current Disneyfication.
Interviews with dozens and dozens of historians, musicians, movie stars, comedians, groupies ...
Film also gets the geography correct. Less accurate docs might try to squeeze in places from Hollywood Blvd as well as Santa Monica Blvd. Each had their own vibe. Not only does this stick with the Strip, but it doesn’t bother with the meandering Sunset that snakes to the Pacific.
All Los Angelenos have their own version of the city. In the doc, Hugh Hefner recalled the glitzy 50's nightclubs. Others reminisce about the 60's - 70's - 80's or later. Yet there has never been a “there” to LA. It is ever a river that flows and changes.
Three Strip shorts -
The hippie chick is a couple of years older than me, and she was a bonefide teenybopper in the 60's. Saw all the groups who were gone by the time I arrived. Buffalo Springfield, Byrds, Love ...
She and friends were waiting in a club for the show when they saw a drunken bum stagger toward the stage. Where is Security, they wondered. Even more when the wino kept trying to climb the stage. Eventually he succeeded, grabbed the microphone and started singing “Break On Through.” The other Doors joined in, the drunk was Jim Morrison.
My brother visited me only once. I gave him the whole experience. Pink Flamingoes at the Nuart, Disneyland, Tower Records on Sunset, and a punk show at the Whisky. The Weasels and The Dogs.
Midway through the Dogs’ set, two guys walked onstage. One took the mic while the other dropped to the floor and started writhing in convulsions.
My brother started screaming, “That’s Steve Jones singing! And Paul Cook! Sex Pistols! The Sex Pistols! This is the greatest moment of my life!!”
Tower on Sunset was one of my favorite record stores. Even when I had no money, no car, I’d hitch a ride then walk. The shop was a temple of music. It was vast and stocked massive deep catalogue. Current chart toppers would be stacked from the floor to waist high - 200 copies of vinyl, maybe? One stand alone was a Beatles shrine.
Groups were always there for in-store events. Or you’d see musicians or TV stars, just shopping.
Few people bothered them, and there was less gutter paparazzi back then.
I was pulling my MG out of the lot, this VW Karmann Ghia waiting for my space.
“Who’s that driving?” I asked the hippie chick.
“Rod,” she said.
“Rod Stewart?”
“No, Rod McKuen,” she said.
“Oh.”
Rod Stewart I might have gone back into Tower to see what he was buying. Poet Rod McKuen?
I’d seen him before.
