NIGHT PEOPLE, Book 1 – Things We Lost in the Night: A Memoir of Love and Music in the 60s with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves Kindle Edition

by Larry J Dunlap (Author)
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IN THIS FAST-MOVING ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE-FILLED MEMOIR THAT READS LIKE A NOVEL, A young Midwestern singer and his vocalist friends experience the transformative power of love, loss, and music in a chaotic West Coast adventure in the1960s. If you liked memoirs from Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson, Carly Simon, Keith Richards, and Patti Smith, you’re sure to enjoy Night People.

“I didn’t want to believe how much you’ve changed, but you’re a different person here. You live at night here, your friends are night people and you’re becoming one, too. You hardly see daylight on weekends. Here it is, nearly dusk, and you’re leaving to play music all night again to entertain your new friends–your new girlfriend–all the new people in your new life.”

In 1965, Larry’s rock and roll vocal group is disintegrating along with his marriage to his high school sweetheart. Despite his resolution to turn his life around in Indianapolis, he finds himself reunited with his scattered-to-the-winds friends in distant San Francisco struggling to re-make themselves into a rock band in the dive clubs of the Bay Area.

Barely surviving the transformation, they struggle to avoid the dangers,temptations, and insecurities waiting to trip them up in their new life. As the band scrambles to overcome, or at least endure, every obstacle in its path, Larry faces a painful choice that will result in loss fort hose he loves no matter how he decides.

Their strong voices and new skills are a potent combination. Soon, Larry and his new band are plunged into a breathtaking journey through mob-run nightclubs, Las Vegas showrooms and backrooms, famous Hollywood night spots, top West Coast recording studios, celebrity managers–and passionate romance.Everything they’ve ever dreamed of is just around the next corner.

Night People’s adventure is set against the backdrop of the West Coast in the mid-60s: a historic era of tectonic cultural, political, musical, and sexual upheaval–and the draft. Everything Larry thought he knew about life, love, and himself is challenged in the tumultuous nights where things and people are too easily found and lost.

PRAISE FOR NIGHT PEOPLE

“Dunlap’s sense of transcendence is similar to the sensation Keith Richards describes in his memoir, ‘Life: ‘ …you leave the planet for a while…‘ Reliving his rock and roll years in his wonderful memoir, NIGHT PEOPLE,’ Larry Dunlap, must have left the planet for a while, too.” I loved it, and highly recommend it. — Kiana Davenport, The Spy Lover, Shark Dialogues

“Whether or not you remember the swift intoxicating music of that era or theseismic shift of mores that burst from the free-love movement, [NIGHT PEOPLE] captures the beat of that misty time when the country suffered “agrowing thirst for individual freedom, a desire to escape from anever-darkening shadow of war, and a national hangover following thepublic murder of a young and popular president.” — C.D. Quyn, Steph Rodriguez, Manhattan Book Review

“Larry Dunlap lived it. His memoir ‘NIGHT PEOPLE’ is a frank, funny, frenzied chronicle of the 60’s West Coast music scene.” — Susan Shapiro, New York Times bestselling memoirist, FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART, GOOD AS YOUR WORD, OVEREXPOSED

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING

One of the best biographies written by a musician!
A Riveting, Mythic, Rock and Roll Memoir
Wonderful! Excellent Read!
Thoroughly Entertaining.
A Great Read
The Naked Truth!
A Window Into a Fascinating Era
Rock and Roll, baby!
A Must Read
A Great Read About An Exciting Life
Music Has Found Me Again
SO Worth Reading!
Night People Left Me Weak!
My Life Seemed Extremely Boring After Finishing “Night People”
Lessons of Life, Love, and Sex in the 60s
Genuine, Exciting, Graphic and Memorable – life in the 60’s
Fantastic Coming of Age Memoir!
Compelling!
Music Reality!
Great Look At An Era
Couldn’t Stop Reading!

Debbie Reynolds – So Full Of Life and Spontaneous Generosity

Debbie Reynolds & Harry Karl, Caesars Palace, Nero's Nook, Jan 1967I didn’t get to meet Debbie Reynolds the night she and her husband came to see us. My mistake, though our lead singer, Dave, had the honor. It happened on one of the most remarkable nights in our career as entertainers and musicians. We’d been hired by Caesars Palace in late December of 1966 to help open the re-imagined Nero’s Nook Lounge nestled next to the new hotel’s casino. It was a gorgeous showroom and the hottest ticket in town. I hadn’t realized when I’d signed the contract that we’d be limited to singing ballads and mellow pop songs, like the Letterman. Another restriction in our contract forced us to appear as The Big Spenders instead of Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, another difficult pill to accept.

We decided we couldn’t live with the constraints being placed on our performances any longer. The Saturday night we decided to break out and play our best material whether pop, rock, or rhythm and blues regardless of the consequences just happened to coincide with a night full of stars from movies and television, international personalities, and hotel headliners from all up and down the Strip. Behind the curtain, we stood nervous but excited. We couldn’t be sure the audience wouldn’t hate us, or the entertainment manager wouldn’t close the curtain in the middle of the show. We risked losing our new 3-year contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (and in the end it did), but together, we’d made the final decision to be true to our nature in the dressing room before coming to the stage, so here we were.

We opened with an Otis Redding tune, “Can’ Turn You Loose,” if I remember correctly and moved through our version of Bobby Hatfield’s “Unchained Melody.” It was probably Sam and Dave after that, and we mixed in “The Way You Look Tonight,” Letterman style, and on through the set list until we came to our closer. The audience response had been more than we could’ve hoped for so far. We’d worked long hours to perfect the Four Seasons “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and I don’t think the Seasons could’ve done it any more justice that we did that night. But the topper of the entire show came as we started into the song’s dramatic ending. I’ve excerpted the following from Night People since I can’t tell it any better …

“I tried to make out the figure moving below us through the blinding lights, until . . . wait—holy crap! That’s Debbie Reynolds down there pulling on Dave’s leg!

“Sing it, baby, sing it!” she yelled. A broad, encouraging grin spread across her face as he stood braced, high above her, to hit the high full voice note near the end of I’ve Got You Under My Skin. When we peeked through the curtain earlier, we’d seen Debbie Reynolds seated at an aisle table a few rows from the stage with her husband.

As Dave’s ringing tenor swept high, and then higher, into a dramatic falsetto run, she’d stretched on tiptoe to grasp the only part of him she could reach, his left pants leg just above a white patent leather boot. Laughing with joyful spontaneity, she shook it back and forth, like a dog with a sock puppet.

Dave had to be as astounded as the rest of us, but he closed his eyes, pushed his mic farther up and out, and leaned back to let those golden pipes of his rip.

“I’ve got you . . .” Dave crooned a cappella, working into the final phrasing of the song with the movie star still hanging onto his pants leg, staring at him with a wide smile. I stole a glance at Mac, his eyes wide as beacons. I knew mine were just as big as we joined our voices with Les and Craig in building the ending harmony.

“Never win, never win . . .” The lounge erupted, peppering another standing ovation with yells and excited shouts that crackled over thundering applause. More people rushed to the front of the stage as we hit the big finish and took our bows while the frenzied uproar mounted to a pounding pressure.

I looked left toward the rest of the band, trying to take us in. Jackets from our dark suits lay rumpled around us. Purple-and-white polka-dotted ties hung loose or strewn across the stage or amps. Burgundy cuff links on our custom tailored white-on-white dress shirts sparkled in the brilliant light. Leonard was sopping wet behind the drums, his dress shirt translucent.”

Debbie Reynolds put the icing on the cake for us that night. Her spontaneous encouragement and appreciation, more than anything else, endorsed our decision to let loose and show ourselves for who we really were. After the show, there was a note inviting Dave and the rest of us to her table. Dave beamed as he went out to meet her. Me? I’d chosen to go to Sammy Davis, Jr. who had also sent us a note. I’d recently read his autobiography, “Yes I Can” and wanted desperately to meet him, and that was a great privilege. But I sacrificed meeting one of the most amazing superstars ever to grace show business. Someone so full of life and so willing to share it, she’d rushed to the stage in front of everyone to express her excitement. To me, it’s not just another Las Vegas anecdote, it’s a moment of generosity I’ll never forget. I’m sure I’m giving voice to all of us on the stage that night when I send a wish from us that she rest in peace knowing that ours were among the thousands and thousands of lives she touched.

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Night People Hits 4 AMAZON BESTSELLER LISTS!

(From Pronoun Book Tracking)

Congratulations!

Mac, Les, Larry, and Dave

Mac, Les, Larry, and Dave

NIGHT PEOPLE, just landed on an Amazon bestseller list.
Your book is now on four Top 100 lists
(and counting!)

*New!*

#60 … > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture

Your other bestseller lists:

#3 in … > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Pop
 
#36 in … > Music > Musical Genres > Popular
 
#37 in … > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > Music

NIGHT PEOPLE – On Sale For One More Day at $3.99 – Get Your Copy Now.

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Writing About Miracles

maxresdefaultThe recent deaths of two important people in my life as covered in, Things We Lost in The Night, have caused me to continue examining how I conceive the Universe. The Introduction of Night People is a single paragraph about the uncertainty of the thin veil between life, and not-life titled Change. I included it because a specific theme of Night People is change. The Introduction in book 2, Enchanted, is a bit more of how I see the nature of our existence as I write about it. It’s here to remind me of the hypocrisy of being human in general, specifically as an author, in how I refer to miraculous or supernatural events in my writings. This is a second draft version of it — I can’t guarantee it won’t get altered a little before publishing.

Are FREE WILL and PREDESTINATION
mutually exclusive?

“If you can accept that we exist in a universe, or more accurately, a multiverse gigantic beyond comprehension, exclusively containing sparsely scattered objects made of matter or energy, that are subject to unyielding laws and rules embedded in its fabric, then it should be easy to allow that Predestination is the natural way of reality.
 
Our bodies, constructed of matter and energy also include our brains, likewise subject to these rules. The wonder of this incredible organ, this brain of ours, is that it is somehow able to host a mind, an entity that it is NOT composed of matter or energy. This remarkable awareness is able to receive physical signals relayed through our brain from our five senses to fabricate a model of the multiverse we can comprehend. For the most part, all of this is already accepted physics and the science of the brain though no one can explain the method of how the brain’s mind-hosting takes place.
 
The mind is the control mechanism of our surroundings, through it, we can direct our bodies to Change, within certain limits, the natural Predestination of the multiverse. Though these actions cannot contradict natural regulation, the results can be profound. The fundamental order of the multiverse may decree that a rock will fall from a cliff by force of gravity over time, but a human mind can move it’s host body to avoid being crushed if it happens to be beneath it. This is evidence that sentience can exercise Free Will (and proof of its existence), subject to the unalterable physical rules of the multiverse.
 
This demonstrates to me why there really aren’t any miracles, only events we cannot understand. However, I’m willing to use this label in a literary sense for incidents I can’t explain, so when I refer to miraculous or supernatural events in my writing, you’ll understand why.”

 

On the Passing of the Jefferson Airplane

74 seems to be a fatal number. So many greats falling by the wayside at this milepost. Since it’s my number, can’t help but wonder, but I don’t think it’s my time yet. I’ve still got things to say … Read this fascinating article about Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson, Airplane’s first girl vocalist. She was 74, too

It was sad enough that Jefferson Airplane founding member Paul Kantner, the keeper of the famed San Francisco band’s flame throughout its turbulent half-century, died last week, from heart failure. A deeper melancholy set in with news of the death the same day of the Airplane’s first female vocalist, Signe Toly Anderson, from cancer. Both were 74.

Source: On the Passing of the Jefferson Airplane

Complete Guide to the 2016 Candidates’ Favorite Music | Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone reached out to all the major candidates, conducting new interviews, examining rally playlists and digging deep into their musical history to find out. Some of what we discovered was predictable (Ted Cruz claims he “didn’t like how rock music responded” to the 9/11 attacks and turned to country), and some of it was surprising (Mike Huckabee will talk your ear off about Grand Funk Railroad).

From Hillary Clinton and Selena Gomez to Marco Rubio and N.W.A, here are the candidates’ favorite musicians

Source: Complete Guide to the 2016 Candidates’ Favorite Music | Rolling Stone

THANK YOU SUE SHAPIRO

From Susan Shapiro –

Sue Shapiro, NYC

“Do you watch Dennis Leary’s new FX show ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’ about a crazy old time rock-in-roller? Well, Larry Dunlap lived it. His memoir ‘Night People’ is a frank, funny, frenzied chronicle of the 60’s music scene.” – Susan Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed memoirs Lighting Up, Only as Good as Your Word and Five Men Who Broke My Heart.

I’ll be going in to Santa Monica next Tuesday night to see Sue read from her new book “WHAT’S NEVER SAID.”:

L.A. READING OF “WHAT’S NEVER SAID”
with ASPEN MATIS (“Girl In The Woods”)
& ALISON SINGH GEE (“Where The Peacocks Sing”)
Santa Monica Barnes & Noble
1203 3rd Street, 3rd Street Promenade
Tuesday September 15 from 7-8 pm

It’s free & open to the public so join us if you can

I’m afraid I’d disappoint a lot of people who really watch S&D & R&R TV show on FX ( I watch it avidly) since we were never as crazy and weird as Johnny Rock and the Heathens. Btw, if you haven’t see it yet, it’s a hoot, and every once in a while I see something I can relate to, especially when they are all visiting a psychiatrist together…

Keith Richards: Beatles’ Sgt Pepper was rubbish

Here in the United States in the middle sixties, there was always a friendly competition between East Coast and West Coast bands, personified by the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons. And though there became a creative competition between the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the long and winding visceral rivalry for the Beatles has always been the Rolling Stones. Especially as they put their own opposing brands onto rock and roll stardom as they entered the Seventies. You always had to choose if you were a Beatles fan or a Stones fan. Though I didn’t care for the Beatles originally, as I mentioned in Night People, I did come to appreciate them, and to be astonished, let alone highly influenced, by “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” as you’ll read about it in Enchanted, should you chose to read it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/06/keith-richards-the-beatles-sergeant-pepper-rubbish-album_n_7946520.html - Rolling Stones' Keith Richards Slams The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper Album - 'A Mishmash Of Rubbish'

Beatles Cosplay for Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, genius album

I didn’t care much for the Stones when I first heard them either, and even now I only grudgingly appreciate some of their classic songs like “Symphony for the Devil” and “Gimme Shelter.” Especially since I had to sing several Stones songs, all of them non-melodic, like “Get Off Of My Cloud” and “Satisfaction.” However Keith Richards has now officially hit my idiot list with his criticism of the Sergeant Pepper album. In a recent interview for Esquire Magazine, without provocation Keith volunteered:

Keith Richards from Esquire Magazine article: http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/interviews/a36899/keith-richards-interview-0915/

Keith Richards, open mouth, insert guitar – Esquire Magazine 6/30

“The Beatles sounded great when they were the Beatles. But there’s not a lot of roots in that music. I think they got carried away. Why not? If you’re the Beatles in the ’60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper. Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties—”Oh, if you can make a load of shit, so can we.”

What? Are you kidding me? Read more about weird Keith in this Huntington Post UK article.

Summer of Love

The History of San Francisco Music in the ’60s and its Influence Today

A look back at the festivals of the ’60s whose influence can still be felt in the music and festivals of today. Source: Summer of Love: The History of San Francisco Music in the ’60s and its Influence Today

 

A look back at the festivals of the ’60s whose influence can still be felt in the music and festivals of today.

The year was 1967 and the place was San Francisco. It was the Summer of Love; a season of creative expression, free society, cultural revolution and arguably the beginning of what we now enjoy as modern music festivals.

I hit the road for Outside Lands this week and I can’t help but reflect (or slightly obsess) over the rich musical history that once graced the Bay Area. It was a time like no other — it was pure, quick-moving, and psychedelic — the Summer of Love irreversibly changed our culture forever. I grew up in Northern California, an hour outside of San Francisco, with my dad’s vinyl collection on continual rotation. The likes of David Crosby, the Doors, and the Who were constant companions of mine and I was captivated by an early age. I was in. But, alas, two decades too late… so this year I wanted to make a point to research this beautiful history and experience “today’s” San Francisco music festival with this knowledge in my back pocket. To feel the energy of the past, to respect the history and the people who pushed an artistic and creative generation forward.

Aug 04, 2015

 Posted by

Lest we forget. I remember too, Joanna. The first third of NIGHT PEOPLE takes place in 1965 and 66 in the music and nightlife of San Francisco. A fantastic time, though not all just good-time music festivals. And there were powerful musical stories taking place outside of Golden Gate Park, as well.

 Posted by Larry J.

Night People review – Readers’ Favorite

This is a review of NIGHT PEOPLE, Book 1 – Things We Lost in the Night, A Memoir of Love and Music in the 60s with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves from Readers’ Review. Thank you, Mamta!

Reviewed By Mamta Madhavan for Readers’ Favorite

Things We Lost in the Night: A Memoir of Love and Music in the 60s with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves by Larry J. Dunlap is an honest memoir in which the author has carefully depicted his years as a young and struggling musician, along with his friends as they strive for fame and fortune. The book also captures the essence of the 1960s when there was a cultural and musical shift. Their transformation from a small band to that of a famous one and their successes change Larry’s perspective on a lot of things in life. In a nutshell, the memoir exposes the 1960s, the music industry, vocal groups, R&B cover bands, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Hollywood recording studios, the nightlife, and the sexual revolution that happened during that period.

The memoir connects with readers intimately as the author shares every small detail of his life. Readers are taken into the author’s world of music, the problems they face as a band, and their struggle for survival initially. The rise of the band opens the way for many other things, and the author also speaks about the sacrifices they make on their way to the top. Many moments in the author’s life are poignantly mingled with misery, happiness, music and sex. I found the book interesting as it speaks about music, the band, recordings and many other things related with music. The challenges the author faces in his life and his love life and other casualties make this memoir a very exciting read.