Setting Times stories to music: From Blondie to the Beach Boys
By Kari Howard
This week I went to a show by a pop band where the opening act bravely came out solo. Just a young man and his guitar. As he bared his feelings about the death of his father, the roar of idle chitchat almost drowned him out, and the theater was full of the firefly glows of people checking their email or Twitter feeds.
The indifference of the crowd reminded me of the feeling I get sometimes when looking at the comments section on the Great Reads. The disdain, or outright hate, can be shocking. But then other readers will talk about how the story moved them.
If just one connection between the writing and the heart has been made, I’m happy.
I hope the singer at the show this week knew he moved at least one person in the audience.
Anyway, in these roundups of the week gone by, I’d like to offer the first paragraphs of each Great Read (or, as they’re known in print, Column One) --maybe they’ll buy your eye and you can settle in for a good weekend read. And you’ll also get the songs that inspired me while editing the stories, or reading them later. A story-song combo!
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Hot on the trail of a kidnapped iPhone
My iPhone had been kidnapped.
It was sending me cries for help.
Each time it was powered on, it beamed an SOS, giving me an exact street address.
I studied the images on my computer screen, zooming in close.
The tidy lawn of a one-story home, the boxy exterior of a duplex.
My iPhone was on the move. Modern technology told me where.
But how on Earth was I going to get it back?
#storysongs combo: “Call Me,” by Blondie.
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Old guard, young blood clash in Salinas’ halls of power
Early evening in the “Salad Bowl of the World” and the City Council meeting is standing room only. The murmur of the crowd drips with anticipation. The bickering has been building for weeks.
“I want to remind everyone,” warned the mayor, opening the floor to public comment, “this is not a blood sport. Be respectful when people speak.”
He was promptly ignored.
The mayor, less than 100 days in office, was presented with a recall petition. His chief antagonist — a council member who also serves on a school board that recently named an elementary campus after a 19th century bandit and convicted killer — was accused of violating state conflict of interest laws.
Emotional, angry, conspiratorial, the night was marked with the racial and class tensions that have simmered for generations in this agricultural town.
It’s a tension now in full view over the actions of two men: a young, defiant Latino politician who has irritated Salinas’ power brokers, and a man he admires who has been dead for 138 years.
In most ways, Tiburcio Vasquez and newly elected City Councilman Jose Castaneda have nothing in common. But the two men’s stories have improbably come together like gasoline and a match to create a fiery political brawl that has divided Salinas for months.
#storysongs combo: “Heroes and Villains,” by the Beach Boys. Love the animation in the video, which includes Day of the Dead images and a riff on a Diego Rivera painting.
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Auction sends wild horses to sanctuary — or slaughter
The gate swings open and the wild mustang rushes into the auction pen. Yearling by its side, the big mare paces the muddy floor, neck craning, nostrils flaring. Graceful creatures that have never known saddle or rider are now biddable commodities.
The unluckiest of America’s wild horses end up in places like this: a livestock yard in rural Nevada, where potential buyers coolly assess each animal’s physique, looking for a deal.
On this day, 23 mustangs that state officials removed from public rangeland outside Reno will have their fates determined in the crescent-shaped bidding theater.
A showdown looms. In the crowd are so-called kill buyers scouting product to ship to a foreign slaughterhouse. Also on hand are animal activists who, checkbook in hand, plan to outbid the kill buyers.
The mood is prison-yard tense, with armed state Department of Agriculture officers looking on. Sally Summers, an activist in Wrangler jeans and hiking boots, suspiciously eyes a well-known kill buyer named Zena Quinlan.
Then the auctioneer begins his racing beat.
#storysongs combo: “Wild Horses,” by the Flying Burrito Brothers. The most vulnerable voice in rock, Gram Parsons, elevates this over the Rolling Stones’ version. He was hanging out with Mick and Keith when they wrote it, and it’s always sounded more Gram than Stones to me.
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Councilman Rosendahl’s colorful life of city service
Behind his house, out back where the hens cluck, a statue of St. Jude stands amid the flowers. It was a 50th birthday gift to Bill Rosendahl from a friend who said he reminded her of the Christian apostle known as the patron saint of lost causes.
For decades, Rosendahl has opened his doors to people who need help. In the 1970s, he let a group of homeless teenagers stay in his Venice Beach apartment, including a young couple who camped in his walk-in closet. Seventeen years ago, he took in an aging street performer, Swami X, who now receives hospice care under Rosendahl’s watch.
They’re a part of the sprawling bohemian universe that Rosendahl has shaped far away from the buttoned-up world of Los Angeles City Hall, where he has served on the City Council since 2005. He steps down June 30 after two terms representing a wealthy Westside district that stretches from Westchester to Pacific Palisades.
One friend affectionately describes his Mar Vista home as a commune. Another calls it a three-ring circus.
Throughout the day, people stream in: caretakers, constituents, a Reiki healer. Rabbits rustle in the yard. Incense smokes. A phone rings and rings. An indoor flock of finches sings.
Rosendahl holds court from a soft recliner in the living room, the ocean breeze blowing on his shoeless feet, a skinny black cat rubbing against his knees. At 68 years old, he is a bundle of contrasts. He loves politics, which can be transactional, but also Buddha’s message of transcendence. He represents some of the city’s richest residents, and is friends with many of them, yet he remains firmly anti-materialistic.
#storysongs combo: “Shine a Light,” by Spiritualized. They were the best band I saw at Coachella this year (stunning me, because I was sure it would be the Stone Roses). This song blew me away live, and here they are being breathtaking at another festival, Britain’s Glastonbury, in 2008.
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Friday’s Great Read:
The story held because of an overload of news and enterprise. That happens sometimes in the journalism biz.
#storysongs combo: OK, how about a song themed to the day, if not a story? In honor of the summer solstice, “Summer Wind,” by Frank Sinatra.
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If you have ideas for story-song pairings of your own, tweet the title and artist to @karihow or @LATimesColumn1 with the hashtag #storysongs.
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