Album Notes

Bunny Ultramod, lead singer for the band The Ultramods, offers his first solo album: A scorching 16-song look at the three years he spent in Hollywood leading up to the LA riots. His unsparing two- and three-chord songs provide a view from the ground of people living on society's margins in a Los Angeles that often seemed headed toward apocalypse.

Stores told include:

-- Tales of the homeless teens who passed through the Citrus House, a shelter for gay and lesbian teens formerly located near Citrus and Santa Monica (“The Shelter Gang”). Many of these runaways worked as male prostitutes, and their stories are detailed in the song “Santa Monica.”

-- Participating in a theater program for homeless teens begun by Academy Award-winning actress Sheller Winters.

-- Sex work in the 1990s, both in the form of street prostitution (“L.A. Xpress”) and adult videos (“First-Person Three-Way”).

-- Watching the Los Angeles riots (“Watch It Burn”) from the roof the legendary Nirvana apartment building, once owned by Anna Mae Wong, the first Chinese American movie star.