(Location of the old 1997 E.P. mailing address – please no more resumes!)
This week has been a good week for a roadtrip. I’ve had a chance to re-connect with old friends, and set up foundations for future alliances. I’ve been gathering more stories, more photographs, and even shot some new segments for the documentary. It’s been a very intense few days.
This morning, I had breakfast with my friend Dick Peterson of the Kingsmen, and we had a chance to catch up on a lot of different things. He just oversaw the total re-design of the official Kingsmen LouieLouie.org website, which looks very impressive. If you haven’t had a chance to experience the new interface, it’s definitely worth checking out.
It’s been awhile since I’ve spent more than 24 hours in Los Angeles, and it feels good to visit again. Ten years ago, I lived in Hollywood, and it was a very odd period in my life. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I had talked to Richard Berry about pulling our resources together to finish the documentary, but then he died the month I planned to do the big move. It was a major shock that hit me very hard, and it was really difficult to move forward with the project. A lot of things were put in limbo as a direct result of Richard’s death.
I remember how I posted a public statement about my “film-in-progress” in a very prominent entertainment publication, trying to generate a buzz, and I was overwhelmed by a lot of people looking for stable employment. I would get phone calls from many desperate people trying to break into the industry, and some of the conversations were absolutely heart-breaking. At the time, I actually had some semi-stable employment, developing a CD-ROM for a company that spent a lot of money for a project that was ultimately never finished. After the CD-ROM project fell apart, I never found a comfortable niche in this town, and I felt like a fish out of water. Even though I made some great friends, I was absolutely miserable in Hollywood, so I made the big decision to return back to the SF bay area.
I do love a lot of things about Los Angeles, and I’m really enjoying this week’s little roadtrip. I am saddened that I can no longer go to Rhino Records, Aron’s Records, or even Tower Records on Sunset, but that’s something that’s affecting every town in America, unfortunately. Record stores are an endangered species, and there’s nothing I can do about it…