When I was a college student at San Diego State back in the 70s the local rock radio station, KGB, had a charity fund raiser project that was very interesting. It was called the Home Grown Album and the idea was musicians from San Diego would write and record songs about life in San Diego and the station would press up the best dozen of them and release it for sale at the local Tower Records store.
The Home Grown Album proved to be very popular and spawned at least several more annual releases that I know of. The songs were about the local communities, Mission Beach, National City, La Mesa, El Cajon, etc. and although the songs may have been somewhat insulting to rival communities, i.e.” Point Loma is great but National City sucks”, the songs were all very pro their home communities.
Bob Coburn was a disc jockey on KGB when I lived in San Diego and years later when I moved back to L.A. he started work on a L.A. rock station. Soon this L.A. station started its own version of the Home Grown Album and I always assumed Bob brought the idea with him. As far as I can recall there was only one edition of the L.A. version and it was easy to see why. Instead of the citizens praising their own communities and perhaps putting down neighboring communities in the spirit of friendly competition, the L.A. Home Grown version consisted of songs where the performers were complaining about their own communities. It was a whole album of musical bellyaching about what a drag living in Los Angeles County is. This vividly illustrated the difference between living in Los Angeles and living in San Diego for me.
The Home Grown Album proved to be very popular and spawned at least several more annual releases that I know of. The songs were about the local communities, Mission Beach, National City, La Mesa, El Cajon, etc. and although the songs may have been somewhat insulting to rival communities, i.e.” Point Loma is great but National City sucks”, the songs were all very pro their home communities.
Bob Coburn was a disc jockey on KGB when I lived in San Diego and years later when I moved back to L.A. he started work on a L.A. rock station. Soon this L.A. station started its own version of the Home Grown Album and I always assumed Bob brought the idea with him. As far as I can recall there was only one edition of the L.A. version and it was easy to see why. Instead of the citizens praising their own communities and perhaps putting down neighboring communities in the spirit of friendly competition, the L.A. Home Grown version consisted of songs where the performers were complaining about their own communities. It was a whole album of musical bellyaching about what a drag living in Los Angeles County is. This vividly illustrated the difference between living in Los Angeles and living in San Diego for me.
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