#83 Dockweiler Beach & Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out-Surfing Under the Runway at LAX

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Flying out of LAX you almost always takeoff out over the Pacific Ocean. Even if you’re not going west. The aircraft climbs to a few thousand feet and then banks north east or south. I’ve often looked down and noticed the beach below us as you climb into the air. Although it doesn’t seem like there are ever many people on the beach, it clearly has it’s devotees. Most surprising is that there are a series of state park RV campgrounds along this stretch of beach.

When Camper Van Beethoven was filming the video to Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out (from last years La Costa Perdida). We ran out of time to film in Northern Californian and had to finish up in Southern California. We were staying at the lovely (?) Hacienda Hotel in El Segundo. This happens to be across the street from our Tour Manager and Video Director’s apartment. So he know this funky little stretch of the south LA coast pretty well and suggested that we go down to this beach and film some of the video there. The idea was that the aircraft taking off would make a nice backdrop to the song.

When we got down to this beach we also discovered that there are these two natural gas fired power plants on the beach. These power plants made impressive and contrasting backdrops for the video for Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out.

I assume the power plants are here because there is this enormous petrochemical processing complex in El Segundo that runs from Sepulveda all the way down to the pacific ocean. (The plants must burn the natural gas byproducts?) The petrochemical plant is impressive in it’s own right. Especially when you’re sitting on the patio of one of the down-home restaurant/cantinas in tiny downtown El Segundo and Chevron designed to burn “flare” off some excess flammable gasses. The night sky turns this eerie orange color. It frightened me the first time I saw it. I thought we were in for a toxic airborne event. The locals didn’t even bat an eye. Continued their small talk and ordered more drinks.

There is also a huge cluster of defense and aerospace companies between El Sepulveda and Aviation. Northrop Grumman, Rayethon, Boeing, SAIC and numerous smaller companies. Direct TV is also in with this lot. So if you think you are in your typical Southern California beach community you are wrong. This is a serious redoubt of the military petrochemical industrial defense complex. This is a serious component of our nations imperial might.

That said there are also three pleasant old school surfer hangouts right next door. Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach. So here you have the makings of a camper van beethoven song. The bucolic surfer lifestyle literally in the shadows of some of the most toxic elements of our national imperial might: petrochemicals, armaments and the deafening and relentless global air traffic at LAX. This became the inspiration for the lyrics to Dockweiler Beach-which is the name of the state park under the runway.

So the character in song has lost his wife or girlfriend to a “rogue wave” which sucked her into an undertow. He’s descended into madness and is basically living in a trailer in the Dockweiler Beach RV camp weighting for her body to reappear.

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Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out.

In June 2011 Camper Van Beethoven was supposed to play a show at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. The performance is not in the library but always outside on the grounds. It rained and they postponed our show for a week. So instead of flying home to Virginia we decided that I should stay in Northern California and Camper Van Beethoven should use the time to write a new album. That week of songwriting produced 17 songs that make up the bulk of both La Costa Perdida and El Camino Real.

Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out is a track off the Camper Van Beethoven Album La Costa Perdida. This song is about an illicit love affair between two military intelligence officers who meet at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California just up Highway 1 from Big Sur. Even after they are deployed to Afghanistan they continue their affair. This song tells their story.

There is also this super cool Acoustic Demo of the song. It’s simply us sitting around in jonathan’s living room in oakland when we made up the music. That’s why you can hear us giving each other instructions. Later I overdubbed the vocals onto this.

Dockweiler Beach

I am waiting in the water

I am waiting at El Segundo

I am waiting for that rogue wave

bring your body back

I saw you go into the water

I saw Neptune’s Trident Shine

Took you by the hand my darlin

Took you in the Undertow

I will wait ten thousand years

Eternity

Ten thousand years

Montgomery Atoll

I am living in a trailer

Dockweiler Beach at LAX

Planes take off for Tokyo

They are never coming back

Oceans filled with submariners

Dark secrets and chemicals

Night time lit by gas flares

bring my baby’s body back

I will wait ten thousand years

Eternity

ten thousand years

Montgomery Atoll

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Someday Our Love Will Sell Us Out