C.I.A. Man

[Cliff Varnell]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Cliff,

     1)  Was this the Newport Folk Festival Dylan set where Pete Seeger cut the electrical cord with an axe?

“Maggie’s Farm,” Newport ‘ 65.  Pete grabbed an ax, rattled by the volume, but cooler heads prevailed.  

The first rap video.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

“Maggie’s Farm,” Newport ‘ 65.  Pete grabbed an ax, rattled by the volume, but cooler heads prevailed.  

The first rap video.

 

 

Yes, and I think that's Ginsburg in the prayer shawl.

[David G. Healy]

9 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Add LSD and rocknroll to Beat and ya got yr counter-culture.

I’d say Neal Cassady passed the Beat torch to Ken Kesey.

A big difference between SF and NY ‘65 - ‘67 was the drug of choice.  Here they did Cid, in NY heroin.

the '65 SF music scene, be remiss in not crediting or indicting (lmao) Owlsey Stanley (the bear) thee producer and "KING" of cheap and very good LSD... dude produced nearly a million hits of acid in his day all the while producing and engineering the Grateful Dead, for years. John Cippolina and Quicksilver also comes to mind, one of San Francisco's 1st FOLK/pshychedelic rock groups -- they played with and next to everyone that became anyone in rock music (including Big Brother, the Airplane, Fleetwood (before going commercial), etal... . And when things got testy in the City for anyone group, you could find the Charlatans and Cippolina at the RedDog Saloon in Virginia City Nv., right outside Reno -- and that was just the beginning... Punk and Rap genre followed, those earlybirds created the roadmap...

And, I might add in the early days there was just as much peyote used as acid, I think, I really can't remember...

[Cliff Varnell]

26 minutes ago, David G. Healy said:

the '65 SF music scene, be remiss in not crediting or indicting (lmao) Owlsey Stanley (the bear) thee producer and "KING" of cheap and very good LSD... dude produced nearly a million hits of acid in his day all the while producing and engineering the Grateful Dead, for years. John Cippolina and Quicksilver also comes to mind, one of San Francisco's 1st FOLK/pshychedelic rock groups -- they played with and next to everyone that became anyone in rock music (including Big Brother, the Airplane, Fleetwood (before going commercial), etal... . And when things got testy in the City for anyone group, you could find the Charlatans and Cippolina at the RedDog Saloon in Virginia City Nv., right outside Reno -- and that was just the beginning... Punk and Rap genre followed, those earlybirds created the roadmap...

And, I might add in the early days there was just as much peyote used as acid, I think, I really can't remember...

Chet Helms

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chet_Helms

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah Cliff, as a kid, I went a couple of times to Playland. Then  about 8 years later. I went to a few concerts at the Family Dog. I'm trying to remember who I saw.

I've seen the Dead the most, spanning into the 80's. The last time was in Jamaica. I used to see the Dead, The Airplane, Big Brother, Quicksilver at Speedway Meadows.

As a kid, I first saw The Airplane with the Animals at the Circle Star theater in San Carlos in 1965!

Edited November 11, 2022 by Kirk Gallaway

[Bob Ness]

10 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I was in high school here on the California Coast ( 125 miles South of San Francisco ) during the late 1960s.

A certain percentage of kids from my high school and it seemed every other nearby high school, adopted the Beatles music influence with longer hair, and dress attire starting in the early 1960's. This conveniently evolved into what I guess you could call the "Hippie Movement?"

Volkswagon bugs and vans were prized symbols of hippie status.

There was a "Peace And Love", "Free Love" and "Flower Child" cultural identity started with it's own lingo. Groovy, right on, peace brother" etc. 

This was different than the 1950s Maynard G. Kreb's "beat" lingo of cool cat, squaresville man, crazy, like you dig? " etc.  Jazz stuff.

And then all of a sudden LSD came into the picture.

I knew some students who jumped right in. Right after high school several kids went off to live on communes. Lots of these up in Northern California and Oregon.

Many went up to the Haight, Berkeley. Lots of Bill Graham concerts. 

The Monterey Pop had that vibe although it looked to me to be mostly kids from slightly higher than middle class families who wore expensive hippie clothing. I hung outside the Monterey fairgrounds just to watch the crowd those three days.

By 1980 many of the commune people left those and jumped back into the capitalist world, although keeping the groovy vibe socially. A brother-in-law came back to our town completely fried from acid. He became a ward of the county and his SSI only covered a room at a local flop house. He died before his 36th birthday.

Just reminiscing about some peripheral Hippie Movement birthplace viewpoints from someone who lived fairly close to the Bay Area in the mid 1960's thru the 1970's.

I worked for Terry Melcher. In a removed and unimportant side story way.

Starting in 2001 I worked at a hotel in Carmel, Ca named "The Cypress Inn" which Melcher co-owned in partnership with his mother Doris Day and a private other owner.

I met Terry.

At his invitation we both sat down and talked at the hotel bar. I was on the clock. Our sons ( my biological son and his stepson attended the same private high school here.)

He was really down to earth and nice to me. No pretentiousness at all. 
He only came into town every now and then from L.A..

Carmel was like that back then. You might very well see Doris Day walking through a local supermarket with her cart and singing her songs to herself! She lived here.

You'd see Clint Eastwood fairly regularly. He was the Mayor of Carmel for 2 years in the early 1980's. He actually went to his Mission Ranch restaurant and bar fairly often. He'd even play the piano for the patrons.

Mae Brussels lived here. She broadcast out of a local Carmel radio station.

Harrison Livingston lived here for awhile.

Carmel was and still is a favored getaway for so many Hollywood types. Almost three times week someone would spot a celebrity walking the streets of Carmel or dining in one of their 50 top restaurants.

OOPS! Sorry. Drifting off subject here.

 

 

 

 

 

Joe did you know Malcolm Moran?

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I was in high school here on the California Coast ( 125 miles South of San Francisco ) during the late 1960s.

A certain percentage of kids from my high school and it seemed every other nearby high school, adopted the Beatles music influence with longer hair, and dress attire starting in the early 1960's. This conveniently evolved into what I guess you could call the "Hippie Movement?"

Volkswagon bugs and vans were prized symbols of hippie status.

There was a "Peace And Love", "Free Love" and "Flower Child" cultural identity started with it's own lingo. Groovy, right on, peace brother" etc. 

This was different than the 1950s Maynard G. Kreb's "beat" lingo of cool cat, squaresville man, crazy, like you dig? " etc.  Jazz stuff.

And then all of a sudden LSD came into the picture.

I knew some students who jumped right in. Right after high school several kids went off to live on communes. Lots of these up in Northern California and Oregon.

Many went up to the Haight, Berkeley. Lots of Bill Graham concerts. 

The Monterey Pop had that vibe although it looked to me to be mostly kids from slightly higher than middle class families who wore expensive hippie clothing. I hung outside the Monterey fairgrounds just to watch the crowd those three days.

By 1980 many of the commune people left those and jumped back into the capitalist world, although keeping the groovy vibe socially. A brother-in-law came back to our town completely fried from acid. He became a ward of the county and his SSI only covered a room at a local flop house. He died before his 36th birthday.

Just reminiscing about some peripheral Hippie Movement birthplace viewpoints from someone who lived fairly close to the Bay Area in the mid 1960's thru the 1970's.

I worked for Terry Melcher. In a removed and unimportant side story way.

Starting in 2001 I worked at a hotel in Carmel, Ca named "The Cypress Inn" which Melcher co-owned in partnership with his mother Doris Day and a private other owner.

I met Terry.

At his invitation we both sat down and talked at the hotel bar. I was on the clock. Our sons ( my biological son and his stepson attended the same private high school here.)

He was really down to earth and nice to me. No pretentiousness at all. 
He only came into town every now and then from L.A..

Carmel was like that back then. You might very well see Doris Day walking through a local supermarket with her cart and singing her songs to herself! She lived here.

You'd see Clint Eastwood fairly regularly. He was the Mayor of Carmel for 2 years in the early 1980's. He actually went to his Mission Ranch restaurant and bar fairly often. He'd even play the piano for the patrons.

Mae Brussels lived here. She broadcast out of a local Carmel radio station.

Harrison Livingston lived here for awhile.

Carmel was and still is a favored getaway for so many Hollywood types. Almost three times week someone would spot a celebrity walking the streets of Carmel or dining in one of their 50 top restaurants.

OOPS! Sorry. Drifting off subject here.

 

 

 

 

 

No problem, keep drifting, I love reading that stuff!

The first time I was in the same area was in the late 1970's, the last time was in the late 1990's.  

I also remember the first time I was really impressed with the Awacs taking off and landing 24/7.   Don't recall the name of the Military Airfield, it was rather "close" to the Bay and couldn't have been far from Sunnyvale either (were I stayed the first time).   I think it was the same were they stored this Russian helicopter (years before a Russian had defected with that).  All those years I stayed in a number of houses between Sunnyvale and Coyote.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Joe Bauer]

3 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

Joe did you know Malcolm Moran?

The sculpter?

No.

 

[David Andrews]

11 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

     3) Is the Jim Derogatis book, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock, worth reading?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0634055488/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

 

     

     

One very good book on the SF music scene is Joel Selvin's Summer of Love (1994), which is out of print but can be found through a library:

https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Love-Inside-Story-Times/dp/0525936750/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=Joel+Selvin&link_code=qs&qid=1668168869&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-7&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0

The two other Selvin books I've read (Grateful Dead, Altamont) have been of the same standards.

I hope everybody understands that I linked to the McGowan pages "for entertainment purposes only."  I can't see getting all bug-eyed over his set of assumptions, only the topics for further research within.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

One very good book on the SF music scene is Joel Selvin's Summer of Love (1994), which is out of print but can be found through a library:

https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Love-Inside-Story-Times/dp/0525936750/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=Joel+Selvin&link_code=qs&qid=1668168869&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-7&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0

The two other Selvin books I've read (Grateful Dead, Altamont) have been of the same standards.

I hope everybody understands that I linked to the McGowan pages "for entertainment purposes only."  I can't see getting all bug-eyed over his set of assumptions, only the topics for further research within.

Another good semi-related book I read recently is Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America by Jesse Jarnow. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, and it’s interesting to read how the primary distribution network for LSD and other psychedelics evolved from the CIA to what could be described as a loosely organized hippie neo-mafia that toured with the Grateful Dead. 

[Pete Mellor]

20 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

More on point, Tom O'Neill's book "Chaos, Charles Manson the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" is excellent.  It covers Jolly West and some of Gottlieb's legacy, and also provides new perspective on Manson and his cult an MKUltra research project gone haywire. O’Neill also highlights that Vincent Bugliosi hid evidence and propagated the popular falsehood (in Helter Skelter) that the motive for these brutal crimes was to ignite a race war.  O'Neill makes a credible case that Manson and the Family were being protected by law enforcement at a high level.  He found records from UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute archives, showing that Dr. Jolyon West was a long-term contractor with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and the MK-Ultra program ... techniques of mind control, automatic obedience, and the induction of amnesia and mental illness. Manson often visited his parole officer, one Roger Smith, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic where Smith was running something called the Amphetamine Research Project, a study of the role that drugs played in psychotic violence.

Cheers Gene, by coincidence I have just found and borrowed O'Neill's book from my local library.  Looks really interesting!

[Bob Ness]

6 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

The sculpter?

No.

 

Yep. Old family friend. Moran Shipbuilding family. Went to school with my parents. Just curious. I have several of his sculptures. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Bob Ness

[Joe Bauer]

2 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

Yep. Old family friend. Moran Shipbuilding family. Went to school with my parents. Just curious. I have several of his sculptures. 

Wow!

 

 

[Gene Kelly]

3 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Cheers Gene, by coincidence I have just found and borrowed O'Neill's book from my local library.  Looks really interesting!

Pete

The book is fascinating, and O'Neill (to his credit) stops short of making any dramatic conclusions.  I corresponded with him for a while, and he told me it took almost 20 years for him to finish his investigative reporting.  He began with the intent of simply by crafting an entertainment-related story that addressed how the Manson clan and Sharon Tate murder changed Hollywood ... but when he was done, he had uncovered unanticipated information about what really happened.  And this led him down the path of CIA and their CHAOS and MKUltra projects, Jack Ruby and Joelyn West, and other troubling facts.  Here is how he described his experience:

"I’d faced multiple threats on my life. I don’t consider myself credulous, but I’d discovered things I thought impossible about the Manson murders and California in the sixties—things that reek of duplicity and cover-up, implicating police departments up and down the state. Plus, the courts. Plus—though I have to take a deep breath before I let myself say it—the CIA."

Needless to say, there's a lot more to the Manson story than meets the eye.  Here are some additional references worth reading, once you get into this:

1. DiEugenio, J. (August 2019) “Vincent Bugliosi, Tom O’Neill, Quentin Tarantino and Tate/LaBianca”. Kennedys and King
2. Garber-Paul, E. (August 2019) “What Do We Really Know About the Manson Murders?”. Rolling Stone
3. Gilbert, Sophie (November 2017) “The Real Cult of Charles Manson”. The Atlantic
4. Hedegaard, E. (October 2019) “The Last Manson Mystery: 50 years ago, Beausoleil murdered Hinman”. Rolling Stone 
5. Lansing, H. Allegra (June 2019) “The Manson Family: More to the Story” 
6. Weston, W. (June 2020) “Linkletter, Whitson, and Manson: Agents Provocateur for the Helter-Skelter Plot”. Zodiac Doubles.  
7. Mathis, M. (July 2017) “Tate Murders were a False flag and the Greatest Unknown Success Story of Project CHAOS”.
8. Stimson, G. (October 2019) “Goodbye Helter Skelter: New Look at Tate-LaBianca Murders
9. Weston, W. (June 2020) “Linkletter, Whitson, and Manson: Agents Provocateur for the Helter-Skelter Plot”. Zodiac 

Gene

[Joe Bauer]

9 hours ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

No problem, keep drifting, I love reading that stuff!

The first time I was in the same area was in the late 1970's, the last time was in the late 1990's.  

I also remember the first time I was really impressed with the Awacs taking off and landing 24/7.   Don't recall the name of the Military Airfield, it was rather "close" to the Bay and couldn't have been far from Sunnyvale either (were I stayed the first time).   I think it was the same were they stored this Russian helicopter (years before a Russian had defected with that).  All those years I stayed in a number of houses between Sunnyvale and Coyote.

Jean Paul; was the airfield Moffet Field?