What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Hand Painted Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip Came to Be
Collectors Weekly: Who started the music industry’s billboard trend?
Landau: As far as I can tell, it was the Doors in 1967 for their debut album. I talked with Jac Holzman—the head of Elektra Records who signed the Doors—while writing my book. In 1967, he had just come out here from the East Coast and opened an office on La Cienega Boulevard, not far from Sunset Boulevard, and it occurred to him that billboards were being used for everything except promoting records and music. A lot of radio stations where popular disc jockeys worked were farther east on Sunset, and he knew they drove on the Strip, and that the entertainment industry in general was based there.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Art, Activism & Faith: The Life of Corita Kent
At the LARB, Sasha Carrera, the former director of the Corita Art Center, explores the fascinating life and work of this oft-ignored figure in American art history.
Posted inQuotes
It’s Friday, Friday: Rebecca Black, the Politics of Entertainment, and Growing Up
When she turned 14, Rebecca Black’s mom paid a couple grand to have her daughter record an inane, hyper-catchy music video in Los Angeles.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
The Month That Killed the Sixties
An oral history of how everything went to hell in December 1969. Fred Hampton was killed by the police, the hippie spirit died at Altamont, and the Weathermen went underground.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Month That Killed the Sixties
An oral history of how everything went to hell in December 1969. Fred Hampton was killed by the police, the hippie spirit died at Altamont, and the Weathermen went underground.
Posted inEditor's Pick
When Rock ‘n’ Roll Loomed Large Over the Sunset Strip
For nearly two decades hand painted rock ‘n’ roll billboards loomed large over the Sunset Strip. The billboards were ephemeral, but a budding young photographer documented them throughout their heyday.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
Rainy Season
Two young sisters living in Thailand sneak off their diplomatic compound for a night of beauty and danger in this spellbinding short story.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
