“THE FIREFLY” IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

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Why is this blog called STUFFS ?

Anyone?

You there – in the vest, is it?  Why do you suppose this blog is called STUFFS?

No idea, eh?

Well, class, you’d better hope that I grade according to “the curve” method.

This blog is called STUFFS because most of the time I try to keep things fun and lighthearted here. There are exceptions to that rule o’ thumb, as there are exceptions to most rules, but that’s the general idea. I have another blog for darker, more serious issues, but that blog is by invitation only... and not all y’all are invited there.

However, periodically I have to dig deeper, address more serious issues, even here at STUFFS. Sometimes I even need to dive into the belly of the beast. This is one of those times. Nevertheless, I shall try to gild the Black Mariah. I will also try to keep this blog bit from expanding beyond short dog volume.

Lost already, aren’t ya? I could tell by the blank look on your faces.

Hokey-Smoke! Why do I always get these remedial students assigned to me?!

Black Mariah – a 19th Century hearse.

Short Dog – a cheap, 375 ml. bottle of (usually about) 19% alcohol wine preferred by Skid Row drunks. It goes by various names such as Night Train and Thunderbird, but is always identifiable by the words “serve very cold” printed somewhere on the label.

OK, class, are we all up to speed now?

Unless you’re a total newbie to this very popular blog [Cough!-Cough!], you already know that I am of the opinion that the relatively unknown first and only album by David & David, "Boomtown" - released in 1986 - is one of the great Rock music masterpieces of all time.

I bought it the year it was released and it caught me at a moment in time when I was utterly in sync with its themes and its characters. I was living in Los Angeles (the sometimes stated and sometimes merely implied setting for the majority of the songs on “Boomtown”) and I was at a real poor point in my life: my spiritual sense was at low ebb, I felt alone (kinda like I do now), and I was wallowing in darkness and an anger that I was even too apathetic to express.

One of the things I so love about the “Boomtown” album is that it is like no other. With most musical artists or groups, I can say he or they “sound sort of like a cross between so-and-so and such-and-such”. But David & David had such a unique sound and such original musical arrangements that I have never even been able to come up with any comparison that really works in describing them.

The best I can do is say that they painted musical urban landscapes peopled by mostly down-and-out characters – some of which still retained a slight burning ember of hope for something better. “Boomtown” contains themes like those found on the Eagles’ album “Hotel California”, but it’s more ragged ‘n’ real. Or like the themes found on the albums “Los Angeles” and “Under The Big Black Sun” by the punk band X, but with songs that are far more complex, interesting and . . . musical! “Boomtown” contains early Springsteenian-type characters, but they’re living on the West Coast and they’re much more believable.

My favorite song on “Boomtown” is probably “All Alone In The Big City” (sure wish someone would post it at YouTube).

But another big favorite is “A Rock For The Forgotten”, and that is a song I strongly identified with in 1986. I might as well have been “the cleanup kid” at the Firefly bar who came to L.A. to write but who never made it out of the fringes. Only difference being that I didn’t need to come to L.A. because I was born there:

At the Firefly we all tell lies
And the cleanup kid hangs his head
He's the quiet type, came to L.A. to write
But he never made it out of the fringes
Keeps a low profile, you kick him he'll smile
Thinks blood is his payment for losing
~ 'A Rock For The Forgotten'
by David & David

As I’ve stated on STUFFS previously, back in the mid to late ‘80s when I was listening to David & David’s “Boomtown” so often, I would sometimes drive late at night after work to The Embassy Hotel at 9th and Grand in downtown L.A. – a very seedy, dark ‘n’ dangerous area after the sun goes down – and I would have a couple drinks at The Embassy’s bar.

I don’t know why I would drive all the way to downtown L.A. late at night when there were godzillion bars closer to where I worked. With hindsight, and trying to squeeze myself into that dark psychological tunnel I occupied at the time, I think perhaps I was just BEGGING for something to happen to me. Kinda like the movie “Death Wish”, only I wasn’t armed and I was subconsciously hoping to be the victim, not the killer.

Back then, I always thought of The Embassy Hotel bar as my own personal version of The Firefly bar from the David & David song “A Rock For The Forgotten”.

In my last blog bit – “Motel, Money, Murder, Madness” – concerning my recent 3-day weekend trip to L.A., I wrote the following:

Before driving into Culver City and checking into my motel room, I drove into the belly of the beast: Downtown L.A. I had planned to have a drink at The Embassy Hotel on 9th and Grand like I used to do during my dark nights in ‘86 . . . but that is a story for another blog bit to be posted here soon.

Well, “soon” has become “NOW”.

Long story sad . . . The Embassy Hotel is closed, Closed, CLOSED! Below are photos of what it looked like just some weeks ago:











[Sorry, Stephen, but we don't serve your kind here anymore. Don't take it personally, because we don't serve any kind here anymore.]

I guess it was my drinking there in the late ‘80s that kept The Embassy in business, and when my mental sky cleared up sufficiently that I stopped driving there after work for my nightly medicinals, the place just couldn’t stay in the black. Too bad.

Just before leaving on my trip, I got to seriously wondering if there really had been a bar in the Los Angeles area called The Firefly. In other words, were David & David referring to A REAL PLACE?

So I began some Google searches and discovered a wildly, fascinatingly warped website called “L.A. Bizarro” which answered my question.

Hell yes! Of course there was a bar in L.A. called the Firefly. And where do you suppose it was?

Anyone?

You there – in the vest, is it?  Where do you suppose it was?

No idea, eh?

Well, class, you’d better PRAY that I grade according to “the curve” method.

Naturally, it was in the grungy heart of Hollywood! (The only other place a bar like that could have been was in the belly of the beast itself – downtown L.A.)

Now I spent half a lifetime on the streets of Hollywood and I had no recollection of a bar called the Firefly. But according to the folks at L.A. Bizarro, it was located on Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Blvd. In other words, it was somewhere right down THIS street:



They say the bar closed sometime in the late 1980s. I was never in the Firefly (Damn! If only I had known!...), but the moment I saw the black and white photograph of the Firefly’s neon sign on the L.A. Bizarro website, I thought: Wait! Hokey-Smoke and Hoo-Wee! I vaguely recall that sign!

In that same block where The Firefly stood there used to be a small, classy Jazz club called 'The Vine Street Bar And Grill', and in the late ‘80s or very early ‘90s, I won tickets from the great L.A. Jazz and Blues radio station (then called KLON) at 88.1 FM to see Anita O'Day perform there.

To now learn that David & David’s Firefly bar was not more than 10 or so minutes from Antonio’s (my favorite Los Angeles restaurant), and that I could have driven to it any night of the week, really bums me out! Hell, it’s enough to make a guy roam the downtown L.A. streets at night . . . hoping for the worst.

CHECK  THESE  OUT! . . .

David & David ~ A Rock for the Forgotten



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JHqyZkhq8U

The L.A. BIZARRO Website’s Story About “The Firefly” Bar:
http://labizarro.com/2010/08/23/firefly/

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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