Los Angeles

 

Los Angeles, city of the doomed
Los Angeles, city of the doomed
Well I loved you once but I gotta go yeah

 

San Francisco, city pretty by the bay
San Francisco, city pretty by the bay
Well I loved you once but I gotta go yeah

NOTE:  Unfortunately, I am unable to post an audio link to "Los Angeles,"  the Gene Clark song which was first released several years ago on the A&M Flying High collection in the UK.  It's a splendid, highly unusual song.  Both the recording and the thoughts expressed in the song feel unfinished, unresolved, which suits the song's mood, but might also account for Clark's decision (if it was indeed his decision) not to release it.  The song's final verse has the girl in the song trying to decide whether San Diego is the place she should remain.   

I myself love Los Angeles, the city.  It's been a big part of my life since my first, rather belated, physical visit (by which I mean to say, that I, like so many people grew up on television and movie images of Los Angeles in such abundance that they constituted a definite aspect of daily waking and sleeping reality) in May, 1979, when I traveled there with my father and viewed  the city's culture through the twin lenses of his business interests, which were focused on the garment industry and real estate investment, and my own more music industry-oriented concerns.  Raymond Chandler culture entered in also and meeting a new ocean was, as it should be, a life-changing experience.  

San Francisco came later for me and I think I will try to tell that story another time, although I would be remiss in not mentioning the artichoke fields of Castroville and the garlic pastures of Gilroy.

"Refuse From A Silver Phial"  (link) is a great Gene Clark/Los Angeles song, so I've posted it here as compensation for the missing "Los Angeles."  Sleeping in the guest room tonight with Andy (home from back surgery and confined to his crate), I was thinking about it all night, rolling around on the daybed, restlessly and incoherently.  With his unselfconscious, bright optimism, Andy's story is pretty much the opposite of the one Gene tells in this haunting masterpiece about the girl with the mind "that slept inside tomorrow," seeking "not to be a victim."

Gene covers the whole state of California in "Los Angeles," but the Kansan's range as a writer was about as big and wide as the Pacific, his adopted waterfront.  Painting with prepositions, Gene created irresistible, inexhaustible mystery maps.

That's Alright By Me (Gene Clark Lyric)

So now this house has grown Too Small.
Don't think of how it used to be.
You say you live now in Tomorrow,
And there I sense you don't see me.

The clock chimes four, You'll turn again then,
To take pursuit of Empty Dreams.
My sensitivity is dying.
You're bound to some day think of Me.

Hey Hey can't you see?
Baby don't you lie to me --
I know you think that you must go,
Well, I think that's alright by me.

  

Nervous words and empty motions,
Claim symptoms just too plain to pass.
I don't know where You think you're going.
But you have drained my love at last.

 Tomorrow I'll be slowly Movin'.
I can't waste all my days the same --
Don't stop to think of where I might be.
Don't stop to figure who's to Blame.

NOTE:  Unfortunately, I am unable to post a link to this great, post-Byrds Gene Clark song, but it can be found (if you can still find a copy, you should) on the marvelous UK Flying High collection, where it was first released several years ago.  The twangy song sounds like something that could have/should have been the theme to a good cinema or television Western from the 1950s or 60s (something with Clint Eastwood), although it could easily be adapted to acoustic instruments and the (e.g., Henry Fonda) 1940s.  It's tough, touching and like most of Gene Clark's songs, quite mysterious.