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21-year-old Bunny Sparber burgled his own parents' house to help pay for a trip out to Los Angeles. A month later, he was homeless in Hollywood, living in a shelter inhabited by male prostitutes. Two and a half years later, Sparber watched the Los Angeles riots from the roof of his Hollywood apartment and decided it was time to go.
18 years later, inspired by an image in the punk zine SIDEBURNS, which published a crude graphic representation of power chords captioned with the words "This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band," Sparber sat down to write his memories of Los Angeles as a series of stripped-down rock and roll songs. Sparber composed these songs on a battered ukulele and recorded them, often moments after writing them, by performing them into a cheap digital camera and then downloading the sound file. The resulting collection of 18 songs tells of the inhabitants of Hollywood's underside, circa 1990: Hustlers, homeless teens, failed writers, petty criminals, aged former starlets, and obsessed moviegoers.
All of these stories are true.
