rigorousintuition.ca

We interrupt our usual assortment of good music for this...this...well, it's a Scientology album, whaddya expect? Clunky amateurish lyrics, horribly dated '80s wimp-pop that makes Toto sound like the Ramones, vocals by b-list actors, brothers of celebrities, washed-up child stars, never-made-its, a children's chorus, and John Travolta...yep, it's another musical pep rally/indoctrination tool from America's wackiest cult, with a truly jaw-dropping vocal from El Ron himself. If you've never heard one of these Scientology albums, you should check one out, at least once (in fact, once is probably all you'll be able to take!) to really experience how far over the edge seemingly sensible people can go. As Travolta sings: "Reality is me, reality is you, yeah yeah yeah..."
Listen with horrified fascination here:

The Road To Freedom

All songs written by L. Ron Hubbard.
1. The Road To Freedom (w/Frank Stallone, Leif Garrett, John Travolta)
2. The Way To Happiness (w/Leif Garrett)
3. The Worried Being (w/failed soul singer Amanda Ambrose in a laughable approximation of funk)
4. The Evil Purpose (w/Frank Stallone)
5. Laugh A Little (the sound effects get disturbingly psychotic; I'm pretty sure that was not the intention)
6. The Good Go Free (Bang yer head! This one "rocks 'n' rolls" like John Tesh trying to go heavy metal.)
7. Why Worship Death? (jazz/prog with Chick Corea; Julia Migenes unleashes hair-raising operatic vox that will send animals scurrying)
8. Make It Go Right
9. The ARC Song (w/a straining John Travolta really trying to, y'know, emote; and Karen Black)
10. L'Envoi/Thank You For Listening (w/L. Ron Hubbard)

"Force yourself to smile and you'll stop frowning.
Force yourself to laugh and you’ll soon find something to laugh about. Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so. A being causes his own feelings. The greatest joy there is in life is creating. Splurge on it!"

If you don't have those words memorized, you will, after hearing them repeated over and over on this ghastly 2001 album released by the Church of Scientology, voiced by a semi-all-star team of singers. It sets the poems of the cult's late founder L. Ron Hubbard over crappy music that sounds way too dated to have been recorded only 12 years ago. I genuinely figured this was from the mid-'90s at the latest. So what's it's all about, Alfie?

- We kick things off with an intro from soul legend Isaac Hayes, who unfortunately only has a couple of quick cameos on this album. Hearing Hayes' trademark baritone speaking voice trying to give this drivel a bit of gravitas is pretty great - as funny as his "South Park" work.
- Anyone who thinks joining Scientology will give your showbiz career a boost should ask "fresh new singer" Shannon Star Roberts, or L.J. Jackson - this album is their sole Discogs credit. One of Roberts' boring songs references Scientology mythology: "Theta, Theta, See You Later." Catchy, eh?
- Carl Anderson apparently was one of the original stars of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and had some pop hit in the '80s "that endeared him to soap-opera fans" (gee, wonder why I never heard of him?); one of his two songs here is a mindbogglingly awful 16-minutes long. Two minutes would be bad enough, but, holy hell, sixteen interminable minutes? He should be shot! Oh wait, he died of an illness a few years after this album. Never mind.
- I always respected Doug E. Fresh as a hip-hop pioneer who recorded the classic single "The Show"/"La Di Da Di." But one of the low-lights of this album is the appalling apocalypse fantasy "We're Going Up While The World Goes Down," which Fresh futilely tries to pump up into a wave-your-hands jam despite lyrics like:
"I was in a Safeway row
of housewives and no chow
Who said they'd been forsaken
by even moldy bacon
The manager's cruel cry
Was the actual why
They'd ate up all the animals
And now must turn to cannibals"
Apart from retarded grammar ("The manager's cruel cry Was the actual why"?!?) Hubbard's attitude of: you're-all-gonna-suffer-and-die-but-we-won't-ha-ha! is hideously immoral for someone claiming to be a spiritual leader. It reminds me of the Xian fundies' 'rapture' fetish. Needless to say, the generic music has gone thru the Scientology washing-machine, bleaching out any chance of black funkiness.
- Someone named Pamela Falcon has the thankless task of translating one of Hubbard's free-verse poems into music, to whit: "CUPIDITY/Cunning mind/Which unnerves the eye/Unclean lancet." Come on everybody, sing along!
- Another low-light: albino blues-rocker Edgar Winter is one of those well-known figures I'd never really had an opinion on one way or another. Well, I have one now: I fuckin' hate him! His "The Joy of Creating" begins with him saying "Y'all know about the joy of creation? Well, this is how we do it down in Texas." He then proceeds to insult the entire Lone Star State with hysterical gurglings that pass for singing over pseudo-enthusiastic music that has all the soul of John Tesh. I have a hard time having much respect for someone who would allow this abortion to be released under his name, with his consent, while calling himself an artist.
- Chick Corea, the guy who contributes the only boring parts to otherwise-classic Miles Davis albums, drops by with under two minutes of pointless piano noodling and recitation.

A former Scientologist known on-line as Tiger Lily wrote on an ex-Scientologist message board: "At the time I was in, those albums were touted as being so theta-infused that just listening to them was supposed to key you out. They had the songs on their phone system "hold", and played them in the lobby over and over (how the staff stood that I'll never know).

I took that to heart and listened whenever I could. I lived 2 hours from the Org so I would listen to those *&^%$%# things for 4 hours on course days trying to internalize them. I memorized all the words. I sang along.

I remember thinking it was pretty cheesy , but they told us that Ron's music was way ahead of it's time, so I just decided I must be stuck in the 70's or something and made myself like it."

A video Scientology doesn’t want you to see: “Boots in the Sky”

Starting today, we’re beginning a new weekly feature that we think is going to impinge. (That’s Scientology talk for “have a big effect.”)

The Underground Bunker has heard from a source who has access to a large number of Scientology’s internal videos. We believe that some of the videos have never been online before. Others, like today’s, did make it to the Internet, but then were pulled down by threats from Scientology.

We’re not getting a lot of information from our source about the videos except where to find them online. But we did some quick research and so we know that today’s piece, “Boots in the Sky,” is something that Scientologists know very well. The words you will hear are spoken by L. Ron Hubbard — it’s from a lecture he gave as part of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course in December 1952.

We’ll have more to say about the PDC and the origin of this video in a minute. First, give it a look…

http://is.gd/gASmZ5

Oh, where to begin. Before we get to what the heck Hubbard is jawing about, let’s talk about the video itself. As we mentioned before, this item has been leaked previously. We found a mention of it at the Ex-Scientologist Message Board (ESMB) in 2009. But that posting of the film at YouTube was taken down after complaints from Scientology.

Inside Scientology, the video is very familiar to members. We wondered when it might have been made, and so we called upon Marc Headley, who spent years working on movies and other audiovisual displays as an employee at Scientology’s secretive International Base in California until his 2005 escape. Marc, it turned out, was very familiar with the video.

We shot this video in the early 2000s — maybe 2001 — for the release of the Philadelphia Doctorate Course on Compact Discs. This was a huge deal in Scientology. Until then all of L. Ron Hubbard’s lectures were being sold on cassette tapes. So after nearly 20 years of the CD era, Scientology decided to get on the CD bandwagon.

In the early 90’s when a cassette series was being released, they would just have a visual effects graphic of all the binders of tapes fanning out with some music. For the CDs we started making full videos with an excerpt from a lecture within the series for the big sales release at events. These were called “quote videos.”

This quote video was shot with Int Base staff as actors. The guy walking around in the boots is Adam Reuveni.

I was around when this video was shot, and I remember it well. There were many fog machine shots where we would blow out the background and have a bunch of people doing things in the “orgs,” and then cut to a bunch of space shots. You can always tell when we had no time to shoot or no real script as you will see a boatload of space and VFX shots.

Also, as a note, when these CDs were released at an event aboard the Freewinds, a special edition version of the PDCs were made — Gold CDs. Most of those Gold CDs were one-off CDs, made one at a time with paper- or thermal-printed labels. I’m pretty sure it was around $3,000 for the set of 70 or so CDs.

The Mind Renewed <<< Click here to listen.

Pete Griffiths : Fall of the House of Xenu

Published 06 December 2014

We welcome again Pete Griffiths of Ex-Scientologists Ireland who joins us for an informative, entertaining and surprisingly musical update on the current state of the so-called Church of Scientology.

Covering everything from Lord Xenu and his frozen alcohol and glycol, through Arpen Polo's first song 3 million years ago, to an improbable music album featuring John Travolta and L. Ron Hubbard, Pete Griffiths guides us through the bewildering world of Scientology and its founder, and shares with us from his experience as an activist working to alert people to the dangers of this fast-declining organisation.

Probably one of the weirdest records as far as the back story behind it!

Lord L.Ron Hubbard, known to his followers as The Source, assembled this funky jazz ensemble from members of Sea Org aboard the flagship of their fleet, The Apollo, originally named The Royal Scotman (supposed to be The Royal Scotsman, but typos & no spell-check in those days). The Sea Org is a unit of the Church of Scientology, comprising the church's most dedicated members. It was established on 12 August 1967 by Commodore L.Ron Hubbard, the science fiction church's founder. They initially resided on board three ships, the Diana, the Athena, & the Apollo because they where banned from nearly every country around the globe. In 1971, Sea Org assumed responsibility for the ecclesiastical development of the church, particularly the upper levels of its training known as Operating Thetan or OT. The band itself played a strange semi-skilled brand of garage jazz. The fact is that this band was assembled to gather recruits for Scientology with free "rock concerts" around the world.

The musick on this album was primarily imagined by L.Ron, honed to its razor sharp mediocrity aboard the Apollo. Then the musick was recorded over a period of days, recording 14 to 15 hours at a crack, directed by Hubbard. Hubbard had rented a movie theater in Portugal as the recording venue. As the Stars recorded, they were constantly badgered by Hubbard to fit their styles within the narrow confines of Hubbard's vision. He charged them a dollar for every wrong note they played (still, many wrong notes made it into the final recording). When it was over, the Stars owed Hubbard hundreds of dollars for their wrong notes.

If you are interested in things Scientological, read on…

Excerpt taken from Bare-Faced Messiah, a unauthorized biography of L. Ron Hubbard & Scientology by Russell Miller. The Church fought this book in the courts, but in the end lost their case. However, they have used their incredible influence to make sure copies of it are extremely hard to come by (& expensive). Pdf files can be found around the interweb, however. Read on…:

First, some Naval background data on Mr Hubbard, quoted from one of his spurious `official' biographies: 'He served in the South Pacific and in 1942 was relieved by fifteen officers of rank and was rushed home to take part in the 1942 battle against German submarines as Commanding Officer of a Corvette serving in the North Atlantic. In 1943 he was made Commodore of corvette squadrons and in 1944 he worked with amphibious forces.' Following was a list of seventeen medals awarded to Mr Hubbard, including the Purple Heart and the Navy Commendation Medal, many of them with bronze stars.

Miller writes, “On 18 June, the Navy Department replied, enclosing the four routine medals awarded to former Lieutenant Lafayette R. Hubbard, US Naval Reserve, and noting, 'The records in this Bureau fail to establish Mr Hubbard's entitlement to the other medals and awards listed in your request.'

The Commodore apparently had no difficulty circumventing this little problem: he quickly put into circulation an eight-by-ten color photograph of twenty-one medals and palms he had won during the war. Some were missing, he explained to the crew. He had actually won twenty-eight medals, but the remainder were awarded to him in secret because naval command were embarrassed that he had sunk a couple of subs in their own 'back yard'.

In the summer, the Commodore turned his attention from his own image to that of his ship. He was taken with an idea to improve the Apollo's public relations by staging free concerts and dance performances for the local residents at her regular ports of call. After hours of watching television in Queens, he considered himself an expert on popular music and modern dance and believed he had made important `discoveries' about the nature of rock music and the need for a strong heavy beat. He often demonstrated his theories to a mystified Jim Dincalci. On the ship, he was able to put his ideas into practice with his own band, the 'Apollo Stars', made up of volunteers from the crew chosen at auditions conducted by the Commodore with all the confidence and aplomb of a man who had spent a lifetime in show business.

Ken Urquhart, who probably knew more about music than anyone on board, resolutely refused to become involved. 'My favourite composer was Mozart, not the horrible, raucous noise they were making. They practiced on the deck most afternoons, playing music made up by LRH with a very primitive, animal beat. There was no way I was going to go near them.' Mike Goldstein, who had played drums in a semi-professional group while he was at university, volunteered to play with the Apollo Stars in order to get out of the RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force). 'LRH had said anyone in the RPF who was accepted for the band or the dance troupe would be let out. I volunteered because I thought anything was better than running around in a black boiler suit. I was wrong. The band was terrible, awful; it was the most embarrassing thing I have ever done.'

Hubbard's idea was that the Apollo Stars would be playing on the aft well deck each time the ship entered a harbor and that bookings for both the band and dance troupe would be arranged in advance at every port of call. Since he would be making appearances himself, he had a new uniform designed with a suitably theatrical flair. It featured a powder blue kepi with a lavishly gold-braided peak and a cloak in the same hue, lined with scarlet silk. He looked, Urquhart reported, 'most peculiar'.

Quentin Hubbard, now twenty, began rehearsing with the dance troupe and enjoyed it so much he made the mistake of telling his father he would like to be a dancer. 'Oh no you wouldn't,' Hubbard replied. 'I have other plans for you.' There was no further discussion and Quentin was no longer allowed to perform. Not long afterwards, he made a feeble attempt at suicide while the ship was docked at Funchal in Madeira.

'He'd gone missing ashore for a while,' said his friend Doreen Smith, 'and while people were out looking for him he just walked back on board. I went to see him in his cabin to make sure he was OK and found him lying on his bunk. He smiled at me and I said, "Hi, how are you feeling?" He said, "Not so good, my stomach's real upset." Then he said, "Doreen, I've done the most awful thing. I've taken a whole lot of pills." I said, "Oh shit. Get out of the bunk and don't go to sleep." I began walking him around the cabin and said, "You know I'm going to have to tell your Dad, don't you?" He nodded and said, "I know. He'll know what to do."'

Doreen ran to the Commodore's cabin and said 'Quentin's taken some pills.' Hubbard did not need it spelled out. He told Doreen to fetch some mustard from the galley and mixed it into a drink which he made Quentin gulp down. The boy vomited repeatedly and was taken to the sick bay to recover. His father sent down a message that as soon Quentin was well enough to leave the sick bay, he was to be assigned to the RPF. Mary Sue Hubbard, Hubbard’s third wife, who had a reputation for protecting her children against the excesses of the ship's regime, was powerless to intervene. She was supposed to be responsible for welfare on board -- indeed, she had won a special dispensation from the Commodore to allow married couples in the RPF to spend one night together a week -- but knew her husband was in a towering rage over Quentin and there was nothing she could do.

Rebecca Goldstein was among the inmates of the RPF when Quentin arrived. 'It was real tough for him,' she said. 'He was very delicate and refined, not at all self-important, very unlike his father. He had hardly any facial or body hair and it was very hard to say whether he had started shaving. There were rumors that he'd attempted suicide before. He cringed from his father, he was completely overwhelmed by him.'

The valiant attempts of the Apollo Stars and its associated dance troupe to win the hearts and minds of the Spanish and the Portuguese people did not meet with overwhelming success, although the political climate did not help. There had been a military coup in Portugal earlier in the year and the subsequent unease tended to make the Portuguese nervous of mysterious foreign ships calling at its ports for no apparent reason. The Apollo had also managed to upset the Spaniards by mistakenly attempting to enter a major naval base at El Firol.

The ship's real problem, however, was that its 'shore story' was wearing thin. Portuguese and Spanish port authorities were still being told that the Apollo was owned by a highly successful business consultancy firm, but all they could see was an old, rust-streaked ship, often festooned with ragged laundry and crewed by young people in tattered, ill-assorted uniforms. It was little wonder that suspicions mounted about its activities and rumors took hold that the ship was operated by the CIA.

Jim Dincalci, who had been put ashore to run a port office in Funchal, Madeira, became alarmed by the rumors. 'It seemed to be common knowledge in Madeira that the ship was not what it was supposed to be and most people seemed to think it was a CIA spy ship. I had made friends on the island and had contacts in local Communist cells. The word was that the Communists were out to get the ship next time she arrived in Madeira. I sent telexes to LRH warning him what was happening and advising him not come to Madeira until things had calmed down. I was absolutely shocked to see the ship come into the harbor.'

The Apollo arrived in Funchal on 7 October and moored in her usual berth. Emissaries were sent ashore to advertize a 'rock festival' to be held at the weekend, featuring the Apollo Stars. Late on the afternoon of Wednesday, 9 October, while Mary Sue and several members of the crew were ashore, a small crowd of young men began to gather on the quayside. By the way they were glowering and gesticulating at the ship, it was obvious to those on board that this was not a social call. Soon the crowd, which was growing all the time, began chanting 'C-I-A, C-I-A, C-I-A.'

Nervous Scientologists lining the rails of the ship tried chanting 'CIA' back at the crowd, but it did nothing to lower the tension. Then the first stone clanged against the Apollo's hull and a bottle smashed on the fore deck. More stones and bottles followed as the crowd's anger spread. The crew scattered to take shelter and began picking up the stones from the deck and throwing them back into the crowd. In a matter of moments it became a pitched battle.

Hubbard, who was watching what was going on from the bridge, got out a bullhorn and boomed 'Communista, Communista’ at the crowd. Then he began taking photographs of the stone-throwers with a flash unit, further inflaming their tempers. Several of the crew were hit by flying stones, including Kima Douglas, whose jaw was broken by a large lump of rock that hit her full in the face. On the quayside, one of the crowd opened his trousers, waggled his penis and took a direct hit with a well-aimed stone from the ship.

With stones and sticks and bottles flying in all directions, there was total confusion on board the Apollo. Some crew members would later describe the Commodore as being perfectly cool through the whole incident, others said he appeared to be terrified. Whatever his state, no one was taking charge and everyone was screaming orders. In one part of the ship someone was trying to get together a party to repel boarders; in another, the sea hoses were being run out and trained on the crowd in an attempt to persuade them to disperse.

Any remaining vestige of control among the rabble-rousers vanished when the ship turned its hoses on them. On the quayside there were several motor-cycles belonging to members of the crew and two of the ship's cars -- a Mini and a Fiat. All the motor-cycles were hurled into the harbor, then both cars were pushed over the edge of the quay, hitting the water with an enormous splash and quickly disappearing under the surface. Meanwhile, others in the crowd slipped the Apollo's mooring-lines from the bollards and she began to drift away from the quayside.

At this point, the Portuguese authorities belatedly appeared on the scene to restore order. Armed militia were put on board to provide protection, a pilot assisted with anchoring the ship in the harbor and a launch rescued those members of the crew who had been stranded ashore, including Mary Sue. The police demanded the film that Hubbard had been taking during the riot and the Commodore, mighty pleased with himself, dutifully handed over two rolls of unexposed film from cameras he had not been using. It was nightfall before the decks had been cleared of the broken glass and rubble.

Since it rather appeared as if the people of Madeira were no longer interested in a rock concert featuring the Apollo Stars, the ship sailed next day, leaving information with the harbor authorities in Funchal that she was heading for the Cape Verde Islands, 1500 miles to the south. She departed on a purposeful southerly course until she was out of sight. She then turned west, equally purposefully, prompting the crew to speculate with mounting excitement that the Commodore had decided to return to the United States.”

Then some more information on the actual making of this album.
From “The Apollo: Voyage of the Damned” by Neal Hamel:

Excerpt…

I Write the Songs That Make the Whole World Gag

“The picture on the cover of the Apollo Stars album shows a peculiarly grim-faced L. Ron Hubbard sitting before the controls of the mixing board, surrounded by his retinue, technical people and musicians.

Hubbard had spent tens of thousands of dollars to obtain the very best recording equipment, yet the Apollo Stars music on this album is technically and musically sub-par. Apparently Hubbard did not understand the basics of mixing. The music on the album sounds as if he did the mix while listening through headphones with cotton in his ears, never bothering to listen to it through speakers. The sound, distorted and mixed in the wrong proportions, is bunched into the right and left channels, an amateur's gross mistake. The rhythm guitarist was mixed in just as loud as the soloists. This way one can clearly hear the same two chords over and over and over and over again (while the high voltage saxophone player plays the ten notes that he knew over and over and over again). The muses were battered and bruised.

Once they had finalized a song, the Stars were only allowed to play their songs one way, no variation in notes, tempo or feeling. Hubbard, satisfied with a rendition of one of their pieces of music would decree that that rendition was the LRH Approved Version. If Hubbard caught them changing the music as he listened to local radio broadcasts there would be hell to pay.

The Apollo Stars were a part of a public relations campaign organized by Hubbard to improve the image of the much beleaguered Apollo. Like all the elements of Hubbard's public relations campaign, it failed and failed dramatically.

Once while docked in a Caribbean port and certainly without Hubbard's permission, the Apollo Stars participated in an all-night jam session with local musicians. Away from the oppressiveness of their hemisemidemigod, reports one of the musicians involved, the music had, for one night away from Hubbard, become enjoyable.

The decline of the Apollo Stars is a metaphor for the final year of the Apollo. Advance men would arrange free concerts for the locals as part of the arrival of the Apollo into ports. The official concerts deteriorated into lackluster affairs attended by bored locals. Finally the Stars were just abandoned as Hubbard reassigned the musicians to other duties. As things got more and more desperate, Hubbard sent a message to the US Guardian's Office head (DGUS), ordering that a land base be established as there were no places left for the Apollo to go. Hubbard said he was running out of time. The DGUS dispatched an assistant from his office in California to Florida and under the business name of Southern Land Development Corporation arranged the transfer of the Sea Org to a "Land Base".

The 'Voyage of the Damned' was over, but the on-shore migration ushered in another chapter in the sorry history of the Sea Org.”

Some final notes about musicians & others associated with the album. On the front cover, Annie Broeker is sitting on the left, then Dan Auerbach, & then Lord L.Ron. Tony Strawn is the other guy wearing a hat, back row right.

Annie Broeker is still a slave at the Int Base, the international headquarters of the Church of Scientology, standing on a 500-acre parcel of land in unincorporated Riverside County, California, outside of San Jacinto.
Dan Auerbach left the cult in 1982.
Tony was jailed for molesting a two pre-pubescent girls in Florida(Florida v. Strawn: Criminal Complaint).
Russ Meadows left the cult in 1983.
Neil Sarfati left the cult in 1978 & runs a large food distribution company.
Bill Potter died from AIDS in the late 1980's.
Kip Hansen left the cult in 1983.
Homer Schomer left the cult in 1982 & sued them.
Wayne Marple left the cult in 1982.

Seems as though most of the ‘Stars’ have fallen.

Year of Release: 1974
Label: Scientology Today, Yay!
Genre: Bad Funk/Jazz

Tracklist:
Side 1 –
The Power of Source
Summertime
Side 2 –
We’re Moving In
Johnny Comes Marching Home Again
My Dear Portugal(Meu Querido Portugal)

Download: The Apollo Stars – The Power of Source (320Kbps)
Download Size: 75.9MB
decryption code in comments

Annie Broeker is still a slave at the Int Base, the international headquarters of the Church of Scientology, standing on a 500-acre parcel of land in unincorporated Riverside County, California, outside of San Jacinto.

You see, Scientology doesn't really address the soul; it addresses the ego. What happens in Scientology is that a person's ego gets pumped up by this science-fiction fantasy helium into universe-sized proportions. And this is very appealing. It is especially appealing to the intelligentsia of this country, who are made to feel that they are the most highly intelligent people, when in actual fact, from an emotional standpoint, they are completely stupid. Fine professors, doctors, scientists, people involved in the arts and sciences, would fall into Scientology like you wouldn't believe. It appealed to their intellectual level and buttressed their emotional weaknesses. You show me a professor and I revert back to the fifties: I just kick him in the head, eat him for breakfast.

Penthouse: Did it attract young people as much as cults today?

Hubbard: Yes. We attracted quite a few hippies but we tried to stay a way from them, because they didn't have any money.

Penthouse: A poor man can't be a Scientologist?

Hubbard: No, oh no.

Hubbard: Two of the people we were involved with in the late fifties in England were Errol Flynn and a man who was high up in the Labor Party at the time. My father and Errol Flynn were very similar. They were only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs. At that time, in the late fifties, Flynn was pretty much of a burned-out hulk. But he was involved in smuggling deals with my father: gold from the Mediterranean, and some drugs --mostly cocaine. They were both just a little larger than life. I had to admire my father from one standpoint. As I've said, he was a down-and-out, broke science-fiction writer, and then he writes one book of science-fiction and convinces the world it's true. He sells it to millions of people and gets billions of dollars and everyone thinks he's some sort of deity. He was really bigger than life. Flynn was like that, too. You could say many negative things about the two of them, but they did as they pleased and lived as they pleased. It was always fun to sit there at dinner and listen to these two guys rap. Wild people. Errol Flynn was like my father also in that he would do anything for money. He would take anything to bed --boys, girls, Fifty-year-old women, ten-year-old boys, Flynn and my father had insatiable appetites. Tons of mistresses. They lived very high on the hog.

Penthouse: And what about this Labor Party official?

Hubbard: He was a double agent for the KGB and for the British intelligence agency. He was also a raging homosexual. He wanted my father to use his black-magic, soul-cracking, brainwashing techniques on young boys. He wanted these boys as his own sexual slaves. He wanted to use my father's techniques to crack people's heads open because he was very influential in and around the British government --plus he was selling information to the Russians. And so was my father.

Right next to The Hole is the music studio used to record Scientology music.



Ortega identifies the building on the left as a music studio in his blog post about the drone videos.

And he wanted to clear up some identifications of structures near “The Hole.” It was at the music studio here that Hubbard’s “Space Jazz” album was recorded, as well as the “We Stand Tall” video. It was also used for Tom Cruise’s courseroom when he visited in 1990.

Right at the top of Gold Base is "Bonnie View," the mansion built for Scientology's dead founder L. Ron Hubbard in case he reincarnates.



Next door is The Religious Technology Center (RTC) Building, which is basically the command centre of Scientology and the office of its leader David Miscavige.

The Castle sits on the outskirts of Gold Base. It includes two soundstages that Scientology uses to film movies and TV shows.



The Daily Mail reports that The Castle is used to film promotional Scientology videos and documentaries.

Here's a look at the lodgings offered to Scientology members.



And here's another angle of The Castle.



The drone video gives us a clear shot of Bonnie View. All the blinds are lowered.

L. Rock Hubbard



Revisiting the curious career of the ultimate cult musician.

By Nathan Rabin - May 1 2014

The early 1980s were a particularly strange time for Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard, the church’s controversial founder, kept such a low profile that rumors abounded that he had, in the parlance of Scientology, “dropped the body.” The rumors gained such currency that Hubbard’s son, Ronald DeWolf, filed to become an appointed trustee of his father’s estate on the grounds that Hubbard had not made a public appearance since 1980, and was most likely dead.

Hubbard, whose fetish for secrecy and privacy rivaled late Howard Hughes’, countered the claims not by making an appearance but by signing an affidavit from his secret lair that asserted that he was experiencing a late burst of multifaceted, runaway creativity. “As Thoreau secluded himself by Walden Pond,” Hubbard waggishly boasted, “so I have chosen to do so in my own fashion. I am actively writing, having published Battlefield Earth, and my Space Jazz album.” (For the record, at no point during his seclusion in Walden Pond did Thoreau release an album named Space Jazz.)

The novel Battlefield Earth plays a central role, of course, in Scientology’s strange relationship with pop culture. But even people morbidly obsessed with Hubbard might not realize that before John Travolta donned platform boots to cackle maniacally at the foolishness of puny man-animals in the film version of Battlefield Earth, the book had been adapted into an album written by Hubbard called Space Jazz. Space Jazz wasn’t the only album masterminded by Hubbard in the final years of his life, as the eccentric guru boogied his way toward death. Collectively, these albums offer a fascinating glimpse into both Hubbard’s psyche and rampant egomania. (To describe these albums as music at all represents runaway narcissism on Hubbard’s part.) Though designed as proselytizing tools, these albums instead function as fascinating sociological and anthropological artifacts chronicling the secretive and insular world of Scientology at a strange, uncertain time.

Space Jazz, released in 1982, was the product of a very specific cultural moment. Thanks to the popularity of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, space was the place and science fiction was the hottest genre around. Scientology wanted in, so an ambitious plan was hatched: Hubbard’s epic 1982 Battlefield Earth novel, to be followed by Space Jazz, and then a big-budget Battlefield Earth movie to follow in the mid-’80s, with John Travolta in the lead as hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Battlefield Earth wasn’t made into a film until 2000, at which point Hubbard was long dead and Travolta, aged out of playing a boy hero, was cast as the villain Terl instead. So Space Jazz is a forgotten curio despite its connection to one of the most notorious flops in pop culture.

Hubbard’s sonic space opera is, as you might imagine, a staggeringly strange piece of work, a bewildering cross between Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack (whose hero is referenced in the shameless opening track “Golden Age of Sci-Fi,” along with Superman and Buck Rogers), an amateur radio play, and a campy audiobook that goes overboard with special effects and musical cues. If you have not recently read all 1,050 pages of Battlefield Earth or seen the film, the album is completely incomprehensible; if you’re familiar with the story, it’s mildly comprehensible.

Musically, the album alternates between canned uplift (“Jonnie”, “Golden Age of Sci-Fi”) and droning dirges, broken up with patches of comic-book dialogue, robot voices, and laser-gun sound effects. A then-new, extremely expensive digital sampling synthesizer called a Fairlight CMI peppers the album; Hubbard seemed to imagine it represents the sound of the future, but it actually sounds more like the rightly discarded mistake of an abandoned past. Even for Battlefield Earth buffs like myself, Space Jazz is less a guilty pleasure than a harrowing endurance test. With Space Jazz, L. Ron Hubbard set out to re-create Battlefield Earth as a purely sonic experience. He succeeded all too well.

Space Jazz was followed four years later by an album inspired by another of Hubbard’s late-period magnum opuses, the aforementioned Mission Earth, which Edgar Winter adapted for a concept album ostensibly written by the reclusive senior citizen, who had officially died by the time the album was released in 1986. So if Edgar Winter’s Mission Earth soars above Space Jazz to earn the dubious distinction of the greatest album L. Ron Hubbard ever wrote, that’s largely because the previous effort set the bar so low. Of the four albums credited to Hubbard, Mission Earth is the only one that actually sounds like music. It’s the only album that could conceivably be played on the radio without prompting confused cries of, “Why?” and “What?” and “Is this even music?” and “How could this have happened?”

The guitarist deserves a St. Jude medal for making typically convoluted couplets like “To Mission Earth I was assigned/ A planet that was seizure inclined” sound like the base components of actual music, and not the ravings of a madman. It helps that Mission Earth has a driving, propulsive beat that makes it easy to overlook the profound silliness of the lyrics—and that Winter brings to the project a scary conviction and effete theatricality to rival John Travolta’s in Battlefield Earth.

If I might damn Mission Earth with faint praise, it has some of the kitschy, campy stomp of The Elder, Kiss’ notorious concept album. Songs like “Just a Kid” and “Bang Bang” have the infectious hooks, narrative thrust and the ripe theatricality of show tunes; they’re not good by any stretch of the imagination, but they are listenable, which is more than can be said of any of the other albums Hubbard is credited as having written.

Thanks to Winter, Mission Earth rises to the level of cheesy mediocrity. Given his source material, that is a remarkable achievement. A lot of talented professionals worked on the commercially available albums credited to Hubbard, including Chick Corea, Isaac Hayes, and Stanley Clarke (as well as Winter, of course), but Mission Earth is the only project that feels remotely professional.


Space Jazz and Mission Earth are direct offshoots of Hubbard’s career as a scribbler of science-fiction kitsch, but the other two albums written by Hubbard, 1986’s The Road to Freedom and the 2001 tribute The Joy of Creating, are Scientology’s version of gospel: psalms designed to express Hubbard’s ideas and messages through song.

The Road to Freedom is attributed to “L. Ron Hubbard and Friends”; the album was conceived as a tool for disseminating Scientology, and acolytes were encouraged to buy multiple copies to hand out to friends and co-workers. However, it’s difficult to imagine anyone but the morbidly curious making it past the first track, “The Road to Freedom,” which finds Travolta, Leif Garrett, and Frank Stallone expounding the gospel of L. Ron Hubbard, earnestly trying to wrap their mouths around lines like, “You are not mind or chemicals, you don’t even have a form/ You’re in a trap of senseless lies, it’s time to be reborn” over the tremblingly earnest sounds of wimpy soft rock.

The tone is painfully earnest, the jargon thick. No one can accuse The Road to Freedom of being off-message: “Take the route of auditing and once again be free,” the title track admonishes. “Give them the cans and audit it out!” implores “The Evil Purposes.” To help non-Scientologists lucky enough to be gifted with this bizarre vanity project, the liner notes to The Road to Freedom contains a glossary of Scientologist terms like ARC, auditing, engram, and reg, but even with that cheat sheet The Road to Freedom still feels like it was recorded in another language and then only intermittently translated into English.

The Road to Freedom is defined by a messianic sense of purpose. It’s filled with flowery, maudlin rhetoric about saving mankind and freeing people as well as a cheerfulness that frequently feels demonic. “Laugh a Little” implores listeners to find something to laugh about as an antidote to the blues but the laughter on the song sounds less joyous than monstrous, the final cackles of fools laughing themselves to death.

L. Ron Hubbard’s posthumous gift to Scientologists ends with “L’Envoi Thank You for Listening,” the only song on any of the four albums where he actually sings, in a foghorn baritone that has been synthesized and processed into a state of ghostly unrealness. The Wizard steps out from behind the curtain for a bow, and the effect is just as surreal and jarring as you might imagine. Hubbard presents himself not as a man with a philosophy but as a speaker of profound truths:

I do not sing what I believe
I only give them fact
If they believe quite otherwise
It still will have impact
For truth is truth and if they then decide to live with lies
That’s their concern not mine, my friend,
They’re free to fantasize.

The Road to Freedom does nothing to refute the notion that Hubbard was a charismatic lunatic who managed to convince a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people that he was not just sane but humanity’s last, best chance at sanity. That, friends, is what you call a long, long grift.

The Joy of Creating, cobbled together from Hubbard’s writings and released 15 years after his death, is defined by forced joviality. Everyone seems to be performing with a plastic smile. The Joy of Creating reduces its roster of singing Scientologists to poor imitation of themselves—pod people versions of the personas they’ve spent their careers creating.

Isaac Hayes, for example, is no longer a towering exemplar of swaggering sexuality; he’s the smiling figure of benevolence seen chuckling in the Joy of Creating CD booklet, clad in a bright orange Cosby sweater. This is not a man who will steal your woman—this is a man who will give your toddler a piggyback ride.

Hayes is the first friendly voice heard on The Joy of Creating. He begins the album by reciting Hubbard’s poem “The Joy of Creating.” “Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so,” he intones, his voice full of canned wonder and manufactured awe. “A being causes his own feelings.” According to the CD booklet, “The Joy of Creating” “reminds us that a being causes his own feelings, and this truth alone has revitalized many artists and professionals the world over.”

Hayes’ brief track is billed as a mere “Prelude,” a palate cleanser for what’s to come, yet four tracks later the words Hayes tried so nobly to instill with life and meaning reappear, reimagined by Doug E. Fresh as an old-school party jam. It doesn’t stop there. Six of the album’s 15 tracks are versions of “The Joy of Creating,” including versions by Chick Corea and our old friend Edgar Winter. At a certain point The Joy of Creating stops feeling like music and begins to feel like a sadistic thought experiment. If the same clumsy batch of words are repeated six separate times by professional musicians in a wide spectrum of genres, can that ungainly chunk of words somehow become music?

The Joy of Creating is an album of surreal blandness and empty polish: Remove the jarring strangeness of Hubbard’s words and you have an album begging to accompany massages or afternoons at the spa. The Joy of Creating was seemingly designed as a proselytizing tool; the album puts a friendly face on the tenets of Scientology, but an awful lot of creepiness seeps through. The final line in the titular poem—“The greatest joy there is in life is creating. Splurge on it!”—seems like a tagline you’d find on a billboard on Mars. The Friends of L. Ron Hubbard nursed an earnest, sincere desire to share their hero’s words and ideas with the world, with music as their medium. Yet The Joy of Creating, and Hubbard’s entire strange output as a songwriter in the 1980s, suggests that his “music” was the worst possible advertisement for his ideas (at least until the release of the film version of Battlefield Earth).

These albums constitute one of the strangest and least explored crannies of Hubbard’s bizarre and fascinating career. Hubbard set out to uplift all mankind; he saw his music, like his books and teachings and ideas, as gifts to a humanity whose true potential only he could unlock. But these albums live on only as gifts to lovers of camp the world over. Splurge on it!

Nathan Rabin is a writer at the Dissolve and the author of You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me.

Space Jazz is an original musical form based on the recently developed Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (Fairlight CMI). It marks the point where computer technology caught up with musicians. Space Jazz is the first real computer music that will appeal to mass public. It antiquates past music like the cathedral organ wiped away blowing on a blade of grass. Listeners are treated to the adventure and unexpected delights of discovering a totally new musical concept in this innovative album.