![Los Angeles Stories [paperback] cover art](http://www.nonesuch.com/files/imagecache/section-albums-coverart/albums/coverart/cooder-los-angeles-stories.jpg "Los Angeles Stories [paperback]")
Track Listing
Click tracks with speaker icon to listen| 1 | Paperback: 224 pages |
News & Reviews
- Thursday, April 12, 2012
Ry Cooder Talks to NY Times About Chávez Ravine As Dodger Stadium Marks 50th Anniversary
As the Los Angeles Dodgers marked the 50th anniversary of Dodger Stadium this week, New York Times writer George Vecsey looks back at some of the team's more checkered moments and wonders whether there might be a curse tied to Chávez Ravine, the Mexican-American community that was destroyed in the '50s to build the stadium. It's a story Ry Cooder recounts in his 2005 album Chávez Ravine. Vecsey continues the conversation with a post on his blog in praise of that album. "It is about baseball and it is about business," Vecsey writes. "But mostly it is terrific music." Rolling Stone gives four stars to Cooder's book, Los Angeles Stories, calling it "superb."
- Friday, March 16, 2012
Ry Cooder Nominated for Best Artist in Songlines Music Awards; Fatoumata Diawara for Newcomer of the Year
Ry Cooder has been nominated as Best Artist in the Songlines Music Awards 2012 for his latest album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Fatoumata Diawara has been nominated as Newcomer of the Year for her debut album, Fatou, released in the UK on World Circuit; her debut EP, Kanou, was released on World Circuit/Nonesuch Records. Among the nominees for Cross-Cultural Collaboration are Kronos Quartet (Uniko) and Chris Thile, for his work with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer on The Goat Rodeo Sessions.
About this Album
The first-ever stand-alone written work from Ry Cooder, Los Angeles Stories is a collection of loosely linked tales that evoke a bygone era in one of America's most iconic cities. In post-World War II Los Angeles, as power was concentrating and fortunes were being made, a do-it-yourself culture of cool cats, outsiders and oddballs populated the old downtown neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Chávez Ravine. Ordinary working folks rubbed elbows with petty criminals, grifters and all sorts of women at foggy end-of-the-line outposts in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. Los Angeles Stories is published by City Lights Publishers.
Rich with the essence and character of the times, suffused with patois of the city's underclass, these are stories about the common people of Los Angeles, "a sunny place for shady people," and the strange things that happen to them. Musicians, gun shop owners, streetwalkers, tailors, door-to-door salesmen, drifters, housewives, dentists and pornographers, new arrivals and hard-bitten denizens all intersect in cleverly plotted stories that center around some kind of shadowy activity. This quirky love letter to a lost way of life will appeal to fans of hard-boiled fiction and anyone interested in the city itself.
Ry Cooder's previous literary endeavor came in the form of a 95-page novella in the deluxe version of his 2008 album I, Flathead, the tale of Kash Buk, a hard-living, car-racing, guitar-playing man with a space-alien sidekick.
Credits
Written by Ry Cooder
Published by City Lights Publishers
Paperback: 224 pages
