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.

Death of an Aristocat

Chuck, Dave, Pat, & Larry - The Reflections 1964

Chuck, Dave, Pat, & Larry – The Reflections 1964

The doorbell on the side of our house next to the driveway rang. This doorbell, with its own higher pitched ring than the front doorbell, rang in the my bedroom in the basement, commonly referred to among my friends as the dungeon due to my insistence that it be painted battleship gray and because to get to it, you had to traverse the furnace room with it’s spooky tentacled maze of vents rising up from of the furnace’s heart to snake across overhead. In my teen years it had served as the bridge of a starship, the conning tower of a submarine, and clubhouse before becoming our rehearsal room. I went up the basement stairs and ushered in Hasty Smith and another guy who seemed to tumble down the open steps all elbows and knees. Chuck Tunnah, Hasty said, introducing him to Pat Baldwin and me, was an inch or two over six feet and kind of gawky like he hadn’t quite grown into his skeleton. He had dark hair combed back from a widow’s peak that made him look fiendish.
“Now listen you guys. Don’t start that “Charlie the Tuna” crap with me,” he said with a big grin, like the Joker’s in Batman, in reference to the Starkist Tuna cartoon spokesfish, “because I do taste great and unlike that cartoon Tuna, I have great taste. Just want to get that clear”

That was how I met Chuck Tunnah, the fourth singer of my original vocal group as we formed the Aristocats, in the Fall of 1957. On July 5, 2016, Chuck, Charles E. Tunnah, died peacefully at 75 years of age in an easy chair with the Indianapolis Star in his hands. As with so many of my friends and associates passing into their later years are beginning to disappear I fear my blog will become an obit page, so I will resist that except in special circumstances. Though Chuck and I had not been in touch for many, many years, this loss struck very close to home to me. Hasting Smith, Jr., mentioned above, and Chuck sang in our high school choir and the exclusive Madrigal singers, and both patiently taught Pat Baldwin and me, both complete neophytes, how to learn and sing the popular music we liked. Hasty soon left us to go to Purdue, and eventually to become a nuclear rock scientist in Los Alamitos, New Mexico, where he passed away prematurely and suddenly as he warmed up to begin an early morning run.

Chuck, Pat, and I found Dave Dunn and went on to become the Reflections, and to record and release our first two records in Indianapolis in 1964. One of them, In The Still of the Night, became a regional hit on Chicago’s WLS, outcharting the Beatles for a couple of weeks. Chuck is the bass singer who first started the bass line that brought that version of a classic to prominence for us.

In Night People though, Chuck is introduced and disappears in the same paragraph; he never made the trip to California and on to the adventure that turned us into Stark Naked and the Car Thieves. Though he could be generous and kind, he could also be loud and obstreperous and because of that, he ended up relegated to staying in Indiana. He, and Hasty, have now passed beyond the curtain of life. When Hasty died, I felt the harsh breezes of change whispering through the hole in my history he left behind. The wind has picked up.

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

NIGHT PEOPLE Book Party, Indianapolis, Oct 11

IRB-NP-102515 Flyer copy

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.

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!

 

NIGHT PEOPLE LAUNCH PRE-ORDER SALE!

Night People, Book 1 - launch on June 15thFRIENDS AND FAMILY PRE-ORDER SALE FOR KINDLE BOOK – $2.99

It’s almost here! 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, goes public on June 15th. The print paperback will go allegedly go on sale at the same time, though we’ll see how accurate that is.

I’ve still got some free ARC books for anyone who would like to get one from me. Just let me know. I’ve got them ’til they’re gone.

In other news …

FOREWARD REVIEWS will feature NIGHT PEOPLE in it’s Fall catalog under the Biography/Memoir section along with 7 other books.We’ll also be mentioned in the AbFab section but the big news is being in the major part of the catalog. This catalog is racked at a majority of the Barnes & Nobles, something 11,00 libraries and several other places, plus the book will be shown at the American Library Association Exhibition in San Francisco later this month.

I’ve received 7 Goodreads reviews for NIGHT PEOPLE, and hope there will be more so we can open up on Amazon with a splash.