Think music then and you are also thinking Laurel Canyon. The Byrds, The Doors, Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Mamas & Papas, Frank Zappa, Buffalo Springfield, Canned Heat, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, The Monkees...and more.
For them Laurel Canyon was a playground. But, did they ever wonder about that big building on Lookout Mountain?
Dave McGowan did, he wrote a book about it and the Laurel Canyon scene, in his hands, is riddled with rabbit holes, it is a warren.
The title sort of gives it away so there's no spoiler in telling you that Dave reckoned that the whole Laurel Canyon scene was a false flag operation dedicated to undermining the anti Vietnam war movement. His argument gains traction when he points out the anti war movement began on university campuses, not among the hippy movement. He adds grit to the mix as he notes that the young men of draft age who were in these bands were never drafted and many of them had fathers in shady corners of the armed forces.
Lookout Mountain? Oh, that was only a self-contained film studio set up in total secrecy by the US government to further the propaganda arm of the cold war, how the rabbit holes spread.
In the beautifully titled 'Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream' Dave takes us into the warren of rabbit holes he found and it is pure escapist fun to tag along and join the dots with him.
As usual take the ISBN, 9781909394124, to your local bookshop, it's in mine.....
OK....if you really don't have the cash for the book the first drafts as published online are now hosted by the authors daughter Alissa (Dave passed away in 2015) and can be read on her site Center for an Informed America
Many of Dave's other rabbit holes are also on the site, have fun but don't fall down too many:)
A new rabbit hole soon..
