LOl.......yes, I distincly remember "Land of a Thousand Dances" , a band out of East Los Angeles. It was one of their "two hit wonders" ("Farmer John......I'm in love with your daughter....."). It was during the mid-60's and East Los Angeles was jumping with dances almost every weekend, with popular local bands that played at those dances (like the Midnighters), and cruising up and down Whittier Blvd. every Saturday and Sunday (it was packed then).
the Japanese crowd (aka, "Buddhaheads") followed along with their own dances at locations like the Aeronautical Ballroom (near Fairfax and Beverly), the Old Dixie Ballroom (on Western Ave, near Vernon Ave), the Rodger Young Auditorium, the Elks Club in Gardena, and others.
Those other dances....like the Watusi, the Monkey, the Shing-ga-ling, the Harlem Shuffle (to name a few), the Skate, the Tempttation Walk, were made popular on the East Coast mostly in the black ghettoes of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. We had one out here called "The Slauson" and you can guess
In the 70's, things started to change as Psychedelic music came in to being as well as the English influence (the Beatles). Everyone changed to growing their hair long, wearing bell-bottoms, worn down denims, tee shirts with "tye-dye" designs on them, started smoking weed and dropping pills, gang activity reduced significantly but Black militancy and revolutionary fervor increased (Black Panthers, Black Muslims, the Red Guard, Brown Berets, the Weathermen); Young people preached "love and peace" concepts, "Love-ins" were held frequently at Griffith Park, huge marches against the Vietnam War were held on Wilshire Blvd. with crowds or easily 100,000+ people, young girls were leaving home and hitchhiking west from across the country to become part of the new "hippie" counter culture in San Francisco. What a crazy time, it was. And, not to mention that you guys straight out of high school were starting to disappear because either they got drafted into the service and sent off to Nam or they disappeared (fled to Canada) to avoid the draft.
