Lol, yeah I love McGowan. His work is real speculative ๐คทโโ๏ธ "just asking questions". But his role as a citizen reporter, clipping articles out of papers and finding strange patterns was definitely valuable. If nothing else he pointed out that almost all of the hippie rock stars were the apolitical (or openly right wing, looking at you Zappa) sons and daughters of the US elite, who were catapulted to success to neuter countercultural movements.
Iminhere3000
joined 4 years ago
1
Listening to Love's Forever Changes and thinking about the narrative that Arthur Lee was a crazy paranoid person
(hexbear.net)
The dude could just see how fucked up that whole scene was. Might have been paranoid but for good reason considering all the creeps (mamas and the papas etc), hacks (the wrecking crew studio band were the actual musicians on a ton of records coming out of this scene, while a lot of the bands couldn't really play at all) and agents (operation midnight climax is a good/insane example of what was going on in California at the time).
He was one of a small handful of black LA rock stars. Had to know that if anyone in that scene was going to end up in jail for drugs etc it would be him (he did end up going to jail btw).
Edit- Jesus Christ I forgot that Bobby Beausoleil was an early member of Love
A lot of old film noir basically had a premise of "there are no ethical or humane choices a person can make in this fucked up world". From what I recall though, quite a few of the people writing and directing these did actually have socialist politics, a lot coming from Europe during the world wars. But the way they created these bleak, inescapable capitalist hellscapes is very effective at getting some complex ideas across.
Damn watching the second episode and this evil lawyer lady just said "we have a nice middle class jury, they dislike the insurance company second only to their distaste for working class people" ouch
How'd all this class consciousness get in this TV show? Damn