Afleveringen
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When you’re a rock star, life can be very busy…there are songs to write, rehearsals to attend, albums to record, promotional appearances to make, interviews to be conducted, and tours to organize and execute…there’s often not a lot of free time.
Maybe you live in a large house or an estate… you might have multiple pied-de-terres around the planet: a home base, a vacation spot or two, and some condos in New York, or London, or Paris.
As a rock star, you’re often away your home (or homes) for long stretches of time…someone has to look after those properties, whether you’re there or not.
Maybe you’ve been a musician, an artist for such a long time you’ve never had to worry about the things that take up a civilian’s day…do your laundry, walk your dogs, go grocery shopping, take care of the lawn, and all that regular daily stuff.
And, of course, you need someone to make sure all the bills get paid…someone has to chase down all outstanding invoices…and because there’s so much money involved in your career coming from multiple streams, you need someone to manage your cash, your bank accounts, and your investments…that means lawyers and accountants and financial advisors.
Just so you can be you, a rock star needs an army of employees and contractors so that everything that needs to be done, gets done…you’re far too busy and the business is far too complex for you to handle that part of life on your own.
And finding the right people is essential…you need to trust these people to deal with the most important aspects of your career, your family, your life, your possessions, and you’re financial security.
But as with all things human, there are those who can’t be trusted…they see all these nice things, maybe have access to cash and assets—and they just can’t help themselves…fingers get sticky…and you don’t know that until it’s way too late.
I’m Alan Cross and this is episode 23 of “Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…this time, it’s a warning to beware the help…these are people trusted by rock stars but instead ended up ripping them off…and boy, do I have some cautionary tales for you.
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On August 6, 1989, a chartered 757 nicknamed “The Magic Bus” took off bound for the USSR…on board were Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, The Scorpions, Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, and a few others…
It was the dying days of the soviet union…but other than the communist hardliners, few people were sad about that…Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, had ushered in the era of glasnost and perestroika…reforms were being enacted and few freedoms were creeping into soviet society…
This trip was part of that…a plane full of western rockers was headed to play a two-day festival in Moscow with attendance expected to top 200,000 people…it was the “Moscow Music Peace Festival”… it was hoped that the event would promote greater understanding between the west and the east during this time of great change at the end of the cold war…
It was also set to raise money in conjunction with the “Make a Difference Foundation,” an organization dedicated to helping local Russian people who were addicted to drugs and alcohol…a lot of the money would go to messaging and rehab treatments…
Wait—what?... Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, and all these other acts were part of a highly sensitive, properly diplomatic, international anti-drugs-and-alcohol project inside the soviet union?...
Oh, yes…and on the plane, Ozzy was drunk the whole time…his guitarist, Zakk Wylde, was tripping on LSD…you had to be careful where you stepped because there were syringes on the floor…at the back of the cabin, people rotated in and out of informal jam sessions fueled by booze and drugs…
Now you’re probably wondering who came up with this idea and how it ever actually happened?...well, that’s a bit complicated…it involved the CIA, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and 640 tons of marijuana smuggled into North Carolina—and the teenage mutant ninja turtles…and at the centre of all of it was a man named Doc McGhee—who just happened to be the manager of most of the bands on the plane…
This is episode 22 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…it’s how a drug-smuggling band manager helped end the Cold War…have I got a story for you.
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In 1960, after months of testimony and investigation, it was made illegal for anyone to bribe a radio station or any of its employees to play a record…payola was forbidden under punishment of jail time and a fine of up to $10,000…
This, it was hoped, would keep the marketplace even and fair and no one—not a label, an artist, or anyone promoting that artist—would be able to jump the queue to get a record played on the radio…only songs with true merit would make it to the public…no more pay-for-play!...
Yeah, nice try…
If one thing was learned from the great American payola scandal, it was that radio airplay was essential to making money from a record…and if promoters could no longer walk into a radio station with a bag of cash, a case of booze, some drugs, a couple of hookers, or the promise of gifts (such as expensive watches), then they needed to get creative…
There had to be less obvious ways of tipping the scales in their favour…and there were…
After those initial hearings and the laws passed in their wake, payola never went away…instead, it went underground, toughened up, and became even more sleazy…
As the music industry got bigger and became more corporatized through the 1960s and 70s, the competition got more intense…the amount of money to be made from music involved got exponentially larger…and it got a lot rougher.
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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In a fair and just universe, we would live in a meritocracy…the best and most talented would naturally rise to the top and be properly recognized and compensated for their contributions to humanity…yeah, nice idea, but…
We’d like to think that music operates this way…the best and the brightest naturally have their songs heard and become popular because, well, they’re good…these artists have hit records and are deservedly rewarded by the world with the fruits of their God-given natural abilities…again, lovely idea, but hopelessly naïve…
The music business can be an ugly place…as Hunter S. Thompson allegedly once said, “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs”…(I should also add that the quote ends with “there’s also a negative side”—but I think he made his point)…
It’s a viciously competitive game…and the truth is that sheer talent is not enough to make it big…every potential hit song needs a powerful distribution and marketing system behind it, someone who will work the song by elbowing other artists out of the way…
The goal is to get the song heard by any means necessary…once that is achieved, it’s push, push, push to make the song ubiquitous…the more people that are exposed to it, the greater the likelihood of a record being bought or a song being streamed…that’s when the money starts rolling in…
But it doesn’t end there…once a song is an actual hit, there are ancillary opportunities for revenue…soundtracks…placement in TV shows…licensing for commercials…covers by other artists…the amount of money that can be made is staggering—and everyone along the way gets a taste…
But none of that is possible unless the song is a hit...how can that happen with a perishable commodity in an environment where the end consumer—the music fan—is so fickle and unpredictable...how do you get millions of strangers to buy into a new piece of art?...
The answer: you gotta grease the wheels, create some incentives, and make offers that people just can't refuse…this is where we enter the murky and illegal world of payola…
I’m Alan Cross and this is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”… when it comes to payola, boy, do I have some stories for you.
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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Episode 294: On the evening of December 21, 1883, near Bloomfield, Ontario, visitor Peter Lazier was murdered by two intruders at the farmhouse of Quakers Gilbert and Margaret Jones. The community, deeply affected, quickly organized a search. They traced footprints in the snow, leading to Joseph Thomset and the Lowder family's homes near West Lake. By the next day, Joseph Thomset and brothers David and George Lowder were arrested and charged with murder.
The legal process moved rapidly. The coroner's inquest began the next day, followed by formal proceedings within a week. The trial, held at the Prince Edward County Courthouse in Picton just five months later, suggested the motive was robbery, aimed at stealing the $555 Gilbert Jones earned from selling hops. George Lowder and Joseph Thomset were found guilty of murder and hanged in June of 1884. Many felt justice was served, but others believed the law got it wrong, acting hastily without sufficient evidence.
Sources:
Prince Edward County
The Canadian Encyclopedia | Quakers
The Lazier Murder: Prince Edward County, 1884 — Robert J. Sharpe
The Kingston Whig-Standard 24 Dec 1883, page 2
Ottawa Daily Citizen 24 Dec 1883, page 1
Manitoba Weekly Free Press 15 May 1884, page 2
The Lazier murder trial of 1884 – did they get the right men?
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In 1969, the Rolling Stones were about to enter their imperial phase, a time in their career where everything they did seemed to go right…they were on their way to being the biggest rock band in the world…
In December 1968, they released “Beggar’s Banquet,” their biggest-selling album so far…work had started on “Let It Bleed,” another record that would become a classic…that would eventually be followed by “Sticky Fingers” in 1971, “exile on main street” in 1972, and half a dozen more albums that would cement their place in rock history…
But let’s back up to 1969…things were not good within the band…in fact, they were terrible…hard drugs had been seeping into the group and founder Brian Jones was a mess…
Not only was he unable to contribute to the group in any meaningful musical way, but his mood swings made him impossible to deal with…sometimes he wouldn’t show up to rehearsals—and when he did, he was useless…
He neglected to look after the band’s communal car and it was towed away…jones crashed his motorcycle into a shop window and spent time in the hospital…and his drug convictions made it impossible for him to get a visa to tour the U.S…
The Stones desperately needed to tour because some insanely large tax bills were due…they needed the month…something had to give…
On June 8, 1969, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards told Brian Jones that he was fired from the band he created…he was no longer a rolling stone…
Less than a month later, he was dead…was it a drug-related Rock’N’Roll misadventure?...did he accidentally drown in his swimming pool?...or was it something more evil…
Ever since the news broke on July 3, 1969, that Brian Jones had died, there have been questions…it’s a very curious case—and some believe (including his family) that he may have been murdered…I’m Alan Cross and this is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry,” episode 19…the mysterious death of Brian Jones…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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If you’re an artist and things are working out well, there will come a time when you need a manager…you need someone to take care of the business end of things while you focus on the music…that’s when you need a manager…
A manager does everything from booking gigs to devising career strategies… which includes promotion and marketing, networking, and conducting any negotiations on your behalf…and the manager is in charge of financial management…hold that thought…
A manager is incentivized by your success…the usual fee is 15% of whatever you make…obviously, the more you make, the more the manager makes and everyone is happy, right?...
The entire relationship is based on trust…you, as the artist, must believe that your manager always has your best interests in mind…and you must believe that your manager will never take advantage of you or rip you off…again, you trust your manager with your money…
In the vast majority of artist-manager relationships, things are professional and legal…the best managers will take a bullet for their clients…some are even legendary for their skills, dedication, and loyalty to their artists…
That includes Peter Grant, who did whatever he needed to do to protect Led Zeppelin and to extract maximum profit from record deals and concert tours…
It includes Paul McGuinness, a veteran who took a very young U2 under his wing in 1978 and built them into the biggest band in the world…
And then there’s Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein who have looked after Metallica, AC/DC, Smashing Pumpkins, the Chili Peppers, Muse, Def Leppard, Snow Patrol, and Cage the Elephant, among others…
But it’s not always sunshine, chocolate, and unicorns…there are bad managers, too…and I’m not talking about general incompetence…I’m talking about people who steal, embezzle, and extort from the very people they’re supposed to protect and nurture…
This is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry,” episode 18…these are three of the worst, most unscrupulous, and most dishonest managers in rock…have I got some stories for you.
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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In 1931, a larger than life prospector, in search of Slumach’s legendary lost gold mine goes missing in the wilderness of British Columbia.
In this episode, we retrace the epic search and rescue efforts that went into looking for the missing prospector as well potential clues left behind at his campsite, that point to an even bigger mystery of what happened to Volcanic Brown?
Host:
Kru Williams
Guest:
Adam Palmer
Facebook - @HISTORYCanada
Instagram - @deadmanscurse
Instagram - @Historyca
Instagram - @kru_williams
Twitter - @HistoryTVCanada
Curiouscast website: https://curiouscast.ca/
Great Pacific Media Website: https://greatpacifictv.com/
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Phil Spector was one of the most successful record producers and songwriters of the 1960s and 70s…he was a boy genius, a millionaire many times over by the time he was 21…
He was the first to use the recording studio as an instrument…he called his recording style “wall of sound,” music that was densely layered and jumped out of am radio speakers like nothing else…
His favourite collection of studio musicians—his house band—became known as “the wrecking crew” and is considered to be the best the music business has ever known…Spector was responsible for hit records for girl groups like The Crystals and The Ronnettes, creating some of the most iconic pop songs of the era…
He produced other massive records for the Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner…later, he finished up the “Let It Be” album for The Beatles, produced “Imagine” for John Lennon, and a couple of projects for George Harrison… towards the end of the 70s, he guided The Ramones through their “End of the Century” album…
Overall, he was behind had 18 top ten singles—one of the very few producers who had number one records in the 60s, 70s, and 80s…
Spector was an early inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…a member of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame…nominee and winner of Grammy Awards…characters in movies have been based on him…
So how did someone so successful and so respected end up convicted for the murder of a B-movie actress?...
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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The very last thing an artist or a promoter or owner of a venue wants is for someone to get hurt—or worse--at a concert…but it does happen…
There are always stories about bad behaviour or unexpected crowd dynamics… Altamont in 1969, The Who crowd crush in 1979, Woodstock 99, the nine dead during Pearl Jam’s set at the Roskilde Festival in 2000, the deaths at the Astroworld Festival in 2021, and the Brixton Academy crowd crush in 2023 all come to mind…
Those were security failures and problems with crowd control…but occasionally, there’s a different type of disaster, the kind that happens suddenly and without warning…
When you go to a show, you expect that the building and everything in it will be safe, that all has been constructed to proper standards, and won’t present any kind of danger to anyone at the gig…
The last thing you think about is the stage coming down on top of the performers, the crew, and the crowd…
Saturday, June 12, 2012, at Downsview Park in Toronto was a clear, calm summer day. But just minutes before the grounds were to open for fans, thousands of pounds of equipment and scaffolding suddenly came crashing down…one person died and three people were injured…
What happened?...and why did it take so long for justice to be served?...and while we’re at it, was justice served? I'm Alan Cross and this is “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem the Music Industry, episode 16”…the Radiohead stage collapse…have I got a story for you…
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There are monsters who walk among us, people who prey on the young and vulnerable…and they have always been out there and in all walks of life…
John Wayne Gacy hired himself out as a clown for parties…it was later discovered that he raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 boys and young men…26 bodies were found in the crawl space under his home near Chicago…
Robert Anderson was the sports physician at the University of Michigan…he was accused of raping over a thousand men and women during routine medical exams…
There are plenty of celebrities who are convicted sexual offenders…director Roman Polanski can’t come back to the u.s. because he’ll be arrested on rape charges over an encounter with a 13-year-old-girl back in the 70s…
Jared Fogel, the subway guy…he was sentenced to 15 years in jail after being convicted of child porn and sex acts with minors…R. Kelly is in jail for 30 years on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and child sexual abuse…
Woody Allen, Mike Tyson, Bill Cosby, Tupac, Michael Jackson—they’ve all been implicated and, in some cases, charged and convicted…and then there’s Jimmy Savile, the British DJ and media personality who, under the veneer of being philanthropic, may have been one of the most prolific predatory sex offenders in British history…
There’s more, too…this is episode 15 of “Uncharted: crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry”…and I have three stories of evil predators from the world of rock…
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The Manson family murders are among the most famous crimes in American history…their actions have been documented over and over and over…this program will not be a recitation of what happened…instead, we’re going to look specifically at how music figures into this story, before, during, and after these horrific events…music had a much bigger part in the murders than most people realize…
This is a story that involves The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Neil Young, The Mamas and Papas, a couple of famous record producers, a large discography of Manson-made records, and a long list of artists who have at least some relationship to Manson and his people…
I'm Alan Cross and this is episode 14 of “Uncharted: Music and Mayhem in the Music Industry”
This time, it’s the musical nightmare of Charles Manson
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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Since homo sapiens gained consciousness and self-awareness, we’ve been asking some big questions…what does it all mean?... What’s the purpose of existence?... Is there something more to life and the universe than what I can see?...
This has led us down all kinds of spiritual journeys and rabbit holes…for billions, this means turning to religion…but what if traditional spirituality and beliefs don’t cut it?...if you’re not careful, you might find yourself in a cult…
Maybe you’re seduced by a charismatic leader who claims to have all the answers when it comes to religion, philosophy, spirituality, and maybe even politics…it's non-mainstream stuff, which is part of the appeal…maybe this leader and his followers really do have all the answers to everything you’ve been searching for…
Here’s where things get weird…you’re introduced to unorthodox teachings, strange rituals, odd practices, and wild belief systems…maybe you’re given a task or caught up in the group’s goals and objectives…
Then we get into mind control, brainwashing, shaming, suppression of individual identities, totalitarian enforcement of behaviour, separation from family and friends, and even terrorism, violence, and death…
There are thousands of groups around the world…many are generally benign hare Krishnas, for example…others are sketchy and warrant skepticism…I’d put the wacky Raelians in that group…and a few are downright dangerous…think the Heaven’s Gate UFO group and suicide cult in San Diego…
Now: what happens when you mix cults with music?...a lot of very, very bad things…I'm Alan Cross and this is Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, episode 13…have i got some stories for you…this is what can happen when music and cults intersect…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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When something bad happens, we want to know why…the weirder and badder the event, the more we need to know…
It can’t possibly be random…someone needs to be responsible and held accountable…someone needs to be blamed…and there had better not be any loose ends…
Certain segments of the population have always been suspicious of the official story…forget the simplest of most logical explanation…these awful events or phenomenon’s are the work of some kind of secret cabal or organization pulling the strings of life on earth…it was a conspiracy…
For example, the most famous murder of modern times was the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963…more than sixty years later, it seems like no one believes that lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman…
To be fair, they might be right…there’s been a lot of investigation into the JFK case over the decades…i’m one of those nuts who reads, watches, and listens to everything involved with the assassination…and I gotta tell you that i’m convinced this was the result of a loose need-to-know operation involving the CIA, the deep stage, Cuban exiles, and American mobsters…
There’s also something called “Occam’s razor” which dates back to the 14th century…this Monk—William of Occam—was annoyed at how people blamed supernatural forces when even the simplest thing went wrong…his answer to that was “look, the simplest and most obvious explanation is usually the correct one”…
But try that approach with people who believe the earth is flat and that we never went to the moon…Covid-19 was engineered by the media…and the Illuminati live beneath the Denver airport…
The world of conspiracy theories is a bottomless pit of weirdness…and when it comes to music, one of the deepest and strangest of these theories has to do with what happened above a greenhouse in Seattle on April 5, 1994…
Boy, have I got stories—multiple stories, in fact—about this one…in fact, it might be the most compressive study you’ve ever heard on the subject…this is uncharted: music and mayhem in the music industry, episode 12: it’s the ever-popular Kurt-Cobain-was-murdered theory…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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In the summer of 2006, a young Calgary woman was on top of the world. She had a supportive family, amazing friends and a great job. But life as she knew it came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the night on August 6, 2006. In this episode, Global News senior crime reporter Nancy Hixt shares details of a violent attack- a story that’s every woman’s worst fear.
www.calgarycrimestoppers.org - reference case # 06274598
https://newsroom.calgary.ca/sexual-assault-case-from-2006-has-new-lead/
Contact:
Instagram: @nancy.hixt
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NancyHixtCrimeBeat/
Email: [email protected]
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By 1965, change was in the air…a new generation of young people were coming of age and they did not want what their parents did…theirs was the counter-culture, a rebellion and repudiation of the status quo…and for a while it was all peace and love—or at least it pretended to…
Yes, we had the “summer of love” in 1967…the Beatles sang “all you need is love”…John Lennon asked everyone to “give peace a chance”…and there were demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and the military-industrial complex…
Hippies, pacifists, and proponents of civil rights and women’s rights were sure they could make a difference…and some of them definitely did…
But there was a dark side to the 60s…parts of society weren’t keen on granting certain parts of the population equal rights…some groups believed that society needed to be reformed by any means necessary, including the use of violence and domestic terrorism…
Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated…Bobby Kennedy was assassinated…there was violence at political conventions…
But many people kept the faith…and the thing that faith ran on was music…music was at the centre of all this promise of cultural change, social change, justice, civil rights, progress, and more..
In August 1969, somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 people converged on Woodstock, a festival billed as three days of peace and music…
A noble idea, this concept that music could bring everything together to make the world a better place…the legend of Woodstock continues today, decades later…
Some loved what Woodstock symbolized… “we need more of that,” they thought…so they came up with a plan to end the year and the 1960s with a similar event in California…it would be the culmination of the good embodied by the counter-culture and send the world into the 1970s…
It did not turn out that way…instead, the stones got something that has gone down in history as an event that symbolized the dark side of the decade…this is the truth about Altamont…and wow, do I have a story for you…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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Metal is one of the most extreme forms of music ever invented…once you’re inside this tent, you quickly realize that the deeper you go, the more intense the music becomes as people compete to see who can make the heaviest music in the universe…
There are genres with names like power metal, speed metal, thrash, pirate metal, gothic metal, industrial metal, and metal core…
Soon you encounter death metal, an American invention of the mid-80s that features distorted guitars tuned down low and drums that sound like machine guns…vocalists growl, time signatures abruptly change, and if you can make out the lyrics, you’ll hear themes of religion, philosophy, sci-fi and more…
There are offshoots, too, each with their own spin on things…there’s blackened death- doom…deathgrind…goregrind…pornogrind…even “melodic back death war metal…
Death metal has a Scandinavian cousin…black metal…it’s also played fast and often doesn’t follow conventional song structure…vocalists shriek…recordings may be lo-fi…members tend to adopt pseudonyms and used make-up onstage…
And again, if you can make out the lyrics, you’ll hear tales of paganism, Satanist praise, references to the occult, and anti-Christian rage…and unlike other metal genres, followers of black metal have been known to engage in acts of violence, most infamously the burning of churches…
At the heart of the black metal legend is a true tale of suicide, murder and possibly even cannibalism…what you’re about to hear may be impossible to believe, but it happened…
I’m Alan Cross and man, have I got a story for you… this is uncharted: crime and mayhem in the music industry…I call this episode black metal/death metal…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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It’s hard to disappear…with all the surveillance tools out there and digital smog we leave behind, it’s almost impossible to vanish without a trace…yet it happens…
We still haven’t found Amelia Earhart who has been missing since 1937 when she tried to fly around the world…we don’t know what became of DB Cooper, the hijacker who in 1971 bailed out of a plane somewhere in the pacific northwest with $200,000 in ransom money…no one has ever found teamster president jimmy Hoffa after that last lunch in 1975…
And you’ve probably heard about maddy McCann the English child who is still missing since 2007 after disappearing from the bedroom of an apartment at a resort in Portugal…
Those are the most notorious cases….but have you heard these stories?
Edward and Stephanie Andrews left a cocktail party in may 1970…they were last seen turning the wrong way on a one-way street and were never heard from again…the case is still open…
Then we have the case of Peter Winston, a chess prodigy who went missing after bombing out of a tournament in 1977…his body has never been found…
Anyone remember the story of Bison Dele?...he was a retired NBA player who went sailing in the South Pacific and was never seen again…cops think his brother, who was on the boat with him, killed everyone on board, dumped the bodies at sea and then committed suicide…but we’ll never know…
There are mysterious disappearances throughout the history of music, too…one of the most baffling is the fate of Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers…one day he was at a hotel in London getting ready for a trip to North America…the next—who knows?...he was just—gone…vanished without a trace…
So many questions…what happened?...what do we know?...with all the CCTV coverage in the UK, is there no record of his movements?...what was done to find him?...where’s the body?...or could he still be alive?...did he just figure out how to disappear completely…have I got a story for you…
This is the mysterious disappearance of Richey Edwards from “uncharted: crime and mayhem in the music industry”…
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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How many times have you or heard someone say “i’m obsessed with [whatever]”…you’re trying to say that there’s something of which you can’t get enough…it could be anything from a flavour of ice cream to a reality TV show…it’s usually just hyperbole and exaggeration…
But if we get clinical, obsession can be a form of mental illness…we open up the psychology textbooks, we learn that a true obsession is a recurring thought about something or someone…it’s always on a person’s mind, maybe even 24/7…we’re talking thoughts, dreams, urges, and fantasies…
These obsessions, this rabid focus, may be intrusive, unwelcome, all-consuming, and dangerous…a person may end up surrendering themselves to these thoughts, driven to focus on the object of the obsession full-time…
Take the case of John Hinckley, jr…he was from a wealthy Texas family who owned an oil company…but john didn’t fit in…he tried going to university but eventually dropped out…he moved to California with dreams of being a songwriter…that didn’t work…when he returned to Texas, he had to confess that the girlfriend he said he had out west didn’t exist…
Hinckley disappeared into himself with severe emotional issues…antidepressants and tranquilizers were prescribed…but he also started buying guns and target shooting…and he spent a lot of time watching the 1976 Martin Scorsese film, “Taxi Driver”…if you know the film, you’ll know that Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a disturbed loner who plots to kill a presidential candidate…he runs across a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris steesmas, played by Jody Foster…
Hinckley became obsessed with Foster…when she enrolled at Yale, Hinckley moved to Connecticut to stalk her…he left her poems and love letters, and called whenever he could find her number…Hinckley became determined to attract her attention…how?...he thought about hijacking a plane…maybe he’d just show up one day and shoot himself in front of her…
Finally, he determined the best way was to assassinate a president, just like Travis Bickle…he trailed Jimmy Carter for a while but was arrested…more psychiatric treatment followed…and then Ronald Reagan was elected…
On March 30, 1981, Hinckley pulled out a 22-calibre pistol and fired it six times as Reagan left the Hilton Hotel in Washington after addressing a conference…Reagan survived, but it was touch-and-go…others were hurt, too…
After a trial, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity….he was finally released from custody in 2022…
The world of music has many obsessives, although few as extreme as Hinckley…there is one standout, though: a young loner in Florida who, like Hinckley, was determined to attract the attention of his love…in the process, he turned into a murderous hater…
I’m Alan Cross, and have I got a story for you…this is uncharted: crime and mayhem in the music industry episode 8…the tale of the Bjork acid bomber…
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X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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There have been many studies into the different types of music fans…basically, they can be broken down into four types…
At the bottom of the pyramid are people who aren’t fans at all…they don’t like you or don’t care about you…they may not even know who you are…so for the purposes of this discussion, they don’t matter…
The next level are casual fans…they sort of like you or your music, but they can take or leave what you’re selling…they have zero investment in your career…
Going up another level, we have true fans…they love you enough that they’ll spend money on you…they’ll stream your music faithfully, buy physical product like CD’s or vinyl from time-to-time, probably own a t-shirt or two, and will go to your shows and have a very good time…
At the very top are the superfans…superfans love, love, love you…they’re evangelists…they follow your ever move…they’ll buy everything…they’ll get involved and donate to your charitable causes…and they’ll go to all of the shows…they may total 10% of your total fanbase but are the source of the majority of your income—like 60, 70, even 80%...they are the top of the fan pyramid…
From there, though, we can cross over to the dark side…this is where we find the fantasists, the deluded, the obsessed, the trolls, and the insane…they are dangerous people, a threat to you and the people around you…and they show up when you least expect it…and if they break into your online world, that’s a whole new level of terror…
Have i got a story for you…The Linkin Park cyberstalker.
Show contact info:
X (formerly Twitter): @AlanCross
Website: curiouscast.ca
Email: [email protected]
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