Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream

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Paulekas shows up in the underground film Mondo Hollywood and likely had allowed Satanist and suspected snuff-film creator Kenneth Anger to feature the three-year old Godo as his “Lucifer” in a film he was working on. It is then that Mansonite and former Grass Roots (a different “Grass Roots,” later renamed Love) guitarist Bobby "Cupid" Beausoleil becomes the Luciferian replacement. You are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes, and Cultural Myths There were something very strange indeed with the 60s america, maybe the world, but often camouflaged by beauttiful images of "the summer of love", "the beatles", "the flower power"...

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops

Every chapter of this book brings some light to people, music groups, weird happenings, surronding "Laurel Canyon", the inception place where the hippie culture sprung... and, man, it is not a pretty picture. The propensity for Canyon-dwellers to avoid the military draft at the height of the war; the surprising number of music clubs that opened ‘just in time’ to popularize and publicize marginally-talented Laurel Canyon artists; or the mysterious and grisly deaths plaguing many of the musicians’ circles may seem like chance sequences or unrelated coincidences—but to McGowan they are worthy of documenting and examining. The central question of his book becomes a rhetorical one: “ How many coincidences does it take to make a conspiracy? ” It was with some personal interest I read this tapestry of biographical sketches, historical vignettes, digressions, and leading questions asked with dramatically-raised eyebrows. My mother and father were almost -- though not quite -- part of the "scene." They were living only one canyon over from Laurel when I was born in 1968. They long remembered the massive influx of unwashed and drug-addled young searchers and the resulting Sunset Boulevard riots in '66. At the time, my father was an impresario trying to get a young ingenue (my mother) into the LA music free-for-all. They spent time in the clubs McGowan profiles -- places like Whiskey a Go-Go and Pandora's. Hell, they might have crossed paths with some unsavory characters like Vito Paulekas and Elmer Valentine -- or even Charles Manson himself. It was a wild time, though the real wildness lasted for only two years or so.I am definitely adding it to my "Classic Trash" shelf along with my Brian Jones conspiracy books and Hollywood Babylon. For example, he accuses Kim Fowley (producer of the Ruaways) of "lowering the bar" even further that Frank Zappa had previously done with his GTOs project. He can't help but let his distaste for these artists color his reporting of the story. It's really amateurish and unprofessional. The murders were not an anomaly, there were the normal consequence of weird vibes, drugs, ways, sexual acts, satanic acts and very very very disturbed people. And with this, I am not putting Manson and his "sect" as some kind of super-evil-power that came from nowhere to end the "love, peace and understanding" society of aquarius, no...

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon - Audible UK

Thomas McGrath: You propose that hippie culture was established to neutralise the anti-war movement. But I also interpreted your book as suggesting that, as far as you’re concerned, there’s also some resonance between what you term “psychedelic occultism” (the hippie counterculture) and the “elite” philosophy/theology? You think this was a second reason for its dissemination? Unfortunately, alarm bells also rang here for me early on, when the author says that he holds strong leftist political sentiments, but assures the reader that he will leave politics out of the book. Sadly, he did not. He launches into a quote about the war in Vietnam being a "crime against humanity" in almost the next paragraph. Oh boy... One thing that comes off of David’s work whenever we read it is its glaring humanity. David sincerely hated to see all the violence and injustice in the world, and his indignation powered his books.I started reading this guys blog posts several years before the book was published. The book itself is full of interesting facts and anecdotes about the area surrounding Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. The book is a fun read if you are a lover of history, conspiracy, and musical biography. At times the author jumps around a little. The book might have benefited from a little more editing, but over all for what it's worth I really did enjoy the conspiracy aspect of it all. For all things to converge in one place and one time, kinda interesting, kinda creepy. Even the death-obsessed and positively evil Process Church of the Final Judgment played a role in Laurel Canyon and surrounding areas. Just ask one-time cape-wearing David Crosby or any number of lesser-known “musicians” who came even later. For all the ocean breezes, bikini babes and daisies and so forth, the ever-present Southern California sunshine couldn’t possibly pierce the darkness hanging over Laurel Canyon. I would like to see someone with the chops to a actually take this on, there's possibly something here to look at, not such a broad ranging conspiracy as McGowan has laid out but it's worth a look and it would be nice to see someone with an ounce of intelligence have a butchers.