Night People at Amoeba Music

Just recently heard that you can find Night People stocked at Amoeba Music on Sunset Boulevard. The iconic music and record store is located between Ivar and Cahuenga in Hollywood. It’s a fantastic place and not far from many other places on Sunset Boulevard where the story takes place: the Hullabaloo Afterhours, where we played with many of the most popular acts of the early 1960s; Gazzari’s Nightclub; where I had a crisis of faith about our music, just one week before we opened at Caesars Palace; the Sunset Las Brea Travelodge where it crosses Sunset – we had to sneak most of the guys in Stark Naked and the Car Thieves in at night we were so broke, the Red Velvet club where we switched clubs with Ike and Tina Turner so we would be close to the studio, and Producer’s Workshop where we recorded most of our records.

Quick reminder, the concluding volume of Things We Lost in the Night, Enchanted, Book 2, will be available for early review soon. Sign up for the mail list if you’d like your review copy. Also not from Gower Street, where City Recorders, my recording studio used to be.

Free Night People Kindle edition

DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE to get a Free Kindle eBook of Night People!

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WHAT READERS ARE SAYING

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

NP 61 Star ReviewsOne of the best biographies written by a musician!
A Riveting, Mythic, Rock and Roll Memoir
Wonderful! Excellent Read!
Thoroughly Entertaining.
A Great Read
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!
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
Great Look At An Era
Meant to be savored
Engrossing
Rock and roll band life
Brilliantly crafted
Passion for music
Car Thieves take me away!

NIGHT PEOPLE – ON SALE NOW thru JULY 23 – $2.99

Book Cover for 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

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

ON SALE NOW for the next week – July 16 thru July 23 for $.299!

GET YOUR COPY NOW!

 

The Girl Who Named 3 Dog Night – June Fairchild

June_Fairchild-gazarri_dancers.com

June Fairchild (Wilson) 1971

Larry J Dunlap – https://larryjdunlap.com/ljd-blog/

I never met June Fairchild, though I first heard about her in 1968, and even then I didn’t know her name. Her given name was June Wilson and she was born in Manhattan Beach, California. Like many of the young beautiful girls of the 60s, she wanted to be a movie star. During the years she was with Danny Hutton of “Roses and Rainbows” fame , she took the fateful step of joining the Screen Actors Guild, discovering that someone had already taken that name. Danny, apparently suggested Fairchild for her stagename and that was accepted. June is famous for naming as well. When she read in a National Geographic that Australian Aborigines defined how cold nights were in the Outback by how many dogs you needed to sleep with to keep warm enough to survive she told Danny that’s what he should name his new band. If it was really cold, it was a three-dog night. It stuck and Three Dog Night when on to a memorable career.

It appeared that June would go on to a memorable career too, as she worked in several movies and danced on Hollywood A’ Go Go TV show with a troupe called the Gazzari Dancers,  though they have no official connection to the Gazzari’s night club where we and many, many other 60s band played. Somehow, in someway, in a haze of drugs and alcohol, she fell through the cracks. The Manhattan Beach prom queen, famous go-go dancer, actress with a brilliant life and future fell all the way down to a skid row cardboard box in downtown Los Angeles. The mean, mean streets of rape and beatings.

Floyd Sneed, pictured here with June last September, was who told several of the guys in our band that some people had come in to see us, as we sat around a table at the

Floyd Sneed with June Fairchild

Floyd Sneed with June Fairchild

Rag Doll night club in North Hollywood in 1968. But they’d missed us, it was our night off. Floyd had been playing our off-nights with an excellent little trio called “Heat Wave,” and we’d become friendly. Especially with our drummer Leonard. One night Leonard asked Floyd, who held his sticks like hammers, about his unusual style and Floyd said, “African Lighting, baby, African Lightning.” He explained that even when the people who came to see us discovered we weren’t playing that night, they stayed anyway and then asked him if he’d like to audition for this new super group they were forming. “Three lead singers,” he’d said. “I told you guys I wanted to play in a group like yours, and look what happened?” I can’t remember for certain but I’m pretty certain it was Reb Foster, one of Three Dog’s managers, and Danny Hutton.

When one of us asked what the name of this hot new super group was, he said Three Dog Night, Leonard, puzzled, wanted to know what that meant. Floyd shrugged. “I dunno. Danny’s girlfriend read something about how many dogs you gotta sleep with on a really cold night, but,” Floyd grinned, and leaned back in his chair. “How can guys in a band called Stark Naked and the Car Thieves question anyone else’s wacky name?”

June died of liver cancer last Tuesday, at the age of 68 in a convalescent home. http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-june-fairchild-20150219-story.html Two of her high school girlfriends rescued her several years earlier from the streets to get her to come to a reunion. Though life was difficult her living on social security disability she remained living in small downtown hotels doing her best. It may not be the newest story of the high-flying 60s, of the time and place, but it reminds me of the pitfalls and dangers my friends and I saw take down so many. There’s a donation site for June at http://www.gofundme.com/JuneFairchild I’m going to go donate to it in our group’s name. For June, and for many others who burned so bright and fell so far in those days of music and love.

“Pleasure” Atlantic City 1967

http://www.atlanticcityweekly.com/
The Pleasure Of Your Company/Maria, Love and Music“I remember my mother watching your show when I was a child. Those songs are still in my head as an adult. I would like to know who sings “I’d Like to Have the Pleasure of Your Company” and what year was it released? Thank you — Veronica, via Facebook
”

“The group was called S.N. and the CT’s (Stark Naked and the Car Thieves). Basically it was a studio group that put it together on a little independent label called Sunburst. Didn’t do anything much nationally, but locally a great hit and can be found on the Geator’s For Dancers Only CD, volume 2. Great cha-cha record. The year was 1968.”

 

Trackback: http://www.atlanticcityweekly.com/news-and-views/ask-the-geator/Marvin-at-Midnight-132630228.html

MEETING A MONSTER and LIBERACE’S TAILOR

Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, Rag Doll, 1968

Stark Naked and the Car Thieves – Rag Doll/John Lieu designed suits

By 1968, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves’ home base in LA was the Rag Doll at Lankershim and Victory in the San Fernando Valley. The club owner, Tony Ferra, promised the band a week’s paid vacation for helping his nightclub become the most successful night spot in the Valley and among the most successful in LA. It was going to work out perfectly for Mickey, our bass player’s plans for deer hunting season. Unfortunately, when we got there late in the year, it was the LAST DOLL. Tony had sold the Rag Doll to Eddie Nash, owner of the Seven Seas on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Most people who read the book won’t know who Eddie Nash was, and I don’t explain because at the time, I didn’t realize who Eddie Nash was either.

(For several decades, Adel Nasrallah [Eddie Nash] was the wealthiest and most dangerous drug dealer/gangster operating on the West Coast.
– Allan MacDonell: In Too Deep. LA Weekly, 2 October 2003)

CLICK HERE TO READ A SIX PAGE EXCERPT
(from Chapter 36, THE CAT, THE COS, AND THE FAMILY STONE of Look Back In Love, tales of A Naked Car Thief)  Hope you enjoy it.

 

ALSO INCLUDED IN EXCERPT:
Following our last engagement at the Rag Doll, Seymour Heller, who managed Liberace, was gradually assuming our personal management from Jimmy O’Neill. He’d used his influence to get us a cherry, long term engagement headlining the Flamingo Hotel’s new Skyroom. It was a combination dance and show room, overlooking the Las Vegas Strip at Las Vegas Boulevard at Flamingo Boulevard, the most important crossroads in town. He wanted us to look great and he knew how to make that happen. He arranged for Liberace’s tailor, John Lieu, to help us design new suits (Burgundy ones pictured above). I thought you might like to read about how that fitting went as well.

EXTRAS:

Some other mentions of Eddie Nash:

• The character Rahad Jackson (played by Alfred Molina) in the 1997 movie Boogie Nights is loosely based on Eddie Nash.

• The 2003 movie Wonderland, in which Eric Bogosian played Nash, revolves around the Wonderland murders.

There are many more details about Eddie Nash, born Adel Gharib Nasrallah in Palestine, at his own Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Nash. Included here are the surprising number of well-known night clubs he owned in the LA area.