In this entertaining piece, Music and Mayhem in Laurel Canyon (9/7/06 - 7:18), NPR's Renée Montagne interviews Michael Walker, author of the Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood. It seems while San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood got all the publicity as the hotspot of the late-60s counter-culture, many of the major musicians of the era were ensconced in this rustic Los Angeles neighborhood: the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Zappa, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Eagles, Jim Morrison, and a host of others.Here's Walker's take on why this happened: ""Musicians need to breathe the same air. And these were some of the best musicians of their generation, sort of by luck and happenstance jammed into this beautiful, leafy, little neighborhood." Read more about Laurel Canyon at Wikipedia.
Musings
- This piece is based on the assumption of the mythic status of the times and musicians--a time when everything seems to have been larger than life. How much of this feeling is still present in today's youth?
- One memorable aspect of counter-culture during the time of Laurel Canyon was its anti-war stance. Can one find a similar anti-war culture today? Where? If not, what? What's the difference between then, when we were at war in Vietnam, and now, when we are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan?
