Episode 15: Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Five Summers in Los Angeles
An impressionistic look at the interplay of Rock N Roll and Culture in Los Angeles during the latter half of the 1960s. There are familiar elements: storytelling, critical discussion and commentary, and lots of Rock N Roll attitude. But this one is different from most of our previous RNRAP offerings.
We draw inspiration from multiple sources, but the wellspring is a pair of books—two collections of essays by the California writer Joan Didion: “The White Album” and “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” asserts Ms Didion in the opening of “The White Album.” This is an entirely human and natural response; we try to make sense of things, to apply a narrative frame to a “shifting phantasmagoria of events.”
And it may even work—for a while. Ultimately though, no frame will fit. We are left with a chaotic collection of impressions, with a story that has no moral—and with a restless feeling that perhaps an opportunity was missed here.
Songs
The Ronettes: “Be My Baby” 1964
Bob Dylan: “Like A Rolling Stone” 1966
The Doors: “Peace Frog” 1969
The Byrds: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” 1966
Buffalo Springfield: “Broken Arrow” 1968
The Mamas and The Papas: “California Dreaming” 1966
Buffalo Springfield: “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” 1966
Buffalo Springfield: “Go And Say Goodbye” 1966
The Byrds: “Feel a Whole Lot Better” 1966
Buffalo Springfield: “Bluebird” 1967
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention: “Hungry Freaks Daddy” 1966
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention: “Trouble Every Day” 1966
The Chambers Brothers: “Time Has Come Today” 1966
Buffalo Springfield: “For What It’s Worth” 1966
The Monkees: “Theme From The Monkees” 1967
The Byrds: “Rock N Roll Star” 1967
The Doors: “Light My Fire” 1967
The Doors: “When The Music’s Over” 1967
The Doors: “When You’re Strange” 1967
Neil Young: “On The Way Home” 1968
Buffalo Springfield: “Rock N Roll Woman” 1967
The Doors: “Awake” 1967
The Doors: “Five To One” 1968
The Doors: “Alabama Song” 1967
Buffalo Springfield: “Special Care” 1968
The Beach Boys: “Sloop John B” 1966
Steppenwolf: “Magic Carpet Ride” 1968
The Beatles: “Baby You’re A Rich Man” 1967
The Doors: “Hello I Love You” 1968
The Doors: “Wild Child” 1968
The Doors: “Not To Touch The Earth” 1968
Crosby Stills & Nash: “You Don’t Have To Cry” 1969
The Flying Burrito Brothers: “Dark End Of The Street” 1969
The Doors: “Touch Me” 1968
Neil Young: “Revolution Blues” 1972
Neil Young: “Down By The River” 1969
Crosby Stills & Nash: “Long Time Gone” 1969
The Doors: “The End” 1967
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
--William Butler Yeats
Books:
Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter
Peter Ames Carlin: Catch a Wave: the Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson
Nik Cohn: Awopbopaloobop! The Golden Age of Rock
Stephen Davis: Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend
John Densmore: Riders on the Storm
Joan Didion: The White Album
Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem
John Einarson: For What It’s Worth
Todd Gitlin: The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Jimmy McDonough: Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography
James Douglas Morrison: The Lords And The New Creatures
Dominic Priore: Riot on Sunset Strip
Hunter Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Neil Young: Waging Heavy Peace
Frank Zappa: The Real Frank Zappa Book
Documentaries:
When You’re Strange, Directed by Tom DiCillo, 2009
Films:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Directed by Terry Gilliam, 1998