Courtesy of the West Hollywood Marketing & Visitors Bureau The Sunset Strip, an entertainment destination since the 1930s, is home to high-profile nightclubs, boutiques, restaurants and huge billboards.

Courtesy of the West Hollywood Marketing & Visitors Bureau Lou Adler and Elmer Valentine renovated a former strip club in 1973 and turned it into The Roxy, still a popular Sunset Strip nightclub.

The Sunset Strip, a mile-and-a-half section of Sunset Boulevard that winds its way through West Hollywood, is one of the most famous stretches of asphalt in the world. For decades, it's been an entertainment hotbed packed with nightclubs, restaurants, boutiques and monstrous billboards.

In the 1930s and '40s, the Strip was a magnet for Hollywood A-listers who flocked to its glitzy restaurants and nightclubs. By the 1960s, that scene was fading as the counterculture was building. Soon, hippies were packing clubs like the Whisky a Go Go to hear unsigned bands like Buffalo Springfield and The Doors.

By the 1980s, the scene had shifted again. This time, hard rock ruled and groups like Guns N' Roses were sending fans into thrashing fits of rock ecstasy at The Roxy Theatre and other venues.

Twenty years on, the Sunset Strip remains a vibrant place for live music, from singer-songwriters to hair band revivalists. The Whisky and the Roxy are still there, joined by the Viper Room, the House of Blues, the Key Club and the Cat Club.

Tonight through Sunday, those six clubs are banding together to celebrate the Sunset Strip's rich musical history. The Sunset Strip Music Festival will feature a dizzying array of concerts, featuring such bands as Everclear, Soul Asylum, Godhead, Hot Hot Heat and Juliette & the Licks.

Todd Steadman, executive director of the Sunset Strip Business Association, said the festival took more than two years to plan.

"We want to finally pay tribute to the legendary history of the Strip, the place where the legends of the Doors, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe were created," Steadman said. "We also want to show this is the place where bands are still being discovered."

Although the array of clubs has changed frequently since the mid-'60s, the Strip's nightclub landscape has held steady for several years.

The Whisky a Go Go is the oldest, having opened in 1964. Johnny Rivers was one of its first regular acts. Lou Adler and Elmer Valentine opened the Roxy in 1973, renovating a former strip club.

The Viper Room, with its all-black front entrance, appeared in 1993. The club, once partly owned by Johnny Depp, hadn't even been open a year when actor River Phoenix died there of a drug overdose on Halloween morning.

The Strip's other current music venues include the Cat Club, the Key Club and West Hollywood's branch of the popular House of Blues chain.

"We expect to have 9,000 people attending the festival," Steadman said. "We have a few special events. (Tonight) there will be a tribute to Lou Adler, Elmer Valentine and Mario Maglieri (longtime proprietor of several Sunset Strip venues). On Saturday, we will have a round-table discussion about the Strip with the current club owners, moderated by Larry King."

Tonight's tribute, hosted by Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, and Saturday's panel discussion are both invite-only affairs, so unless you've got connections, you'll have to sit those events out. The concerts, though, are all open to the public.

Nic Adler, son of Lou Adler and current owner of the Roxy, said he has envisioned a festival for more than a decade. And while he hopes that future events will be even more grand, Adler is happy that the clubs are working together to keep the Sunset Strip in the limelight.

"There is competition among the clubs, but you have to have the mentality that crowds breed crowds, and excitement breeds excitement," Adler said. "If it's busy at the Whisky and at the Roxy, then that's good for both. And when those shows let out and they go to a restaurant or bar down the street, then it's good for the entire Strip."

Adler said that in the past 40 years, the Strip has followed a cycle of "discovering" hot new bands that make it big every three or four years.

"It's like graduation," he said. "We send out a group that has graduated, and we get new ones in. I think we are at the point now that in a year or so, another three or four bands are going to come out of the Roxy."

— E-mail freelance columnist Jeff Favre at jjfavre@yahoo.com.