A review by majortomwaits
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream by David McGowan

0.25

The best thing I can say about this is that it served as a pointer to some projects I was unaware of.

Everything else is just outrageous. Main source seems to be wikipedia and the author is proud of that. It is written laughably badly with many, MANY 'is that a coincidence or what' and 'but I'm sure that that's nothing' and similar terms mixed in. It also has no goal. It's just a bunch of info with some imaginary conclusions that lead absolutely nowhere, what's the point of this book? Because it felt like I was reading author's therapy notes justifying him leaving the hippie music behind.

One of the main points seemed to be that many people who gained popularity in the Laurel canyon had parents who were in the military, so that, according to the author, means that the whole hippie movement was some kind of a government orchestrated thing? But no, that was less than 30 years after the end of WWII, it's only logical, people go to war, gain new ranks and so on, don't piss me off. Even if that is true, do you think that the government would approve CSN's horrible 'hot dog' album? I doubt it.

In short: terrible, if you want to save yourself the rage that you'll experience, avoid this at all costs.