This is long. And boring. Very long. And very boring. You've been warned.
In February of 1978, I made the mistake of watching the TV movie Deadman's Curve, the story of recording artists Jan and Dean. Still being 12 years old, I was unfamiliar with the duo's work, though I was very familiar with the Beach Boys, and I was amazed that Jan and Dean were permitted to blatantly rip off the tune of Catch a Wave to release the song Sidewalk Surfin. Having long been a fan of Allan Sherman, who had died a few years earlier, I decided to continue his legacy and to become, in addition to many other things, a professional song parodist, despite my devout Christian parents' criticism that "it's not nice to make fun of" other people and their work.
I had already parodied many popular and lesser-known songs but they needed refinement. I also didn't know how to play any musical instruments, so my plan was simply to reuse the artists' original master recordings minus the vocal tracks. Doing so would save me 99.9999% of the effort I would otherwise need to expend, and besides, no matter how well I mastered all the necessary instruments, I would still not be able to produce a perfect imitation of the original backing music. I was completely ignorant of the legal issues and implications involved in this ********, and lacked easy access to learn them. I only cared about perfection, as anything unable to be done perfectly was not worth doing at all. If everyone could and would take this mentality, the world would be a far better place; people are much happier with products and services that rarely, if ever, falter or fail.
Following the adage that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, my first step was to research Jan and Dean, so I purchased one of their compilation cassettes. I quickly discovered that I had, in fact, heard some of their songs, but I had usually ******* they were the Beach Boys, as they had the same trademark sound. They also actually recorded several songs that were recorded and popularized by the Beach Boys, which frustrated me further in my attempts to figure out which were the original artists and which were the "thieves."
The song I fixated on was, naturally, Dead Man's Curve. It was a catchy little ditty that actually told a coherent, cohesive story, another feature I admired. I did have some difficulty understanding a few lines of the lyrics, though. Back in this Cretaceous period of ****** radio tuners, vinyl records, magnetic tape and worn out hand-me-down players of each, the best interpretation I could come up with for one of them was "I flew past the bridge on the prison's pike," which I figured must have been wrong. In my opinion, inclusion of lyrics with any song or album purchase should be required by law, but as my opinion is uncared for by our legal system and the music industry, my cassette's cover had only a blank white interior. Experience would later teach me that compilation albums ****** ever included any lyrics. As the dawn of the Internet was still far off and its popularity even further away, I had to resort to the archaic process of visiting several libraries and requesting some annoyed librarians to actually do their jobs, which was more work than keeping the books and card catalog organized to meet the requirements of the Dewey Decimal System. After a couple of months, I was finally able to establish that the line I had been confused about was supposed to be "I flew past LaBrea, Schwab's, and Crescent Heights."
Well now, never having lived in or even visited Los Angeles, my misunderstanding was understandable. These were geographically local references, and while I did have a general knowledge that the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street was popular, I wasn't sure why. As a dinosaur fan, I also knew about the La Brea Tar Pits, but not exactly where they were located. Another line that I had failed to grasp was "He passed me at Doheny then I started to swerve." While previously listening to the song, I wouldn't have known "Doheny." I had tried to guess "He passed me at the wingie? The weenie?" to no avail. Now that I knew the proper lyric, my next duty was clear: I also had to know the exact location of Dead Man's Curve. I could not go through life with the possibility of someone else knowing a fact that I didn't. Oh dear, this would mean more infringement upon the valuable time of the crabby old librarian, but after a few more weeks, this worthless and intrusive library visitor had a Los Angeles County map in his hot little hands, along with some harsh admonitions to "be careful with it" and that as reference material, it was not to be removed from library premises. "Excuse me, but isn't everything in a library 'reference material'?" I thought but didn't dare vocalize, as if I had specifically ordered a Los Angeles County map so I could take it to the park and make a **** kite out of it. Sheesh.
I got to work, using the clues in the lyrics and inspecting the map: "Let's come off the line now at Sunset and Vine." Fine, it was pretty easy to find the intersection of Sunset and Vine, but the next question was which way they were headed, north, south, east or west. "I flew past LaBrea, Schwab's, and Crescent Heights." Okay, so the La Brea Tar Pits are... uh-oh, down here, at a diagonal angle, an impossibility when the streets are oriented to the main compass points, so they must have gone south on Vine and just "flew past" La Brea in general terms. However, south of Melrose, Vine becomes Rossmore, which **** shortly after crossing Wilshire Boulevard. No, no, this isn't right at all. I tried another approach, looking closer to the La Brea Tar Pits, when I spotted there was a LaBrea Avenue running north and south. "Aha!" I thought, "they could have headed west on Sunset, then passed LaBrea Avenue, Schwab's, and Crescent Heights." I continued following Sunset Boulevard west, and sure enough, I saw another cross street, Crescent Heights Boulevard. There was only one problem; I didn't see any roads or landmarks named "Schwab's."
For all I knew, Schwab could have been one of their friend's names, so I disregarded that and didn't let it impede my virtual journey. "He passed me at Doheny then I started to swerve." Farther along Sunset I found Doheny Drive. "Jeez," I thought, "this would have been a really long race," as I found it impractical when there must have been other stoplights along that route. However, since I didn't know for sure, I just went with the flow. "But I pulled her out and there we were at Dead Man's Curve." Well, there's a slight bend just after Doheny at Cory Avenue, but nothing notable. In fact, Sunset stays relatively straight until... here. Where Greenway Drive meets Sunset Boulevard, I saw the first "real" sharp curve. Satisfied that that must have been what they were referring to, I locked that tidbit of trivia into my brain, so that thereafter, if anyone ever wondered where Dead Man's Curve from the Jan and Dean song was, I could tell them "Sunset at Greenway." I had never been there, but I was confident that I had seen it "myself" because I had personally looked it up.
It would be several years before I discovered that "Schwab's" was the locally-famous pharmacy at 8024 Sunset Boulevard, just east of Crescent Heights Boulevard, so it did in fact lie between LaBrea and Crescent Heights.
None of that was what really bothered me about the song, though.
I had always been an automobile aficionado, and lately I had been honing my ability to instantly identify the make, model and year of any vehicle I saw, whether it was daytime or at night. I would sit outside in the dark and