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

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This was not, as we have seen so many times before, a ‘false flag’ operation (which is to say, an operation that involves Uncle Sam attacking himself and then pointing an accusatory finger at someone else). Perhaps it was a mixture of both, an alchemy requiring a combination of natural and artificial ingredients. The navel-gazers eschewed social concerns in favor of focusing on tales of personal anguish, the acid rockers largely preached the mantra of ‘turn on, tune in, drop out,’ and the country-rockers largely stuck to traditional—which is to say, quite conservative—country music themes. Bon Homme Richard, which was involved in the very Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to escalation of the Vietnam War.

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON - Internet Archive WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE CANYON - Internet Archive

There is also much made of certain dates which have occult significance like the fact that Tom Mix died on October 12, Alistair Crowley's Birthday. By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. McGowan notes how so few of the Laurel Canyon artists really demanded an end to the war, killing so many of their peers. We’ve seen most of the approved and authorized bios of bands like The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors and so on.Hippie culture is now viewed as synonymous with the anti-war movement, but as the book points out, that wasn’t always the case. Okay, okay, so the body count won’t be that high if the Christians In Action (CIA) actually decide that a nobody like me shouldn’t be posting my thoughts on a book that reveals some very insidious and incendiary behavior by the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from foreign enemies. There were many interesting ideas but no real connections and where were the covert-ops promised in the subtitle.

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops

Following a similar path to Laurel Canyon was another influential artist on the forefront of the hippie movement: Frank Zappa . He had a rich history of detailing secret plots by criminal elements within the world’s power structure—an inherently risky undertaking. What you make of McGowan’s criteria in and of itself (which ranges fairly widely, and at times wildly, from a “tell-tale” preoccupation with the occult to heavy military-industrial family ties), to my mind the virtue of Weird Scenes dwells in the ensuing atmosphere of incredible fairy-tale strangeness—not unlike Joan Didion’s own famous look at California in the late sixties, The White Album. 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.It will quickly be followed by releases from the John Phillips-led Mamas and the Papas ( If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, January 1966), Love with Arthur Lee ( Love, May 1966), Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention ( Freak Out, June 1966), Buffalo Springfield, featuring Stephen Stills and Neil Young ( Buffalo Springfield, October 1966), and The Doors ( The Doors, January 1967). The ships in question were on an intelligence mission and were operating in a decidedly provocative manner. And as you mentioned, a second purpose was served as well – indoctrinating the young and impressionable into a belief system that serves the agenda of the powers that be. Who was paying the bills for the extremely-rough or even talentless before they rose almost inexplicably to near-instant fame?

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops

No, what the Tonkin Gulf incident actually was, as it turns out, is an ‘attack’ that never took place at all.And they also got a tremendous assist from Vito and the Freaks and from the Young Turks, as previously discussed. Just ask one-time cape-wearing David Crosby or any number of lesser-known “musicians” who came even later. I could hear the baby boomers keeling over and falling on their favorite bongs as I paged through the most provocative chapters.

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The story of the scene that played out in Laurel Canyon from the mid-1960’s through the end of the 1970’s is an endlessly fascinating one” and that while most folks know about San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene, Angelenos, of which McGowan is one, “remain ignorant of the even larger music and counterculture scene that played out in the Hollywood Hills.I personally don’t believe the teachings of either Satanism or Christianity, which are really just opposite sides of the same coin. A thriving anti-war movement existed before the first hippie emerged on the scene, along with a women’s rights movement, a black empowerment/Black Panther movement, and various other movements aimed at bringing about major changes in society. S. will — without a declaration of war and with no valid reason to wage one — begin indiscriminately bombing North Vietnam.