A local music scene in LA in the 1960s that still influences music today

A review of two books which document a particularly creative musical community located in LA in the 1960s. Among those who were a part of that scene: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The Mamas and The Papas, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, The Eagles, Carole King, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, The Turtles, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, Little Feat, Warren Zevon, J.D. Souther, and Gram Parsons.

How do scenes like this develop? From what I have seen over the years in the arts or technology, it takes:

1. A critical mass of talented people, often brought together by some sort of place to create (e.g., a university or research facility for scientists, a foundry for sculptors, a recording studio for musicians).

2. Either financial resources to pay creative types or low-cost living so that they can afford to live there.

3. Some way to spread the word about the creations (e.g., links to people outside the community; a person recording and publishing what's happening there; a patron or development program to launch creative ideas or art).

4. A community spirit that encourages and supports experimentation.

5. Places for people to exchange ideas (e.g., club, bars, or coffee shops; community centers; office meeting rooms; private homes where people "hang" out.)

Some examples that come to mind:

1. Silicon Valley, which grew out of work done at Stanford University and a number of research and think tanks which located there.

2. Boulder, which got a major arts infusion when the Buddhist school Naropa was established here and became a second home to many of the Beat Generation.

3. Loveland, Colorado, which has become home to many sculptors, some of whom originally moved there to be close to several bronze founderies.

4. Black Mountain College, a North Carolina school which existed from the 1930s to the 1950s, attracted such famous artists, architects, thinkers, and scientists as Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Alfred Kazin, Merce Cunningham, Paul Goodman, and Buckminster Fuller.

Canada.com, 7/29/06 - Making music in the flower-power era: "It isn't clear why two competing books on the same narrow topic and with the same cast of characters would appear simultaneously more than 30 years after the fact, but Hoskyns's Hotel California and Walker's Laurel Canyon ... both tell essentially the same story of a remarkable period when the hub of popular late-1960s and '70s North American music was in and around the idyllic Los Angeles-area community of Laurel Canyon."