I See You Live on Love Street: Music From Laurel Canyon 1967-1975 (CD) - CD

Details: Four-hour, 72-track anthology of the Laurel Canyon music community that became a dominant worldwide force in the late 60s/early 70s. Tracing the scene's development from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love and The Doors through to early country-rock and the singer/songwriter boom that defined the early 70s. By the end of the 60s, the international music world's nexus had shifted from such previous hotspots as Liverpool, London and San Francisco to Laurel Canyon, a rural oasis in the midst of the bustle of Los Angeles. Just minutes from Hollywood, the Sunset Strip and the LA record companies/studios, Laurel Canyon became home to a folk, country, rock and pop hybrid that encompassed everyone from early players The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield to The Doors, Frank Zappa, Glen Campbell and manufactured pop kingpins The Monkees. The canyon's rustic charms and the proximity of leading folk den The Troubadour attracted a phalanx of singer/songwriters while also giving birth to the country-rock movement, kickstarted by various Byrds/Springfield spin-offs (Dillard & Clark, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco) and former teen idol Ricky Nelson. Highly incestuous, the Laurel Canyon family featured some unlikely bedfellows: The Monkees worked with Frank Zappa, The Turtles sponsored Judee Sill and hung out with The Doors, Kim Fowley collaborated with both Steppenwolf and Warren Zevon, and the individual members of CSNY appeared on each other's solo records as well as everyone else's. A follow-up to Grapefruit's acclaimed 2022 compilation 'Heroes & Villains: The Sound of Los Angeles 1965-1968', the painstakingly-assembled 'I See You Live On Love Street: Music From Laurel Canyon 1967-1975' charts the scene's birth and gradual development until a revitalised, relocated Fleetwood Mac spearheaded a new, sleeker Laurel Canyon sound to go stratospheric in the mid-70s. Housed in a clamshell box that includes a heavily annotated and illustrated 48-page booklet, 'I See You Live On Love Street' features many of the biggest names in the canyon community alongside acts who failed to find success at the time but went on to achieve cult status.