One thing that I remember from the years when I was in a band by Les Bohem

I was a small part of the great Los Angeles Music Scare of the late 1970s. We were all just young enough to still have dreams and just old enough to have memories – a lot of the joy came from that. We thought the music of our formative years was a million miles gone and really, it was just a (backwards) shot away. We were discovering our roots and the commonalities of our youth all at once, on stages, in late night, down time (cheap rates) recording studios, in each other’s record collections.  My fondest memory of that time is of a taco stand at a carwash on the corner of Sunset and Alvarado in Echo Park. It had no name and was open until three or four in the morning. We all just called it, “The Car Wash” and a lot of us from the bands would wind up there after gigs. We all were very competitive and opinionated about who was cool and what was hip, but we had the night and the stages and our dreams in common, and, at The Car Wash, we would come together and talk about what we’d done that night, or who we were listening to, or what new guitar one of us had found in a pawn shop.  It was a beautiful time there in the late night of our prolonged adolescence.  Years later, The Car Wash stand finally got a name. They called  it, in a fit of true inspiration, “El Taco.   Short time after that, they tore it down.

Les Bohem has written a lot of movies and TV shows including Twenty Bucks, Daylight, Dante’s Peak, The Alamo and the mini-series, Taken which he wrote and executive produced with Steven Spielberg, and for which he won an Emmy award.   He’s had songs recorded by Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis, Freddy Fender, Steve Gillette, Johnette Napolitano (of Concrete Blonde), and Alvin (of the Chipmunks.)  His short novel, Flight 505, was published last year by UpperRubberBoot .   His new album, “Moved to Duarte,” was just released on Jack Rabbit Day Records to much critical acclaim and no sales whatsoever.