Everything You Need Will Never Be Here

For the better part of my childhood I lived in the Echo Park/Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. To me, there really wasn't a world outside these two communities or outside L.A period. Around nine or ten my family relocated to Alhambra which is this small town just fucking East of L.A on the border where East L.A and Monterey Park meet. I hated this town from day one and there is no change. There is a "downtown area" but no way in hell would you ever catch me dead there with the countless other burnouts from my high school and elementary school times. I hate that place. I'll go to L.A and force something to do rather than go down there and see Sebastian cracked out talking about how he fucked some chick in the Johnny Rocket's bathroom and ate at Applebee's after. At least in Hollywood when you see people fucking it's in a fancier bathroom.

So Alhambra, "The Gateway to the San Gabriel Valley" is basically known for nothing. It has nothing and is nothing. There used to be an independent record store that I worked at but that went the way of the buffalo and now it's just an empty space for people to gawk at. That strip seriously lost all of its business within three years of it going up. It's fucking sad. And that tends to be the case for small town areas like Alhambra that are situated right fucking next to huge metropolises. Why go to downtown Alhambra when you can drive five miles and go to a real night club in L.A or drive an extra six miles down the road to Pasadena? For these reasons, Alhambra has garnered a reputation for being an essentially useless town that has nothing to offer.

With that said, Alhambra does have something going for it. It does have a little celebrity status because two of its most famous celebrities. These two celebrities have garnered Alhambra a repuation as a desolate place of either murder or complete nothingness, barren of any form of true human emotion. The two men I speak of are Alhambra's most famous citizens and I guess Alhambra's claim to fame. These two men: Phil Spector and Malefic, the man behind perhaps the cruelest and most nihilistic American death metal project, Xasthur.

Now, I knew Phil Spector lived in Alhambra. I use to be his neighbor. Phil Spector lives in this giant desolate castle, alone. This castle sits upon a hill in the city and is surrounded by giant trees so as to give a feeling of pure isolation. It is barracaded by a giant black fence that stretches all around the compound. There is no noise or never any activity that goes on in the castle. To the best of my knowledge, Phil Spector lives there alone, with like two or three people who maintain the property and live in the back house. They keep to themselves and leave him to be; an insane lunatic with crippling mania suffering major psychosis and more than likely sitting alone all day. In a giant fucking castle. By himself.


Phil Spector is a record producer who has recorded everyone from The Beatles and The Ramones to the Strokes in a career spanning five decades. He is credited with creating the wall of sound technique which to be honest, sounds fucking sweet. I love all that old girl group trio sound. The Ronnettes ruled. However after he finished with the music world, he became more and more deranged and move to Alhambra to live in a giant castle, alone, surrounded by woods and a giant fence. There he slowly began to go mad and devolved into the frighteningly crazed lunatic you see today. It is at this castle where Spector shot and murdered that girl after one night where his insanity went over the edge, and the terror of living in a town such as Alhambra, by himself, finally got to him. He offed some B-movie actress and now the castle is a tourist attraction for the strange and creepy.

Speaking of castles and grandiose personnas, one man who probably visited this site for inspiration is none other than Alhambra's native son, our own Malefic. Known as the driving force behind the black metal outfit Xasthur, Malefic's lyrics are perhaps the darkest, most devoid, pessimistic and nihilistic I have ever heard. This is music that you literally hear right before you kill yourself. Each song is about the hatred and spite he has for human beings and how the only possible solution to such malcontent is the systematic erradication of the human race including himself. He is so angry, so spiteful, that the minute I found out he was Alhambra's own, I was like, "ohhhhh, THAT'S WHY he hates people as much as I do." Malefic lyrics are filled with anger and contempt for his fellow man and it got me thinking to myself, "why does this town do this to everyone who lives here?"

Alhambra's native son.

Take a good luck at him Alhambra. Take a good look at both of them Alhambra. These are the type of people you produce. Insane, homicidal, suicidal, genocidal, maniacs with such contempt for human life and such spite for everything around them that they shut themselves out completely. I have never seen anyone do a good deed for anyone in this fucking city ever. Everyone just shits on everyone else and it's no wonder this city breeds a feeling of pure isolation and hatred for your fellow citizen, when everyone hates everyone and will do anything to see them suffer. I lived in a house for three years and we were evicted. We had no where to go so we would sneak into the house still and sleep on the floors. The lady next door called the police on us and also called the landlord and we were foricibly removed from our home leaving us homeless for a summer. Those are the type of people that exist in Alhambra and I will go on record and say that these people are way more evil and way more diabolical than any murderer or nihilist this town has ever produced. This town does this to people and makes them that way, or at least amplifies the dispicableness of human beings. No wonder Phil Spector is a homicidal lunatic. No wonder Malefic despises people so much. When I think about all the times people in Alhambra have hurt me, it kind of makes me dispise people as well--almost as much as these dudes.



But I guess you will find this in any small town. Every small town has its seedy and diry secrets and I guess it's in these small towns that you find the true worthlessness of some human lives. People tend to think Los Angeles is the scummiest of scum, and you know what, for the most part they are right. But travel just a few miles East, West, North or South, and what you'll find is more terrifying and appalling than anything you'll see in Los Angeles.


Alhambra: Isolation. Desolation. Wasteland. Terror. Murder. Insanity. Hatred. Sorrow. Spite. Anger. Fear. Death.

COME VISIT US SOON!

- C