There's so much music-making in Echo Park that Chicken Corner couldn't begin to draw an outline, except to peck around the edges. Up and down my street alone it's been musicians, a grammy-award designer, a rock critic, a recording engineer, mixers... A friend visiting from New York one time said, so Echo Park is the new Laurel Canyon. Well, not really. Somehow Dublab doesn't fit the mold. It's a different time, and a different place. A splatter of names from EP over the years: Woody Guthrie, Art Pepper, the Eagles, Afghan Wigs, Silversun Pickups....

Recently I got a copy of a new CD, Hallowed Ground, by I See Hawks in L.A. They're psychedelic country rockers who recorded this latest project at an apartment in Echo Park. Their press release describes "their natural habitat" as the Echo nightclub on Sunset. It's members have played with big names, and the CD is almost too good: theatrical in the style of the Four Tops or Dave Alvin.

Country and green don't always go together happy-like. But on Hallowed Ground they dance. Read: their song "Ever Since the Grid Went Down."

Meanwhile, The Shortstop bar has caged a different kind of bird -- of the boogaloo DJ variety -- with a grand opening tonight and to be continued every Thursday. My friend Oliver Wang (O-Dub) and his partner Wilson (not to be confused with Oliver Wilson, who is one of the bar's owners) will be spinning from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Soul Sides & Captain's Crate present Boogaloo[la]. One thing I find interesting, Soul Sides and Captain's Crate are blogs, which means the party is created by blogs. How cyber-forward is that? (Answer: I don't know, maybe very.)

If you have lived in the Bay Area in the not-too-distant past you may have heard Oliver Wang on KALX-FM, where he was a DJ for ten years.

Back to hawks, the bird kind. I saw one today in Elysian Park. First he/she soared over the amazing flowering mustard and an oak tree. Then he/she was chased away by three crows.