Article Contributed by Gratefulweb
Published on 2026-08-03
Before streaming, social media, and effortless self-promotion, the Pur’p’l Tur’t’lz built their own musical world from cassette tapes, photocopied flyers, borrowed rooms, and sheer nerve. Musician and songwriter Greg Brown revisits that world in his newly released book, Too Hard to Handle: Music and Mischief in the San Fernando Valley: The ’80s & ’90s.
The Pur’p’l Tur’t’lz emerged from California’s San Fernando Valley during the 1980s and early ’90s. The group shared cassette recordings, created its own flyers, staged backyard and park shows, improvised freely, and encouraged the audience to become part of the experience.
Around the band grew a community known as the Hardshells. They were more than fans, helping organize shows, create artwork, carry equipment, circulate tapes, and preserve the stories that made each performance feel like part of something larger.
The Grateful Dead’s example helped demonstrate that music could create its own culture—one built around live performance, musical exploration, taping, friendship, and participation rather than conventional commercial success. Brown’s memoir tells the story of a smaller community that embraced many of those same values and made them its own.
In the San Fernando Valley of the 1980s and early ’90s, Brown and his bandmates transformed living-room jams into backyard parties, free park concerts, parking-lot performances, club dates, and studio sessions. The Hardshells became a loyal and unruly family of friends, fans, artists, roadies, and fellow travelers who helped make every show more than just a concert.
Drawn from decades of recordings, photographs, flyers, and firsthand memories, Too Hard to Handle is part music memoir, part local history, and part love letter to a scene that existed before anyone thought to preserve it. The book follows the music, mischief, brotherhood, losses, and unlikely breakthroughs of a band that was never polished, predictable, or easily contained.
Funny, candid, and deeply personal, Too Hard to Handle is a story for anyone who has ever built a life around a band, a friendship, or one more song after midnight.
Greg Brown is a Santa Cruz musician, songwriter, recording artist, and recently retired elementary music teacher. He has performed on keyboards, bass, guitar, and vocals in numerous bands, including the Pur’p’l Tur’t’lz. Brown spent decades preserving the band’s recordings, photographs, flyers, and stories.
Too Hard to Handle: Music and Mischief in the San Fernando Valley: The ’80s & ’90s features a foreword by Evan Marcus Rotman and contributions from Larry Saltman.
The book is available for purchase HERE.
