The Pop Corporation

We’re like everyone when we say we’re interested in things that are genuinely horrible. Not ironically; no humour — just a fascination in how things can go so badly wrong… or weird. If you’re not into upsetting things, this is your warning to stop reading right now.

Of course, a lot of people enjoy reading about serial killers and the like — however, there’s something more grisly and psychedelically awful about cults. It’s one thing being a bad person doing bad things – it’s entirely another being a bad person who convinces scores of others to completely devote themselves and do unspeakably wicked things on their behalf.

From diving deep online, keeping a eye on developing groups, in the past reading Fortean Times and Bizarre and staying up late to watch horrible documentaries and all that interesting stuff – it’s hard, weird work trying to work out why people look for this type of higher purpose, and found themselves at the foot of leaders who let their egos run riot, or indeed, wielded their influence for nefarious gains.

Appalling abuses, violence, intimidation, brainwashing, leftfield interpretations of existing religious texts, power, money, racketeering, and more. It’s all in there, and all bleakly engrossing.

In among all this, is music. Some cult leaders made music themselves, while other groups had choirs that put albums out.

Some were just trying to live an alternative lifestyle off the grid, while other cults were involved in mass-suicides and murder. Listening to the music made on the darker end of the spectrum is an unsettling past-time, such as Charles Manson and the Family’s recordings which exist. We know Manson wanted to be a pop-star, and of course was linked to a lot of famous people in Hollywood (various members of the Beach Boys, and producers, etc). However, there’s been others — David Koresh recorded music while being the ‘lamb’ to his Branch Davidians, some spiritual, some pop.

There’s been self-proclaimed spiritual gurus and leaders, such as Father Yod (or YaHoWha) from The Source Family, who went from killing someone with martial arts and robbing people, to setting up a vegetarian restaurant loved by Lennon and Joni, to coercing followers to indulge in what one former member referred to as “heavy enlightenment and rigorous hedonism”, which meant shagging while a band played psychedelic music.

Then, there’s the members of the Synanon church, who were initially a drug rehab group, who became something else. They’ve beaten members who have ‘split’, and were implicated in the disappearance of Rose Lena Cole in the early ’70s. They apparently sent a number of death threats to NBC Nightly News, and have sent live, de-rattled rattlesnakes to an attorney who took on a case against them.

Head Synanon honcho — Charles Dederich — is recorded saying: “We’re not going to mess with the old-time, turn-the-other-cheek religious postures…our religious posture is: Don’t mess with us. You can get killed dead, literally dead…these are real threats.”

“They are draining life’s blood from us, and expecting us to play by their silly rules. We will make the rules. I see nothing frightening about it… I am quite willing to break some lawyer’s legs, and next break his wife’s legs, and threaten to cut their child’s arm off. That is the end of that lawyer. That is a very satisfactory, humane way of transmitting information. I really do want an ear in a glass of alcohol on my desk.”

Listening to this music is a heavy, heavy vibe indeed. Making such a mix feels bad on the soul, but it’s still fascinating stuff. In the mix (below), there’s more (in)famous groups. Featured is a children’s choir from Jonestown, and the chilling thing is that every voice you’ll hear on the record will probably be dead. The photographs of the Jonestown massacre, or mass-suicide if that’s your angle, are some of the most grisly pictures online. There’s even a recording of a sermon being given, and you can actually hear children crying in the background as they’re poisoned to death (it does not feature on my mix, mercifully).

Scientology also makes an appearance — perhaps the most famous of the new religions. L Ron Hubbard made a number of albums, including one with prog-legend Edgar Winter. LRH made freeform jazz albums, as well as mood-music, which speaks of the virtues of their group. There’s a lot of films made about Scientologists, and you will have drawn your own conclusions by now.

There’s music from Bobby Beausoleil — the Manson Family cohort — who murdered a music teacher and was a recruiter of young women for Manson himself. He made the soundtrack for the film ‘Lucifer Rising’, and a piece from that features beneath a message from Marshall Applewhite, the leader of Heaven’s Gate, who oversaw the mass suicides of over thirty members, who were leaving the Earth to get to an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

There’s also a mantra of sorts, from the Church Universal and Triumphant Inc. (the ‘incorporated’ is theirs, not ours) and their spiritual leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who kidnapped people, and have been accused of using sleep deprivation in a bid to control members. Like a lot of these groups, they’d amassed quite an arsenal too, but that can happen in America, where you can buy in stock down the gun shows and supermarkets. Either way, this is a church — like some of the other groups featured here — that are still active.

There’s other groups that could’ve featured, had they made more music. The Moonies didn’t make any music that sounded too different from the usual born-again hymns. There’s also Aum Shinrikyo, who are a doomsday cult who carried out the sarin attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. They did make a cartoon though, which you can see here.

We also hear from David Berg and the Family International/Children of God.

Berg, or Moses David or The Last Endtime Prophet, as he referred to himself, has been accused of many appalling things, including barbaric assaults on children, and the sexual abuse of his flock. He recruited through ‘Flirty Fishing’, which basically saw him sending young women out to have sex with strangers, to lead them back to his fold via blackmail, or be shopped to the authorities on charges for raping a minor. Berg was openly anti-Semitic, and in testimony, his grand-daughters said they’d been molested by him. The story of Ricky Rodriguez alone, is worth reading if you have the stomach for it.

Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist, Jeremy Spencer, infamously ‘went for a walk and never came back’, after a chance meeting with one of the disciples of The Children Of God.

In summary, this post is to tell you what you’re getting yourself into if you’re listening to the mix.

It isn’t designed to glorify any of what happened, but it is a fascinating body of work, made up of music, testimonies, news reports, and tracks prised from instructional VHS tapes from these groups that lie on the fringes of organised religion. It is grim, and even while compiling it, it felt like summoning up a demon or drawing a chalk pentagram around yourself. There’s literally victims singing in praise, or the words of those who abused their followers, so it’s not surprising that if felt like messing around with bad juju.

Why we’re interested in these things is another discussion, and indeed, one person’s cult is another’s legitimate religious group. We’ve basically based selections on what the media at large agree on as being ‘a cult group’, because obviously, there’s a lot of mainstream religions that have indulged in things that are as bad, if not worse, than those highlighted here.

Some featured here are straight up evil. Others meanwhile, are just a bit odd. Here’s the mix – hope you find it interesting.