STRIPPING THE HIPPIE

TRAILER FOR THE FILM “LIVE FREAKY DIE FREAKY. THE DEATH OF THE HIPPIE DREAM” MUSIC BY GIL DE RAY

                                                            STRIPPING THE HIPPIE

                         On LIVE FREAKY DIE FREAKY a new soundtrack album by Gil De Ray 

Gil reads a book on Thursday the 18^th June and by the 26^th 
There’s an album. A soundtrack to a horror that primes
The psycho before the psychedelia we once prized.
After reading David McGowan’s tripped tome
About CIA collusion and murder, with Manson and Co.,
Wilson, Melcher and Crosby each gnashed, the flame dies

That we once held before a bright time, seeing it as the way
Through the mire, only to find that WEIRD SCENES IN
THE CANYON blocks even Jim Morrison’s smeared
Goldmine. The album soundtracks the book; an aide
Grimoire for your reading, but each track becomes
Independent with Gil’s instruments guiding your own

Mental landscape as the intrusive thought occupies;
For what if the world isn’t quite as we once hoped
Or imagined? And what if our counter cultural heroes
Were themselves the product of a former virus
So much harder to know or to feel, or define?
The project was called M.K Ultra, a mind control

Programme whose secret agent was that aromatic
Heaven scent: LSD. This gathered all in, and stripped
The happiness from the hippie who soon consumed
Paranoia as eagerly as their first ecstacy. The so called
Summer of love was two months before that hippie dream
Turned to nightmare; Altamont was the summit

And that final death scream and song bleed.
But it all began here with CIA Head Screwed on,
Sent  to screw us. A dark heart blood would run
From, called Agent Sidney Gottleib, who, in seeing
The tide start to turn acted to then stem the river
By running and supervising the  drowning his own

Colleagues’ kids whose heads would roll as they rocked,
Unwittingly setting about a new order that head twister
Gottleib, with chubby hands checkered each pawn
Into playing the sort of private game the dark bids.
Gottleib: Poisoner in Chief overtures, cavern drums
Stamping grandly, while a stately guitar line emphasises

And wags a finger too, aurally. This is where notes
Create words and chords a reaction as the track
Through triplets spirals you down, spiritually.
Gottleib in the dark mixing his own rising poisons.
He supervised those sent to stain Castro and failing
In that looked to home. The repeats and refrains

In Gil’s music serve to remind you that through even
American sunshine there is always a darkness with
Which evil attempts overthrow. Brothers Under the Skin
Speaks of this with a fiery guitar figure. The thematics
Charge like injections as chorus and chord spike the vein.
Both title and track and title speak of a deeper communion

Between drug and drug user and those squeezing the users
In the mind and blood control game. It’s a cycle of course
And a vicious circle that the music continues as Gil’s
Fingers find shape. The CIA bought LSD soon ran out
As the swingers swung with abandon so to rein in
The tarred jungle, Gottleib turned to the pharmaceutical

Company Eli Lilly to stun and regress each tripped ape.
And so the track flays and flames as crashing chords
Echo shaker and the trapped thrill sends you sleepless
Before love’s wasted wake. Every angle was trimmed
As Vito& The Freaks ably captures. With its breathy
Swathes of sound and we hear the dancers in Vito

Paulekas’ strange troupe. These ‘heads’ with feet set
The scene around The Byrds, Love and The Doors
By entering every venue and smoothing the mission’s
Way and spermed route. A deep seeded plan for an
Underground Scene that was rising, a jaded green
Through the yellow of a flower’s powered flame

And disguise. The music leads us through those
Forgotten bars, stars and spaces that once stoked
Hope’s hungers and let it filter and stream at each eye.
For we can cry for a past as soon as we know that its over.
But then even tears can burn when that era in reaching
Its end signals ours. Which makes the books Gil has read

Their own forms of Bible and the soundtracks on this album
Song spears and rainfall spearing us all from sound cloud. 
Each track transforms the current theme and infection,
While representing the sound and the feel of the day.
These are the songs the walls sing as they witness the wheel
Fate was spinning. And so, across these tracks trace the wires
Through which dark electricity came to play. Manson’s
Mystic Mantra  says it all as ominous rimshot now captures
The Devil’s own asshole shitting across porecelain.
Whether that be the homes of the rich or the bones
And teeth of the Hunted, the strings strummed before him
Or Sharon Tate’s splattered skin. The track trips along

As if it were its own jaunty Satan, saving his sympathy
Not for victims but for the generations of fear still to come.
The organ swirls madly before as the Hellfire rises and the
Spahn Ranch where he plotted is also depicted by footstamping
Chord, and phased drum. The Dark Heart of Bobby Beausoleil 
Is revealed, as blood is birthed beneath beauty, and some

Of his own Kennelled anger that the cultish Kenneth
Once captured is kept withina Guitar line that scratches
And slits the starred air. The killer puts his boots on once more
Alright and walks down the hall and hill towards glamour
As the wind serves and slices and the charming facade
Foregoes care. Murder and Mayhem in The Canyon disturbs

With Gil’s Nico like keyboards, for which a ghoulish
Piano soundtracks time’s crime, to foretell. Along with
Sharp spikes of synth and a ghosted pitch echo we can see
The scars under sunshine and strip some of the star’s
Spores to slide spells. Midnight Climax paints the room run
As a CIA brother in which all of those who were courted

Were recorded and filed for blackmail. It shows how
The cunt that controls is to do with those who soil countries
Employing those who fall helpless as souls duly weaken
And corrupted skin starts to pale. The distorted whistle like
Theme satirises seduction as the chords chime at midnight
And each note’s tolling traps us, there to ensure the light

Fails. The Death of the Hippie Dream wah wahs in, as reverb
Sisters time’s echo and we see through the era, thanks
To the crashing symbol of the age, one guitar. For wherever
Gil De Ray shines his light, be sure to look. Dare to follow.
For what he composes is cosmos. The death and the drug.

The soiled star.

                                                                                                  David Erdos June 26^th 2020

https://gilderay.bandcamp.com/album/live-freaky-die-freaky-the-death-of-the-hippie-dream