My band moved to Los Angeles in the spring of 2000. Nu-Metal was really starting to gain momentum at that point to give you an idea of what the scene was like. I’ll never forget arriving before dawn in Studio City where our producer lived. He had offered to let us crash at his house while we found a band apartment to live in. We met him at a local gas station and followed him back to his house in the hills. We were in a daze. We had been driving for a couple days from Austin and that is a long drive. Like 1500 miles or something. When we awoke I was hit by the realization that we were now living in Los Angeles. Awesome!
We had decided to find a place in “The Valley” because the rent is cheaper. That’s the San Fernando Valley to the uninitiated. There are hills that separate the Valley from Hollywood so we just refer to Hollywood as the “other side of the hill.” As far as the entertainment business, both sides of the hill have their share of recording studios and movie/tv studios.
We set off looking around the Valley for an apartment that met our requirements: cheap and mansion-like. Let me tell you this was no easy task. A big reason why was that although we were using a premium paid apartment locator guide we weren’t familiar with all the neighborhoods. A lot of streets run from one side of the Valley to the other but not always continuously. So you’d be driving down a street and then it would just dead end, picking back up who knows where. Oh, did I mention this was pre GPS? Ugh. We were using this map book that was several inches thick called the Thomas Guide. Back then having one of these with you was an absolute must.
So, it would take us 30 or 45 minutes minimum to go find a place and then we would realize there was no way we would want to live there because it seemed completely unsafe. Early on our trailer full of gear was broken into in our gated apartment garage. The thieves stole a single 4×12 Marshall cab. Turn and face the strange… I’m pretty sure these guys were a rival band who thought they were the new Guns n’ Roses. Another time my brake lights were stolen. WTF? I got a locking “club” for my steering wheel and used it religiously.
When we finally got ourselves an apartment we started to rehearse and book shows. We started off playing at a club called the Coconut Teaszer. Eventually we would play all of the name places: the Whisky, the Roxy, Viper Room, Troubadour, Dragonfly, House of Blues, etc. There’s lots of stories and experiences I can share about these early gigs. As I’ve said previously there was definitely some culture shock going on. One of the first things we noticed was that clubs were smaller than the ones we were used to playing in Texas and elsewhere. They ran much tighter schedules as well. There wasn’t the screwing around that used to drive us crazy previously. You had your allotted time to play and when it was over it was over. No dragging your feet during gear change overs. Boom, boom, boom. This tightened up our ship. Hemming and hawing between songs was something people just didn’t do. Basically your whole set needed to be back to back music with a limited amount of talking between songs. This was eye opening and gave us a kick in the pants.
This was just the beginning of the changes we would experience over just the first few months of living in L.A. We weren’t in Kansas anymore, or Texas in our case. Welcome to the show.
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In the spirit of changing, I would suggest keeping this in mind when you are writing and recording new music. A few ways you can change things up is by using different techniques, different writing partners, and different gear. When you find things that work it can be easy to fall into a comfort zone where you do the same stuff over and over. This of course can lead to being in a rut. I’ve found that putting some different ingredients into my musical recipe gets me fired up about the process. Change can be scary but ultimately it is inevitable. If you take the bull by the horns you will become much more comfortable with change and use it to your advantage. Most rock bands reinvent themselves to some degree on every release. AC/DC and a few others being the exception to the rule. Getting into this habit will open up your horizons and make your music more exciting.
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