California (All the Way)

While reading through Nathaniel West's 1939 novel "The Day of the Locust," I came across the following line: "He wondered why all his sympathy had turned to malice." When i read it, it resonated with a musical lilt. Immediately I knew that I had heard this very same sentence in a song before. I stopped reading and hummed the sentence in my head, trying to recall the tune it belonged to. I knew it was a band i liked and whose CD i owned, but it wasn't until I googled the keywords "lyrics," "sympathy," and "malice" that I learned it was this Luna song. I first heard this song 7 years ago, after buying a used copy of "Bewitched" (Luna's best album, alongside "Chinatown") for 6.95 at a Blockbuster music. I purchased the album because I recognized the band from an Uncut Magazine compilation CD where their song "Super Freaky Memories," in a small way, blew my mind. I am a southern Californian, Nathaniel West's novel takes place in Hollywood and this song is, to this day, one of my all time favorite Luna songs. Both the book and the album were purchased second-hand and I think I have hit on an interesting connection between the two, although aside from this linguistic similarity the song and the novel have little in common. And, in case you're wondering, the novel is excellent. It is considered the premiere novel about Hollywood, specifically pre-WWII Hollywood, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes to read fiction.

Why has my sympathy now turned to malice? This song reminds me of a girl I was hanging around with so I wouldn't be lonely. Eventually she drove me nuts and I decided it was preferable to be lonely.

This song actually is pretty sad.. the melody and the lyrics.... really great

So, Dean Wareham actually talks about this song in the docmentary. It's about a chick who was really into Sean Eden and she would follow him from show to show. "Well, she followed him from phoenix out to California" that's about Sean and this chick.

"He asked her please stop quoting Rod McKuen in your postcards..." Rod McKuen wrote a bunch of songs and translated the songs of Jacques Brel, but he is probably most well-known for his schlocky books of romance poetry, very popular (especially with women) in the 1970s.