Sonic Youth and Murder, with Jake Brennan

Over the course of their relatively short career, Sonic Youth absolutely rocked the music world, creating timeless songs and art that remain deeply relevant in the modern day. Yet as special guest Jake Brennan, the legendary creator of Disgraceland, reveals: there's a dark, disturbing story behind the cover art of their breakout, mainstream album Goo. Join Jake as he breaks down the horrific story of the serial killers informing this art... and teaching Ben, Matt and Noel why neither the band nor the artist understood it at first.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. We're massively excited for this, one,
fellow conspiracy realist. It is a unique, disturbing blend of
music history, crime and murder that we were not aware of.

(00:53):
We don't even want to spoil it. We've got to
welcome our special guest, returning guest friend of the show,
the legendary author, producer creator of Get This Folks, the
most downloaded music podcast on the planet, Disgraceland. That's right,
it's Jake Bretton Jake, how are you doing? Man?

Speaker 4 (01:12):
I am floating on clouds after that intro, Ben, that
was which that was incredible, Man, the ethereal noise clouds. No,
we're talking to a little uh, you know what we're
talking to I don't want to dangerous man hold.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Charge they do. We're not blowing rainbows, no, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Wow, I'll tell you, Jake. As soon as we got
into the world of iHeart, as soon as we started,
you know, just growing a little more because we're the
old house stuff works kind of earth boys, and we
heard your name, we heard about Disgraceland, we like started
learning about you, and honestly, I was a little worried
you were like too cool to hang out with the

(01:50):
Stop Stop.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Well, you know, it's it's funny. I but thinking a
lot about cool lately, and I think people who think
they're too cool are entirely not cool.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
So Dunny Krueger or Baier Minehoff thing.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
Yes, there's also a bit of a Venn diagram about it.
And I think we did an episode of Ridiculous History
on what it means to be cool and at the
end of the day, being cool it's all about freedom, baby, Yes,
it's all about freedom. It's all about hitting the road
all whirlwind, heat and flash, not necessarily killing your parents.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
But I mean, you know you did.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
In situations and Jake, you also you hung out with
us most recently on our sister show ridiculous history where
we talked about the grim Christmas folklore of a character
named Johnny Ace.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Yes, that was fun.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
I don't know that at all.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
Oh yeah, all right, check on.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Bum today, Jake. This is the culmination of a conversation
we've been having with you off air where we were
as as my peal Matt said, we were like, can
we get the cool guy to hang out with us?
And you had the perfect idea, Dude, you said essentially,

(03:01):
you said, hey, what do you guys know about Sonic Youth?
What do you know about their album Goo? And we said, hellus.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
It's also a perfect way to offset the cool factor
of it all, because no one's cooler than Sonic Youth,
and there's no album cover more iconic or cool than
that of Goo. And apparently it has a mega, mega,
dark and disturbing story that not even the cool guys
in Sonic Youth.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Were aware of, right right, So Jake, let's start there. Man,
how would you describe the band's Sonic Youth to someone
who had somehow never heard of them before?

Speaker 4 (03:36):
In a word, I would say nineties. They sound They
sound like what the nineties at their best sounded like,
even though they came up in the eighties, but they exploded.
Goo came out in nineteen ninety. But if I'm trying
to give a musical explanation, I would say they're a
mix of early New York no wave in early LA

(03:59):
hardcore music.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
Yeah, and punk. I mean, their whole mythos surrounds kind
of the punk scene. There's a documentary called The Year
Punk Broke that talks about the kind of burgeoning grunge scene,
and while Sonic Youth could be credited for some of
that sound, they were really not grunge at all. They
were something else. They were like a secret third thing.

(04:20):
But that's a great doc if you're into seeing like
the early days of Nirvana and them kind of paling
around backstage with Sonic Youth.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
Yeah, they were early champions Thirst and More and Kim
Gordon the whole band were early champions of Nirvana. They
were at the first East Coast short show in Hoboken
at Maxwell's and then when Evana played The Pyramid a
bit later, they were there, and Yeah, they were their
own thing. Noo, that's absolutely true, and this element of cool.

(04:47):
You're like Thirst and More the whole band, but Thirst
and More and Kim Gordon are just the definition of cool.

Speaker 5 (04:56):
Kim's in her seventies, I know, still putting out crazy
week weird, boundary pushing records. Yes, she got out like
a kind of a wrap record.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
I mean, and it doesn't suck.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
No, it doesn't suck at all.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
But like Thurston was.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
An early proponent of like a lot of avant garde composers.
He's a gateway drug to a lot of nerds like
myself and the people like Stockhausen and John Cage and
you know, I mean, they were just arbiters of culture
in any ways.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
And he was part of the Glen Brocka Orchestra with
le Ronaldo and that whole thing. And and there's but
there's this obvious element of cool with Sonic Youth. But
I I would actually argue the true crime story that
we're going to talk about today that that influenced Goo.
The theme behind that is also cool and and both
the literal and figurative senses of that word. And I'm

(05:45):
excited to get into that with you guys.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, let's let's start. Let's start with the quotation that
went around the world. I stole my sister's boyfriend. It
was all whirlwind, heat and flash. Within a week, we
killed my parents and hit the road. That's a hell
of a thing to put on an album cover, right.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
I remember exactly where I was when I read that
for the first time.

Speaker 5 (06:06):
I saw it on a T shirt.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah, I saw it on the album goo. I was
in the Harvard Square, Cambridge, Newbury Comics. I must have been,
you know, thirteen, fourteen years old, fifteen something like that,
and I just was shook. I was. I didn't know
what it was. I didn't. I was like, wait, is
this what this image is about? Is this what this

(06:29):
music is about? Who are these people on the cover?
Is it? I knew that Sonic Youth had a guy
and a gal in the band, but it wasn't really
I didn't. I wasn't listening to daydream Nation at fourteen
years old. I'm not going to, you know, inflate my
punk rock credibility. But I do remember just being possessed.
That's the word. I was possessed by that quote and

(06:50):
this image, and it just owned me.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Man.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
And then the music on the album does not disappoint.
It lives up to the explosive of those words and
that imagery.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
And since we're Do we have the image, Yes, we're yeah,
we're on Netflix. Yeah, Jake, could you hold it up?
Can you describe what we're seeing here?

Speaker 4 (07:12):
Sure? So this is a picture for those who are
just listening to the picture of this incredibly cool looking couple.
Looks like they're from from the sixties, look.

Speaker 5 (07:19):
From the Velvet Undergrounds. They straight up looked like members
of the Velvet.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Undergrad Absolutely, you're kind of looking at, you know, an
androgynist John Kale and Lou Reed here perhaps, And it
has the sort of you know, I knew punk rock
when I was younger, and I recognized this artist as
the artist that did the Black Flag albums as well.
And but this was big. This was mainstream. This was DGC,

(07:45):
David Geffen record Company, you know, this was Geffen Records.
It wasn't SST, it wasn't black Flag, it was it
was bigger than that, and it was indicative of something
massive coming down the pike in nineteen ninety, which was
this whole nineties alternative nation thing that was on its way.
And this was the coolest I'd ever seen at that point, right.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
And we're talking, by the way, about Raymond Petibond.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Yes, right, exactly.

Speaker 5 (08:11):
Yes, would you consider him like a pop artist. I mean,
he's sort of working in the same style as like
Liechtenstein and Andy Warhol in some ways, he's doing this
sort of like throwback vintage comic strip style. But I
don't know a ton about him other than this image.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, he's he's considered that now.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
I guess that requires some hindsight, doesn't it, even being
a member of that sort of scene, like he almost
it's like you have to look at it in retrospect
even yeah, that was pop art.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
Well well, but he is celebrated, Noel by those those
sort of more sophisticated pop art curators and museum galleries
all that stuff. Like he's in that world now, you know.
And he he that was never his aspiration. He's Greg
Ginn from Black Flag's brother, the guy who founded Black Flag,

(08:59):
the guy who founded s ST Records, which which put
out I believe. Uh, I can't remember what the Sonic
Youth album was. Sonic Youth was on SST for a minute,
and they did Chaconi Youth, the side project of Madonna. Yeah,
Pedvon has a distinct, distinct style which is very much

(09:19):
like appropriating and this is to our podcast purposes here,
appropriating imagery and then recontextualizing language along with it and
doing it all in this very cool eighties di y
cut and paste fanzine style and very subversive, completely subversive there.
I read this thing the other day about Henry Rollinds explaining, like,

(09:41):
you know, the height of Rowlins testosterone Black Flag. He
went to Raymond and he was like, and Rollins lived
in pedobones mom's backyard in the shed where we're.

Speaker 5 (09:51):
Talking about Henry Rollins probably the most famous person from
Black Flag, if anyone's not intightly familiar.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
Right, And he went to Raymond and he said, hey,
give me I want a big middle finger for an
album cover or a flyer like and Petemon came back
and it was this very kind of like Fay effeminate
looking middle finger. It wasn't it wasn't like the distosterone
Rollins thing. And Rollins was like, that was his way

(10:16):
of telling me to go myself and not to tell
him what to do creatively, like he was going to
do what he wanted to do. And this thing here, guys,
you know, Petemon even the artist didn't know what this
imagery was in the story behind it. He got it from.
There used to be these true crime magazines, and there
was a magazine called True Detective, which by the time

(10:38):
the seventies and the eighties rolled around, it was completely sensationalized.
But back in the earlier part of the twentieth century, fifties, sixties,
I think even the forties, that magazine was kind of
what the true crime podcast is today. That magazine and
magazines like it were true crime stories. In the earlier

(10:58):
decades of that magazine history, it wasn't this sensational stuff.
It was more kind of like there was a thirst
for this. People wanted to read about it, but it
was a little too risky for like Life magazine or
you know, something like that. So these huge circulation and
this is where Peedimont's dad used to get had a

(11:19):
subscription to it, I think, and that's where he got
this image and this language. I'm not sure where he
got the language, which deserves repeating. I stole my sister's boyfriend.
It was all a whirlwind, heat in flash. Within a week,
we killed my parents and hit the road. I don't
know where he got that language.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
But my god, there's a band out of Detroit, Co. Whirlwind.
He I think that rolled with Jack White and that
whole scene. Maybe it was Hell. I think it might
have been Jack White's band before the White stripes. Maybe
I'm mistaken, but Whirlwind Heat definitely, it's a very arresting phrase.
So I could see why they glombed onto them.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
I mean, it's just great writing. Honestly. We also have
so we have this image, as you've described here, Jake,
we know that Raymond. Raymond took it into his own
artistic voice from this True Detective magazine and he based
his drawing on this. But you're telling us that he

(12:21):
didn't know the story behind the story behind the photograph.

Speaker 5 (12:25):
Now he didn't.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
It's Dave Smith is the guy, and it's his wife, Maureen,
Maureen Hindley, and they're both I believe he's seventeen in
this photo, even though they're married, and I think she's
she might be pregnant with her second child at this point.
But they young couple, young couple and fascinating couple, and

(12:48):
this image is the two of them either on their
way to the courtroom or leaving the courtroom. The story
goes they're leaving the courtroom. I actually, from my research,
I think they're arriving, not that matters, but I'm gonna
say it's when they're arriving at the courtroom, and people
are probably gonna disagree with me, but that's what my
research has turned out. And it's a paparazzi photo. They

(13:09):
were the subjects of intense, intense international news coverage way
up in Manchester, England because of this true crime that
they were connected to, called the Moor's Murders.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
And they definitely wear a couple of mods, but it
may well be that the sunglasses look of it all
was more to like be disguised than to look super cool.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
Yeah, I don't mean to correct you and sound like
a dink, but I don't think they were mods. I
think his hair is flopped over here and it was
pomped like like mine. And I actually think there were rockers,
and that was a famous like mods versus rockers, saying, right,
the Quadrophenia thing. These guys grew up there. They lived,
excuse me, in the in the council estates, which are

(13:57):
essentially like like the projects like like like slump public
public housing, right, and and there was this mass migration
happening at the time, and David in this picture was
very serious about rock and roll and to our point
about cool, not that mods weren't cool, but this is
a little pre mod and the villain here is kind
of a mod. And there were these massive violent riots

(14:21):
that David was part of, dressed like Stuke Suckcliffe from
the Beatles, in like drained pipe jeans, cuban heel, cowboy boots,
buttoned down shirt with the cross hanging grease pompadoor crucifix,
i should say, and just like they would get in
these violent fights with people who weren't deemed to be

(14:41):
rock and roll whoa a culture war. Yes, exactly, exactly exactly,
And to your point, no, I do think there was
a mod phase coming, but I think it was after this.

Speaker 5 (14:52):
I'm not trying to quibble. Yeah, And you know what,
I always kind of get that term confused mods was
a little more of the like laughing kind of like
you know, uh achadelic, almost pretty hippie like jazz head
kind of thing about like dressing in fancy, colorful outfits,
whereas these dudes were almost more like beat poet looking guys.
I often misconstrue those terms, and as I'm looking it up,
you absolutely of course, are correct, I can.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Smell the clothes cigarettes.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
Well, it's it's an important distinction because David is the
hero here or anti hero, and I want to get
to that, to the the whole stuff. They don't want
you to know piece of it. Right. The actual villain,
it could be argued, was a mod, which was David's
brother in law, a guy named Ian Brady. And we'll

(15:36):
get to this in the story, but he was very
much the like, you know, whereas David and his dudes
were hanging on our motorcycles, Ian was riding a little
scooter and he was dressed in a suit, and he
had more of a square haircut, but he was into
more of what he would term sophisticated music, et cetera.

(15:57):
So much more of a mod. But it was almost
right before we and had that term. So they kind
of live in the story. These two figures live kind
of in contrast with one another.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
And his uh, the relationship comes via Myra Henley.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
Yes, yes, and I don't know if anybody so, do
you want me to just get into it, Ben and
just explain what we're what we're dealing with here, right.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
We've got we've got to do it. Yeah, because we've
already We've got so many people right now who are
staring at the cover art of Goo, yes and saying,
what are you guys talking about? All right?

Speaker 4 (16:31):
So David here on the cover, David, David Smith. He's
he's he's married to the sister of the woman you
just mentioned, Myra, Myra Henley. And I just mentioned that
David was an anti hero. He's hated. He's still very
much despised by a lot of people in the UK

(16:51):
because they think that he was guilty of this crime,
when in fact he was the hero and he prevented
more crimes, I believe. Again, stuff they don't want you
to know. And so what happens is this this couple
on the cover of Goo and her sister Myra and
her husband Ian, who are older than the couple on Goo,

(17:14):
David and Mareen.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
There.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
They hang they're tight, they drink a lot, and they
listen to rock and roll records that David wants to
listen to. This is what they do. They hang out
in their apartments and they listen to like you know,
Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan and Charlie Feathers and and
just a great, great taste, you know. That's what David's
into the guy on the cover. Ian, his brother in law,

(17:35):
is like, oh, this is cool and all, but have
you heard Adolf Hitler's speeches? Yeah, and they when they
get really drunk, Ian's racism comes out and it's shocking.
It is absolutely the worst thing you can imagine. And
he's got he's had Hitler's speeches converted. I don't know

(17:58):
on the tape was a cassette or vinyl or whatever
it is. I'm not sure of the medium, but that's
what they're listening to. And again, these are the older guys, right,
and David is not about that at all, and neither
is his sister. However, there's some element of being an
impressionable young guy here that's taking place, but he's outspoken
about the bulk of the racism in the Hitler stuff.

(18:20):
This other thing comes into play where Ian, the older
brother in law, the more mad of the two, has
these really messed up opinions about humanity and he is
he basically he's a nihilist. He despises other humans, and

(18:43):
he's very into the Marquis de Sade, which is the
author who is a nihilist.

Speaker 5 (18:47):
And would you know, just debauch absolute psychotic behavior.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yes, from the eighteenth century, and his writings were banned
and you couldn't even have these books at the time.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
A lot of sato masks he gives them, yes, exactly solo.
If anyone's familiar with the film, check it out. It's
a great date movie, as Bill Hayter said in the Criterion.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Clausetah, yeah, it's it's a buddy road trip adventure up
there with forjury.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Yes, yes, so okay, So to how he ends up
being hated, Ian basically assigns David these books to read
and ask David to give his opinion of So there's a.

Speaker 5 (19:25):
Level when your friends give you homework assigns. That's my favorite,
especially about like my comf.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Exactly like twenty years after it happened.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. And by the way, yeah, this
is England is still very much dealing with the repercussions
of the war of the war in the in the
early sixties. So anyways, there's my point is he writes,
David writes about just you know what he thinks the
Marquis dessou is trying to say, right, so there's a
record of this insanity. Later I'm foreshadowing here. So what

(19:55):
happens is these kids go missing. This is like nineteen
sixty three in and around Manchester, and no one knows
what's going on, and young kids, young teenagers, and everyone's broke.
They're basically living in poverty. And David and Ian start

(20:18):
talking about, oh, maybe we can make some money, you know,
doing some robberies or whatever. So they kind of have
this criminal conversation going on that doesn't really go that far.
They never really do anything, but it is a conversation.
And at some point that conversation turns from robbery to murder,
and Ian is trying to Ian and his wife Mayra

(20:38):
are trying to bring David into their diabolical reality. And David,
of course again is the husband of Myra's sister Maury.
They're trying to bring him in. David doesn't know that
Ian and Myra are behind the deaths of these children.
They're essentially serial killer. By now, there's like three or

(21:01):
four kids who are missing.

Speaker 5 (21:03):
Jesus Christ and.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
David goes is called one night to come by the
house and to I think it was to pick up
some wine or bring some wine or party whatever it was.
It wasn't abnormal for him to get called over. He
goes over the house, he comes in, they start drinking.
I believe everybody's blotto drunk, and Ian gets into his

(21:27):
racist hitler and then he's like, I got to show
you this thing, and he brings him in the other
room and there's a young man that they picked up
in the city and brought there for the purpose of killing.
And his age escases me at the moment, but he

(21:48):
was I think he was like seventeen ish. I could
have that wrong, but he wasn't as young as some
of the kids who had gone missing.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
I don't believe he's alive at this moment.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
He's alive, and what Ian is trying to do is
to get David to kill with him. And Ian just
starts attacking this guy with an axe and it happens
quick and David is there and he's petrified. He knows

(22:19):
exactly what's going on. He thinks in this is his
statement that he believes that he has no choice but
to stay there. He can't, he can't blow his cool
because he believes he will then be murdered. So he
basically like as the guy. The guy dies, and this

(22:39):
is when this comes to David's David's fears is realized.
It's not like he's sitting there and the guy is
being killed and he can prevent it. The guy dies
fairly quickly, and David is in like, oh my god.
And the cleanup starts to happen, and a couple hours
go by and the body is taken upstairs and like

(23:03):
trust and David plays it cool the whole time so
he can get out of there. And he gets out
of there, and he goes home to his wife, the
sister of the woman he just saw commit a murder,
and he tells her what happened, and they then go
straight to the phone booth and they call the cops.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
And that victim is Edward Evans. Yes, by the way, yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Okay, So Myra was directly a part of the murder
or a part of the cleanup, or an accomplice that murder.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
A part of the cleanup, I believe, but part of
the murders the previous verse very much a part of this, very.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
Very kind of he sort of groomed her, right.

Speaker 4 (23:48):
Yeah, I mean I've read that, but.

Speaker 5 (23:50):
To a degree. I mean I recently watched the documentary
with an old English detective who was very familiar with
his case, and she talked to a lot of the
key folks. And the way she described it was, or
some of the investigators described it, was that she was
had issues on her own, but that he kind of
coerced her and groomed her to sort of become his
accomplice in a way.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yeah, I think it depends on who you're going to
listen to. And I'm not saying yes or no, but
I will say that David's account of it was she
was a tough chick of her single minded, of her
own volition in a lot of ways, and there wasn't
a lot of like convincing her of doing it. She
was going to do what she was going to do,
type of thing.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
To take a tiny little break. Here, we're from our sponsor,
and then we'll be right back. Hey, we're back with Jake.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
So this was this Evidans case where things blow up.
This murder in particular, it is not new to Myra
by any means. This is just part of Okay, it's
part of there, as you said, diabolical plan to kind
of groom this kid and get him into the family.

(25:00):
I remember reading that when he made it out when
he got back to his wife, he was obviously in
deep shock, and he had her make him a cup
of tea and then vomited and told her everything that happened.
Did the police respond pretty quickly?

Speaker 4 (25:21):
They did, but the police were not well. They go
and they arrest, they arrest where they go and they
search the house and they find the body immediately. It's
like that day, right, The body's still up in the house,
and they bring in Myra and Ian, but they let
Myra go. They think Myra is is just sort of like,

(25:44):
you know, kind of was this there and didn't have
anything to do with it, and it was all Ian.
That doesn't last very long. They eventually arrest her as well,
and somehow, I mean and and so they're basically like
David is now working with the police to help them
build the case, but he quickly becomes kind of I

(26:07):
don't want to say public enemy number one, but the
public doesn't believe that he's innocent. And so much of
that comes from I think what Ian was saying and
what Mairo was saying. But also you got to keep
in mind, this is nineteen sixty five, super socially conservative,

(26:29):
and this guy culture is a juvenile delinquent, like straight
out of Central Casting and just like, I mean, there's
to an old school, conservatively socially conservative English person at
that time, this guy looked like an alien, as a
lot of those kids did. And you got to remember, like,

(26:51):
this is the first time rock and roll hits. This
is the first time this sort of like greaser culture,
peep long hair, you know, people are like, what is happening?

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Well, and he was in the he was in the house.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
So it's it's building on the culmination of these existing
social tensions, right.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely, and and and it's a very insecure
time in that part of the UK. They're relocating all
these families from these council estates because they're so dilapidated.
It's like, you know, the war happens, and they're immediately
after the war they're building up London, you know what
I mean. Early sixties come around. They finally get up
to Manchester or wherever down I don't know the geography,

(27:32):
and they're and they're just like, okay, you people can't
live here, You've got to move, you know. All there's
all this unrest going on in the background, and you
have this like raging lunatic, who, by the way, I
think is still seventeen years old, right, with two kids
once dead, and you know, one kid died as a
baby and another one on the way, and he's like,

(27:55):
like you were saying, Matt, he's at the murder when
it takes place. You know, he's there, and they're just
they think he's just trying to pull one over on
them all.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
How soon do the authorities realize that this one murder
is connected to the rest of the Moor's deaths and
missing missing people.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
I don't have a precise answer for you, but it
happens in pretty short order.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Is it me or is this giving clockwork orange a
little bit?

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah? Yeah, it is kind of can you know what
I mean?

Speaker 5 (28:24):
I mean, there's just that like kind of like the
a lot of that mod culture and beating it culture
is represented in the parents or these kind of conservative,
sort of clueless like layabouts who are just freaked out
by the outside world and the youth sort of taking over,
and there's just this sense of just like unhinged you know,
Bacchanalian kind of that sadism that we're talking about here, right, Yeah,

(28:47):
with the youth, you know, with that youth culture.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah for sure, I mean I see it. It's not
part of the it's not part of the narrative of
this story. But when you read, not even between the lines,
when you actually when you read, like you read David's
the book that he co wrote with I can't remember
the journalist's name, Like, you see what they're up what
they're up to, and it's everything you just mentioned Nol.
It's all that subculture and that subversiveness.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
I want to point out here that some of these
victims were in their teens, like sixteen seventeen, like that
the victim we talked about in the house, you know,
when when that choice was made to go to the police.
But some of the other victims were twelve.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Years old, ye like yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, several of them. Keith Bennett, what was the other one?
Oh gosh, John Kilbride. There's just there are there's something
so abhorrent to murder. First of all, right, of anybody,
but then somebody as young as sixteen seventeen, But then
you take it even further, like to that age, middle

(29:51):
school or you know, even sorry, something about that is
just so so I want to use the word evil.

Speaker 5 (29:59):
But we have satanism and just like this is for sport, right, you.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Know Cicely and Downey is ten years old, that's one
of the victims. And this brings us to another question, Jake,
and we are folks, we are getting back to do
do we know anything about the motivation? But behind these
heinous crimes? Like what propelled this couple to do such

(30:24):
unclean things?

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Strictly nihilism, Like that's that's all I could find. Yeah,
I mean, just just deranged evil. And to give you
a anecdote to illustrate that, before the murder at the
house happens where David is present, Ian the chief nihilist here,

(30:47):
Ian Brady and Myra Henley take David and her sister Marie,
his wife out to the moors where they're burying the
bodies of these kids, and they picnic around the buried
dead bodies.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
It's insane that this is not a more widely discussed case.
It has so many of the hallmarks of like Manson
family murders, and it's it just seems to not really
be something that the general public has any idea about.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
That's insane, And how many people know do you have
to kill before you're designated a serial killer, you know
what I mean, Like.

Speaker 5 (31:22):
Wow, Yeah, that's a question of itself. And I'm not
saying like, wow, this one's really a blockbuster, you know,
nihilistic murder case. But it's just it's the kind of
prurient that people usually just go for, and I'm just
shocked that there is in a movie about it.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's the the FBI definition, I believe is three or
more with a cooling down period between each, so that
would separate it from say, the description of a mass
murderer or a spree killer.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
So then then Ian Hinley and Myra Hindley were serial
killers then, because there's there's more than three, and there
was absolutely this this is over two years. There was
a cooling down period for sure.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
There's this this book that's cited in a couple of
places as potentially one of the things that led them
towards that nihilism concept, but also towards this desire to
commit the perfect crime. There this obsession that we've seen
with some other serial killers. If you look to the
just a couple of years later in the sixties, somebody

(32:25):
like Zodiac Killer, someone who appears to be wanting to
get away with things almost and again, you can't prove
motivation here, but almost it appears to be getting away
with things in the face of a law enforcement that's
viewed as being oppressive in a lot of ways, especially

(32:46):
in this era and specifically this Meyer Levin book. Compulsion,
this concept that there is there you can get away
with a perfect crime and no one will ever know,
and the you know, the cops won't ever find out.
It does appear that there's some of that at play,
and culturally it seems like some of that maybe is
at play, just in this time, almost as a.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
Form of like sick protest, you know, against the man.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
Truly anti social behavior, like the in the most extreme
form of anti social behavior.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
And that's what we're seeing resonating with the you know,
the way folks are beginning to dress is we're talking
about as just that outward appearance begins showing and the
way the sounds that are being generated by bands are showing.
This this anger at the situation, you know, not always
the state, but just that society.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
Right, And I think from it not to psychoanalyze the
killer here too much, Ian Brady, but I think there
was something with his racism. To your point, Matt with
his racism. David was heavily into black music, rock and roll,
R and b Ike Turner, like all the stuff that
influenced the Beatles, that influenced the great rock and roll
that was. He was hip to that, and those are

(33:57):
the records he was playing. And I guarantee, I mean,
I prove this, but I guarantee you Ian will All's
raving Hitler madness. There was some sick satisfaction about trying
to pull this kid out of this sort of place,
like I don't want to use a modern word like
progressive place, but out of this sort of like open
minded uh attitude toward things that were that were that

(34:20):
he saw as as uh, I don't I don't want
to phrase this in the wrong way. They that that
he was opposed to and trying to pull him over
to the dark side. I think that goes to the
anti social thing that you're bringing up.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
He wanted to turn him.

Speaker 5 (34:36):
Yes, yes, it's a similar thing we see today and
people railing against quote unquote woke culture, you know.

Speaker 4 (34:42):
Yeah, or exactly trying to flip it goes both ways,
and trying to flip somebody in that sixth sense of
like of oh I I convinced this person to do
them to the dark turn them. Yeah, and he and
so this is the point I was trying to make
earlier about cool, right, like, like, imagine what it takes for

(35:05):
a seventeen year old to all of a sudden you're
you're hammered and you're sitting there, You're looking, You're like,
what's this guy?

Speaker 3 (35:11):
Oh my god?

Speaker 5 (35:11):
What wait?

Speaker 4 (35:12):
Now he's dead, like like, and now I have to
not get killed. I have to maintain my cool to
quote the Great is that a Sonics record? I don't know,
and make it out of here, you know what I mean?
And and he does. And then there's this massive trial
and the public turns against him in the media, like

(35:32):
literally the international media shows up and they and he's
persona non grada. They kind of they want to republic
enemy number one.

Speaker 5 (35:39):
However, you want to lumping him in with the crew
that did the crime, basically, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, And that makes for a convenient headline that speaks to,
you know, resisting stereotypes and social concerns. And we know,
we know at this time, ultimately they do get justice delivered, right,
and I believe they receive life sentences, both of them.
Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Yes, and he's Ian Brady's still alive. Myra died in
twenty seventeen, I believe, and I think Ian has been
wholly unrepentant the entire time. But this while that's all
going on, back to goo, if I can this image

(36:23):
in the recounting from David of this this when this
was taken, they're they're going to I believe it's like
the evidence brief. It's there some pre trial thing, but
it's he's showing up in court for one of the
first times, if not the first time, and they're being
driven by the police, and it's like, I'm not exaggerating,

(36:46):
it's like Beatlemania. There are people everywhere pounding on the
car as they're as they're snaking their way through the
city to get to the courthouse, and they're completely like
what is happening? And there's cameras and there's spitting and
this whole thing, and and they get to this stop
sign they're about to take a corner to go to

(37:07):
the court to drive closer to the courtroom, and the
cop in the front seat turns to them and goes, Okay,
get ready, it's about to get really crazy right now.
He says something to that, and and they and they
drive in even closer, and it's even more madness. And yeah, no,
that's where the picture apparently takes place.

Speaker 5 (37:30):
And you know, we're seeing this image in a magazine's
true detective magazine that you know the artists we're talking about. Pettybond,
certainly he would have known that this was like all surrounding,
like heinous true crime stuff. But as an artist, he
was just more arrested by that image and didn't really
think to look further into it or even to read
the caption.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Funny, right, right, he didn't he didn't know. I mean,
he knew his true crime. He didn't know was there
anything about the Wars murders. But he's just like, this
thing looks cool. I'm going to make something cool out
of it. And what he makes is undeniably cool.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
You were telling us, we talked about this a little
bit off air. Uh. Four of the coolest people on
the planet at the time, the band Sonic Youth. They
they love working with this guy, but they also have
no idea about the providence of this image at the time.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
No, I mean, they just thought it was this cool.
I mean they had all these Petabond fanzines and they
were like, this is cool. I mean they were going
to use a different image, an image of Joan Crawford
that Pedamon had created, and they were gonna call and
her lips apparently were puckering, and and and Pedomon had
written blowjob question Mark that was gonna be the na

(38:43):
gonna they thought their first major label debut, you know,
want a blowjob?

Speaker 3 (38:49):
I don't know that.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Well, they had created total creative and their A and
R guy. It's funny like the guy who got them
to go to Geffen is a friend of mine who
used to manage my music career. Goy named Mark Ktes
and literally you read any Sonic Youth telling of their story,
they mentioned Mark, and Mark was just kind of like, yeah,
do what you want to do. But they're A and
R guy who they also really dug. This guy Gary

(39:14):
gersh Like he was like not he didn't want this,
it was too too dark, but they were like, no,
that's what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Oh wow. He was like this is worse than the
Crawford one.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
Yeah was He's like I don't know about that. To
ask him for a third option, I don't know about that, and.

Speaker 5 (39:29):
It's also pretty it's also pretty sick that like the
album cover doesn't even say goo on it. It just
says Sonic Youth LP. That's I think is pretty ballsy
in and of itself.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
You're right, Oh, you're totally right.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Yeah, And it's got you know if you look at
it too, like they left all I don't know if
you can see it here, like there's like you can
see the tape down there where they're lining it up,
and and you know, goo Goo's a song on my
Friend Gou? Is the song a song on this? He
just says pu and exactly. And that was actually a
Pedibond film that they that that Peedomona made with Mike

(40:02):
Watt from The Minute Men and fire Hose, and it
was about this this uh, I haven't seen it, but
it was about this young woman sort of coming of
age and trying to work her way through the sort
of the hippie and punk rock movements of southern California,
which it's that's kind of Kim Gordon's backstory in a way,
not that it was intentionally done that way, but she

(40:23):
identified with it. And that's where the song my Friend
Gou comes from.

Speaker 5 (40:27):
I gotta wonder, though, Jake, this being their like major
label debut and then attempting for some level of commercial
success at least in terms of their handlers. Do you
think that cool thing, the collaboration with Chuck d was
like a record label idea or do you think they
did that organically.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
I don't know, it was totally organic. They were. They
were recording in the same studio and Thurston Moore was
a huge, huge hip hop fan, and I believe Kim
Gordon had wanted to collaborate with ll cool Jay at
some point because she loved Ello cool J. But then
she ended up interviewing him and she was like, what
rock and roll are you be into? He's like like

(41:05):
bon Jovi, and she was like, I'm good on this,
but not cool Ja.

Speaker 5 (41:11):
But they were.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
They were recording in the same studio with Public Enemy.
When when Public Enemy was made check this out note
we're making a fear of a fear of a black planet.
So they're like hanging out in there, hanging out in
the in the studio common area, and they go down
and they ask Chuck to sing on this, to do

(41:32):
a track on this song, and he's like, uh yeah,
I'll be by in a bit, comes by a little
while later. He's like, let's do it, and they're like,
you want to hear it. He's like, nope, roll it
and he goes.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
He just does kind of an extemporaneous spoken word thing.
He doesn't do like a rap verse or anything. He
had a little speech. Yeah, he hadn't heard.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
Any of it, and he didn't know that Sonic Youth
knew what the name of the next Public Enemy album
was going to be. So when Kim Gordon says he
hears in his headphones for the first time fear of
a of a female Planet, He's like, yeah, fear baby.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
You know.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
He does that great line and he's kind of taken aback,
but he so cool, man, I mean just rolls with
it completely and did it in one take.

Speaker 5 (42:20):
That is one story, Jake. That's so cool. It's so
Sonic Youth and so like data and just lets a
weird let it ride kind of mentality, just throw it
at the wall.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
That's so cool. I wish that happened more often in
music today. You know, just that just that hey, what
are you doing later? Because we're in the same building.
What a legend. Chuck d and also how how strange
for the band to learn later I think from a

(42:49):
British journalist the origin of this image, right, which has
become a smash success. It's going around the world's they
are any controversy over go over that image, like when
the news came out, or over the album itself, I
don't think so.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
I'm sure there was some controversy for this at the
time because just the era nineteen ninety and this was
so this was not a major label looking thing. But
like I said before, it was an indicator of everything
was about to change.

Speaker 5 (43:22):
And the crime certainly wasn't like known. It wasn't like
people were clutching theirs because they saw this image, were like,
how could you you know?

Speaker 4 (43:30):
Right? It wasn't the Misfits cover of JFK's head blasting out.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Jake.

Speaker 5 (43:35):
I did read somewhere that there are some pretty interesting
similarities or connections despite everyone being completely unaware. There's a
song on the album called Mildred Pierce that the plot
of Mildred Pierce does involve kind of a nihilistic murder.
Not to spoil that, but I didn't know if you
had any thoughts about that, or you'd heard any other fun,
weird kind of happenstancey.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
No, I mean, I mean songic Youth always kind of
played with true crime Death Valley sixty nine, Pacific Coast
Highway Thrister Moore's line, I want to kill all the
California girls. Like there was all this sort of like
subversive nods to Manson and this whole thing. And to
the extent that it's connected in any way, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (44:21):
I don't think it's actually connected. I think it's sort
of like, you know, playing Dark Side of the Moon.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
With the Wizard of Us.

Speaker 5 (44:27):
I love those little serendipitous occurrences. Mildred Pierce one is
kind of neat synchronicity.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Is the feeling disturbing? Yet, oh how about some ads?
We'll be right back.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
And we've returned. We also know that, despite despite this
strange story that the vast majority of the public is
not aware of, including the band who makes the album.
Despite this, the cover art for Goo Who has become
its own sort of pop culture phenomenon. Right. You see

(45:05):
it on T shirts, you see it on mugs. I
was fascinated to learn that not too too long ago,
back in twenty twenty, I want to say, Jake, there
was this renaissance of this artwork being remixed to speak
to the COVID lockdown. Did you ever see any of
those images not specifically related to COVID, But I did see.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
I have seen a bunch of the memes. You know,
there's Kim John Ouon and putin almost said Gorbachev and
putin like in these same positions like driving in a car.
There's Bart Simpson and Millhouse, which is my favorite, and
they even get they even do a Simpsons version of
the quote in the Bart Simpson in the Millhouse one,
which is fantastic. But yeah, it's sort of become its

(45:48):
own meme, the memification of goo if you will well.

Speaker 5 (45:51):
And also like, I mean, let's not forget that this
image and that text, and I know it was this
guy's style, but he was kind of adding to Lichtenstein.
Liechtenstein did all of these like comic strippy prants, often
with two attractive, cool looking male and female couples with
speech bubbles saying sort of odd existentially kind of things.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Yes, great point, exactly, And this is only one of
the stories that you have explored in your long career
with Disgraceland without pivoting gears too much. Jake, I think
we'd all love to hear where new Disgraceland listeners have

(46:33):
an entry points. Are there any other strange, disturbing tales
that you've uncovered, Like, what's the stuff? Because you've done
so much, so many what's the stuff that really sticks
with you today?

Speaker 4 (46:45):
Oh wow, that's a big question. Well, this story is
interesting to me because of the it's you know, there's
no true crime really connected to Sonic Youth. There's a
lot of the stuff I cover is artists who are
actually committing the crimes.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
You know.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
The famous one is Big Lurch, the hip hop artist
cannibalizing his roommate. But there's a lot of other sort
of you know, I find parallels to the world, to
history through true crime and music history. And the sort
of one that's similar to this is the famous story
of Jim Gordon, who is you know, he's like the

(47:22):
Josh Freeze of the sixties and seventies. He's the drummer
who played on everything, and he was a schizophrenic and
he ended up murdering his wife. And there's a connection,
there's a very very close connection in my in my
mind to these murders that took place in nineteen eleven
in North Carolina where this this guy kills is these

(47:45):
people believe schizophrenic and he snaps one day and kills
his whole family on Christmas Day. So I tell that
story in a similar way to the way I'm telling
the Sonic Youth story, with the merging of the true
crime that's influencing the music or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Dude, you've got I remember episodes you uh, this is
back in the day, Jake, but like David Bowie, and yeah, well,
you know somebody that I personally revere and I like
really enjoy the music and a lot of the stuff
about him. But then some of the things that you
find in one of the at least one of the
episodes you did way back in the day on him,
just like you, it put him in a very different

(48:19):
different light for me.

Speaker 5 (48:21):
Like the cocaine palace and the white witch that he
hired exercises, and.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
Yeah, there's so many, there's so many fascinating You know,
Bowie is revered and loved, beloved right right.

Speaker 5 (48:31):
Weird and revered. We're also a great example of someone
that made it through all that shit and and became
an advocate for sobriety and level headedness. As you know,
I think he's he's my hero.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
And we can revere someone without pretending they're.

Speaker 4 (48:46):
Perfect, right, and he was far far from perfect, and
his fans were far from perfect as well. My favorite
Bowie story is, you know, a lot of people point
to the Jimmy Page one where he was completely freaked
out by believing that Jimmy Page was in fact Satan himself.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Oh they're magic born magic.

Speaker 4 (49:02):
But there's this other scene where I believe it's in
Philadelphia and Bowie's backstage waiting to go on, or he's
in his hotel, I can't remember which, and literally a
fan brings a dead body to Bowie like what, yeah, yeah,
like here this is for you. Look what I brought you.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
That's like the worst cat effort.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
Yeah, exactly, it's like a cat.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
There's this thing that we've explored a bunch a couple
of times in full episodes on the show about occult symbols,
occult you know, words and narratives and things that are
so kind of fringe and meant to be you know,
in your face, especially if you're let's say a highly
religious listener or something. The point is to throw that

(49:49):
in your face and get you angry or excited, or
you know, to generate buzz about let's say an album,
er single or something like that. When you're when you're
looking at even pop culture now in the twenty twenties,
they're still when you watch some artists that go on television,
sometimes when they perform at super Bowls, sometimes when they

(50:09):
do all kinds of big stuff, you'll still see that
type of what appears to be rituals that get done
on stage, but they're like veiled. You see, you know,
people doing a lot of the different symbols with their hands.
You see all this stuff, and I do wonder how
much of that goes back to just kind of legends
within music about you know, having some connection to a

(50:34):
dark power that allows all of this to occur. Have
you found any maybe through line in all of your
explorations of all of this music over all of this
time that has some connection between music and either the
occult or some darker thing.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
Superficially for sure, the most recent version I think of
what you're talking about is the astra world thing where
people kind of after the travesty had the tragedy happens,
they sort of painted as this demonic grand conspiracy, and
so I would say there's superficial connections, but I don't think.

(51:14):
I think in the nineteen seventies artists were really really
trying to tap into this idea of dark power that
was directly connected to Alistair Crowley, and they were overtly
trying to do it, and they were talking about it.
I mean, Jimmy Page bought Aleister Crawley's house and lived there,
you know what I mean. And when Bowie was circling Page,
that's what he was trying to tap into. And he

(51:35):
thought that because led Zeppelin was so massive, so huge,
so popular, so successful, so big sounding, that they were
connected to the Jimmy Page specifically was connected to another
type of force. I do believe that Bowie and his
cocaine psychosis actually believed that and wanted to harness that.
Do I think he believed that by the time the

(51:56):
nineteen eighties rolled around? No? Do I think that born yeah?
Or do I think he.

Speaker 5 (52:01):
Doesn't remember any of the creation of Station to Station
Really Kujo, that was the height of his cocaine addiction,
and he claims he remembers almost nothing about the process
of making that right.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
I believe it. I believe it. But do I think
that modern artists are sincerely chasing that? I don't. I
think it's superficial and phony and coincidental at best.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
And he keeps you in the headlights.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Yeah, And it's also I just fe iatrical, And I
don't think it's subversive in any way or rebellious. I
don't think.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
I think.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
I think that rebellion these days is actual what actually
like the opposite of what you're seeing at Astroworld. I
think it's a quiet life off the grid with with
more conventional ways of living, and you know, might have
something to do with my own age. And that's why
I think that, you know, get away from all this
look at me as exactly what.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Also, I think Kanye West probably really does believe whatever
ritual he thinks.

Speaker 5 (53:03):
Well, that man's one. Well, but by the way, his
daughter just came out with an EP and it kind
of slaps Kanye Kanye's daughter Northwest. It's very hyper pop
and Japanese kind of vocaloid coded. I kind of dig it.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Hooray. It makes me think about that dichotomy between your
work and Disgraceland and the things that I at least
the stories that I latch onto that you've done, and
then your work on dead End gone specifically on like
that culture and the dead Heads and how violence can
or you know, violence and bad things can make its

(53:37):
way into any culture, any movement, any like version of society.

Speaker 5 (53:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean Madson showed the rotten hippie culture
in a similar way, right.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
And bad Lands we got to talk a little bit
about the series that you've birthed from Disgraceland. Bad Lands
is doing, you know, kind of what you were describing there, Matt.
We've got Hollywood Land that books at some very disturbing
scandals from some very high level, high level celebrities and actors,

(54:08):
and then Sportsland, which goes into true crime stories of
some of the world's biggest athletes. Jake, one of the
questions a lot of people in the audience are going
to have tonight is what inspired you, Like, how did
you get started and what drives you to do this
still and what are some things you wish you knew

(54:31):
when it was day one? For you?

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (54:32):
Wow, Well, it got started back when I read Helter
Skelter in I don't know, I must have been fifteen
years old, and I also read In Cold Blood back
then as well, and I was just always drawn to
these stories that had crime and darkness at the center
of them. I've been obsessed with music my whole life,
and when I read the Jerry le Lewis story about

(54:53):
how he potentially or me allegedly murdered his fourth and
possibly fifth wives, I just couldn't believe it. And I
couldn't believe that that story was out there in the
open and no one seemed to care. And it really,
it really taught me something that there are, uh, these
stories that just for whatever reason, I can't put my
finger on it. They like the one we're talking about

(55:13):
today with the murder, the Mores murders, they just get
left behind, and they're fascinating to me. And I've always
sort of like, when I want to learn about an
artist or any figure from history, whether it's an athlete
or a musician, or an actor or an actress, or
a politician or a historical figure, I want to know
about the darker side, because we all have a dark side.

(55:37):
Not to say that we're serial killers, but it's more
relatable and it's more interesting. It's just more interesting, you
know what I mean to me anyways, So that's that's
what spawned it. What I wish, what I've learned? How'd
you say?

Speaker 2 (55:49):
What if I?

Speaker 5 (55:50):
What did I wish I knew?

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Then?

Speaker 3 (55:51):
What? What? What? If? Anything? Uh? Do you wish you
knew back when you were starting out? Like if somebody,
if you could travel back in time to pass Jake
and say, hey man, this is the way to do it.
These are the things to prize, prioritize, or to avoid.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
That the most interesting stories from history to your point,
all three of you, is the stuff that they don't
want you to know. It is literally the most interesting stuff,
and it's all there in the cracks.

Speaker 5 (56:27):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
I believe that.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Just let us blush a little bit.

Speaker 5 (56:33):
I mean between the lines, down the rabbit holes all that. Casey,
Yeah you're here.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, if you could go back, would you sign with
Victory again?

Speaker 5 (56:41):
I would?

Speaker 4 (56:42):
I never actually signed though. That was the thing I
had Sonic youth lawyer actually, and he advised me in
our contract dispute. I called him up and I said,
hey man, our record's coming out. The contract they gave
us is the opposite of what they said we're going
to have and what are we going to do? The
record is going to come out. I got I gotta
sign the car. He's like, you sign anything, He's like,
don't sign it. I was like, that's genius. Record came out,

(57:04):
didn't sign the thing, got.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Paid all day. That was great. Now that's a conspiracy
that we could we get perhaps and.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
I have one less going for you. End of ben Uh.
Do you know this guy Jacob Otis And can I
play drums with him? Sometimes?

Speaker 5 (57:19):
Damn?

Speaker 4 (57:19):
I've I think he died a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Matt.

Speaker 4 (57:23):
It's gonna be hard to bring him back.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
We'll get him, all right, Yeah, we'll get him next time.
Jacob again, thank you so much. You're one of the
busiest guys we know. We greatly appreciate you not only
spending time with us today, but also hipping us to
a story that none of us had ever heard of.
We had I think it's fair to say we had
no idea until you hipped us to this. So for

(57:47):
people who want more information like this, who want to
learn more of these hidden stories, where can they go
to find out more about your work?

Speaker 4 (57:57):
Disgraceland in the in the Apple podcast app or the
iHeart app you can get every episode. Got over two
hundred fifty episodes on artists from every single genre you
can think of in this uh this Sonic Youth episode
will be out in a couple of weeks and be
able to check that out. But disgrace lampod dot com.
That's the website. It's got everything there, and I just
want to say thank thanks to the three of you

(58:19):
for having me here. I am in awe of what
you do. You are an inspiration and I am honored
to be here and to talk talking with you. Hope
that you'll come onto my show at some point on
the bonus episode and we can dig into uh two
more stuff they don't want you to know from music history.

Speaker 5 (58:35):
Dude, back at you, You're the best. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
We'd love to thank you. Jake Brennan fellow conspiracy realist.
Check out Disgrace Land wherever you find your favorite podcast.
Also check out the multiple other projects we've mentioned. We're
not blowing rainbows, Dead and Gone and everything this guy
does is a banger.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
You guys know, payin Lindsey. He Jake makes the show
with paint Lindsay pains on a couple of times. It's like,
for me, it's like one of those supergroups, right that
we would all get excited about when band members would
join together. That's what That's what den Gon is to me.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Yeah, thank you so much, man, appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
And there you have it, folks, Wow, what a ride.
As you can probably tell, we are huge fans of
Jake and his work, and more importantly, we think you
are going to be huge fans too. Guys would love
to hear thoughts from our fellow conspiracy bilist on more
stories from the dark side of the music world. I

(59:32):
wish we could have kept talking about Bowie, you.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Know, yeah, more stories Ben, all right.

Speaker 5 (59:41):
I mean you know somebthing I didn't even think to
bring up. There are so many of these British like
procedural crime murder mystery shows where the most horrific serial
killings you ever heard of happened in these tiny rural
villages in the UK. This really reminded me of some
of those, like Wire in the Blood is a great example,
Midsummer Murders. I just I really love these shows, uh,

(01:00:02):
and I gotta believe that some of them were influenced
by by this and just we didn't really get into it,
but just the geographical smallness and closeness of the scene
of these crimes really something something unique about.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
It, and that that concept of class struggle because you know,
this is this is like an underserved area where all
of this is happening. Class struggle and anger at folks
who were just kind of flaunting wealth and power and
all these things in the worlds.

Speaker 5 (01:00:31):
It almost resonates with something what is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
It, doesn't it? I mean, well, it's just something, let's
do it. Let's go just something that's been ongoing. And
there when we're talking about that nihilism that that sets in,
you know, ebbs and flows, comes and goes. Part of that,
I feel like it's quite justified.

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
It's not the side of it. It's the truly giving
up and choosing just like you know what ef it,
let's just burn.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
It all down for participation grade yep, right, Yeah, that's
the question of class in society.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Certainly not justifying murder, no anything, but.

Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
The darkness of it is relatable, and we would urge
to maybe look at these as cautionary details and please
don't go down that dark hole. That there is hope
and that we can band together and make a better future.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Right. Yeah, don't let the darkness define you. It can
be a part of you. But remember there's a lot
of good in there as well, and we can't wait
to hear your suggestions for stories in this miliu that
we should cover in the future. So thank you for
tuning in. As always, please hit us up. You can
find us on the lines. You can call us on
a phone. You can always send us an email.

Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
You sure can. If you want to find us online,
you may do so by reaching out to the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social
media platform you go out for.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When
you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let
us know if we can use your name and message
one of our listener mail episodes that show up in
the audio feeds. Hey, bonus points. If you've got a
song you want to sing or play to us in
the voicemail, we would love to play that on the

(01:02:11):
air if it's cool. If it's cool with you, all right,
If you want to send us an email, we are
the entities that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Read each piece of correspondence. We receive, be well aware,
yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, shout out to
shout out to the person who caught us at just
the right moment to get a very strange screed about
the true death of Alexander the Great. So, if you
want some more random facts, come hang out with us

(01:02:39):
in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.