Los Angeles Versus the Bay Area: Santa Monica, Pico Boulevard, Record Surplus, West LA Music

Ah, a lifelong question: LA versus SF/Berkeley/CA.

Well, let’s start out with LA: Pico Boulevard! Whoa! If you don’t know WLA, you’d better learn, Pico is the heart of WLA! Pico and Sawtelle, Pico and Westwood….McCabe’s Guitar, Record Surplus, Westside Pavillion, Apple Pan, Fox Studios, Rancho Park, SAMO High, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, fucking Sears, …the list goes on. Of course there’s the little Japanese Sawtelle area, Little Little Tokyo, with Giant Robot etc (R.I.P. Yamaguchis) right up from Pico, and below f’n Santa Monica Boulevard…

Santa Monica:

photos from Panorimo

Also in LA you can stop by some nice local theatre like the Nuart or some playhouse and see such a nice young lady and her dog (Sarah Silverman and Doug)

Or see this nice lady on Santa Monica Beach (Joni Mitchell)(well, maybe in the 70s):

Then there’s f’n Record Surplus and West LA Music (featured as a quick Cameo in High Fidelity–or was it some other movie? Oh yeah, ha ha, it was Judd Aptow’s/Seth Rogen’s Knocked Up!!! Word, I scored my first Magma, Flying Lizards, and Karate Moves, records there, way back when, just based on looking at the cover art…) and the Nuart

Bill Bruford–Master Strokes, Gothic 17

Just discovered Bill Bruford’s Master Strokes compilation–it’s awesome!!! Bill Bruford was, of course, the drummer for Yes and King Crimson in their classic days. He’s way underrated as a solo artist. Most of this has the amazing Allan Holdsworth on guitar…Bill Bruford is the man from whom Damon Che of Don Caballero probably learned all of his drumming…his drumming sounds so current/modern…listen to this back to back with the Police albums Regatta de Blanc and Synchronicity to see how prog-rock influenced the Police were at their best…

Best futuristic indie postpunk prog rock new wave robotic guitar part:
Bill Bruford–Gothic 17

Also good:
Bill Bruford–Fainting in Coils
Bill Bruford–The Sahara of Snow Part II
Bill Bruford–One of a Kind Part I
Bill Bruford–Hells Bells

ZZ Top and Aerosmith Tour 2009

WHOA…Summer 2009 ZZ Top and Aerosmith tour! There is no way I am going to miss this…I can’t think of anything more rock and roll, frankly…

OMG the Google overlay ad text for this ZZ Top video right now reads “Vaporize Your Herb”

Best Party Songs Ever–The Clash-Magnificent Seven, Radio Clash, Rock the Casbah

The Clash–Magnificent Seven

Inspired by early 80s hip hop but sounding like nothing before and nothing since

The Clash–Rock the Casbah

The Clash–Radio Clash
THIS IS RADIO CLASH

Prince–While My Guitar Gently Weeps (RnR Hall Of Fame); Crimson and Clover on Ellen 4/23/09

Prince with Tom Petty, check out Prince’s awesome solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps in this George Harrison tribute.

Prince on Ellen–Crimson and Clover

Ashtma and ADD/Attention Deficit Disorder/ADHD/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

I had a friend who always thought she might have ADD/ADHD, when she was diagnosed with asthma in her mid-thirties. Then she told me, “Duh, you can’t breathe right, of course you’re going to have trouble concentrating and sitting still.” I wonder if any other kids or adults who are diagnosed as having ADD really just have asthma or some other respiratory problems?

The book “Attention Deficit Disorder Misdiagnosis” mentions comorbidity of ADD and asthma, but doesn’t go into too much detail. Also see the article “Children With Asthma Often Suffer Developmental And Behavioral Problems”

“Much of the research surrounding childhood asthma has sought new approaches to managing the disease. However, little was done to address other conditions that often appear along with asthma including depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which can negatively affect a child’s ability to cope.”

I think this should be studied very carefully, all kids/adults diagnosed as ADD/ADHD should have asthma tests. All kids and adults should be tested for asthma anyway, my friend wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her mid-thirties–she had always complained about breathing problems, mostly nasal–only in her mid thirties did a doctor actually test her breathing, make her take a hit off of an asthma inhaler, then test her breathing again to compare, and conclude that she had asthma.

Maybe saying she had trouble breathing through her nose made all her previous doctors think it was purely a nasal problem–only her latest doctor was intelligent enough to realize that she might have trouble breathing overall and that he should test her for asthma.

How many Ritalin-addled kids really just are having asthma-related breathing problems and are hyperactive or have trouble focusing because they can’t breathe properly?

Google is Breaking the Internet–Link Wrecking, Rerouting, Stealing in Google Search Result

Hi Google,
what is going wrong with your search engine these days? Nowadays when I do a search, perhaps for the first two links in your search results the URL is not for the actual site, but some weird Google URL rerouting. For example, I just did a search for Saturday Night Live, the green URL listing is for http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/, but the actual hyperlink when you click on the link heading, or copy the link, is:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbc.com%2FSaturday_Night_Live%2F&ei=aFn2ScPwNJLuMvHr7bIP&rct=j&q=%22saturday+night+live%22&usg=AFQjCNFFBBjsqcDY4BnxQ7Pd5QOWRvvG0w

This is so inconvenient, Google! A lot of people copy the links to distribute etc…we want the real site links, not some weird Google rerouting! You’re breaking the Internet!

Come to think of it, when I login to Gmail, often the page gets stuck…have to reload a couple of times before Gmail finally opens…and this is happening when I click in links in Gmail too, they’re trying to open some google address, not the real link…and YouTube has been losing its sound for me on all videos every once in awhile…hmm.

New York Times turns into HGTV, Bad Reporting

The New York Times article “When Skaters Grow Up” missed the biggest question in its reporting: how on Earth did a 26 year old interior designer and a 29 year old skateboard company worker in 2005 get the money to buy a million dollar house in Noe Valley, CA and pay for a $500,000 renovation? I mean, is the woman a super rockstar interior designer catering to the very richest in the Bay Area, and is the guy on par with Tony Hawk–I figure it would take a combined annual income of at least $350,000 to pay a mortgage and taxes on a million dollar Noe Valley house. Doesn’t sound like either of them were like Google millionaires or anything. Let me know, I’d like to be able to make that kind of money interior designing and/or skateboarding!

Unless of course they just inherited the money…which would beg the question…is that all it takes to get into the New York Times? Like, I inherited a million dollars, bought a house in SF, and like, lined the walls with Pez dispensers? Mysteries abound!!! Explain it all to me, please!

*UPDATE: Oh, wow, from the NY Times article: the renovation itself “cost just under $500,000.”*

Good Books, Good Authors

David Mitchell (Black Swan Green, number9dream, Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas), Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, You Don’t Love Me Yet), Maria Doria Russell (The Sparrow). Keep them coming!

Can and Red Krayola/Red Crayola

Ah, the wonderful world of psychadelia and krautrock! These people did in the 1960s and 1970s what so many postpunk and new wave bands tried to do in the 1980s and indie bands tried to do in the 1990s and 2000s. Those musicians could all have gotten PhDs and cured cancer and brought world peace if they only knew the music they were trying to make had already been made 20, 30, 40 years earlier for them!

Can–One More Night
Awesome drums, harmonics, etc. Can’t beat trippy jazz dance drums with experimental guitar and bass and electronics and English-speaking native Japanese lead singer living in Germany. Can ends up sounding like trippy German Japanese experimental hippies channeling James Brown via Pink Floyd a lot of the time, the drums sometimes end up sounding like some Manchester songs from the 1990s but much better. There’s some Can song that’s quite like the Stone Roses’ Fools Gold.

Can–Halleluwah
I’ll bet Grateful Dead and Phish fans would really like Can. American Beauty is one of the best albums ever made BTW.

Can–Moonshake
Sounds like 1995 and 1981. Pretty sure Joy Division listened to a lot of Can–what’s that one Joy Division song that sounds like this?

Can–Paperhouse
God, this song is so beautiful!!! WTF??? Indie rockers gave up the term “post rock” after they discovered that Can and Brian Eno basically did all that stuff in the 60s/70s.

Can-Vitamin C
Yup, here it is: Pink Floyd meets James Brown. Hey you, you’re losing your vitamin C!!!!

Red Crayola-Hurricane Fighter Plane
What??? It’s new wave postpunk in 1967. That’s BEFORE Captain Beefheart’s Troutmask Replica!!! The same year as Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Ah, there aren’t really many YouTube videos of the Red Krayola/Red Crayola songs I’m looking for. You can preview them/download them on Amazon:

Red Crayola-Jewels of the Madonna
This really sounds like fucking PAVEMENT! Steve Malkmus!!! Jeez!!! It’s crazy that this was from the 1960s. What?????
Red Crayola-Green of My Pants
Red Crayola-Leejol
Red Crayola-Dairymaid’s Lament
Red Crayola-Sherlock Holmes
Red Crayola-Listen to This

Red Crayola-
Former Reflections Enduring Doubt
This is just a noisy freakout.