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This really is an excellent book and a real joy to listen to, and special mention must go to the narrator Nick Landrum, who does a first class job of keeping the listener engaged and interested. Names like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, America, Rickie Lee Jones and, of course, The Eagles, all of whom went on to have long, successful careers in the music industry. Over a period of just a few years a seemingly endless stream of fresh new sounds and new voices continued to pour out of the bohemian LA suburb to dominate the pop charts across the world. No matter what your personal musical tastes are, it’s hard to discount the massive changes that happened between 1967-1976 as the focus of the popular music world shifted from London to Los Angeles, and in particular, the singer/songwriter boom of Laurel Canyon. Be warned that the book really slams the likes of David Geffen, David Crosby, and the "Eagles." It also documents how drugs (mostly cocaine) eroded away many of the artists ability to effectively express themselves musically. This is a very serious and important look at the not particularly positive growth of the music industry in Hollywood, and how the bottom line first managers, agents, and distributors controlled what American and, to some degree, what the rest of the world would listen to. It also illuminates a number of interesting musical casaulties of that time that prompted me to go back and listen to their works. The book does an effective job of documenting how drugs (Cocaine mostly) and the bottom line driven Corporate landscape began to suffocate and thus kill all that was creative about the early music scene in Hollywood. Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you? It seems like he really brings out the nuances of the book and the various characters involved that might otherwise be missed by a casual read of the written text. Nick Landrum does an amazing job of reading Hotel California. What does Nick Landrum bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book? "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon" should be the required companion piece for this book, though "Weird Scenes" is more tabloid and conspiracy driven in nature than "Hotel California." "Weird Scenes" also deals more with all of the happenings leading up to the late sixties and, ultimately, culminates with the Manson Family while "Hotel California" documents the gradual take over of the music business by Corporate entities and Cocaine Cowboys, which goes well into the '70s.
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What other book might you compare Hotel California to and why?
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There are some really nice nuggets of insight in this book that are more interesting than the, overall, thrust of the story. I suspect though that I would have been tempted to gloss over certain aspects of the book itself, and thus run the risk of missing out on some interesting observations and insights. I haven't read the print version of this book. Would you consider the audio edition of Hotel California to be better than the print version?