In 1990, Mike Davis wrote one of the great books on contemporary Los Angeles: City of Quartz. In it, Davis offers a Marxian social history of Los Angeles rooted in investigation and analysis of the power blocs, and practices, that gave way to de facto segregation that characterizes LA’s today. LA, as Davis observes, has been run by real estate and homeowners’ associations for quite some time now, those who hire their own police and covet military style architecture, and it may be the reason why the city has, as it’s classically the case in Europe, produced music in the city’s shadows that expresses the very opposite of the endless summer that fuels LA tourism. Bands like X, and artists like NWA are just a few of these radio dissenters, out to shock and rally. Rank and File is a musical aesthetic in the city of angels: Rage against the machine, etc.
Davis’s book foresaw the now infamous LA riots of 1992, in the South Central that was a base from which Mayor Brady launched a coalition to run LA as the blocs coveted. The city feels. Antonio Villaraigosa, the major name after Brady would build the same sort of coalition as a Latino in a city full of Latinos: at the service of blocs of influence. The riots sought to break through the absurdity of situation that is LA, “beauty” felt as a jail for many.
Nonetheless, LA remains the future of American humanism. The truth is that thanks to the fact that LA has been a giant experiment for aesthetics, activism, a home for the muralism of the Mexican Revolution, etc., it is today a battleground. Labor Unions have made LA history, as have poetry workshops, and educational institutions.
I’ve sat on the beach many of times thinking about the future of LA, and what’s so beautiful about it today. I’ve decided that LA is a city made beautiful by struggle. In his book, Mike Davis writes of a certain LA type: the booster, eternally optimistic about LA. An example of a very important booster is Eli Broad, financier of LA art with the LACMA and the Broad. What if one is instead a booster of the beauty in LA’s struggle, in punk, and the “ethnic rock” that Davis writes of. I wrote the following lyrics to celebrate that LA, the LA of those who feel that meeting someone at a coffee shop and discussing how to further an education or help a homeless person is as great as the Broad.
“Once upon a time in the west”
1.
Our lady of moonlight and poinsettias is a rainbow this time
It’s been raining for two whole nights
There sits that milkweed dressed in orange in black
Monarch butterflies that come along for the ride
I’m right where I wanted to be sitting perfectly still
No one’s had to ask I’ve written down the day’s thoughts
O, but Medea’s nowhere around
It’s time that I decide
2.
It’s our own Monte Alban we’re living in can’t u feel in the look u give off
Teotihuacan we’re living in
Let’s not waste our desires
3.
Colorful beaches not waiting for the end of sunlight
It’s cold as hell everywhere else
O nice to meet you you’re pretty cool I think just want to say hi
This is the way to my heart
This is the way to my heart and this time we’re right at the start
Chorus
You can only live like this in southern California
Watch the sky turn pink in southern California
Sing till your lungs turn blue
Feel your eyes burn out
Live mythology right here in Southern California
4.
Faster rhythm
On my way to get a high five
I cross a giant eggplant
I’ve got to make a phone call
Meet me at the park friend
Bring a giant bag and
Some cash for the get down
The sun is destined to set
But I will not be there
Bounty in its box
I will be drawing a smile
In red and in brown
