And A River Ran Through It

"They're disgusting ... they're ruining peoples lives."

-- River Phoenix (1970–1993) commenting on the notorious "Children of God" cult - he was raised in it, just as the folks in the band Girls were (a member of Fleetwood Mac also participated in having sex with children in it) - which, through stage and screen, music and broadcasting, has all been contributing to our culture, I Gather.

Cultism: The Song Remains The Same

"How’s this for a new twist on the old coming-of-age narrative? Christopher Owens was raised in a 60’s-spawned pseudo-Christian sex-crime-promoting cult called the Children of God by a globetrotting mom so brainwashed that she let one of her own sons die of pneumonia because the cult didn’t believe in hospitals.

Girls deftly bulked up their small but potent catalogue with new track 'Heartbreaker' ('a song about how people suck'), and B-sides 'Life in San Francisco' ('when all your friends are self-centered eccentric weirdo junkies') and 'Substance' ('this song is about drugs, which, if anyone has any, please give them to us')."

-- Hilary Cadigan, on Girls - one of the few, true, "cult" bands out there (another is The Brian Jonestown Massacre) - singing about the same topics this blog covers, in much the same way, according to Lumino Magazine.

Cults + Whores = Girls (Not Women)

"The music of Girls is too beautiful to ignore. The melodies are pure California pop, the lyrics as simple and affecting as those of Spiritualized's Jason Pierce (of whom White and Owens are big fans). Full of tales of heartbreak and friendship, Girls' debut album, Album, comes across like a lo-fi Pet Sounds. It has an innocence that countless bands try to capture, a sense of childlike otherwordliness.

As Owens talks about his experiences growing up, it becomes clear where that has come from. He was born into the Children of God cult, the religious group formed in California in 1968, which gifted him with a childhood and adolescence he calls 'pretty hellish'.

'Some of the things the cult did were so fucked up,' he says. 'There was this thing called "flirty fishing", where the women met men for money. The cult basically convinced them it was fine to be hookers. It was like mind control - the women believed it was a good thing to do because they were physically showing these men they met the love of God. My mum had a lot of terrible experiences from that. I was there. We'd be hitchhiking our way around Japan or somewhere crazy and I'd have to wait in hotel lobbies for her. Sometimes we'd have to run away from violent people and she'd be crying, saying she didn't like her life.'

As you'd expect from a cult that emerged in the hippy era, the days were at least filled with music, albeit religious music. Owens says certain acts would become popular within the cult, such as a young couple called Zac and Shelley: 'They wrote love songs to each other and recorded them on tape. I was a big Zac and Shelley fan. They did great harmonies.'

According to Owens, the cult's founder, David Brandt Berg, only allowed members to listen to the pop music he liked. 'He had these tapes called My Old Favourites, full of Elvis and the Beatles. We learned to play all those songs because us kids were desperate for any kind of secular culture. A lot of us made mixtapes off the radio, too, and passed them around. There was sort of an underground scene with kids passing around tapes, although if you got caught it was a big deal.'

One famous member of the cult was the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer, who gave Owens his first guitar, which he now plays when recording demos for Girls. It was also the guitar Owens played when he was sent out to busk to earn money for the cult. But the musical legacy of Children of God is not what sticks in mind about it.

'My friends there have been dropping like flies,' he says. 'I've known several commit suicide over growing up there. I was a huge fan of this one musician called Jeremiah Singer, and he has since hung himself. There was another guy who wrote country music - he called himself Micah Teddy Bear. He's died as well.'

Is he angry about all of that? 'Oh yeah. I was angry for a long time.'

-- Tim Jonze, interviewing another group of music artists with cult experiences - the Brian Jonestown Massacre and I are others - in The Guardian.

Black Lightning: The One Man Who Knew

"In [Ted Patrick's] single-minded focus on rescuing cult members, he minced no words and wasted little time on social niceties. As a result, he often irked and alienated those parents, clinicians and law enforcement officials who might otherwise be his natural allies.

Yet, regardless of his style, the grave questions Patrick first flamboyantly brought to public attention are not the ones we can choose to like or dislike nor will they simply go away if we ignore them. Is an individual free to give up his freedom of thought? May a religion, popular therapy, political movement or any other enterprise systematically attack human thought and feeling in the name of God, the pursuit of happiness, personal growth or spiritual fulfillment? These are questions that Americans, perhaps more than others, are not prepared to deal with, because they challenge long-standing constitutional principles and cultural assumptions about the nature of the mind, personality and human freedom itself.

In the months after our trip to the Orange county Jail we spoke with many people about Ted Patrick: parents, ex-cult members, attorneys, mental health professionals and others who, at the time, were only dimly aware of the building controversy over some alleged forms of religion in America. Some denounced him as a villain and a fascist, others hailed him as a folk hero and dark prophet of what lay ahead for America."

-- Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, describing the man called "Black Lightning" (inventor of "cult deprogramming" or "snapping") who predicted the rise of cults to power, as described on Rick Ross.com.

Sing A Simple Song

I don't know about you, but I didn't know John Denver was a graduate of EST (Erhard Seminars Training) I just thought of him as the "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy" guy who, quite unfortunately, died in a plane crash. But it seems:

"He was an early follower of Werner Erhard, founder of the self-improvement association known as EST (Erhard Seminars Training). Denver once asked Erhard if he might become a trainer in the EST organization, but was told he could contribute more by continuing his career as an entertainer, spreading the message through his music, of taking personal responsibility for whatever happens in the world. Several of his subsequent songs reflected that philosophy."

So I'm back to thinking about new wage manipulation of the public - including me, BTW - like EST getting me to sing John Denver's songs, internalizing values that are not my own, which is exactly what they, and the companies that hired them, were sued for, back-in-the-day, before EST went underground to re-emerge as The Landmark Forum. It's crazy-making stuff. And EST isn't the only one. Rick Ross showed Scientology was on PBS - spreading their whack-job ideas to all of us as kids - but I want to stay on the theme of music.

I've already mentioned Denny Fridkin's description of his whole band being sucked into Scientology - and we should all know about Issac Hayes, Herbie Hancock, Chic Corea, and Beck, by now. Keep in mind, like Tom Cruise and John Denver, each of those artists perform, partially, to recruit as many others into the cult as they can. That was L. Ron's vision.

Jeremy Spencer (above left, formally of Fleetwood Mac) was a Children of God member. That means he was having sex with children. Have the police gone after him as they've gone after others? One can only wonder. Many of those "Family" kids grow up severely damaged, or they're left, sleep-walking through life, spouting evasive nonsense, like, "People think this is all about sex, but it's greater than sexual relations. It's about how you relate and feel about people. It's about loving God with all your soul." Yea, yea - and all those damaged women, working in strip clubs, are really nuns - I get it, I really do. Jeez. Just shut-up and let me hear your demo, O.K.?

Amazingly intelligent, and crazy-as-hell, The Beastie Boys have totally-mellowed-out since bowing their heads to the Dali Lama, only to start producing some of the worst music of their careers (I've said it before and I'll say it again: The connection between new wage believing - and sucking at Rock 'n' Roll - is clear.). Sheryl Crow, who has always made God-awful music - but, strangely, keeps snagging TV commercials - has to be into,...*something*, being part of the one-square-of-toilet-paper crowd, because sane people just don't talk like that. And, of course, the latest addition to the new wage musical canon is the Smashing Pumpkins's Billy Corgan, whose latest outing, Zeitgeist, catches the dismal, depressing, feeling of these times perfectly.