Lovely.Can you have nostalgia for a place you have never been to or seen before.Have I asked that question before?I dont care I am asking it again.
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George Kaplan
March 23, 2013
The famous Sardi’s, neat design too. Another fine image. I like the old tank-like automobile looming into view.
I think, to peremptorily answer Eduardo above, that it’s perfectly possible to have that form of nostalgia. After all in other cases, one doesn’t necessarily have had to have something to miss it or appreciate it (or love it)…well, not from my point of view, hah…
LA is actually several little towns that seethed together under pavement and the automobile. You can walk, but the basin is about the size of the state of Connecticut so walking is usually restricted to your neighborhood. There is a very fine architectural school here where the professors suggest you walk wherever you can to get a sense of the human body in relation to the city. I think it’s genius!
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George Kaplan
March 23, 2013
Genius indeed, I love that concept. Also, thanks for little bit on LA history. Of course, I already know quite a bit through books and movies (and osmotically, I guess you could say. Everyone knows LA. And “Everyone is Beautiful in California”, maybe it’s the quality of light again?! From Sunset Boulevard to Chinatown) but there is nothing like hearing about it from an intelligent native steeped in its lore and with its history in her veins and its oxygen in hrr lungs (hope it isn’t smoggy!)…
I take you point completely George.I now can be nostalgic without question for all those Led Zeppelin concerts I never went to say nothing of Jimi Hendrix when he first appeared in England.
Thanks George you are quite right.My next point of call is a venue where Hendrix stood up on stage and shocked Eric Clapton so seriously by his playing that he was left by all accounts shaking backstage.I am now free to roam the decades whoopee.
I didn’t know there was a Sardi’s in Hollywood… the West Coast Sardi’s! I am trying to figure out what movie that billboard is promoting….hummm. Oh look Vanity Fair too!
xoxo
Hello Mr L and Ms V
Call me the amateur sleuth, or the professional historian, or just a man of the past but…..
I’m pretty sure the Movie is “I Give My Love” directed by Karl Freund. If you look at the bottom left hand corner the surnames of the stars are just visible as Lukas and Gibson – Paul Lukas and Wynne Gibson. I’m a little puzzled by the name above the title.. could it be “Baum’s” referring to Vicki Baum the Austrian novelist who supplied the stories to so many films including most famously “Grand Hotel”? She supplied the plot to this one too…but it seems very unlikely for a writer to take such a prominent place on the poster.
Anyway, If I’m right everything gets a little more curious, as imdb states the date of release as 1934 – which calls everything into question being two years after the date of the photograph…
Puzzles within puzzles within puzzles…
Your ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Thanks Vickie,You Tube is a great place to do the wandering.Marc Bolan had such strange voice at he acoustic stage of his life.I find it quite compelling others might find it annoying.I am sure you could not make any sense of the lyrics-she was born to be my unicorn.Perhaps he was a stream of consciousness writer?Actually because he was dyslexic his wife June Child used to read Tolkien to him and that and a lot of other fantasy is mixed up in the lyrics.Still do not make any sense though.
The late June Child was once the girlfriend/minder of that other sixties luminary Syd Barrett once singer and lyricist with Pink Floyd till he became so seriously unhinged that he would strip naked and spend the entire show swaying back and forth without I believe making any other contribution to the performance such as actually playing guitar and singing.
Syd long regarded as a major casualty of the period and a lost talent never really worked again properly.He died recently after it is said many years of mental ill health.
What I’m finding particularly interesting are the interviews with Russell Harty. Bowie and Bolan seem magnificent but not quite mature at that stage of their lives (none of us were), hoping to find some interview with Syd Barrett now. Thank you!
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George Kaplan
March 23, 2013
I love Syd Barrett! See Emily Play! You might be able to get footage of the Pink Floyd “video” to Arnold Layne (from ’67 I think) which was broadcast on the BBC – it’s Monkeesy but weird – and I seem to remember seeing some of their psychedelic stuff too.
Bowie on Harty! Coked out of his hatbox I think. You have to see Bowie on Dick Cavett, it’s…interesting and he has a cane. Sorry to get excited these are things I love (see Mott the Hoople performing All the Young Dudes on Top of the Pops). If you can track down Alan Yentob’s classic 1975 Bowie documentary Cracked Actor that’s fantastic too.
T. Rextasy 🙂 Cosmic Dancer! Jeepster – “I’m just a Jeepster for your lo-ove” Marc bleats. A total egomaniac but a great performer 1970-73.
And best of all Roxy Music! Virginia Plain on the Old Grey Whistle Test, so wonderful and strange (what *are* they wearing?!). Sublime. Glam with a Brain and real glamour, in the sense of the ineffable (it just can’t be eff’d) and indefinable “something”. Wonderful Woman! Again, sorry to intrude and get excited.
Say… Could this be the specialty Chez George? I’m talking about a music and culture blog… It’s just a thought. (And, I especially like the phrase, “coked out of his hatbox”…
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George Kaplan
March 23, 2013
Re. “Hatbox” Why thank you, kindly, ma’am. All afizz that you liked that. Georgianus Kaplanius.
George -yes there is a lot of jiggery pokery,backwards tapes etc on See Emily Play.You Tube has a rather spooky live recording of Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun.Its spooky anyway I think.It contains some borrowed lines from two Tang Dynasty poets taken from a book called Poems of the Late Tang by A L Graham.The Poets are Li He…Witness the man who raves at the wall and Li Chan Yin…….watch little by little the night turns around and countless the twigs which tremble at dawn.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought there were some Japanese lines in there somewhere.I will have to look it up.
They were of course quite a well read and literary group as their first album -Piper at the Gates of Dawn concerns the god Pan and is chap 7 in Kenneth Grahams- The Wind in the Willows.
Now I have probably told you something you already know.Sorry if I have.
I know exactly what you mean by osmosis there George I sometimes have the same feeling with San Francisco-Dirty Harry movies and everything else.Maybe US citizens do not or do have the same sense of Britain?I assure you most people do not talk like Hugh Grant. Unfortunately I do, as American friends who I sometimes talk to ,but who have never met me usually say.They mean of course no harm, its just that I do not like him overly and think him a bit of a fop.Now there is a lovely archaic word.What next poppinjay?
Dearest V
Great snap and a great thread.
I walked very much in Los Angeles especially around Downtown in the daytime – I adored old Broadway. But I guess the sense of decay appeals more to Europeans as it’s very little mentioned in guidebooks.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Downtown is going through a nice restoration now, many of the old bank buildings and hotels have been converted to condominiums and my favorite bookstore, aptly called The Last Bookstore is in an old bank building on Fifth and Spring. http://lastbookstorela.com/
mmmmmmmmmmm Vickie,The Last Book Store-nice name.For some reason Douglas Adams -The Restaurant at the End of the Universe popped into my mind.I met him once at a science fiction convention and he was very charming.Sadly no longer with us however.
I just do not get the time to read as much as I once did.Now the piles of books to read seem to get higher month by month, as do the similiar micro mountains for films and cds.Whats a man to do?
I spent a very pleasant year once being a bookseller most of the week and lecturing at an Art School at odd times.Quite lovely.
The shop might have intrigued you as quite different to anything un America I would guess.It was an old timered building and before its birth as a bookshop had been an old family home.
I remember my amazement and delight when the manager showed me a secret room concealed behind panelling on the stairs.The wall just swung inwards to reveal a very small room that had once been a priest hole in use by the Catholic family during Britains religious wars.
Your bookstore sounds very good though and they do vinyl as well.Hold onto your hat I am flying over.
I will personally escort you there! I find I have less and less time to read – but when I do it feels like a holiday. I have a stack of fourteen unread books waiting, and I feel beyond rich…
Vickie,Thank you so kindly -an escort.I notice that I not only have a problem with timber, un America is pretty good.
I do know exactly what you mean about seeming like a holiday when you get a chance to read.In fact its sometimes only when I have a holiday that some get read at all.
I think I have approximately the same number of books unread just building up on a coffee table.
Wow…In the 30s they were already modernizing buildings born in the 20s. Look at that poured concrete, the Sardi’s lettering, the opaque glass and the metal awnings and sharp diagonal poles holding it up!
I do like how the signage is part of the design concept – it makes me crazy when I see a building and there’s a banner sagging, or something permanent that’s completely wrong for the building… Or, almost anything in a mini… or maxi mall!
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George Kaplan
March 26, 2013
The Last Bookstore does sound like very heaven. There’s so few bookstores here now especially of the quirky, individual kind. Same for actual *physical* places where you can browse for dvds. Saddening.
There’s beauty in a bookstore just as there’s even greater beauty in a (good) book. To read is divine, it takes me away, the mind takes flight, unfettered (and other bad metaphors).
Having books to read (even if you can’t find the time to read them) does make you feel rich. I have six books from the library and twice that I’m supposed to be working my way through, yet the siren call of more is hard to resist!
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Lovely.Can you have nostalgia for a place you have never been to or seen before.Have I asked that question before?I dont care I am asking it again.
The famous Sardi’s, neat design too. Another fine image. I like the old tank-like automobile looming into view.
I think, to peremptorily answer Eduardo above, that it’s perfectly possible to have that form of nostalgia. After all in other cases, one doesn’t necessarily have had to have something to miss it or appreciate it (or love it)…well, not from my point of view, hah…
We have (it’s a city that was formed by the automobile) a car museum here – those old cars were huge!!!
Like great boats of the road… Is it actually possible to *walk* anywhere in LA?! I’ve read that it’s almost the opposite of New York…
LA is actually several little towns that seethed together under pavement and the automobile. You can walk, but the basin is about the size of the state of Connecticut so walking is usually restricted to your neighborhood. There is a very fine architectural school here where the professors suggest you walk wherever you can to get a sense of the human body in relation to the city. I think it’s genius!
Genius indeed, I love that concept. Also, thanks for little bit on LA history. Of course, I already know quite a bit through books and movies (and osmotically, I guess you could say. Everyone knows LA. And “Everyone is Beautiful in California”, maybe it’s the quality of light again?! From Sunset Boulevard to Chinatown) but there is nothing like hearing about it from an intelligent native steeped in its lore and with its history in her veins and its oxygen in hrr lungs (hope it isn’t smoggy!)…
I take you point completely George.I now can be nostalgic without question for all those Led Zeppelin concerts I never went to say nothing of Jimi Hendrix when he first appeared in England.
Yes, that’s the ticket. Convention can go hang…
Thanks George you are quite right.My next point of call is a venue where Hendrix stood up on stage and shocked Eric Clapton so seriously by his playing that he was left by all accounts shaking backstage.I am now free to roam the decades whoopee.
Regarding Marc Bolan, thank you — I went roaming the decades via YouTube!
I didn’t know there was a Sardi’s in Hollywood… the West Coast Sardi’s! I am trying to figure out what movie that billboard is promoting….hummm. Oh look Vanity Fair too!
xoxo
I think it’s got to be a Carl Laemmle theater – but the movie isn’t jumping out at me.
Hello Mr L and Ms V
Call me the amateur sleuth, or the professional historian, or just a man of the past but…..
I’m pretty sure the Movie is “I Give My Love” directed by Karl Freund. If you look at the bottom left hand corner the surnames of the stars are just visible as Lukas and Gibson – Paul Lukas and Wynne Gibson. I’m a little puzzled by the name above the title.. could it be “Baum’s” referring to Vicki Baum the Austrian novelist who supplied the stories to so many films including most famously “Grand Hotel”? She supplied the plot to this one too…but it seems very unlikely for a writer to take such a prominent place on the poster.
Anyway, If I’m right everything gets a little more curious, as imdb states the date of release as 1934 – which calls everything into question being two years after the date of the photograph…
Puzzles within puzzles within puzzles…
Your ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Superb, Sherlock! You nailed it, and I fudged it putting the date in as 1932 because that’s when the restaurant opened.
I bow to your deductive powers,
V
E Perfumed Dandy, private eye! Wow!!!
Which came first, the NYC Sardi’s or this one? I’m thinking NYC. Great photo.
1927 New York, 1932 Hollywood – 6313 Hollywood Blvd, I believe it’s a parking lot 🙁
Thanks Vickie,You Tube is a great place to do the wandering.Marc Bolan had such strange voice at he acoustic stage of his life.I find it quite compelling others might find it annoying.I am sure you could not make any sense of the lyrics-she was born to be my unicorn.Perhaps he was a stream of consciousness writer?Actually because he was dyslexic his wife June Child used to read Tolkien to him and that and a lot of other fantasy is mixed up in the lyrics.Still do not make any sense though.
The late June Child was once the girlfriend/minder of that other sixties luminary Syd Barrett once singer and lyricist with Pink Floyd till he became so seriously unhinged that he would strip naked and spend the entire show swaying back and forth without I believe making any other contribution to the performance such as actually playing guitar and singing.
Syd long regarded as a major casualty of the period and a lost talent never really worked again properly.He died recently after it is said many years of mental ill health.
What I’m finding particularly interesting are the interviews with Russell Harty. Bowie and Bolan seem magnificent but not quite mature at that stage of their lives (none of us were), hoping to find some interview with Syd Barrett now. Thank you!
I love Syd Barrett! See Emily Play! You might be able to get footage of the Pink Floyd “video” to Arnold Layne (from ’67 I think) which was broadcast on the BBC – it’s Monkeesy but weird – and I seem to remember seeing some of their psychedelic stuff too.
Bowie on Harty! Coked out of his hatbox I think. You have to see Bowie on Dick Cavett, it’s…interesting and he has a cane. Sorry to get excited these are things I love (see Mott the Hoople performing All the Young Dudes on Top of the Pops). If you can track down Alan Yentob’s classic 1975 Bowie documentary Cracked Actor that’s fantastic too.
T. Rextasy 🙂 Cosmic Dancer! Jeepster – “I’m just a Jeepster for your lo-ove” Marc bleats. A total egomaniac but a great performer 1970-73.
And best of all Roxy Music! Virginia Plain on the Old Grey Whistle Test, so wonderful and strange (what *are* they wearing?!). Sublime. Glam with a Brain and real glamour, in the sense of the ineffable (it just can’t be eff’d) and indefinable “something”. Wonderful Woman! Again, sorry to intrude and get excited.
Say… Could this be the specialty Chez George? I’m talking about a music and culture blog… It’s just a thought. (And, I especially like the phrase, “coked out of his hatbox”…
Re. “Hatbox” Why thank you, kindly, ma’am. All afizz that you liked that. Georgianus Kaplanius.
George -yes there is a lot of jiggery pokery,backwards tapes etc on See Emily Play.You Tube has a rather spooky live recording of Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun.Its spooky anyway I think.It contains some borrowed lines from two Tang Dynasty poets taken from a book called Poems of the Late Tang by A L Graham.The Poets are Li He…Witness the man who raves at the wall and Li Chan Yin…….watch little by little the night turns around and countless the twigs which tremble at dawn.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought there were some Japanese lines in there somewhere.I will have to look it up.
They were of course quite a well read and literary group as their first album -Piper at the Gates of Dawn concerns the god Pan and is chap 7 in Kenneth Grahams- The Wind in the Willows.
Now I have probably told you something you already know.Sorry if I have.
I know exactly what you mean by osmosis there George I sometimes have the same feeling with San Francisco-Dirty Harry movies and everything else.Maybe US citizens do not or do have the same sense of Britain?I assure you most people do not talk like Hugh Grant. Unfortunately I do, as American friends who I sometimes talk to ,but who have never met me usually say.They mean of course no harm, its just that I do not like him overly and think him a bit of a fop.Now there is a lovely archaic word.What next poppinjay?
Dearest V
Great snap and a great thread.
I walked very much in Los Angeles especially around Downtown in the daytime – I adored old Broadway. But I guess the sense of decay appeals more to Europeans as it’s very little mentioned in guidebooks.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Downtown is going through a nice restoration now, many of the old bank buildings and hotels have been converted to condominiums and my favorite bookstore, aptly called The Last Bookstore is in an old bank building on Fifth and Spring. http://lastbookstorela.com/
Oh Lordy that does sound lovely… and what about the old pictures houses that I seem to recall had become discount jewellers?
They too are being restored… “Dreamgirls” was shot at the Orpheum.
mmmmmmmmmmm Vickie,The Last Book Store-nice name.For some reason Douglas Adams -The Restaurant at the End of the Universe popped into my mind.I met him once at a science fiction convention and he was very charming.Sadly no longer with us however.
I just do not get the time to read as much as I once did.Now the piles of books to read seem to get higher month by month, as do the similiar micro mountains for films and cds.Whats a man to do?
I spent a very pleasant year once being a bookseller most of the week and lecturing at an Art School at odd times.Quite lovely.
The shop might have intrigued you as quite different to anything un America I would guess.It was an old timered building and before its birth as a bookshop had been an old family home.
I remember my amazement and delight when the manager showed me a secret room concealed behind panelling on the stairs.The wall just swung inwards to reveal a very small room that had once been a priest hole in use by the Catholic family during Britains religious wars.
Your bookstore sounds very good though and they do vinyl as well.Hold onto your hat I am flying over.
I will personally escort you there! I find I have less and less time to read – but when I do it feels like a holiday. I have a stack of fourteen unread books waiting, and I feel beyond rich…
I have a unique way of spelling timber.Whoops from across the pond.
Vickie,Thank you so kindly -an escort.I notice that I not only have a problem with timber, un America is pretty good.
I do know exactly what you mean about seeming like a holiday when you get a chance to read.In fact its sometimes only when I have a holiday that some get read at all.
I think I have approximately the same number of books unread just building up on a coffee table.
Wow…In the 30s they were already modernizing buildings born in the 20s. Look at that poured concrete, the Sardi’s lettering, the opaque glass and the metal awnings and sharp diagonal poles holding it up!
I do like how the signage is part of the design concept – it makes me crazy when I see a building and there’s a banner sagging, or something permanent that’s completely wrong for the building… Or, almost anything in a mini… or maxi mall!
The Last Bookstore does sound like very heaven. There’s so few bookstores here now especially of the quirky, individual kind. Same for actual *physical* places where you can browse for dvds. Saddening.
There’s beauty in a bookstore just as there’s even greater beauty in a (good) book. To read is divine, it takes me away, the mind takes flight, unfettered (and other bad metaphors).
Having books to read (even if you can’t find the time to read them) does make you feel rich. I have six books from the library and twice that I’m supposed to be working my way through, yet the siren call of more is hard to resist!