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June 21, 2006

So Very Los Angeles

Bob Massey
From the continuing correspondence of our man in the field.

Today I saw a very L.A. thing. It’s a sunny Saturday, so I walked down to the coffee joint in my neighborhood. It’s the kind of place that bakes its own bread and croissants and cookies, which is a rare phenomenon these days (most places scoop that shit out of a plastic tub – I know, I did it for a living at one time), so people swarm the joint. There’s tables on the sidewalk and people tie up their dogs, so there’s also lots of good dog-scratchin’ to be had, for free.

Now, to my knowledge, this neighborhood is not particularly celeb-heavy. Not in a Paris Hiltony kind of way, anyhow. It’s mostly hipsters and latino families and musicians and writers. The two celebs I have personally seen in my neighborhood are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Kiefer Sutherland. And I wouldn’t have seen them at all if someone hadn’t pointed them out to me. My celeb radar is milky thin.

Which perhaps is the root of this anecdote. Because I was sitting there outside the coffee bakery dog joint when the guy next to me got up to leave. And as he was making his way past me, some dude at a nearby table gets up and pushes a CD at him. The following is a close paraphrase of what he said: “Hey, excuse me, I’d like you to listen to my CD, it’s a mix of electronica and indie, it’s from the heart, you know. I produced it myself.” At first I thought the guy was handing them out to everyone on the sidewalk, so I kinda ducked down into my magazine, because, sorry, but odds are about a hundred to one that his CD is awesome. But he only gave the one CD to this one guy. Who took it, said something vaguely encouraging, and walked off with a friend.

The thing is, I have no idea who the accostee was. And I know a silly amount about music and the people who make it, from obscure to ubiquitous. So it’s interesting to me that the accoster a) knew his face, b) had a CD for him, and c) had the stones to push it on him at a bakery. I’m also amused by his spiel (“It’s from the heart. I produced it myself.”) – not in a snarky way, but in an affectionate way, since I myself say idiotic things just talking to cute songwriter girls after their sets. And it probably says a lot about me – good or bad I don’t know – that I would never in a million years shove a CD at someone I admired, not if it was Leonard Cohen himself. So is my artistic output doomed to obscurity for that reason? If that accoster is the one in a hundred who’s genuinely great, is he now on his way?

Los Angeles. Where hope springs eternal. Until it doesn’t.

+++++

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Posted by Rock Heals at June 21, 2006 12:00 AM