Thursday, January 20, 2011

Pat's hearing??

Did anybody hear anything yet?   Should I get the spare bedroom ready for her or what?





    


If anyone would like to write a book report/review 
for usplease do.  After reading Patty's, I know that is a book I would enjoy from cover to cover.  This can be a real money saver for some people. 
It totally sucks to spend money on a book you thought would be a good read.  There have been several times I have spent $25.00 or more on a book that sucks.  Also, there are quite a few books with just small snippets of M related stuff.  I have Coroner by Thomas Noguchi which touches briefly on Sharon's autopsy.  Why waste your money on it to just read one chapter?  Like all the out of print books you can probably never get your hands on, and  they only have a page or two you wanted to read.

Plus, there are so many books out related to the case on E-bay and places like that.  A small review by someone else might be your deciding factor.  I myself have always wondered how Simon Well's book-"Coming Down Fast" is.  It is forever on E-bay for various prices.  Does anyone have that book and would like to do a small report on it?  

Or like I said-any one is welcomed to do any reviews/reports on any case related books.  Somewhere I have a copy of one of Doris Day's
books.  I will eventually get around to posting the part in which Doris spoke about her son Terry Melcher's involvement with the Family.






BOOK REPORT- "Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-n-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood" by Michael Walker


n,Thanks to Panamint Patty for the book report.  She is one brave lady who fears not~ the wrath of~Eviliz


ENJOY!

I humbly offer on the altar of Eviliz a book report on "Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-n-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood" by Michael Walker (Faber & Faber Inc.)


  Walker's excellent title is divided into two parts aptly
 named "Jingle Jangle Mornings" and "Cocaine Afternoons".
The last chapter of the first part is simply called "1969" and is meant to delineate the first part from the second by discussing
three pivotal events which occurred that year: the Tate-LaBianca murders, Woodstock and Altamont.  Miller argues that the events of 1969 changed life in the canyon forever, but also had far reaching implications for our culture at large.  


  The page count that specifically deals with Manson is 9 of 248,
though references to the Family can be found throughout.  Those who were interviewed by the author include, Graham Nash, Frank Zappa's widow Gail, record executives Sally Stevens and Michael James Jackson, photographer David Strick and Troubador doorman Paul Body who claims to have gone to high school with Lulu:


"She was in my French class. Sweet little girl,
homecoming princess. We hung around the same sort of people.  Then she got into the drug thing, then LSD, and that just ruined her.  Then she hooks up with Manson and becomes totally different from anything I remember." 
     
  This chapter also claims that Charlie auditioned live for Neil Young and that the Family regularly hung out at Cass Elliot's
house on Woodrow Wilson.  In fact, early rumors about who was responsible for the murders centered on an acquaintance of Elliot's,
"a drug dealer who had disappeared."  As evidence that Charlie and his minions were firmly entrenched in Laurel Canyon at that time,
Gail Zappa states that:


"If you were surprised by the Manson murders,
then you were not connected to what was going on in the canyon.
I don't think that you could have necessarily predicted it, but those people were dangerous and everyone I know knew it."


  Miller never does take a position on motive.  He outlines the main theories that we are all familiar with:  The "same old Helter Skelter" and/or rage at Terry Melcher and "the establishment" over being denied a record deal.  What Miller does say however is that the ultimate impact of the Family and the murders on history may be taken as "evidence of the counterculture's internal rot."  This laughable overgeneralization was necessary however in order for Miller to progress his book from part 1 to part 2:  from the peaceful, loving hippie-dippie sixties to the spun out, smacked out, soulless seventies.  There is no revelation here, but there are enough interesting tidbits to make the book a good read including discussions about where a lot of your favorite songs came from.