The Palisades (5)

The Palisades were from Hawthorne CA (the same home of the legendary Beach Boys), which is part of the Los Angeles beach scene, known as the South Bay. Dominating the South Bay music scene for two years (1982-1983), the Palisades in some ways epitomized the raw sound and look of the area’s musical youth community. Their group following was almost exclusively high school teenagers, too young to get into even 18 and over clubs, much less full drinking bars, which is why the band was never very successful in clubs but enormously popular in every other respect. The Palisades were neither scruffy nor clean cut, played neither L.A. big hair-poseur hard rock nor popular synth dance music (the dominate or soon to be dominate muzaks of the ‘80’s), played virtually no current radio hits, yet quixotically, became incredibly popular in a very short time in the beach cities with their straight forward mixture of heavily ‘60’s influenced originals and pumped up rock n’ roll oldies. No one sounded like the Palisades in 1982 and 1983. The music they wrote and performed was the music of being young – a celebration of youth.