1981

I believe the term was dubbing that guys in L.A. used to describe how people would edit popular songs, and extend them longer than the original recording. I don't remember which songs got such treatment, just a vague recollection of a friend mentioning the process. The year was 1981: I was twelve years old, in a new city, and just happy to experience some level of normal child life. My Mom moved us out to Los Angeles with no real plan for how she would establish a life for us, and we spent a month, maybe two living with no home. I am the youngest of my mother’s four children. I had a sister who was murdered before I was born, and from what I was told, the killer was never caught. My Mother’s life slowly unraveled.

No one, especially a child should experience walking through a neighborhood, looking into homes, but you have no place to call home; a television going in the living room, the glare of light on the outside, and you're walking by wondering what it's like to live inside that place. Homes off Sunset Blvd always looked the coziest from the outside. Sunset Boulevard itself was endless street lights, neon signs, creepy night crawlers, and the occasional family coming from dinner a little late but obviously on their way home to someplace warm and safe. Frederick Phillips is a contemporary artist. In Chicago, his work was sold exclusively at a chain of stores called Atlas Galleries. Some of his work consisted of women walking alone down an affluent empty street, day or night.  These pieces, from the viewer's vantage point behind her, giving the onlooker a stalking feel, but it would put me in the mind of the times in my childhood life when my Mother and I had no place to call home.  We lived in on particular motel from time to time called the Sun-Rey Lodge, on Sunset Blvd, down the street from Western Avenue, where Zody's, the discount store was located which was across the street from a strip mall that housed a Carl's Jr, Alpha Beta Grocery, and Musicland. Directly behind Zody's was the film processing company, Color by Deluxe where Star Trek, the Lucile Ball Show, and most Hollywood motion pictures.

 Across the street from Zody's stood a white building with a large mirrored glass window. If you pierced inside with your hands, you could see inside the place, inside housed a design firm with album covers on one large wall, all created inside I'd imagine. Of all the covers I saw, one stood out to me, it was the cover of a Beatles compilation album titled; Rock-N-Roll Music Volume 1.  The album cover depicted the Fab Four playing, Nehru collars and all. Two thumbs were illustrated in the design, near the edges of the illustration, as if someone were holding the album besides a real person. I wanted in on that secret world, to create album covers. I would eventually obtain a design degree from Columbia College Chicago in 2007. A world away from that design firm, and Sunset Boulevard was South Central L.A. The environment with which I dwelled. I attended Normandie Avenue Elementary School. I lived with my mother in a horrible two-room apartment on 45th & Western, directly across the street from the U.S. Post Office (90062) and above a rowdy, rambling tavern. All day I would hear the baselines, and faint lyrics of the popular songs of the day: the Whispers "It's A Love Thing," Larry Graham's "One In A Million,' "Let It Go" by Teddy Pendergrass, "Call me" by Skyy, and most songs from Rick James's wildly popular "Street Songs" Album among many others. My friends lived on the residential blocks off Western Avenue, and I would walk around the corner to hang out with them. Prior to our arrival to South Central, I had almost no contact with children my age. I was mostly around my mother. Once I made friends with the neighborhood kids, we were running all around the 'hood and beyond.

L.A. was rife with gang trouble. We lived in an area the bangers called the "Rollin' 40's" which was Crip territory. The fifty-hundred blocks, and 60-hundreds were considered Blood areas. Normandie Avenue Elementary was nearby but, at some point, I would have to choose a junior high school and, depending on what school I chose, I can be in a precarious situation; Forshay Junior High was in the 30-hundreds, not far from home but far enough. John Muir was outside of the 'hood I think but, I remember being interested in Audubon Junior High. It didn't seem to be associated with a big gang presence, and it wasn't far from the Crenshaw Hills. As a boy in a new environment, I was terrified of gangs. In certain neighborhoods in L.A. there was almost always something going on, something in the air that gave you the impression that the possibility of violence was eminent. ‘Sherm’ was the drug of choice for these troubled individuals. One afternoon the principal of Normandie ordered all staff to keep students inside because someone with a shotgun was on the school grounds. It was rumored that the gunman was high on ‘sherm,’ and broke out of a pair of handcuffs after being subdued by police officers. I remember being inside the neighborhood laundromat with my sister, and above we could hear the propellers of a police chopper, a man darted inside with a head full of braids. He took off his t-shirt, undid his braids and darted back out of the place!

We spent a lot of our time in arcades, or “game rooms” in neighborhood vernacular. Mr. Lux's Game Room was on Vernon, near Western Avenue, and there was another not even a block away. I begged my mother to buy me a book that illustrated "patterns" to successfully execute the moves to complete several boards of Pac Man but, the action of the game wouldn't allow me to follow along with a book in hand so, I learned what I could from watching others. Defender, Asteroids and Centipede were all very popular. I was influenced by my new Los Angeles surroundings. No longer was it sufficient to roughhouse, and be "a kid," it was time to be "cool" and dress cool. I was fascinated by ghetto materialism: the tennis shoe of top choice in L.A. in 1981 was K-Swiss. Ralph Lauren Polo, and Izod (or LeTigre) were the shirts, Members Only Jackets and Levis Jeans. Looking "sporty" was the style: $300 tennis suits by Fila "BJ" (Bijorn Borg edition) and Ellesse-this was in 1981, when the average guy in the ‘hood was unfamiliar or indifferent towards tennis. Todd1 was the tennis suit for the average guy, along with the corduroy Neiman Marcus golf cap.

 My friends and I didn't own any of that stuff, we dug it but I saw no real way for me to own any of it. Stores, and the malls that housed the items we desired were Robinsons, with their hyper-conservative television spots that played classical music under the voice of a snooty butler fueled my imagination. The Beverly Center, Fox Hills Mall, the Polo Shop in Costa Mesa, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Not having material privileges didn't stand in my way of having fun until I became a high school teenager. Broke as we were, my mother found a way to pay for a cartooning class for me at Los Angeles Community College. I went maybe two times, squandering an opportunity to meet new kids who didn't seem to have the social, economic, and environmental challenges as I did. I went to the first class alone, I never traveled that far of a distance without my mother, or my rag-tag crew of friends. Before I became acquainted with the neighborhood kids, I spent my time drawing, and watching animated cartoon characters constantly. My mother would take me to the memorabilia shops on Hollywood Blvd. 

Once we arrived back home in Chicago (in the summer of 1982,) I became aware of music that I didn’t recall hearing on Los Angeles radio stations. Some of the songs that come to mind that I heard on Los Angeles radio stations before we left L.A. were Jeffrey Osborne’s hit “I Really Don’t Need No Light,” Patrice Rushen’s “Forget Me Nots,” “Night Crusin” by the Bar Kays, “Centerfold” & “Freeze Fame” by J. Giles Band, “Do I do,” and “Frontline” by Stevie Wonder, “Circles” by Atlantic Star “Hold Me Tighter In the Rain” by Billy Griffin and one that I was particularly fond of, “She’s My Shining Star” by the Fatback Band. I remember hearing “Don’t You Want me” by Human League, and “Situation” by Yazoo in L.A. but, in Chicago they were played on the WBMX mix shows-I never heard a mix show in L.A. “Girls Know How To” by Al Jarreau was a pop tune from the movie soundtrack “Night Shift” that mysteriously invaded my dreams one early morning, and I consider that to be a benchmark moment. I’ve always appreciated music but this was the first time a song or piece of music tapped into or defined a feeling of mine: I was a prepubescent Twelve and a Half Year Old boy! Some of the first tunes I heard upon my arrival back to Chicago were “Chance to Dance” by the Wreckin Crew, and “Share My Love” by Magnum Force-both were local acts. “So Fine” by Howard Johnson (I later found that this was a big Knuckles/Warehouse tune), “Rising to the Top” by Keni Burke, “It’s Just Your Love” & “Jump to It” by Aretha Franklin. Three songs that received little airplay in Chicago, that I liked and I would much later discover as Paradise Garage tunes were “She Can’t Love You” by Chemise, “Don’t Make Me Wait” by the NYC Peech Boys, and “Do It to the Music” by Raw Silk. For a very brief period, Chicago radio stations WBMX, and WGCI were in my opinion experimenting with a different way of programming music, as I recall hearing a particular bluesy Jimi Hendrix tune in rotation. That didn’t last long. One tune at the time stood out to me, as nothing sounded quite like it on radio, or anywhere for that matter. It was “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force. When it was played during the daytime, it was the dub, or instrumental version. The rap version would be played in the mix shows.