As I approach the middle portion of my time in Los Angeles, I reflect on how quickly my trip has gone by. It feels like just yesterday I arrived, eager to explore the environment as well as the literature that I picked to read while I am here. It’s such a difficult city to explore, due to the decentralized nature of the city itself. While this aspect makes being a tourist/newcomer to the city, it has also greatly benefited the city. In Kenneth H. Marcus’s book, Musical Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Creation of a Music Culture, he brings up a point that one of the keys of the creation of Los Angeles’s music culture was the decentralization of the city, which occurred between 1880 and 1940. While Los Angeles has a vast metropolitan area, it extends much further, into what is known as Los Angeles county, spanning a whopping 4,083 square miles (larger than Connecticut). When two intercontinental rail lines were built in the early 19th century, the urbanization of Los Angeles began, and real estate boomed. In 1880, there was a population of 11,000 people, while a decade later there were over 50,000. As of 2000, there is around 16.37 million people that reside in the greater Los Angeles area. The dispersion of power in Los Angeles occurred not by accident; the Charter of 1889 provided citizens more power over their locales, attempting to avoid the giant endemic corruption that existed in cities such as New York and Chicago. This balancing of power into the outer cities of Los Angeles transformed Los Angeles into not just a collection of suburbs, but “a city surrounded by many satellite sub-center cities and communities” (Marcus, 3). Unlike other major cities in the United States, Los Angeles did not have all of it’s culture focused into one downtown sector. This allowed for a greater diversification of music scenes, and created different musical communities as well. And with all of the immigrants moving into the city from different parts of the world, the diversity of sounds was overflowing.

This development of the city as a spread out collection of cities was made possible by the technology of the time. In fact, Los Angeles was the first modern metropolis to be built around the idea of the car. The car culture in Los Angeles allowed people to not only live far away from each other, but they could also travel across the city, allowing musical communities to intersect. The car culture in L.A. boomed in the 40’s and 50’s, and became much a part of the music scene as well. A blossoming genre at the time was ‘sunshine pop’, lead by artists such as The Beach Boys, Gary Usher, Jakc Nitzche, Jan and Dan, The Pyramids, etc. These artists painted an image of L.A. that had been at the base of the city for far beyond their times. It displayed a mythical land of sun, surfing and women, with a tinge of innocence within. The car was an object of fun, where one rode down the ‘drag’ to be noticed by walking passer-bys (much like what people do on 4th avenue in downtown Olympia still) as well as it being viewed as an object of leisure and relaxation. While this view of the city was predominately held by the white, upper-class population of the city, it became world famous, and represented the city to the rest of the country and the world. Cars not only moved through the city, but they became an integral part in the identity and image of the city.

Walking down Venture Blvd, I can see that the car culture is still heavily dominant here. As one of the few actually walking down the sidewalk, a feeling of alienation kicks in. While the restaurants and shops are lit up and filled with people, the sidewalks are empty. But the way that the city is designed, this in inevitable. If you want to get around beyond your satellite community, you need to have a vehicle.But even then, parking is an even bigger issue. On many of the side streets, one has to have a permit to park, and the only places that I have found in the area for parking have ranged in the $20-30 area. Thus, I have begun to utilize the public transportation systems.

On Friday night, I went to The Roxy on the Sunset Strip, where I was Panda Bear and Ducktails.

(above is the album that he is touring on, entitled Panda Bear Versus The Grim Reaper)

The show was phenomenal. Panda Bear played fevered, textured pop music, with many vocal overlays and harmonies. His style reminds me of The Beach Boys; progressive pop structure, vocal arrangements, and vocal tone-wise. The crowd was very active, and the night was filled with dancing and a feeling of happiness and content. Ducktails also gave the same vibe. A California native, I could begin to see how the concept of ‘sunshine pop’ still remains While more driving and formulaic, the music was light, beachy, and happy. While at times the lyrics became depressing in both sets, the overall vibe of the sound was positive. The lyrical content had a similar focus as well; an idyllic view of life in the sunshine, where bad things can happen, but the sun continues to shine.