@mofimadness: I’ve watched a few docs on the Laurel Canyon scene, but I’m waiting for part 2 and 3 of the one you linked. Hair Metal is of no interest to me 
. By the way, a couple of the guys in Guns N’ Roses worked at the Tower video store on Sunset Blvd. as they did the Pay-To-Play scene in L.A.. To get booked at The Whiskey the bands had to buy a number of tickets (maybe a hundred or so), which they could resell or give away. It worked, a lot of them got deals.
I saw a lot of shows at The Whiskey (where I saw the great Power Pop band The Beat a coupla times), The Roxy Theater (a great sit-down venue with excellent sound. I saw Victoria Williams and Lone Justice there), The Starwood (The Knack, The Plimsouls, X, The Blasters. I appeared there one night in ’82), The aforementioned Troubadour (where I made my L.A. stage debut. I spent my 30th birthday drinking there, and got carded!), The Palomino (The Pretenders first U.S.A. tour, Dwight Yoakam, a lot of Cow Punk bands like Rank And File, lots of Rockabilly), The Central/Blackies (across the street from The Whiskey, a real dump).
There was a second Blackies in Venice Beach, and one night I was setting up my drumkit and another guy in the band said "Hey, looks who’s sitting at that table." It was Dennis Wilson, drinking alone (he was living in a houseboat, moored nearby). I went over and had a little chat with him, telling him The Beach Boys were the first group I saw live, in the Summer of ’64 at The San Jose Civic Auditorium. He was completely down-to-Earth, no Rock Star attitude whatsoever.
There were a lot of smaller bars with live music all over SoCal, to accommodate all the bands and singers who flocked to L.A. in the wake of the success of The Knack. Coming from the S.F. Bay Area---where weed was still in vogue, I was surprised by how commonplace coke was. At parties instead of joints being passed around, it was mirrors with lines of powder. Some people liked it a little too much, like one girl I dated who told me she had sold her car and spent all the money on coke. She was a lot of fun, a real "screamer", if you get my drift.
In the 90’s I started going to nicer places, like The Palace (Steve Earle, The Bangles), The Wiltern Theater (Lucinda Williams on her Car Wheels tour, the Roy Orbison Tribute Show), The El Rey Theater (Los Lobos opening for Tom Waits), The Universal Amphitheater (Leonard Cohen---fantastic!, Brian Wilson---sad and pathetic), and The Hollywood Pantages Theater (Bob Dylan and his band. It was one of his good nights, REAL good).
