Turning Things Around, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

March 17, 2010 Whitney Farmer 0 Comments

The Club is located in Redondo Beach, about ten minutes south of LAX. Just about the time that our door opens, the sun sets right in front of our eyes if we have a chance to walk up from below ground where the sound check is happening. This is the “Redondo Beach” that Patti Smith sang about on Horses where a young woman had died. It’s the place where Nicholas ‘Razzle’ Dingley of Hanoi Rocks and Vince Neil crashed 25 years ago, with only the Motley Crue lead singer and another passenger surviving. Razzle was buried on the Isle of Wight.

Last weekend, the founding frontman of Hanoi Rocks Michael Monroe played at the Club. He announced from the stage that he and the band were dedicating their performance to the memory of Razzle and to his family. He also told us that he had never been back to the area since the wreck. Rather than pulling the room into grief, he gave a performance like most had never seen. He leaped from the stage to the top of the main bar without missing a beat or losing his balance or his breath. I know that he is a pro and does this for a living, but it all seemed natural and newly created for the moment. The night before, he had played a sold out show at the Viper Room and still didn’t seem to have an end to his energy. He looked like he enjoyed being there, and everyone else truly did because of it.

I was talking with his manager during the settlement later in the night and we talked more about what Michael had gone through all those years ago and where he was at now. I got a sense that now he and his band were going through a lot because of coming here at this time, that a lot was converging.

I told her about a place that I used to work. It was both the most successful I had ever been and the greatest failure, all at the same time. It was an organization that worked to rescue homeless youths and then help them get a new start. The first step always seemed so easy, but trying to figure out how to make sure that there was ground under each new step they tried to take was a battle that we would sometimes lose. That I would lose. When I came to the Club, I hired some of the people I had met there. It became a place where things could turn around. There are other people who have come here and had it change their life, or help them stay in the life that they had already changed. ’Redondo’ Beach has lived up to its name. I told Michael’s manager that I was grateful that they had come to be with us, that they had honored us with being the place where they had put their foot back in the territory to reclaim it, that I wanted them to be blessed.

Turning things around is simple. It has to be, because essential life saving tactics must be accessible. When you are driving a car and are going in a wrong direction, stop it. Turn on your signal to let everyone know you are making a move. Look over your shoulder, which can give you a glimpse of the new place you will end up and just to make sure that there is enough merging grace in the traffic jam. Then make your move.

Quote of the Blog from Ed, Dude of Light and Fog, “Stupendous”.

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Whitney runs a rock music club in L.A. She has an MBA and no one cares.