I finished listening to all six episodes from the first season of the new podcast, Home: Stories From L.A. It's reported, produced, hosted, and edited by Bill Barol, who has never done a podcast before, which is surprising because Home is so excellent. In the first six episodes, Bill told the stories about:
Herman Stein, who composed the music for more than 200 films, including lots of 1950s monster movies: Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, It Came From Outer Space, The Mole People, Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man. He also wrote the theme music for Lost In Space.
The creator of the Beach Boys memorial, built on the site of the Wilson family's demolished home in Hawthorne, California.
Amboy, CA, a ghost town 30 miles from anywhere on the old Route 66, and the chicken magnate who's spent a fortune trying to keep it from collapsing into the desert sand.
The winding road that led an ex-monk from Bristol to Venice Beach.
p>Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s, a place that managed to be both the iconic American suburb and an industrial powerhouse that cranked out everything from beer to cars, and moon rockets to The Brady Bunch.
The sad fate of the Villa Carlotta, home to show business A-listers in the Golden Age, and later to a generation of young actors, writers and musicians — [which now] sits, a hollowed-out shell, on Hollywood's Franklin Avenue.
If you live in Los Angeles, or just love Los Angeles, I highly recommend subscribing to it. I can't wait for the second season.
