California Dreaming: the La Pop Music Scene and the 60s

In 1960, a group of young men in California recorded an instrumental single, Moon Dawg, and started what would become known as surf music. Within a few years, those young men would have been important parts of records by the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Canned Heat, the Monkees, and many more.

In this book, Andrew Hickey takes a look at the LA pop music scene of the 60s through the lens of its greatest records, looking at the interconnections between seemingly disparate bands and performers. Discover the song Davy Jones of the Monkees wrote about Captain Beefheart, or the member of the Mothers of Invention who named Buffalo Springfield and wrote songs for the Beach Boys.

California Dreaming: The LA Pop Music Scene and the 60s takes you from the Gamblers' surf instrumentals, through sunshine pop by the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys, to Little Feat and Randy Newman, and shows how all these different artist influenced and inspired each other, in ways that might surprise you...