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Johnny Otis

Don Snowden, New York Rocker, February 1982

IT'S BECOMING readily apparent that one salient characteristic of the first batch of Los Angeles bands (let's leave those lovable beach punks out of this) is a willingness to draw on the traditional sounds and spirit of early rock 'n' roll and its antecedents. It stems, I suspect, in part from the twin desires to avoid being stamped as clone bands mindlessly following the London/New York leader and to separate themselves from the Eagles-Jackson-Linda-mellow-plastic record industry image we all know and loathe. As the NME's recent feature on X insightfully pointed out, you had to go the punk route to be a real rock 'n' roll band in Los Angeles.

Total word count of piece: 2744

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