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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

History of Orange County's Music Scene


Vintage Orange      Wednesday, June 22 2016

A lot of great sounds came out of Orange County. There were the classic, coastal music venues like the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach or the Blue Beet in Newport Beach. Radio Repairman Leo Fender invented the first, mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar in his Fullerton workshop.
And in 1970, Laguna Canyon was the site of The Happening; Orange County's version of  a free music, free love festival.

OC native and author Jim Washburn talks about Orange County's musical heritage and the unique sounds that were born here.

Jim Washburn has written about music and popular culture for the Los Angeles Times, the OC Register, the OC Weekly (of which he was founding executive editor) and other publications, ranging from Rolling Stone to Reader’s Digest, as well as the MSN and fourstory.org websites. He co-authored the 1998 book Martin Guitars, an Illustrated Celebration and the 2000 John Crean autobiography, The Wheel and I.


He has curated four exhibits at the Fullerton Museum Center, with two specifically on Orange County’s popular culture history: The Orange Groove, Orange County’s Rock Music History in 2004 and Lay Down the Boogie: OC in the Disco Era in 2012. In 2012, he was a guest lecturer at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts Chautauqua! engagement.




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