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

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There really isn’t a unifying thesis here other than outrageous coincidence, shady goings-on, and vague tie-ins with the military and intelligence communities. I kept waiting for the point, or the crisis moment, and it isn’t there. I’m rating this book four stars anyway for being wildly entertaining, full of crazy stories and information I never knew (surprise me and I’m your fan forever), and giving me a hundred rabbit holes to follow. McGowan notes how so few of the Laurel Canyon artists really demanded an end to the war, killing so many of their peers. Jim Morrison? ‘Fraid not. Mr. Mojo Risin’s dad, U.S. Navy Admiral George Stephen Morrison was the man in charge of the naval ship, the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard, which was involved in the very Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to escalation of the Vietnam War. In fact, McGowan includes a photo of a clean-cut Jim Morrison on the bridge of the infamous ship with his dad in early 1964. Just a few years later he would be asking the world to ‘break on through to the other side” and to “light his fire.” All the while, he largely ignored the politics of the day and had seemingly no musical training or interest. How convenient. One downside of the book is the cursory treatment given to a key element of the alleged scheme—namely, how did these bands and their music influence the masses? Were subliminal messages used? Brainwashing? Reverse speech?

RIP David McGowan - Headpress RIP David McGowan - Headpress

Carl Franzoni perhaps summed it up best when he declared rather bluntly that, “the Byrds’ records were manufactured.” The first album in particular was an entirely engineered affair created by taking a collection of songs by outside songwriters and having them performed by a group of nameless studio musicians (for the record, the actual musicians were Glen Campbell on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, Larry Knechtel on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, and Jerry Cole on rhythm guitar), after which the band’s trademark vocal harmonies, entirely a studio creation, were added to the mix. As would be expected, the Byrds’ live performances, according to Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting for the Sun, “weren’t terribly good.” But that didn’t matter much; the band got a lot of assistance from the media, with Time being among the first to champion the new band. And they also got a tremendous assist from Vito and the Freaks and from the Young Turks, as previously discussed.” The standard modus operandi of a work of “conspiracy theory” is fairly straightforward. The author/researcher takes some commonly accepted historical narrative, and lavishes scepticism upon it, while simultaneously maintaining an alternative understanding of what “really” happened, one that ostensibly better fits the considered facts.of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream by David McGowan Also, he seems to labouring under the misapprehension that hippies were all Gandhi-style pacifists, and that when a musician owned or enjoyed guns there’s some sinister double standard at work, meaning they’re not who they say they are. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200105 Openlibrary_edition JOIN ME NOW, if you have the time, as we take a stroll down memory lane to a time nearly five decades ago — a time when America last had uniformed ground troops fighting a sustained and bloody battle to impose some decidedly Orwellian ‘democracy’ on a sovereign nation. Author David McGowan was born and raised in Torrance, California, just twenty miles south of Laurel Canyon. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in psychology and has, since 1990, run a small business in the greater Los Angeles area.

Classic rock conspiracy theory: ‘Weird Scenes Inside the

Although his literary work was only one part of David’s life—among other things he was also a father, son, brother and businessman (he worked in construction—which may come as some surprise to readers of his books)—it was of course the part that Headpress knew him for, and we sincerely feel that he was one of the most talented authors we have had the privilege to publish, and that Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon was one of the best books we’ve ever released. or possible human sacrifices to the Dark Lord. McGowan, in his chapters “Vito and His Freakers: The Sinister Roots of Hippie Culture” and “The Death of Godo Paulekas: Anger’s Infant Lucifer,” we are introduced to debauched guru and self-described “Freak” Vito Paulekas, along with his wife Szou and his disturbing companion Carl Franzoni. These guys helped get The Byrds (a largely untested, musically-limited band which was as much or more of a manufactured act than the derided Monkees, at least in the early years) off the ground by doing spasmodic, freakish dance moves on the dance floors of clubs that sprouted overnight on the Sunset Strip. That freewheelin' behavior cloaked something far more ominous. Admittedly, most of the music is forgettable. With the exception of ‘Californa Dreaming’, Love’s Forever Changes, and ironically, Charles Manson, it’s dreary stuff. Only the most slovenly, beer-gutted boomer crying demented tears of nostalgia over the memory of his first joint could possibly find pleasure in the likes of Frank Zappa, or Crosby, Stills and Nash. A true conspiracy-archivist to the end, McGowan chose to highlight this morbid synchronicity in one of his last messages to loyal supporters.Adding a cherry to the top of the synchronicity sundae is Frank’s wife, Gail, who also hailed from a military family. Funny enough, she happened to cross paths at a young age with fellow future hippie, Jim Morrison—they both attended the same Naval kindergarten class before reuniting decades later in Laurel Canyon. McGowan finds these facts unsettling, describing the series of events as “too many coincidences… to be a chance gathering .”