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29 reviews for:
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
Nick Bryant, David McGowan
3.27 AVERAGE
29 reviews for:
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
Nick Bryant, David McGowan
3.27 AVERAGE
this book, although easy to see as congested with singular kept notions of an author’s ideas based around the popular musicans of this era, still managed to derail my own ideas and information that i had of said musicians as well. interesting novel nonetheless.
This book is a history of sorts about the 60s and 70s music/movie scene centering in and around Laurel Canyon and the Hollywood Hills in LA. The author is a noted conspiracy theorist yet this book seems well-researched and is certainly very readable. The eeriest connection throughout is that there appears to be almost this "six degrees of Charles Manson" with everyone mentioned. The occult/hippie/mass murder leader was everywhere.
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
McGowan here is at his sloppiest and most smug. While I’m inclined to believe his thesis— that, as they have many times in the past and most assuredly continue to do, the US state and intelligence apparatus used and manipulated mass culture through media, music, and money— McGowan doesn’t help himself with how he chose to write his final book. Unfortunately less rigorous than Programmed to Kill, this book brings up many interesting and worthwhile questions and connections, but smugly let’s them sit idly by while it breaks the fourth wall and looks at the reader knowingly. I wish he had composed this in a more scholarly manner.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child death, Incest, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, War
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
For Serious Sixties Music Fans
If you love the bands of the 60’s and 70’s, you’ll enjoy reading the stories in this book about their wild parties in Laurel Canyon.
If you love the bands of the 60’s and 70’s, you’ll enjoy reading the stories in this book about their wild parties in Laurel Canyon.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
This book blew my mind.
Interesting and well-written.
An in depth look at the underside of celebrity that very few challenge themselves to see. In a culture, in awe of fame and celebrity at any cost, this book serves as a vital source of information that can dissolve the enchantment of the "pied piper."
An in depth look at the underside of celebrity that very few challenge themselves to see. In a culture, in awe of fame and celebrity at any cost, this book serves as a vital source of information that can dissolve the enchantment of the "pied piper."
He's collated a wonderful trove of pretty well known coincidences (and widened his net to take in some extremely tenuous ones) but alas (one of his favourite words annoyingly), it's just that, there's no corroborating evidence to support, the theory he's built around them, he's not interviewed anyone of any note, there are lots of "seems", "I feels" and "It goes without sayings", he's basically just collated a lot of stuff (some of it discredited now) of off Wikipedia and constructed a far fetched theory based on it. He has some good points and if he was at least a half a competent writer he could have made this into something interesting even without the evidence but, alas, he's incapable of that, which is a shame because there could very well be a few valid points buried in here a amongst the sarcasm and snarkiness, is he a CIA mole set up to discredit the theory? I can't think that anyone would publish this, unless that were the case so perhaps his sheer amateurism proves his point, who can tell? Certainly not David McGowan.
I read this off the back of O'Neill's Chaos (which I thought made some compelling points and at least made you think), expecting a similar well researched book on a related subject, you won't get that here unfortunately, as personal as Chaos was, this comes across as a personal vendetta, the constant insulting asides about even the most insignificant players ("Carol, alas, perhaps weighed down by her enormous breasts,managed to drown in barely a foot of water"), the generalisations (to paraphrase, most of them were "terrible musicians that couldn't play live"), just completely undermined his argument, why focus on this sort of obvious bullshit if there was actually a case to be made, it really read like an extended Reddit post.
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.
5 stars for the idea, 1 star for the execution (I mean he actually put quite a few words together one after the other, that's got to be worth a star hasn't it?). Probably not going to bother with any more of his books unless anyone recommends otherwise.
I read this off the back of O'Neill's Chaos (which I thought made some compelling points and at least made you think), expecting a similar well researched book on a related subject, you won't get that here unfortunately, as personal as Chaos was, this comes across as a personal vendetta, the constant insulting asides about even the most insignificant players ("Carol, alas, perhaps weighed down by her enormous breasts,managed to drown in barely a foot of water"), the generalisations (to paraphrase, most of them were "terrible musicians that couldn't play live"), just completely undermined his argument, why focus on this sort of obvious bullshit if there was actually a case to be made, it really read like an extended Reddit post.
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.
5 stars for the idea, 1 star for the execution (I mean he actually put quite a few words together one after the other, that's got to be worth a star hasn't it?). Probably not going to bother with any more of his books unless anyone recommends otherwise.