Like ʻ Wow: thereʼs another one! Weʼre actually making progress!ʼ The Strip offered the Aquarian good vibes of Haight-Ashbury with a Hollywood difference: better-looking people and no body stink. 'In those days, people with long hair who had cars waved to each other-long hair was a mark, a signifier. ' It was an amazing time,' says Gail Zappa, who met her future husband, Frank, when she was 21 and working as Valentineʼs secretary. kid who recorded the bulk of his celebrated Wall of Sound output at Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard.) Today, the words Sunset Strip may automatically summon a mental montage of sleaze- cocaine, skull tattoos, breast implants, hamburger grease-but 35 years ago there was no place more sunshiny and brimming with possibility. (To say nothing of the fact that Phil Spector, a man often presumed to be a New Yorker, was actually an L.A. started to happen, as far as the music business-it blew up.' Indeed, the mythologizing of psychedelic San Francisco and Brill Building–era New York often obscures Los Angelesʼ status as the seat of American pop in the 60s, the city that gave us not only the explicitly California-identified Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, but also the Doors, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Sonny & Cher. ' Once the Whisky started to happen, then Sunset Boulevard started to happen,' says Lou Adler. The club was an instant smash, a cultural trendsetter from the outset we have Valentine to thank for introducing the terms à go go, go-go girl, and go-go cage into our vernacular, and, more significantly, for helping launch the careers of some of the best rock ʼnʼ roll bands ever. Johnny Rivers, later famous for the song 'Secret Agent Man,' was the headliner. "Elmer Valentine opened the Whisky à Go Go in January of 1964. Originally true to the European concept of being a club which featured recorded music only, Elmer Valentine, noticing the proliferation of live music on the Sunset Strip, quickly realized that only live music would put his little boite on the map. The Whisky A Go Go that most rock & roll fans know & love was opened on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles by a group of investors consisting of Elmer Valentine, Phil Tanzini, Shelly Davis, Theodore Flier and Mario Maglieri. In 1958, one of them opened in Chicago, another in the Georgetown section of Washington D.C. In fact, plans were afoot to open a string of Whisky A Go Go discotheques across America. By the late 50's, the concept of dance clubs or "discotheques" (as they were called then) began to spread to the U.S. The story behind the Whisky a Go Go begins in 1947 when a dance club of that name was opened in Paris, France under that name. Still in business today, this venerable club is located along the infamous Sunset Strip at 8901 Sunset Blvd (between the Clark and Hilldale streets). Today, on this latest edition of Rock & Roll Geography, we take a stroll down to California to check out The Whisky A Go Go, one of LA's most historic music landmarks.
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