Dave McGowan

Sad news for the bloke, but when listening to him talk on a gnosticradio podcast a while back I couldn't shift an intuitive feeling that this fella doesn't know half as much as he liked to make out. I didn't think he was the type to lash out at others who questioned him though.

What was frustrating reading the Laurel Canyon series was the absence of any real links to substantiate a number of the the claims he made there. Reading through it, you'd be left thinking that every single late 60's rocker was a kind of mkultra/manchurian candidate super agent of the secret state; I didn't buy that then and I still don't now, because at the end of the day, they are just people, with all the same ego problems/issues that the rest of us have, only amplified, due to fame, wealth and that double edged sword of attention, some wanted, some hated. It just seemed a little too close to David Icke's "the Queen's a shape shifting lizard" for me.

Good points made above about staring into the dark abyss as well, I didn't have the stomach to read Programmed to Kill.
 
Skipling said:
Sad news for the bloke, but when listening to him talk on a gnosticradio podcast a while back I couldn't shift an intuitive feeling that this fella doesn't know half as much as he liked to make out. I didn't think he was the type to lash out at others who questioned him though.

What was frustrating reading the Laurel Canyon series was the absence of any real links to substantiate a number of the the claims he made there. Reading through it, you'd be left thinking that every single late 60's rocker was a kind of mkultra/manchurian candidate super agent of the secret state; I didn't buy that then and I still don't now, because at the end of the day, they are just people, with all the same ego problems/issues that the rest of us have, only amplified, due to fame, wealth and that double edged sword of attention, some wanted, some hated. It just seemed a little too close to David Icke's "the Queen's a shape shifting lizard" for me.

Good points made above about staring into the dark abyss as well, I didn't have the stomach to read Programmed to Kill.
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I found value on the Laurel Canyon series, uncovers very revealing threads that I haven't see anywhere else about the spreading tentacles of the intelligence community + mind programming + satanists and other strange characters into pop culture and we have been seeing the results of that for some time.

The C's mentioned this about the music scene in a recent session:

Laura said:
Q: (L) Okay, next forum question:

Is the NSA using musical tastes and downloads to track and identify certain 'types'?
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A: Of course.

Q: (L) Next:

Is the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" really used as a mind-control programming tool like Catcher in the Rye?
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A: Sadly, in some circles, yes.

Q: (Galatea) So, if people like anarchy music about hating the government and law, then they're gonna stir up some trouble?

(L) I dunno. Maybe they would track somebody like that and think that they could turn that person to their own uses.

(Perceval) They said there are some types of music that are listened to by certain types of people... Certain types of emo music or whatever that certain types of young people listen to, like outsiders or loners and that kind of thing, and those people could be tracked as candidates for "use"...

A: The 70's were the time of development of such concepts and technologies. The 80's were the period when implementation became more widespread. At present 90 percent of broadcast music has corrupting elements.

Q: (Pierre) So we have to listen to old music. Music from before the 70's. Or classical music.

(L) Obviously we need to be paying much closer attention to our musical tastes, and analyzing what it is about songs that we like. And obviously, we need to pay a lot more attention to what we listen to in the background. But that means I'm safe since I only listen to old classic rock like Bob Seger, whose music is the best! [laughter]
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This could have been another branch of something already in the works from way back, of which Laurel Canyon was part of.
 
Fair points you make there Navigator, and to an extent I agree with you, particularly with reference to the ever increasingly shallow nature of popular music and the often subliminal messages contained in the videos, though you'd have to be some kind of idiot to be truly succeptible to them. FWIW, I enjoyed reading his series too, I just wanted a little less conjecture and a little more hard factual evidence. Certainly very interesting how so many of those "rock aristocrats" were children of military types though.

You do have to consider also that in the late sixties, as in any era since, growing up in a conservative, or even repressive home environment, that is gonna garner a reaction from the kids, kicking against the squares so to speak, much like the children of old hippies so often rebel in the opposite direction and become very conservative. Such is the way with individuals, and it's best not to lump them all together and generalise, or at least that's what I think.

I read that transcript btw, and the way I figure it is you've just gotta listen to the content of the music, the lyrics, the overall tone of the music, and of course the videos, to discern whether it's going to be having a negative influence on you, most particularly on the subconscious level. That way you can separate your Ice T's from your Public Enemy's, for just one example. The former fantasises about beheading Charlton Heston, while the latter donates proceeds from gigs to help fund state schooling in the U.S. ;)
 
Skipling said:
Fair points you make there Navigator, and to an extent I agree with you, particularly with reference to the ever increasingly shallow nature of popular music and the often subliminal messages contained in the videos, though you'd have to be some kind of idiot to be truly succeptible to them. FWIW, I enjoyed reading his series too, I just wanted a little less conjecture and a little more hard factual evidence. Certainly very interesting how so many of those "rock aristocrats" were children of military types though.

You do have to consider also that in the late sixties, as in any era since, growing up in a conservative, or even repressive home environment, that is gonna garner a reaction from the kids, kicking against the squares so to speak, much like the children of old hippies so often rebel in the opposite direction and become very conservative. Such is the way with individuals, and it's best not to lump them all together and generalise, or at least that's what I think.

I read that transcript btw, and the way I figure it is you've just gotta listen to the content of the music, the lyrics, the overall tone of the music, and of course the videos, to discern whether it's going to be having a negative influence on you, most particularly on the subconscious level. That way you can separate your Ice T's from your Public Enemy's, for just one example. The former fantasises about beheading Charlton Heston, while the latter donates proceeds from gigs to help fund state schooling in the U.S. ;)
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Skipling, I agree. I discovered the Laurel Canyon series before I came to this forum, and found it fascinating. Although, I didn't agree with the complete "cointelpro program" that Dave proposed as the purpose of the music. There is a very unusual and suspect high percentage of kids from military/intelligence parents converging on Laurel Canyon at the same time. It seems most of them are the product of regimented, competitive environments, for sure.

But I think he missed a key point in the genesis of the Laurel Canyon scene over say London's scene, or Detroit or Memphis at the time. The record execs that were involved with The Byrds and the rest of the founding bands were all from New York and had Brill Building connections. Whatever the "hippie/folkies" wanted to experiment with, they had a Brill Building arranger beside their producer making sure the songs were put together in a way that was palatable to what the (white) American music listening public expected. Brill Building arrangements are remarkably consistent. From 30's Broadway to Sinatra/Dean Martin to the Byrds & Doors (Touch Me especially), Streisand and Billy Joel.

In what I've read about the NY execs and their industry at the time, they were trying to copy and then outdo Memphis and Detroit. Of course this had a racial undertone, but this had been established as cultural issue for the music industry for decades. I think the whole plan may have been more based on capitalist competition at the band level, than an overt attempt to undermine the civil rights movement. That being said, there seems to have been an exponential amount of capital for white hippie bands to make albums from record companies that had banking backing. There's a lot of garbage that came out of Laural Canyon. Nowhere near as much sub-par music came out of Detroit or Memphis. This financing to suffocate the black music and the associated civil rights movement seems likely.

But as mentioned above, Zappa was radically left from what I've read and heard from him. His music was also universally difficult and unapproachable. Zappa is a mind-blowing musician and could play with any jazz guys. He was incredibly uncompromising. I don't "feel" anything for his music, but I do recognize its brilliance. I don't think he was ever "working" for anyone in a capacity to convert youth to some sort of "one world" non-thinking agenda. One listen to "Joe's Garage", will alienate most youth. There's way too much jazz and rap combined for anyone to like ;-)

Also Dave mentions that all the musicians were hacks at the time. While the playing wasn't as good as Motown or Memphis, they weren't hacks. Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and The Doors all utilize more complex harmonies and chord progressions than the simplified pop of the time. Neil Young's acoustic guitar playing is not hacky whatsoever. Neither is Roger McGuinn's.

The other thing that I think Dave missed was that by 1973, most of these LC bands were done as driving forces in music. The last gasp of the whole scene seemed to be Neil's "Ohio". That song is more raw and brutal than almost anything at the time. It was definitely not "distracting" from the real issues. I wish musicians today could put out a song that brutally honest.

By the mid-70's, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind & Fire rose far above the Laurel Canyon scene with their politically challenging ideas, spiritual concerns and exploring the idea of "soul" (as well as sales). So clearly the whole Laurel Canyon Operation ultimately failed. It seems to me that more people are interested in Marvin nowadays than The Byrds. So maybe the puppet masters behind the Laurel Canyon scene may have had cards in play that hoped for a nefarious outcome, but ultimately the socially conscious music of Detroit/Philly/Memphis won out. I'd like to think so, anyway...
 
I also think that Dave's series on Laurel Canyon was not nuanced. What I noted was the possibility that a number of the kids of the authoritarian types (pschopaths?) appeared to be rejecting their own backgrounds. That made me think of what Lobaczewski said about normal sons with a feeling of empathy for others being born into such families. Don't have the quote right to hand, but he did point it out so it seems that this was a sufficiently observed phenomenon to make special note of it.

One can also think of Caesar who was from the optimate background (the "best families"), yet was a populare (for the people).
 
Although it is hard to sort the wheat from the chaff in the Laurel Canyon series, it is an interesting exploration of that world. I put its approach together with some other works to extrapolate a sort of picture of some historical events: the book "Caricature of Love" describing how pathological elites disseminate their "values" throughout pop culture, Laura's writings in I think "The Wave" series about CIA infiltration of for example the infamous Acid Tests, the publicly outed FBI COINTELPRO operation, and a documentary called "Berkeley" if I remember right.

This documentary was about the Berkeley anti-war activists. Intelligent, motivated, organized and a part of a burgeoning, multi-racial movement to challenge not just the Vietnam War but the legitimacy of the system that created it, it is easy to imagine how threatened the defenders of that system would be. The documentary underlined without exploring conspiracy that at some point the counter-culture movement arose and was championing the idea that popular culture itself was the ground where imperialistic wars and racial/class discrimination takes root, and that to defeat that culture, a new culture must be ready to take its place. The idea seems reasonable on the face of it, but the counter-culture movement started siphoning off people and resources from the activists. The Laurel Canyon series seems to take a peek at the mechanics of how the counter-culture movement was either manufactured or at least diverted to being nothing more than the controlled opposition.

What a time... From Henry Wallace to King's "Why I Am Opposed to the Vietnam War" speech, I bet the Deep State actually sweated a little starch out of their collars.
 
Some great ponits made there, JTucker and Laura. The idea that none of these guys had any discernable talent is laughable. Take The Doors for instance; One of my fave bands and I'll not hide it, and they get unfairly slated by people who haven't done their research. Ray Manzarek (who sadly died a few years back) and Jim Morrison were in UCLA film school in the early-mid sixties with Francis Ford Coppola for chrissakes, who said they were "quiet and studious". Manzarek was a classically trained pianist who was turned onto chicago blues in his teen years. He played lead keys with his right hand while playing keyboard bass with his left hand, both on records and live. No talent, huh? When asked why, he said they couldn't find a bass player they could gel with as players, which implies empathy.

As for Morrison, he seems to be the very exemplar of what Laura stated above. In an exhaustive biography by "Hammer of the Gods" writer Stephen Davis (who has Bio-ed Led Zep and Bob Marley also), he discovered that Morrison's lawyer during his obscenity trial, Max Fink, stated that Morrison claimed to have been abused by a family relative when a child. He was also allergic to alcohol (it turned him from a mogwai into a gremlin, his body was literally driven insane by alcohol), and in his desperation to come off weed/cocaine in the early 70's (when their music took a decidedly bluesy-bar room direction) he became, yep, an alcoholic, as many drug addicts have been known to. He was also apparently a little afraid of his father as a teen (seeking his approval) and came to loathe his mother, having nothing whatsoever to do with them once he finished university. I reckon he blamed them for something, and his lyrics to "The End" had an edge to them which was way beyond Greek tragedy.

Having read his bios of Morrison, Marley and Zeppelin, I consider Stephen Davis to be an excellent writer and biographer, and frankly it annoys me when bands like the Doors get stigmatised as sleazy, druggy wrecks when it is well documented that the likes of Bill Wyman and Jimmy Page have had relationships with teen models. Granted, they were no angels, but no part of history is black and white; indeed, no part of life in any way whatsover corresponds to such simplistic reductionism.
 
The Laurel Canyon material started strong, but it seemed to lose its own narrative after a while.

It seemed like there were too many threads to pull and too much darkness to navigate. When doing heavy research, a person's mind, I think, can become overexposed to certain streams of thinking, and as with any heavy brain labor, we know that synapses will handily re-wire the wet ware to enable greater degrees of whatever it is we find ourselves doing. This can be very healthy and strengthening, but it can just as quickly destroy minds. As it directly affects our perceptive and information-handling, in the same way that people who deny reality train their brains to not see upsetting things, (and thus begin to go functionally, cognitively blind), in this case, it seems Dave sort of went blind with a bias.

I really noticed it with his "Fake Moon Landing" series, which carried his signature characteristic writing style, was clever and punchy, but was objectively wrong on more than a dozen critical points (that I saw; I gave up half way through); he started making the worst kind of journalistic errors, sweeping assumptions founded on nothing more than his sense of humor (I say it in a charming, funny manner, so it's obviously right!), rather than based on crunching the numbers and doing actual hard research to answer his otherwise rhetorical questions. Building scaffolding on marshmallow. The energy required to maintain the structure, (as demanded by ego), becomes too taxing, and decay is the inevitable result.

From there in Dave's history, I stopped paying attention. It is very unfortunate to learn that his decay has been so complete. It's worth looking at hard, because most of the folks here, including myself, are involved in heavy research of one sort or another. So.., a cautionary tale. Manage your mind like a garden!

I find along with networking, it is useful to maintain a variety of different interests and new challenges in life, manual/physical things as well as mental. Learning new things that are difficult (but fun) remind us of our own imperfection. And, as always, having people around us to point out when we're losing our own narrative is so, so important.
 
"Manage your mind like a garden". Woodsman, that is bang on the money. Parts of mine resembles one of those gardens of student houses, tall weeds, unmown lawn etc. Neglect due to a dislocation of key i's is my suspicion. Much more reading is required.

Very good point you make about challenging yourself with new disciplines, I have a tendency to play it safe in my reading and in my other activities, you've given me something to ponder there..
 
I just discovered that Dave has lost his battle against cancer and has died on November 23, 2015.

From Facebook: _https://www.facebook.com/WeirdScenesInsideTheCanyon

For those who haven't heard, Dave passed away at 12:42 pm on Sunday, November 22, after a courageous six-month battle with highly aggressive lung cancer. Obviously signed book copies are no longer available, and anyone with an outstanding order will be contacted within the next week.
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Other sources:

_http://snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.nl/2015/11/dave-mcgowan-researcher-par-excellence.html
_https://wikispooks.com/wiki/David_McGowan

May he find greener pastures... RIP.
 
I, for one, was an avid reader of his website and thoroughly enjoyed his style of writing. I think that all of his series, on 9/11, the Apollo missions etc., all but the Boston Marathon Bombings, where brilliant. His articles will hopefully be available on his website in the future.
It was heartbreaking to see him and SotT fall out, as I always regarded him in "your/our team".
I'm sad but not surprised to hear of his demise. He'll be missed.
 
Torfgardur said:
I, for one, was an avid reader of his website and thoroughly enjoyed his style of writing. I think that all of his series, on 9/11, the Apollo missions etc., all but the Boston Marathon Bombings, where brilliant. His articles will hopefully be available on his website in the future.
It was heartbreaking to see him and SotT fall out, as I always regarded him in "your/our team".
I'm sad but not surprised to hear of his demise. He'll be missed.
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I agree. Very sad. Maybe having cancer made him cranky, or being cranky brought on cancer. I notice he passed on the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. Maybe he did that on purpose.
 
Woodsman said:
The Laurel Canyon material started strong, but it seemed to lose its own narrative after a while.

It seemed like there were too many threads to pull and too much darkness to navigate. When doing heavy research, a person's mind, I think, can become overexposed to certain streams of thinking, and as with any heavy brain labor, we know that synapses will handily re-wire the wet ware to enable greater degrees of whatever it is we find ourselves doing. This can be very healthy and strengthening, but it can just as quickly destroy minds. As it directly affects our perceptive and information-handling, in the same way that people who deny reality train their brains to not see upsetting things, (and thus begin to go functionally, cognitively blind), in this case, it seems Dave sort of went blind with a bias.

I really noticed it with his "Fake Moon Landing" series, which carried his signature characteristic writing style, was clever and punchy, but was objectively wrong on more than a dozen critical points (that I saw; I gave up half way through); he started making the worst kind of journalistic errors, sweeping assumptions founded on nothing more than his sense of humor (I say it in a charming, funny manner, so it's obviously right!), rather than based on crunching the numbers and doing actual hard research to answer his otherwise rhetorical questions. Building scaffolding on marshmallow. The energy required to maintain the structure, (as demanded by ego), becomes too taxing, and decay is the inevitable result.
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That's a pretty insightful, and I think accurate, take on the situation Woodsman.
 
Perceval said:
Woodsman said:
The Laurel Canyon material started strong, but it seemed to lose its own narrative after a while.

It seemed like there were too many threads to pull and too much darkness to navigate. When doing heavy research, a person's mind, I think, can become overexposed to certain streams of thinking, and as with any heavy brain labor, we know that synapses will handily re-wire the wet ware to enable greater degrees of whatever it is we find ourselves doing. This can be very healthy and strengthening, but it can just as quickly destroy minds. As it directly affects our perceptive and information-handling, in the same way that people who deny reality train their brains to not see upsetting things, (and thus begin to go functionally, cognitively blind), in this case, it seems Dave sort of went blind with a bias.

I really noticed it with his "Fake Moon Landing" series, which carried his signature characteristic writing style, was clever and punchy, but was objectively wrong on more than a dozen critical points (that I saw; I gave up half way through); he started making the worst kind of journalistic errors, sweeping assumptions founded on nothing more than his sense of humor (I say it in a charming, funny manner, so it's obviously right!), rather than based on crunching the numbers and doing actual hard research to answer his otherwise rhetorical questions. Building scaffolding on marshmallow. The energy required to maintain the structure, (as demanded by ego), becomes too taxing, and decay is the inevitable result.
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That's a pretty insightful, and I think accurate, take on the situation Woodsman.
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I agree. Over time I took Dave's writing with a good-sized chunk of salt. He really was an unpleasant person when criticized and his ego kept him from acknowledging any mistakes or suppositions in his research.

For some reason this reminds me of author Iris Chang who researched and wrote several books dealing with war crimes of WWII, one of which was The Rape of Nanking - a very dark, disturbing work that unsettled me so much that I had to stop reading it at points just to give my soul a rest from the horror of it all.

Unlike Dave McGowan, Iris Chang was not cranky and she dealt with her critics (mostly Japanese historical revisionists) with firm, unyielding grace, using facts and first-person accounts to counter arguments against. Sadly, she eventually suffered severe depression and committed suicide, with some people claiming her research into this particular abyss drove her over the edge.
 
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