During a recent Spring cleaning, I found a copy of the LA Weekly, May/June 1986. I felt like an archeologist. In it were ads for Jimmy’z, Esprit, and other now-defunct clothing stores. The comic strip Life in Hell by Matt Groening. Ads for Albees, Hot Tub Fever. Ads for new films Top Gun and Poltergeist II. On the music front, ads for Billy Vera and the Beaters and Vonda Shepard @ At My Place, James Harman and Preston Smith at Club Lingerie. Coconut Teaser in Hollywood. Stephane Grappelli and Phoebe Snow at the Beverly Theatre. Tippa Irie, The Skatalites, and Pato Banton at the Music Machine. The Art of Noise at the 321 Club. Missing Persons and Modern English at the Palace. And Anita O’Day at the Vine St. Bar and Grill. Robben Ford at Hop Singh’s in Marina Del Rey. Finally, Miles Davis and Mel Torme at the upcoming Playboy Jazz Festival. There was a much bigger variety of clubs then.
Then see a Tower Records sale for the new lp, Tinderbox, by Siouxie & The Banshees. And then, later on, the Personals.
It seems like a million years ago, before cd’s, before the demise of record labels and stores, pre-computer, before the internet. So much has changed but, on a more fundamental level, has it really? We still buy music (though not records), hit the clubs, live our lives. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing for me is the death of records and record stores, along with the nostalgia and loss of so many great musical artists who are no longer with us.