The first book from THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT, a memoir of love and music, has been sent for final editing. Wish I could tell you more but I’m about half-dead from fighting through the flue to get it done. So more later.
Catherine Rideout was a community manager for Imperial Wars back when we were entertaining the masses by giving them an online space empire of their own. She’s had her share of bad breaks, disabled with a severe spine condition that leaves her in pain 24/7, but thought she’d found a home in Scotland. It hasn’t turned out so well. If you can spare a farthing or two, please help her to return to her home in Canada with her rescue animals. Note the page shows English pounds, so don’t forget to adjust for US Dollars.
Even if you can’t help, consider sharing so others can have a chance to do a mitzvah, a good deed.
John Walker Ross – BroadwayWorld.com
“More than any other American city–even New York–Los Angeles occupies a psychic space as well as a geographic one. More than any other decade “the sixties” represents a state of mind as much as a series of dates in history.
As someone who grew up discovering the sixties in the seventies and has visited Los Angeles exactly once (and that in the nineties), I can’t speak with much personal experience about either the city or the decade that fascinate me beyond reason. The most I’ve been able to do regarding either is, well, read about them.
That has amounted to a lot of reading–both fiction and nonfiction–much of it deeply rewarding and/or disturbing.
John Kaye’s 2002 novel, The Dead Circus (the title is from a barely mentioned underground newspaper which I took to be fictional, but one of the many strengths here is a wealth of details that blur the line between what was and what ought to have been), brings a new dimension–one I didn’t suspect could be caught between the covers of a book until now…”
Read the rest here – THE DEAD CIRCUS
When I first began the process of actually writing a full-length book about my adventures with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT, I wasn’t sure what form it would take. However, it soon became obvious it would have to be memoir, and that made it personal. I hadn’t read many memoirs I liked but I decided I needed to find some that could help me model the way I should express myself. The first, and most important, influence on my writing was Cheryl Strayed’s WILD, and with good reason. Her unflinching and matter-of-fact sense of writing about her life inspired me. I have several wonderful influencers now but Cheryl Strayed’s story is first, and how I got started. Here’s the trailer to the movie from the book starring Reese Witherspoon. I’ll be in line to see it when it’s released.
Things We Lost in the Night, a memoir of love and music, Part Three of Five, final draft is finished, and available to beta readers. If you aren’t a beta reader and wanted to be, just let me know. Parts One and Two are available now. One slight caveat, I still have a couple of people helping me edit the Hawaiian English Pidgin in some of the chapters, so that will change as I get back edits from them. In the meantime – Aloha.
http://www.atlanticcityweekly.com/
“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
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“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
DON”T MISS IT. Tonight The Sixties on CNN, 9 pm (EST), 6 pm (PDT), plus there are usually several re-runs. Covers the war from its beginnings through 1968. The face of war changed forever with this escalation. Combined with the pictures that brought the brutality of the war to the home front, a new sense of power and disenfranchisement from the country’s youth, and the hangover from the loss of a young and popular president, the support for this war faded as the commitment to it by the government went up. Up until this war, as Bill Murray exhorts his army buddies it in Stripes, “We’re 10 and 1!”
For me, it was trying to find a way to stay with my band when the army was bound and determined to induct me. I had no political viewpoint in the beginning, and to the degree I did, I tended to trust the government implicitly then. That all began to change when it started to impact my life and I had to figure things out.
My most personal experience was when Stark Naked and the Car Thieves performed for a couple of months at a nightclub in Honolulu in April of 1968, as the buildup of American forces followed the Tet Offensive during the height of the Vietnam War. 80% of the guys in the club were either on R&R coming from the war or going home. The emotional power of the songs we played to remind these warriors of home, girlfriends and wives, high school, families, and buddies, some of them lost by their side, came through to all of us there. As the messengers through our music we became instant friends, somehow passed into the intimacy of one solder to another, and it was all we could do to hold onto our own feelings sometimes. We heard many stories from the battlefield, reminisces from home and witnessed soldiers at the outer limits of their ability to endure. But as humans do, they found humor and understanding and love in their experiences. While they thought we were enriching their lives, it was they who were enriching ours.
Over the last few years I have received a surprising number of messages from soldiers who saw us at the Lemon Tree on the beach in Waikiki. To a man they remember us for the music and how it helped connect them to the things most important to them. God love them all.
Here’s a little quiz about the 60s you might enjoy – What 60s personality are you?
Larry J Dunlap, Things We Lost in the Night, a memoir of love and rock n roll music
My friends in Indianapolis tell me that there are all kinds of locations in Indianapolis in the book. It would be like visiting back there. All the kids like the book, they’ve given it a call sign, TFiOS, which must mean something. Many of the young readers say it has replaced Hunger Games in their affections, so that’s a positive. Well okay then, I’ll read the book, John Green, because it looks like you’re a fabulous writer, and I’d like to visit home. But that doesn’t mean I’m seeing the movie. I don’t cry in public.
The Reflections / Illusions ’63 & ’64
For those of you who’ve been following along, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves began as an acappella vocal group back in Indianapolis. We called ourselves the Reflections when our very first recording was released in late 1963 on WLS radio in Chicago. Unexpectedly, our uptempo version of In The Still of the Night hit the Chicago charts in early 1964 at the same time the Beatles did with I Want to Hold Your Hand. If you can read the chart below you’ll see we arrived at #17 while the Beatles languished at #40. Our producer screwed up and lost or accidentally destroyed the master of In The Still of The Night so even though we got great airplay and were about to break out nationally, when the charts came out two weeks later, our record had fallen off into oblivion while the Beatles were on their way to number one.
WLS Chart Jan 17, 1964
What you don’t know is, and that’s because even I’ve never heard or seen a copy of the record since we recorded it 50 years ago, our producer rushed us into the studio to get another record out to try to take advantage of the tremendous interest in the Reflections up in the Windy City. Since we sounded a lot like the Four Seasons, he found a song by Larry Huff, who’d co-written Easier Said Than Done for the Essex, called In the Beginning. We tried to adapt to sound like it was from the original Jersey Boys right in the studio, recording literally overnight. By the time it was pressed, the Reflections who recorded (Just Like) Romeo and Juliet) had hit with their song, and our name and all the good will we’d built up with the previous record was lost. He had to decide on the spot what we would be called so he decided we were the Illusions. But the record failed and soon the Indy Sound no longer existed.
Today, doing some research for Things We Lost in the Night, I ran across our recording on YouTube. I can’t tell you how amazed and pleased I was. Made me glad I got up this morning. It’s the weirdest thing though, strangers have put almost all our records up on YouTube. I’m hoping the person who posted this knows where I can buy a copy of the original record.
OPEN HOUSE AT LARRYJDUNLAP.COM
Probably as good a time as any to invite you to the Open House at my new website! I’m halfway through my final draft and scheduled some time to get my site in order. Among other features, is a list of thirteen songs we recorded and that are an important part of Things We Lost in the Night. They’re listed in chronological order (excepting this one of course), and make something of a musical history of the band under its various names. It’s on the THINGS WE LOST page in the Songs from TWL tab here on this site. There’s also a First Chapter sample from the book and two audio excerpts as well as short blurbs from the book. Come one, come all! Look around. Log in , say hi. Let me know what you think.
Thanks – Larry
Hey Everybody!
Don’t forget to catch the first episode of The SIXTIES tonight on CNN. Shouldn’t be hard. It’s running several times over the evening. It was one of the most transformative decades of the past century. I’ll have mixed feelings looking back on it all.
Stark Naked and the Car Thieves 1968 Nehru jackets
And please keep your eye out for Things We Lost in the Night, a memoir of love and rock n roll music set in the late sixties and coming soon in 2014. You had to be there to believe it, or at least have read the book.
All the best – Larry