C.I.A. Man

[Cliff Varnell]

 

8 hours ago, Lori Spencer said:

“Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon” blew my mind when I first read it many moons ago. McGowan connected all those microdots into a story that was quite a trip in itself! 

As rocknroll history it’s bunk.

The Counter Culture was not born in Laurel Canyon.  Frank Zappa, David Crosby, John Denny and Jim Morrison didn’t start the Counter Culture.

Ken Kesey, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Bill Graham started the Counter Culture in San Francisco in 1965.  LA was a year behind.

With the 13th Floor Elevators, Austin had more of an impact on the Counter Culture than LA.

Laurel Canyon gave birth to MOR.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Cliff Varnell

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

 

As rocknroll history it’s bunk.

The Counter Culture was not born in Laurel Canyon.  Frank Zappa, David Crosby, John Denny and Jim Morrison didn’t start the Counter Culture.

Ken Kesey, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Bill Graham started the Counter Culture in San Francisco in 1965.  LA was a year behind.

With the 13th Floor Elevators, Austin had more of an impact on the Counter Culture than LA.

Laurel Canyon gave birth to MOR.

Certainly true. 

[David Andrews]

On 11/7/2022 at 12:31 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Wow Dave.  This gets deep in a hurry.  Zappa's dad worked at Edgewood as a chemist.  For Gottlieb? 

 

Entertaining as they are, McGowan's pages require fact-checking by the reader.  I have a Zappa biography I can dig out to see if Gottleib is mentioned in connection with FZ's dad, and other delights.

It's possible that McGowan's thesis boils down to this: To get a major label contract in LA, it helped to have a daddy who was rich or connected.  I don't want to write his work off totally: it has research-worthy topics and tidbits. 

BTW, if you check online, you may still find McGowan's series on the Lincoln assassination.  It's been a long time since I've read it, but I did think enough of it to save a copy...somewhere among my 20-plus hard drives.  (I'm still looking for Rich Dellarosa's now-deleted pages on the MLK assassination, which I promised another inmate here, years ago.)

Edited November 9, 2022 by David Andrews

[Ron Bulman]

I know W started this thread with the fugs video.  But ever since I can't get this song out of my head.  So maybe sharing it will do that?  I love the guitar riff/solo in the middle..

 

[Richard Price]

10 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I know W started this thread with the fugs video.  But ever since I can't get this song out of my head.

Thanks, Ron.  Same here.  Every time I read the topic heading.

[W. Niederhut]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I know W started this thread with the fugs video.  But ever since I can't get this song out of my head.  So maybe sharing it will do that?  I love the guitar riff/solo in the middle..

 

Ron,

     Funny you mentioned Johnny Rivers.  In his new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan mentioned that the Fugs song, C.I.A. Man, would have been a good Side B on a Secret Agent Man 45 rpm.

Edited November 9, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

On 11/7/2022 at 6:14 AM, Lori Spencer said:

“Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon” blew my mind when I first read it many moons ago. McGowan connected all those microdots into a story that was quite a trip in itself! 🤯

I attended the University of Oklahoma in Norman where Dr. Jolly West famously overdosed and killed the poor elephant. Was a running joke on campus… although most of us students didn’t know the dark side of West’s MK ULTRA experiments. They sure as hell didn’t teach that to OU students, where Dr. West was still very much revered… 

What amazed me about West at OU, beyond interfering with Jack Ruby's psyche, was his appointment to a department head with no teaching experience.  I'm halfway through Inside the Canyon, it is fascinating.  Thanks to David for linking it.  BTW, Lori might you have seen the Texas - OU game this year?

[David Andrews]

35 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

What amazed me about West at OU, beyond interfering with Jack Ruby's psyche, was his appointment to a department head with no teaching experience.  I'm halfway through Inside the Canyon, it is fascinating.  Thanks to David for linking it.  BTW, Lori might you have seen the Texas - OU game this year?

I have to tell you, Ron - I skimmed the McGowan pages I linked to, and I think that the version I read on his own site while McGowan was alive was a revised edition, longer and better written.  I don't remember that version ending where this one does.  I haven't read the book he made from his articles, but the published work *may* be a more complete read.

McGowan's stuff often falls into the "Everybody was guilty" fallacy of conspiracy fabula.  For instance, McGowan asks, portentiously, why Jim Morrison never mentioned that his father, the admiral, was (supposedly) instrumental in assaulting North Vietnam.  A simple answer might be, He was effin' embarrassed to acknowledge it, and not in on a cover-up.  Or he didn't want the bad press in the counterculture media.  Or - being Jim Morrison, lost in a Roman wilderness of liquor bottles - he really didn't give an eff.

Edited November 10, 2022 by David Andrews

[W. Niederhut]

44 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I have to tell you, Ron - I skimmed the McGowan pages I linked to, and I think that the version I read on his own site while McGowan was alive was a revised edition, longer and better written.  I don't remember that version ending where this one does.  I haven't read the book he made from his articles, but the published work *may* be a more complete read.

McGowan's stuff often falls into the "Everybody was guilty" fallacy of conspiracy fabula.  For instance, McGowan asks, portentiously, why Jim Morrison never mentioned that his father, the admiral, was (supposedly) instrumental in assaulting North Vietnam.  A simple answer might be, He was effin' embarrassed to acknowledge it, and not in on a cover-up.  Or he didn't want the bad press in the counterculture media.  Or - being Jim Morrison, lost in a Roman wilderness of liquor bottles - he really didn't give an eff.

And Jim Morrison's father was completely clueless about his son's rock 'n roll career, and life.

I watched an interview once where Admiral Morrison said that he initially thought that his son abandoning a film career to sing in a rock band was ridiculous, and he didn't realize that the Lizard King had become wildly successful until he saw the Doors perform on the Ed Sullivan Show.

[David Andrews]

29 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

And Jim Morrison's father was completely clueless about his son's rock 'n roll career, and life.

I watched an interview once where Admiral Morrison said that he initially thought that his son abandoning a film career to sing in a rock band was ridiculous, and he didn't realize that the Lizard King had become wildly successful until he saw the Doors perform on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Who was it that called Morrison an erotic politician?  The noun may have been less developed than the adjective.  God bless him, though, for what he got across, sometimes wonderfully off-handedly.  Where would Coppola be without him?

Edited November 10, 2022 by David Andrews

[W. Niederhut]

12 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Who was it that called Morrison an erotic politician?  The noun may have been less developed than the adjective.  God bless him, though, for what he got across, sometimes wonderfully off-handedly.  Where would Coppola be without him?

David,

   Most of what I know about Jim Morrison, aside from listening to the Doors for years, comes from watching Oliver Stone's  movie, The Doors.  I read that Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger didn't like the movie, but I thought it was terrific.

  As you probably know, Morrison was depicted in the film as a kind of psychedelic mushroom-eating Dionysian poet/prophet who ultimately visits Andy Warhol in Manhattan, and is given the gift of a golden telephone.  Warhol says, "I'm told that this telephone can be used to call God, but, honestly, I don't know what I would say to Him, so I thought YOU should have it." 🤥

 

[Tom Gram]

On 11/7/2022 at 3:09 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

 

As rocknroll history it’s bunk.

The Counter Culture was not born in Laurel Canyon.  Frank Zappa, David Crosby, John Denny and Jim Morrison didn’t start the Counter Culture.

Ken Kesey, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Bill Graham started the Counter Culture in San Francisco in 1965.  LA was a year behind.

With the 13th Floor Elevators, Austin had more of an impact on the Counter Culture than LA.

Laurel Canyon gave birth to MOR.

Absolutely. As a random side note, being a Deadhead is a lot like being a JFK researcher: a hero that died a tragic death, decades of rich and fascinating history over several different eras, an immense quantity of archival material to obsessively listen to/study, and even a few conspiracy theories involving the CIA. What’s not to love? 

Here’s a face melting Johnny Cash cover cause why the hell not.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Tom Gram

[Lori Spencer]

On 11/8/2022 at 7:18 PM, David Andrews said:

It's possible that McGowan's thesis boils down to this: To get a major label contract in LA, it helped to have a daddy who was rich or connected.  I don't want to write his work off totally: it has research-worthy topics and tidbits. 

Excellent point, Dave. That may well explain how Admiral Morrison’s hippie son went from being a beach bum to a rock star practically overnight, among other Laurel Canyon kids of the military industrial complex powerbrokers. But however they got those record contracts, their talent spoke for itself. (Unlike most musical “artists” of today!) 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Cliff's right about the counter culture starting in the Bay Area.

I actually know the Merry Prankster house. It was about 3 miles south of La Honda on Highway 84. I had just gotten my license and would take that way to go to the beach. It was just before I starting turning on to pot, and I saw what I later came to read was the "Furthur bus".. I thought, "Man, trippy place1 It looks like a lot of freaks there." They looked about 5-10 years older than me.

A person I came to know actually rented the place in the mid 70's. He was a psycho pharmacologist, who like the rest of us had learned the whole psychedelic lore of the Merry Pranksters. 

A few years earlier in the very early 70's. I went to  Willow Hospital in Menlo Park Ca.where Kesey, I believe  first volunteered to be  turned on to LSD. Boy did that experiment backfire! I was in therapy sessions within a group to pad my Psychological out from the draft during the later years of the Vietnam War, which was successful.

I later met and talked with Ken Kesey, I would guess about 1972. He was lecturing at Canada College in Redwood City. Having read "Electric Kool  acid test".  In the book. I would liken Thomas Wolfe  as sort of a fully clothed New England preppie guy walking around a nudist colony at those acid test except for the one time he took it , and said he'd never be the same again. (he never accounts taking it again, right?) 

Kesey was very accessible after his lecture. I asked him a question I always wanted to ask him. "Wasn't Thomas Wolfe kind of a thorn in your side, this whole time?" Now I wish I could remember the exact words he used, but he  smiled and said, something to the extent of"we just sort of shined him on!"

I'm a huge John fan but Allen's right about John Lenon. Understandably John was trying to emerge from his Beatle bubble phase and he wasn't an expert to ask about any of this stuff. By the time John got on to his political phase "Writing songs for the revolution" and "Power to the People", that revolution was largely over.

 

 

[Lori Spencer]

5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

What amazed me about West at OU, beyond interfering with Jack Ruby's psyche, was his appointment to a department head with no teaching experience.  I'm halfway through Inside the Canyon, it is fascinating.  Thanks to David for linking it.  BTW, Lori might you have seen the Texas - OU game this year?

Ron, I have divided loyalties.  went to OU for 2 years, then moved to Austin and finished up my degree at the University of Texas — OU’s arch rival at football 🏈— so I know to keep my mouth shut around these parts when the Red River Shootout comes around every year. 

Who am I rootin’ for? Depends on which side of the TX/OK border I’m on! 😆