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ENCHANTED CONCLUDES Things We Lost in the Night, a fast-moving, romance-filled memoir of a young singer and his friends search for success in the 1960s music business of California and Las Vegas - if you liked memoirs from Carly Simon, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Tommy James, and "The Wrecking Crew," you'll love Enchanted.
"I began with a simple retelling of the four of us from Indiana's rock and roll adventures in the chaotic West Coast of the mid-1960s for friends and family. It turned into a memoir seen and experienced through my eyes, that in the end, revealed itself for what it had always been--A LOVE STORY."
In the final three years of Things We Lost in the Night, the band's trajectory continues to rise as their new record release is picked by Billboard Magazine to debut high on the Hot 100. In Hawaii, Larry encounters a life-threatening moment and an indelible romantic fantasy, experiences on this beautiful and exotic island during the Vietnam War that change his life in many ways. The band's homecoming to Indianapolis that follows is far less satisfying than he'd expected and a national tragedy affects the hit record everyone expected. But the band's success as performers continues as they headline in Las Vegas with famous bands like Sly and the Family Stone and discover that Stark Naked and the Car Thieves has become the model for the latest supergroup, Three Dog Night.
Though the recording success they'd hoped for hasn't materialized yet, the Flamingo Hotel has booked them to perform in the new SKY ROOM, a dance/showroom designed and built especially for them. Here they perform for the biggest stars in the world, including Tom Jones and Elvis Presley, and play with internationally famous musicians who come to sit in with them. With their success, Larry's feels he's living a romantic fairy tale with his new wife and baby son and been given a second chance to redeem the failure of his first marriage.
When the Flamingo's owner completes construction on the new International Hotel, the world's largest resort casino, Elvis Presley is slated to open in the main showroom to begin his legendary climb to superstardom in the city that never sleeps. Stark Naked and the Car Thieves are told they will join him as they open the CROWN ROOM at the top of the new hotel, a venue similar to the Sky Room. After another record release fizzles, the band fears their producer is losing interest in them and are frustrated with their progress as recording artists.
In a big surprise, Capitol Records chooses them to record a theme song for a new major movie, and they believe their fortunes may change. When the movie fails to be completed, and another release fails to hit the charts, disappointment in their recording success continues to dog them. Larry believes the band has to compose their own original music and looks for unconventional ways to trigger the band's creativity. Meanwhile, unrest threatens to implode the band. During a scheduling mixup, a crisis arises. His new wife and son are missing. His life and sanity are threatened as he searches for ways to save his family and keep the band together.
PRAISE FOR THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT
"Dunlap's sense of transcendence is similar to the sensation Keith Richards describes in his memoir, 'Life: ' ...you leave the planet for a while...' Reliving his rock and roll years in his wonderful memoir, Larry Dunlap must have left the planet for a while, too." I loved it and highly recommend it. -- Kiana Davenport, The Spy Lover, Shark Dialogues
"Whether or not you remember the swift intoxicating music of that era or the seismic shift of mores that burst from the free-love movement, Larry J. Dunlap captures the beat of that misty time when the country suffered "a growing thirst for individual freedom, a desire to escape from an ever-darkening shadow of war, and a national hangover following the public murder of a young and popular president." -- C.D. Quyn, Steph Rodriguez, Manhattan Book Review
"I began with a simple retelling of the four of us from Indiana's rock and roll adventures in the chaotic West Coast of the mid-1960s for friends and family. It turned into a memoir seen and experienced through my eyes, that in the end, revealed itself for what it had always been--A LOVE STORY."
In the final three years of Things We Lost in the Night, the band's trajectory continues to rise as their new record release is picked by Billboard Magazine to debut high on the Hot 100. In Hawaii, Larry encounters a life-threatening moment and an indelible romantic fantasy, experiences on this beautiful and exotic island during the Vietnam War that change his life in many ways. The band's homecoming to Indianapolis that follows is far less satisfying than he'd expected and a national tragedy affects the hit record everyone expected. But the band's success as performers continues as they headline in Las Vegas with famous bands like Sly and the Family Stone and discover that Stark Naked and the Car Thieves has become the model for the latest supergroup, Three Dog Night.
Though the recording success they'd hoped for hasn't materialized yet, the Flamingo Hotel has booked them to perform in the new SKY ROOM, a dance/showroom designed and built especially for them. Here they perform for the biggest stars in the world, including Tom Jones and Elvis Presley, and play with internationally famous musicians who come to sit in with them. With their success, Larry's feels he's living a romantic fairy tale with his new wife and baby son and been given a second chance to redeem the failure of his first marriage.
When the Flamingo's owner completes construction on the new International Hotel, the world's largest resort casino, Elvis Presley is slated to open in the main showroom to begin his legendary climb to superstardom in the city that never sleeps. Stark Naked and the Car Thieves are told they will join him as they open the CROWN ROOM at the top of the new hotel, a venue similar to the Sky Room. After another record release fizzles, the band fears their producer is losing interest in them and are frustrated with their progress as recording artists.
In a big surprise, Capitol Records chooses them to record a theme song for a new major movie, and they believe their fortunes may change. When the movie fails to be completed, and another release fails to hit the charts, disappointment in their recording success continues to dog them. Larry believes the band has to compose their own original music and looks for unconventional ways to trigger the band's creativity. Meanwhile, unrest threatens to implode the band. During a scheduling mixup, a crisis arises. His new wife and son are missing. His life and sanity are threatened as he searches for ways to save his family and keep the band together.
PRAISE FOR THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT
"Dunlap's sense of transcendence is similar to the sensation Keith Richards describes in his memoir, 'Life: ' ...you leave the planet for a while...' Reliving his rock and roll years in his wonderful memoir, Larry Dunlap must have left the planet for a while, too." I loved it and highly recommend it. -- Kiana Davenport, The Spy Lover, Shark Dialogues
"Whether or not you remember the swift intoxicating music of that era or the seismic shift of mores that burst from the free-love movement, Larry J. Dunlap captures the beat of that misty time when the country suffered "a growing thirst for individual freedom, a desire to escape from an ever-darkening shadow of war, and a national hangover following the public murder of a young and popular president." -- C.D. Quyn, Steph Rodriguez, Manhattan Book Review
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About the author
Larry J. Dunlap
6 books48 followersLarry J. Dunlap is the author of the recently completed THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT, A Memoir of Love and Music in the 60s with Stark Naked and the Car Thieves in two volumes: NIGHT PEOPLE: Book 1, followed by ENCHANTED: Book 2.
Find out more at http://larryjdunlap.com
Below I'd like to invite you to read the first seven chapters of the two books of Things We Lost in the Night, a fast-moving romance-filled ROMANCE-FILLED memoir of a young singer and his friends search for success in the 1960s music business of California and Las Vegas in an easy to read online format in the link below.
Here are the first seven chapters of NIGHT PEOPLE FREE at the link below:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin...
and here are the first seven chapters of ENCHANTED FREE at this link:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin...
"Though I'd always wanted to be a creative writer from my youth, my writing career didn't begin until late in life as a pencil-for-hire, technical and training writer for Fortune 50 companies in the 1990s. In the 1970s, the years following my memoir project, I spent most of the decade working in Hollywood as a personal manager, publisher, and Sunset Boulevard recording studio owner/operator. While actually seeking a way out of the music business in the 1980s, I developed a love affair with early computer gaming that led me to co-found The Games Network, Inc., the first all-digital broadcasting cable network, followed by several years in video and film production and post-production.
My favorite project has been imagining a galactic empire as a backdrop for an online game system. In the mid-2000s, I designed what I considered to be an innovative gameplay and delivery system and gathered together a highly talented art and programming team to develop a breakthrough graphical multiplayer online strategy game called IMPERIAL WARS. Since I didn't have the resources initially to develop the game, it gave me a lot of time to work on a history of the empire and develop ideas and concepts for a trilogy based on a specific time in this history. For my latest project I have begun work on the first volume, working-name, IMPERIA, and roughing out the two following books. I've been a huge science-fiction fan since the golden age of sci-fi in the late 1950s and early 60s. It's hard not to be intimidated by the incredible authors in this genre between then and now but I'm excited by the challenge.
At various moments over the years, I have published short stories, been a rock music review columnist for a California lifestyle magazine, and authored and drawn a published music-based cartoon strip named Frets. I author fiction and creative non-fiction project from a wonderful little hideaway near the ocean in Southern California where I count my blessings and share my life with my wife Laurie and our pet Chilidog."
Find out more at http://larryjdunlap.com
Below I'd like to invite you to read the first seven chapters of the two books of Things We Lost in the Night, a fast-moving romance-filled ROMANCE-FILLED memoir of a young singer and his friends search for success in the 1960s music business of California and Las Vegas in an easy to read online format in the link below.
Here are the first seven chapters of NIGHT PEOPLE FREE at the link below:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin...
and here are the first seven chapters of ENCHANTED FREE at this link:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2019
In this electric, surprisingly moving memoir, Dunlap takes up where he left off in Things We Lost in the Night and recalls his final years as a member of Stark Naked and the Car Thieves band.
Dunlap talks about Elvis and Streisand’s glory days in Las Vegas; the raw beauty of Hawaii, the insecurities, fears, and hopes of his band and their struggle with finding their original voice. Along the way, come his own struggles, his fractured relationship with his wife, his heartache, and a growing sense of despair as the band’s hopes of attaining recording success shatter.
With its bracing honesty and captivating prose, the memoir also serves as an interesting study in the 1960s music business of California, Las Vegas, and Hawaii.
Dunlap is an informed narrator, and this exciting, passionate memoir will appeal to readers whether they’re fans of memoirs or not.
Dunlap talks about Elvis and Streisand’s glory days in Las Vegas; the raw beauty of Hawaii, the insecurities, fears, and hopes of his band and their struggle with finding their original voice. Along the way, come his own struggles, his fractured relationship with his wife, his heartache, and a growing sense of despair as the band’s hopes of attaining recording success shatter.
With its bracing honesty and captivating prose, the memoir also serves as an interesting study in the 1960s music business of California, Las Vegas, and Hawaii.
Dunlap is an informed narrator, and this exciting, passionate memoir will appeal to readers whether they’re fans of memoirs or not.
June 23, 2019
All the questions that left the reader wanting more at the end of Night People are answered as the story of Stark Naked and the Car Thieves reveals the personal sacrifices paid to chase a dream. This must-read for music fans will not disappoint.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews