Music Cults

[sufi]

(Inspired by the article on the BUUM thread https://medium.com/@friedlander.cra...ung-people-to-give-up-everything-f3878fbec632 though I expected that might be all about a musical cult, rather than a wanking cult.)

I spent many many happy hours as an Aba Shanti-ite - there's definitely a strong religious streak at the House of Roots, but i was regrettably never inducted to the next level which i imagine involved even more ganja smoking (and probably only exists in my imagination), there was no coercive element but in other ways, the small devoted group, disinterested in the mainstream, there's some resemblance i think, as there are with lots of scenes where strong characters play to the crowd

other examples which i was not personally involved with -
- Manson family, a proper murderous death cult
- TOPY - that was just styling, wasnt it?

Any others? If not why not??

 

[Leo]

Sabbath Assembly, featuring Dave Nuss of No-Neck Blue band, linked to Process Church.

 

[william_kent]

Father Yod & Ya Ho Wha 13 - the house band of the Source Family



Sky Saxon from the Seeds got involved after Father Yod's death in a hang-gliding accident

 

[william_kent]

RAEL is failed musician who started his own cult



This documentary is an entertaining insight into the Raëlian Movement - he still sings to his acolytes

here's an example of his pre-cult leader music



Claude Celler - Monsieur votre femme me trompe (1967)

 

[william_kent]

David Koresh is a failed musician who ended up taking over an existing cult with disastrous results



David Koresh - Waiting So Long

 

[sufi]

David Koresh is a failed musician who ended up taking over an existing cult with disastrous results



David Koresh - Waiting So Long

o yeah i forgot about that lot

 

[william_kent]

Funkadelic's Maggot Brain album has liner notes taken from The Process Church of The Final Judgement's FEAR issue of their magazine

Their dalliance with the cult was short-lived...

 

[william_kent]

Changes, maybe the first ever neo-folk band, was formed by members of the original Process Church of the Final Judgement ( not the Skinny Puppy / Genesis P-Orridge reboot)



Changes - Fire of Life ( 1974 )

 

[william_kent]

I don't know if this band ( Mitch Woods and his Rocket 88s ) realise that that their guitar player is Steve "Clem" Grogan, formerly of the Manson Family



He's the one in the white hat on the left of the stage

 

[william_kent]

Here's a couple of former members of the Manson family doing their thing



Paul Watkins & Brooks Poston - Moments, Moments

 

[william_kent]

the Manson Family sings - Steve "Clem" Grogan on lead vocals - I think Paul Watkins plays on this as well - he's certainly in the film footage - to my shame I actually like this song, I find myself humming it sometimes - it's catchy..



Manson Family - Ra Hide Away!

 

[william_kent]

The People's Temple featuring Deanna Kay Wilkinson - The Way of The World ( live at Jonestown )

this was filmed the night before the massacre - you can see Jim Jones at the beginning looking bored

this is really difficult to watch, seeing all those people who are no longer with us and knowing what happened the following day

 

[woops]

blimey @william_kent nows everything about darkside transgressive stuff

 

[william_kent]

just a hobby...

 

[IdleRich]

RAEL is failed musician who started his own cult

I always find it strange when a cult fails and the leader goes away and then comes back with a new one and only true path to ultimate power. Seems to be surprisingly common, it really feels as though for some people it's their vocation... and in many fields, this ability to get back up after failure, dust yourself off and then have another crack is a good thing. First band didn't take off, sure, try a different line up, tweak the sound a little and have another go. If you're a businessman and your first venture doesn't work, then in the same way, if you have another idea that you think is good and you can raise the capital, why not try again? But for me it feels as though religious leadership should be different, that if you form a group and tell them that you alone have access to the ur-truth, the path, the secret etc etc and they follow you and the cult sort of muddles along for a bit but doesn't really ever properly take off and eventually it fails, then it doesn't seem right to me that you can just pop up again with the really real truth "I know what I said before, but this time it's special" - I suppose that in each of the above cases, the link is that what is being is in fact the person... the story itself is all but incidental.
But it just bugs me that so many cult members have let people off the hook for ridiculous stuff. I'm pretty sure that the Heaven's Gate guy was on his second or third attempted cult and surely that should have given people pause for thought before they started mutilating their genitals and killing themselves on his say so... what if you're wrong again?
Another one that springs to mind is that preacher guy who was completely exposed by the Amazing Randee, he was taking diagnosing them by magic, I mean the word of god, on stage and then curing them or whatever, but Randi showed utterly clearly that he just had a thing in his ear and someone would tell him what was the issue so that he could "diagnose" it.... and after he was humiliated and proven to be a totally evil lying fraud who was pretending to have the word of god on his side and basically tricking and stealing from his congregation, he went away for a bit, and then he came back and set himself up again and everyone was like "Yeah, cool, probably he's magic now" - the psychology behind that is fascinating but it makes me think we are all doomed.
Nothing to do with music though soz.

 

[william_kent]

I always find it strange when a cult fails and the leader goes away and then comes back with a new one

Genesis P-Orridge springs to mind here - kicked out of TOPY, although G-PO claims that they "dissolved" it - I remember someone involved in one of the TOPY "stations" told me at the time "Gen has to go!" - tried to revive it with TOPI to little interest, then tried to form their own "The Process" with Skinny Puppy, again to little interest, and finally the One True Topi Tribe to yawns all around..

 

[IdleRich]

Should be a few former TOPY members on here i think, I remember what one of them told me about it - or his view of it and the way he used it - which I found quite interesting. He, this guy, is a few years older than me and when he was getting interested in weird music, weird books, weird stuff.. well, of course there was no internet to find like minded souls and so you would go to gigs, get magaazines, fanzines etc and look at the ads in the back and maybe trade stuff with people and so on, and of course if you were looking in that direction of course you would come across TOPY at some point and he was saying as I understood it, not that he was opposed to it or anything, but basically he was using it as a meeting place or hub for freaks with all the actual TOPY stuff as basically fairly incidental. At least this is how i remember how he described it.

 

[william_kent]

that's probably how most people used it, the "rift" occurred when G-PO thought he was a cult leader and no-one else was having it - at least according to my source - there's a book on the original Process Church of the Final Judgement with an afterward by G-PO which comes off as really bitter about the whole TOPY episode - my copy of the G-PO memoir, "Non-binary", arrived last week - I'm looking forward to reading it but it's currently in the "Gravity's Rainbow pile"

 

[william_kent]

I don't think I'm cut out to be a cult member - I once almost got in a fist fight with some Hare Krishnas at motorway service station when I refused their offer of a free LP - they didn't like it when I told them "I've heard it and it's shit"

 

[woops]

I always find it strange when a cult fails and the leader goes away and then comes back with a new one and only true path to ultimate power. Seems to be surprisingly common, it really feels as though for some people it's their vocation... and in many fields, this ability to get back up after failure, dust yourself off and then have another crack is a good thing. First band didn't take off, sure, try a different line up, tweak the sound a little and have another go. If you're a businessman and your first venture doesn't work, then in the same way, if you have another idea that you think is good and you can raise the capital, why not try again? But for me it feels as though religious leadership should be different, that if you form a group and tell them that you alone have access to the ur-truth, the path, the secret etc etc and they follow you and the cult sort of muddles along for a bit but doesn't really ever properly take off and eventually it fails, then it doesn't seem right to me that you can just pop up again with the really real truth "I know what I said before, but this time it's special" - I suppose that in each of the above cases, the link is that what is being is in fact the person... the story itself is all but incidental.
But it just bugs me that so many cult members have let people off the hook for ridiculous stuff. I'm pretty sure that the Heaven's Gate guy was on his second or third attempted cult and surely that should have given people pause for thought before they started mutilating their genitals and killing themselves on his say so... what if you're wrong again?
Another one that springs to mind is that preacher guy who was completely exposed by the Amazing Randee, he was taking diagnosing them by magic, I mean the word of god, on stage and then curing them or whatever, but Randi showed utterly clearly that he just had a thing in his ear and someone would tell him what was the issue so that he could "diagnose" it.... and after he was humiliated and proven to be a totally evil lying fraud who was pretending to have the word of god on his side and basically tricking and stealing from his congregation, he went away for a bit, and then he came back and set himself up again and everyone was like "Yeah, cool, probably he's magic now" - the psychology behind that is fascinating but it makes me think we are all doomed.
Nothing to do with music though soz.

it's weird but there's just a certain type of person who for whatever reason has the psychology that leads them to set up as a charismatic leader and then there is the type of person who is vulnerable (or gullible) enough to follow those leaders and that's just what they do. it's similar to conmen who run pyramid schemes and so on - literally the day they are released from prison for running a scam they start running the next scam and were probably running one inside prison as well. it's just what they do and there's not a shortage of people willing to play along with the con either.

i mean if you're willing to believe that x person is the mouthpiece of the universal force of life then you're that much more willing to believe them when they say they've calculated wrong, or that the archangel raphael has transmitted a new date for the ascension, or whatever. sad but true.