April 30, 2024 • 54 mins
The Village People were a smash hit singing group that came and went in under two years. Then other people performed under that name for several decades. This is their story.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, do you live in Washington, DC? Are you
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working on one of these campaigns. Well, we've got a
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, we guarantee zero political jokes, one hundred percent zero
political jokes if you come out and see us. We're
gonna be in Medford, mass on May twenty ninth. The
next night, we'll be in DC on May thirtieth, and
then the night after that we'll be at our old friend,
the Town Hall in Manhattan Town, NYC.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's right, So check out tickets. You can go to
stuff youshould Know dot com, you can go to the
theater websites themselves, avoid those secondary ticket brokers, or check
out our link tree, right, Josh.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, link tree sysk Live.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And when you put us
all together, well things get pretty great. How's it going, man.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's going great.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I've been listening to The Village People off and on
all day.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, same here and what We're supposed to both come in. Sorry, Chuck,
did you pick this because I cannot imagine that you
weren't a cute little seven year old Village People fan. True,
(01:43):
So which one did you identify with the most?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Well?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I've told this story before because I posted it on
Instagram way back when I talked about it. But I
still have a crayon drawing of the Village People because
I would sit around and play Cruising the record Cruising okay,
(02:08):
their third album, their third album, but the one with
YMCA and I Believe in the Navy and like most
of their big hits outside of my favorite Village People song,
which is of course Macho Man Sure such a good song,
And I would just sit around and listen to Cruising
and stare at that record cover of those guys you
(02:31):
know on the Horse and the most Cycle, the motorcycle
and the Bulldozer, and like I would see them on
American Bandstand and Solid Gold and the early music videos,
and I would just I thought they were the coolest,
most awesome dudes ever in the world. And I would
sit around and draw crayon pictures of them, and I
(02:52):
still have one of them.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Maybe I'll pint it on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm sort of always laughed years later that like, who
knows what my peer parents were thinking. And we'll get
into the you know, whether or not village people count
or were in fact a gay band. But I imagine at
the time, in the early to mid seventies, with Southern
Baptist parents, they either weren't aware of that or were
(03:18):
probably pretty like worried about their son when they needn't be,
because either way it would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, well put man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
But back in the seventies, in the in the rural,
not rural, but in a suburban, conservative South, I'm I'm
sure if they didn't, if they did know what was
going on, they're probably like, have you seen these Crown pictures?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Like he drew Little counselor got in Touch.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I drew literal like pancake boobies on the biker Guy
because I didn't know how to draw like a bear
chest correctly.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah hey that worked.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, So anyway, I'll either scroll through my Insta or
maybe I'll figure out how to pin stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
But definitely.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We're talking about village people technically not the village people.
It's just sort of one of those things like Eagles
or hall of Oates, where you just you come to
be known by that name even though that's not your
real name.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yes, like Edith Burkell and New Bohemians.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Oh, is that what it is? It's not the New Bohemians.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah. For some reason, I've always had this memory of
her correcting David Letterman on Letterman. It's funny in like
nineteen ninety or something like that. I don't know why
it stuck with me, but I always she got the
point across.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Sure, And Indigo Girls is the other one. They're not
the Indigo Girls.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. I don't even say that to their face. They
will they will beat you up.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Well, if you say Hall of Notes to Daryl Hall,
he gets pretty salty. He's like, we were.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Not hall of Oates.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We never were.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Oh really what were they?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Look at the the Hall and now every single album
it's Darryl holland John Oates.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
They were never Hollan Oates.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And it just does he really get salty about that
because they are much much greater things to be upset
about that.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I've seen him a little salty, but I think it's
largely because they don't like each other.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Man, why are you telling me all that?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Sorry?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I want Daryl hall and and John Notes to be
like just the best guys ever.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You want to be like, it's like wow or dare
I say, Josh?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And I'm not participating for the rest of this episode,
but I have to chew on some stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
All right, let's talk Village People.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. Actually, one of the things that stood out to
me is this is like the improved version of our
Milli Vanilli episode, because one thing I didn't realize is
that the Village People were like a manufactured band and
they were the brain child I guess collectively yea of
Jacques morale In Henrie Belolo, who are both Moroccan born
(05:51):
French Minten Yeah, who I guess separately kind of got
into the music industry by their own grit and determination
and didn't really know each other at first. They had
their own I think, starting in the fifties and sixties,
had their own careers that they were trying to build,
and eventually in the seventies they came together. Henri Bololo
(06:13):
was kind of like the brains the producer that kind
of type. Jacques Moraley was more he was a producer
as well, but more the hands on, creative type of producer.
And when they came together, some sparks flew even before
the village people were ever around.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, there's no way to say this without sounding completely
like kind of stuck up.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
But I've been listening to a lot of French music lately.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, there's I mean, if you're in the
right mood there, if you look up like eighties sort
of new wave, but French music, their version, it is
really really awesome stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Nice. I will check that out.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Highly recommended. So yeah, they were, like you said they were,
had made a name for themselves independently, I believe in
nineteen seventy three, Belolo set up Can't Stop Productions a
couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That's a great name, by the way. Oh yeah, it's
just stuck out to me all day.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Oh yeah, and I remember seeing that little logo like
Can't Stop the Music. I think that was the name
of the movie, right.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah. I didn't put those two together, actually, don't just know.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
But they eventually met up in the United States and
their first project and release was a real banger. You know,
the song Brazil from the nineteen thirties, the one from
the movie Brazil. They took that and updated it with
a female trio called the Richie Family as a disco song,
(07:42):
and it is, like I said, it's a real banger,
kind of a classic disco song.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yes, but it was disco before disco actually existed. So
a lot of people kind of credit these two is
really helping lay the foundation for disco. It was that
that period, right before disco became a thing. So it
was a weird transition between like, what's the guy's name, Percy.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Fledge?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Is it Percy Faith in his orchestra? Okay, the transition
between Percy Faith and and John Travolta. This is like
that that slice of music, lots of strings, kind of
salsa based, lots of like chorus and vocals. It was.
It actually was up for the nineteen seventy six Grammy
for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and lost to The Hustle
(08:33):
if that gets it a cross, So like the Hustle
is like proto disco. Yeah, so was this version of Brazil.
And it's right before disco became a thing.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, Like on the matter of months though probably.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Right, Yeah, I would say that, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Mean losing to the hustle. There's no there's no shame.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So they had this pretty good hit with Brazil again.
I recommend you check it out. It's and listen to
all these songs are all great. Can't Stop Productions was like,
all right, listen, we need we you know, back then
they would just go from thing to thing because it's
not like you can ride out something like the Richie
Family forever, so they're always looking for the next new thing.
(09:10):
In seventy seven, they were hanging out in Greenwich Village,
New York, which then, as it is now, is a
very friendly community for especially gay men. Moraley was gay,
but Belolo was not. But they were hanging out there.
They were going to disco's, they were going to bars
and stuff, and they started to see these guys in
(09:30):
these clubs that were dressed up as these these sort
of macho American stereo types that they grew up watching
on you know, American TV and American movies. And this
is a direct quote from Blolo. Dave is encouraging me
to read it with a French accent. I'm not sure
about that, but I'll try this from Billboard magazine. We
(09:54):
saw different types of characters and bars. That's how we
decided to cleate a group that's will represent different characters
of the American male. As we had the idea in
the village, we decided to call the group the Village People.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Simple.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That was a great pepulo peza.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, that was like they saw these guys in bars
fitting these sort of archetypes or stereotypes of what they
thought like a macho American man was, and they're like, hey,
this is like a concept right here, right in front
of us.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, And actually it's possible that it was one specific guy.
They saw, Philippe Rose, Felipe Rose, who was known as
the Indian, who dressed up as a Native American Indian
around Greenwich Village very flamboyantly because he was a Native
American his father on his father's side, he was Mescalero, Apache, Lakota,
(10:51):
and Cherokee, which is like that's the trifecta, and he
was very proud of it. So he dressed up in
like moccasins and fringe leather vests and all that kind
of thing, and they saw him and that in addition
to going to bars like the mind Shaft, which was
a BDSM gay club, and then seeing other people kind
(11:13):
of dress up. That's where they put the whole thing together.
And Dave made a really good point here that that
whole concept of dressing people up as like stereotypical American male,
macho like image images essentially that an American producer probably
would have been like, that's not a great idea, it's
(11:34):
kind of lame. But these guys were like looking at
America from the outside in, and I think, like you
kind of alluded to, they were exposed to this like
their whole lives. This is like what they were fed
through American movies and TV. So to them, they were like,
this is amazing, what a great idea, Like we want
to celebrate this American macho male and that's where the
(11:55):
village people came from.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that part, but I
respect Dave's opinion. If you agree with.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Him, I do agree with him on that.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I respect you.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I'm going with Dave on this.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I bet they're American producers that are like, oh God,
that's right there in front of my face, can't believe it,
and think.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Of Hey, yeah, in hindsight.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So Moroley started writing songs. You know, like you said,
they were inspired by Felipe Rose. I don't think you said.
He was basically kicked out of his house because he
came out as gay. So he was hanging out in
the village, working in bars and stuff. The Richie family was,
you know, they were trying to eke a little, trying
to ring that thing dry from the Richie family. And
(12:33):
they were getting a new album together. They needed some
backup singers, and someone said, hey, there's this guy. He's
on Broadway right now in the Whiz. His name is
Victor Willis. The guy can really sing, It's got a
lot of personality, can dance a little bit. You should
bring him in here as a backup singer. Roley brought
him into the studio and it was like, dude, you
are a star, so we need to get you to
(12:56):
record these other songs we've written that. There were no
Village people yet, but in nineteen seventy seven he cut
their very first disco hit. And you'll see a lot
of parentheticals because that was the time. But this is
called San Francisco parentheses.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
You got me another good song.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So, yeah, Victor Willis was the first. This is long
before Felipe Rose came along, but after they had seen
Felipe Rose, right, so they were inspired to create the
village people. But Victor Willis was really the only village
person at the time. Everybody else was just studio session
musicians and singers and stuff like that, right, So that
(13:36):
worked fine when they cut that first album, which I
think was like four songs or something like that, and
they had that hit with San Francisco You Really Got Me.
And with that hit, they're like, okay, you got Me
San Francisco. Yeah, which is funny because, as we'll see
later on, Victor Willis would become a fugitive from the
law and he would finally be arrested in San Francisco.
(13:58):
So he was so but he was the village people.
And now that San Francisco Got Me was a hit,
like apparently an international club hit, they needed more people,
and so they started looking for other village people and
the first one they recruited was Felipe Rose, appropriately enough,
because apparently he was unknowingly the inspiration for the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Right, Funny enough, they were San Francisco You Got Me
was big in Australia. As you'll see, that's become a
recurring thing. It seems like Australians love the Village People. Yeah,
so I'm curious to hear from them that if you
look at that first album cover, it is not the
Village People. And I don't even think Victor Willis is
on the cover. It's just it's a bunch of guys.
(14:45):
There is a guy wearing a Native American headdress, but
I don't think it's Felipe Rose, No, none of them.
There's a flannel shirt, hard hat guy, and there is
a biker. But that's it, just those three sort of
village people that we went on to know and love.
Everyone else is just a bunch of guys stand around
(15:06):
in T shirts looking tough with a motorcycle and frame.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. I mean, so they had the concept, they just
didn't have the people yet. So they're slowly starting to
assemble this. Now they have Victor Willis and Felipe Rose.
They've got the first two and they actually put an
ad in the paper, I would guess the Village Voice
looking for gay men, singers and dancers with mustaches to
(15:35):
basically audition for the roles in this band, not like
can you play the bass? Can you? Can you play
the drums? But do you have a mustache? And are
you good looking? And a singer and dancer? And they
got from what I saw like thousands of replies.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, this was They were never a band. It was
always just supposed to be a singing group, and they did.
I believe Felipe or I'm sorry. Glenn Hughes, who was
the biker. He worked at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel collecting tolls,
saw the ad. By his memory, the ad said seeking
gay singers and dancers, very good looking and with mustaches.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Probably wasn't hard to find at that time.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Well, all his friends were like, Glenn, that's you, buddy,
Like you need to get in there.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, So Glenn Hughes became the village people's leather man,
which apparently was not a stretch for him. I think
he was already in the leather at the time, so
he became the leatherman slash biker, right.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
That's right. He was the third. I think.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
The second one to join up was Alex Briley, who
came at Victor Willis's recommendation. He was the original sort
of stereotype for him was he was the athlete, but
then they changed that pretty quickly to the army guy.
He was the gi and also the Navy sailor, so
he kind of crossed over the different arm services, I guess, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And then another guy who responded to the ad was
David Hodo. He had just gotten done with the musical
about the Grand Old Opry and basically went out for
the cowboy. They're like, nope, you're a construction worker. Through
and through, a guy named Randy Jones became the cowboy,
and so you had Victor Willis, Felipe Rose, Alex Bridley,
Randy Jones, David Hodo, and Glenn Hughes, which, by the way,
(17:22):
I realized earlier today that I could rattle off the
names of the original village people now. But that's who
the village people were at first. And I say we
take a break, because now we've got this murderer's row
of mustachioed, generally gay guys ready to hit the disco
scene and they're about to blow up.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
All right, so we're back. We have our village people assembled.
I think we failed to mention earlier that Dick Clark
and American Bandstan American Bandstand. The TV show had already
sort of reached out after they had San Francisco You
Got Me as a hit, but they were like, there
is no village people yet, we can't just you know,
send one guy out there. So they got these other
(18:25):
guys together. In December of nineteen seventy seven, they appeared
for the first time on American Bandstand. I could not,
for the life of me find this exact performance. Oh yeah, no,
I couldn't find it anywhere. I mean they were on
quite a few times, but I never saw the one
from seventy seven somehow. But that was their American you know,
(18:45):
TV debut and debut of the world when they sang
San Francisco or I guess lip SYNCD and and the
song in Hollywood parentheses everybody is a star.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yep, And you're right, pentheses where a thing back then?
I just died in your arms tonight?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Is that a real one?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I remember we talked about it a few weeks ago,
that cutting crew song.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I just didn't know if you fooled me then or not.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
No, no, no, it's it's legit. Have you been walking around
wondering that?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah for three weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So we're onto your favorite song, Chuck, which I agree.
I think it's the best Village People song. Macho Man. Yeah,
and that was in their second album. So their first album,
like you said, was called Village People. It came out
in nineteen seventy seven. Their second album came out in
nineteen seventy eight, and that was the one. It was.
The album was called Macho Man, and the big single
(19:40):
from it was called Macho Man as well.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Is it okay if we read some of the lyrics
to some of these songs?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yes, I saved them too, Oh you did, Okay? I
think you should sing them.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Not going to sing them, okay, though it might be
hard not to.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And I'm not going to read them all because there's
that intro, that great intro to Macho Man, when they're going,
you know, body, body, and he's going to want to
feel my body, such a thrill, my body, want to
touch my body. That's all that long intro. And then
here here's some of the words to the verse. Every
man wants to be a macho Macho man, to have
(20:14):
the kind of body always in demand, jogging in the mornings,
go man, go, workouts in the health spa, muscles grow,
you can tell a macho man. He has a funky walk.
His Western shirts and leather always looks so boss punky
with his body. He's a king. Call him mister Ego.
Dig his chains. Every man ought to be a macho
(20:37):
macho man to live a life of freedom. MACHOs make
a stand, have your own lifestyle and ideals, possess the
strength of confidence. That's the skill.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
But it's so if you dig into that last bit,
this song goes from essentially just total body worship and
like working out at the spa and all that stuff
and however, but he wants to be a macho man
to essentially like that. The last verse is about gay
liberation and basically coming out of the closet, it sounds.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Have your own lifestyles and ideals possessed the strength of confidence. Yeah,
say exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah. So it really takes like a sudden turn there
because it's like the most superficial vein song of all time,
and then it suddenly like kind of is a shout
out for gay liberation. Yeah, this was like it's kind
of tough to wrap your head around here in twenty
twenty four. Sadly, it's not as tough as it should be,
but it's still tough to wrap your head around just
(21:37):
how big of a deal it was for men to
be like on stage singing songs gay like I'm gay everybody,
There's just no question about it. I'm a gay person.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
That was a big, big deal at the time. And
then to sing about it, yeah, and to sing about
how that was a good thing that was that was
really daring and it was really it's neat that they
did that. Likes it just should not go unnoticed or mentioned,
and it's hard to overstate what a big deal it was.
(22:12):
And then it's even harder to overstate how huge of
a hit Macho Man was for the village people.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, I mean little seven year old Chuck in Stone Mountain,
Georgia dancing around in the shower to that song. Yeah,
Like it truly reached every corner if that was what
was going on. They went out on the road, which
is not something that a lot of disco acts did that.
Disco wasn't known as a great like sort of live
touring thing.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, it was, like we talked about in our Disco episode,
it was a really anonymous type of music, like you
might have never see a picture of the person who
who is your favorite you know, who sang your favorite
song at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, so, you know, there were some package things here
and there, but generally going on the road as a
disco act wasn't a very big thing to do, but
the Village People did it. From the store, Art and
Dave dug up the thing from the Washington Post in
seventy nine that said that their first tour had you know,
usual stage and equipment problems, but also the group was
forced to endure all manner of verbal and physical abuse
(23:13):
from the audience, which means that people were either dragged
there or went there to you know, to boo to
boo like a hate watch.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, which is crazy. It is crazy, But I mean
we're talking nineteen seventy nine, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I guess so, but like to spend your six bucks
or whatever to like, Hey, We're going to go down
to Madison Square Garden and boo the Village people. I
don't know, I guess that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, I'm sure that was a thing, but I think
more often than not they were just loved. I read
a quote from Glenn Hughes, the leather Man, who said
he basically had to beat back women, Yeah, who wanted
to sleep with him.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And he's like, he's like, I got a headache.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, he said, I have a headache. So apparently some
people just didn't get it, some people didn't care, other
people did get it. It cared one way or another.
But they were huge. I think for the most part,
people were either not reading into it or just look
like purposefully being obtuse and looking past it. I'm not sure,
but they were enormous. You mentioned Madison Square Garden. They
(24:18):
definitely played Madison Square Garden. They were in the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade in nineteen seventy eight. They were huge.
But if you look back on when they were huge,
it apparently lasted twenty two months, less than two years,
but they were at the top of the heap during
that time.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah, because you know disco and again, like Josh mentioned,
we had one of our favorite episodes is on Disco
many years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
It was you know, not a flash in the pan,
but it was a pretty brief stay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know, I guess we should get into this whole
notion of whether or not village people were you know,
a quote gay group end quote. Because that's always been
a question, Like, you know, when I was a kid,
I believe, you know, people finally started telling me, like,
you know, those guys are all gay, and I don't
know if it was I'm not sure how common knowledge
(25:10):
because pre Internet, any of the real truth was. Back then,
Randy Jones, who was the Cowboy, said, we didn't start
as a gay group, and not everyone in the group
was gay. That's an incorrect notion. So much of our
music was played in black, Latin and gay underground clubs,
though that's where the first Village People album found its
(25:30):
initial audience. Victor Willis, who you know, to a lot
of people, kind of was and is the Village People
because he was the super, super talented Broadway guy. He
was the guy that co wrote a lot of their
big songs. Was not just sort of a backup singer.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
He was the cop.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
He was the cop as the front man, and he
was not gay. He was, in fact, for four years
married to Felicia at the time, Felicia airs Allen, who
would later become Felicia Rashad, the wife on The Cosby Show,
is what she's most well known for. But they were
in the Whiz together on Broadway and then eventually got
together to make music with Moraley. I think they got
(26:11):
together to write a concept album for her called Josephine
Superstar about the life of Josephine Baker, which I haven't heard,
but I'm going to try and find that.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
If it's in French, it's really going to knock your
socks off.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, but so Victor Willis was not gay. He was
the frontman and lyricist, but like they had songs about
Fire Island and San Francisco and Key West, Greenwich Village
and Key West, and if you look at the lyrics,
like it's pretty clear that like this stuff was either
coded for gay or just basically like, if you don't
know what we're talking about, then you're pretty dense.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
But if you were even remotely hip and you read
some of the contemporary or contemporaneous articles on them, like
all the journalists wanted to know, like are you gay? Right?
I read a New Music Express article from like, I
think nineteen seventy eight, and the guy's asking Randy Jones
the Cowboys, like are you a gay group? And apparently
(27:07):
Randy Jones was sick of hearing this at the time. Yeah,
it was barely containing his anger, and he's like, why
does it matter. He's like, we're not a gay group
or a disco group. Right. Over time, they definitely evolved
into a gay group. I think it. I think it
kind of occurred to them, like what a huge impact
they were having just by basically being ambassadors of gayness
(27:29):
to the rest of the world and showing everybody, like,
you like our music, you know, like us too. Yeah,
maybe like the gay dude that you work.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
With exactly, And that's what I think.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Victor Willis says, as the straight lead singer, and this
is touching on YMCA, which we'll get into, but he said,
you know, I wrote those lyrics, so technically it's not
a gay song because I'm not gay and I wrote it,
but I never had any qualms that it was embraced
by the gay community.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, he's like, nothing, there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, basically.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So on the other hand, the Hodo the construction worker says,
I mean, look at us, we were a gay group.
The song was written to celebrate gay men at the
YMCA was it, Yes, absolutely, and gay people loved it.
YMCA was you know, is the song I think Macho
Man is a much better song, but YMCA is became
(28:23):
part of the cultural zeitgeist, like forever.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, I saw somewhere I couldn't find it, but that's
it's in a time capsule in orbit around Earth right now.
It was included in like a bunch of songs that
was sent out into space.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh yeah, for sure it was.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, it was a huge hit. Like that's just yeah,
it's part of American culture, I guess international culture really.
But the idea behind it is that Randy Jones the Cowboy,
when he moved to New York in nineteen seventy five,
one of the first things he did was join the
YMCA on West twenty third Street in Manhattan, which became
the inspiration for song YMCA because he took Jacques Morale
(29:04):
to the YMCA with him to work out with some
of his buddies, who apparently were gay adult film stars,
and Jacques Moraley was just blown away that there was
this place. Yeah, it's like this secret hidden gay oasis.
I'm the cheap right, Like it costs almost no money
to not only like work out there, but get a
(29:25):
room there.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You'd stay there at the time, So apparently he.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Was just starstruck at the whole idea and loved going
to the YMCA and decided to write a song about it.
So he wrote the Bones of YMCA, and then Victor
Willis came in and wrote kind of the rest of it.
But the whole idea behind YMCA is that it was
an ode to just the gay experience at YMCA. And
(29:49):
Victor Willis, though, he wrote a lyric that I hadn't
noticed until I was listening to it yesterday where he's
talking about how just he arrived in this new city
and he was very unhappy about being there. Huh, he said,
I thought the whole world was so jive. I noticed
(30:09):
so jive, Like he just didn't like anything. He thought
the whole world was drive until he discovered the YMCA
and realized that this place is awesome and amazing, and
the world in term was pretty amazing too. I had
never heard that lyric before noticed it, and when I did,
I was just I just thought that was so great.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That's a great lyric.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
If you look at the original music video, it has
a close up shot of the McBurnie YMCA at the
very beginning there on what's twenty third, and it's basically
just a video of them dancing in the street outside
of it.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
As far as.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The the YMCA hand gestures, they did not create that.
They if you if you look at that video and
basically any performance of them doing it on the Why,
like you know, it builds.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Up, it's funny and they go they.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Throw their arms up on why. Yeah, And what they're
doing is they were just kind of throwing their arms
up in unison as like a dance move, but it
sort of looked like a why. And as Randy Jones
tells it, that it was a live performance where some
of the audience like just started doing the you know,
the why, and then the MCA and they the audience
sort of started it.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. They so they when they threw their arms up,
the audience mistook that is like the beginning of them
spelling out why with their arms, and they took it
from there. And so some kids on American Bandstand are
the ones who actually came up with the YMCA dance.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, And Hodo said, here's the quote. When I saw
the movements, I thought, wow, this is so stupid. Then
everyone in America started doing it, and I thought, wow,
this is so brilliant.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome, and the YMCA itself apparently, remember
this is not a time where everybody's like, hey, kay
is great. The YMCA was like, you can't use our
name like that, right, it's trademarked, and I guess got
in touch with Cosablanco Records, which was producing The Village
People at the time, and it just petered out. It
just went nowhere. They ultimately decided not to I think
(32:09):
they kind of concluded it was actually way better press
to just leave it as is, and that they risk
getting terrible press for suing the Village People for singing
how great YMCA is. So yeah, they just left it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I think in the movie version, it will be like
the head of the YMCA is on the phone to
the record company, and right before he goes to tell
them that he wants to cease and desist letter drawn up,
some kid, you know, some low level worker bust in
the room and goes boss and he comes up with
the phone memberships are through the roof, and then it
(32:44):
just you know, never mind, this is all good.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, he's a wrong number.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
So before we break, we'll talk quickly about the fact
that you cannot go to a baseball game anymore. Without
hearing YMCA like a Major League Baseball game, especially the young,
especially the Yankees that all started at spring training in Tampa.
I'm not sure if the Yankees are still there, but
that was their home at least at the time, and
(33:09):
in nineteen ninety six. This did not happen in the seventies.
It was in the mid nineties. Top of the fifth inning,
the grounds crew came out to take care of the
infield like they always do midway through the game, and
they broke into the YMCA, you know, spelling out those
letters as the song played, and everybody thought it was
(33:29):
the best thing ever. And that's how it was born.
It was transferred to the new Yankee Stadium, and then
it just became a thing.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah. You can hear Larry David as Steinbrenner ordering them
to take their YMCA dancers in the grounds crew. Yeah,
but yeah, I saw a video of it from a
Yankees game and they're just out there doing like the
raking like normal, and then YMCA's playing like it's just
playing as a song for the crowd, and then all
of a sudden, when it gets to the YMCA, they
(33:57):
just drop their rakes and start dancing and then when
that's done, they pick up their res and go back
to work. It's pretty great, did it You want to
take that break you promised, Let's do it. Okay, Well
we'll be right back, okay, Chuck. So we've hit Macho Man, Ymca,
(34:35):
I think it's time for in the Navy, which was
their last big hit, their last big single. It came
out in nineteen seventy nine. That was on the album Cruising,
which I guess YMCA.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Was as well, right, Yeah, that was the one that
I had.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
So that was the third album, second album in nineteen
seventy eight. These guys released two albums in one year.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I thought it was all three? Was it just two two?
Speaker 2 (34:57):
No, the first one was nineteen seventy seven Macho Man,
and Cruising came out in nineteen seventy eight, and then
there was whatever the third of Yeah, I guess it
was three. There was no there's three singles, four albums,
so I'm missing an album. But that album came out
in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
The fourth one, Yeah, that last album was Go West.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yes, which, by the way, I always thought that was
a pet Shop Boys song because it was on their
album Vary from the nineties, and I was listening to
Village People and came across that and was like, Oh,
I've never realized it was a Village People's song.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Okay, I actually had this album too, now that I'm
seeing the cover, because it's basically them on a well
clearly a green screen, but like a tropical island setting,
and that had In the Navy on it. So I
think I'm just getting those confused because I had both records.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Sure, but can we read a little bit of in
the Navy?
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yes, all right, here we go, Everybody in the Navy
by Village People.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Where you can find.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Pleasure, search the world for treasure, learn science technology where
you can begin to make your dreams all come true.
On the land or on the sea, where you can
learn to fly, play in sports and skin dive, study oceanography,
sign up for the big band, or sit in the
grandstand where your team and others meet. In the Navy
(36:21):
And that's when it starts that great chorus.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
And then weirdly, at the end of the song, they're
singing like the in the Navy part over and over again,
and Victor Willis is, I guess, singing about how he
doesn't want to join the navy, and at one point
he goes, but I'm afraid of the water. Yeah, And
it's hilarious. It's like purposely funny. And that really kind
(36:45):
of to me captures like what the village people were doing,
Like they were balancing like really good disco music with
high camp, right. I mean, these guys were dressed up
as just macho stereotypes with like like genuinely funny lyrics sometimes,
and I think that really kind of captured it for me.
I saw that in that New Music Express article. The
(37:06):
author said that they were experts at balancing what is
deft and what is daft?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Can I read verse two?
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah? Oh yeah, sorry, I didn't know you were.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Oh no, that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I think it works better to split it up to
people can just fully absorb if you'd like adventure. Don't
you wait to enter the recruiting office fast. Don't you hesitate.
There is no need to wait. They're signing up new
seamen fast. Maybe you're too young to join up today,
but don't you worry about a thing, for I'm sure
there will be always a good navy protecting the land
(37:39):
and sea. And there's another line in the chorus about
you know you can protect the motherland like it is
a legit Navy recruitment song. Yeah, so much so that
the Navy said, you know what, we'd like to actually
use this for recruitment, and in exchange, we will let
you film your music video aboard word like, we'll completely
(38:01):
help you out and not charge you money.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
We'll give you all the.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Navy semen that you want as background actors and stuff,
and you can shoot it above aboard our active ship,
the USS Reasoner. And that's what they did. They said,
all right, great, we got a lot of production value here.
You can use it as an official recruitment song.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah. I mean that's just amazing that, Like, that's just crazy,
but that's what happened. Apparently the Navy, any ship that
had a closed circuit TV system got that video and
I guess would play it over and over again, which
I mean, luckily, it's a good song and it's an
interesting video.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I was at a Dunkin Donuts the other day and
they had the Super Bowl Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez commercial
on loop. Oh boy, and everyone inside we're completely out
of their minds. It was an awful, awful scene, terrible
place to.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Be Yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So what I'm saying is I don't think that would
have happened on board those Navy ships because it was
a pretty good song.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, and I think their they're actual recruitment did like increase,
supposedly while the song was out and being used. I
think the American military was maybe like my parents. They
weren't like, wait a minute, what we what song are
we using and by what band as active recruitment for
our US military?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Right?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
But you know, I'm glad they were daft enough to
not recognize that.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I guess they're right. Well, the other thing about it
is I didn't see a single kind of gay innuendo
lyric in that song. It was more just a gay
group singing about being in the navy, which you know,
coded for There are plenty of like gay dudes in
the Navy secretly at the time, and I'm sure still are,
but I'm sure it's much less secret. So I think
(39:49):
that's more what it was than it being like a
gay song. Sure, it was, like you said, a straight up,
like like promotional song for the Navy.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, it doesn't say in the Navy you can maybe
meet your next husband.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Right right, exactly? That got cut.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, got cut.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So that was, like we said, the last big hit.
It was in nineteen seventy nine. And I alluded earlier.
I think I just said out right, didn't even allude
to it. They had a twenty two month run just
Burned White Phosphorus Hot. During those twenty two months, I
saw that both Madonna and Michael Jackson opened for them
while they were on tour during this time. My guess
(40:29):
would be nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Wow, Michael Jackson surprises me.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, because he was already like famous from the Jackson Five.
But I mean that goes to show you just how
crazy huge the Village people were for a time.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, and this is.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Before Michael Jackson himself was like just the world's biggest star. Yeah,
but yeah, it still says quite a bit. And they
kept it going, they kept trying to go with it,
and they released a movie, as you do said earlier,
it's called Can't Stop the Music, Very bad. I can't
even make it through the trailer. No, it's it's well
(41:07):
known as like one of the worst movies of all time,
just a disco fluffball that keeps hitting you in the
head over and over again. Steve Gutenberg is the star. Yeah.
The whole thing is kind of like a fictitious or
fictionalized version of the story of how the Village People
came to be. So he plays an americanized, fictionalized version
(41:31):
of Jacques Morelli. His name is Jack Morrell in it,
and again he roller skates everywhere and finally puts together
this group that became the Village People. And it was
so bad that apparently it inspired the Razzie Awards.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Right as the story goes, it was helped create the Razzies,
and the inaugural Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay winner in
nineteen eighty was a modest hit, though I do Australia.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I think that's where they made just the tiny amount
of money that they made back, that's where they made it.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Back, I guess.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
So I would love to hear from some Aussies of
a certain age that could testify as to whether or not.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
This is true.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I would love to hear that as well.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, so we'll find out.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, I think the guy, one of the guys who
created the Razzies the Golden Raspberry Awards, which for those
of you who don't know, it's like for the worst
movies of the year. They hand these out. He went
and saw a ninety nine cent double feature of Can't
Stop the Music in Xana Do and wanted his money back.
That's how bad he thought that movie with Xanadu was great.
(42:41):
He clearly was not talking about Xana Do. He must
have just completely been focused on Can't Stop the Music.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
When was the last time he saw Xana Do?
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Not that long ago? Okay, I love it. It's also
got a great soundtrack too.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It does.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I mean, this was the time when they were making
these big sort of movie musical like pop pop movie
pop music movies.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, it was a strange.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Time, and everyone was on roller skates.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, you know, none of them had like were the best,
like plotted, you know, and they were just were what
they were, which was can we get someone into the
movie theater that likes this music?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, and roller skates.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
After Disco Village, people did try their hand at new Wave,
because that's.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
What came next. It did not work out.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Victor Willis left the band in nineteen seventy nine, and
this is where the story gets you know, sad. I
guess sad in one way or just a little confusing
because Victor Willis, who a lot of people say, like,
Victor Willis was Village People as the leader, as the
original singer and songwriter, but he left had many many
run ins with the law, awful drug problems, many warrants
(43:54):
out and you know for like illegal firearms and cocaine
possession and stuff like this kind of over and over
and over, kept getting second chances from sympathetic judges that
were like, hey, listen, you know you got a lot
to offer the world, like can you get yourself clean?
In the meantime, Ray Simpson Sugar Ray Simpson took over
his lead singer and like for thirty years and all
(44:17):
new Village People save Phelipe Rose and Alex Briley as
the Indian and Gi toured and played sold out cruise
ships and county fairs like all over the country in
world for like thirty years without Victor Willis, they would do.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Two hundred and eighty shows a year.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yeah, I mean very successful touring like nostalgia touring group,
but without Victor Willis.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, And Victor Willis was not very happy about that.
So he'd been again. You said, he had huge, huge
self inflicted problems and run ins with the law. He
was on an episode of America's Most Wanted once because
he kept skipping bail. I know he At the same time,
he definitely had and taken advantage of I can't stop
the music productions. Early on, he'd only gotten less than
(45:05):
two grand in album even back in nineteen seventy eight.
That wasn't that much money for something that was just
super megahits. He got one and a half percent of
Village People royalties for the songs that he co wrote,
co wrote, like he wrote significant portions of these songs,
and like you said, to a lot of people, he
was the village People. So there was a point in
(45:26):
time where the Village People were playing the San Mateo
County Fair and a mile away, Victor Willis was in
the San Mateo County Jail. Probably could hear at least
a little bit of it from miss Jail's cell, right,
So it was pretty bad. And apparently the lowest point
came in two thousand and eight when they got a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah, I look this up and apparently they've edited out anything,
because I watched sort of the whole ceremony. But apparently
Willis was in the crowd in that copy uniform, like
yelling and screaming and talking about how it was fake
and caused a disruption. So I don't know if they
just got him out of there and did the ceremony,
or if they edited the thing out. But it is
(46:10):
not in the YouTube video. But what is evident when
you're watching that YouTube video, no disrespect to these guys,
but those aren't the village people. No, when you watch
those guys are like, that's not those aren't the guys.
You know, there's not the guys I drew in crayon.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
It's kind of like if you see a guy dressed
like the Incredible Hulk, you're like, that's not the Hulk.
He represents the spirit of the Hulk, and in the
same way, these people represented the spirit of the village people.
They were there to accept the award in honor of
the village people. I hope they realized that that's what
they were doing.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
They didn't even mention Willis, so like they were listing
off names and no one said Victor Willis's name.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, there were a lot of sour grapes. Yeah, I think,
and so Willis actually took can't stop productions to court,
and in a really rare and usual turn, he he
won big time. As a matter of fact, they went
from giving him one point five percent of royalties to
fifty percent totally. I didn't see did he get back royalties.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I don't know that. I was really curious about.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
That because he just became probably something close to a
billionaire overnight if they did, and then he this, this
is this to me where I was like, I wish
this hadn't happened. They also gave him full control over
the Village People like name and likeness, the name of
the band, the whole intellectual property that was the Village People.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
You feel bad for the other guys, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
That's so wrong. They kept the thing going for decades.
And what did he do.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Well?
Speaker 1 (47:42):
I mean, he started playing shows as Village People with
you know, an entirely set of new guys behind him.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
He fired them. He fired some of the original Village People,
like you said, I think it was Alex Bridley and
Llebe Rose and Ray. He was not the original, but
he came in so closely after Victor Willis did. He was,
for all intents and purposes, an original, but he was the.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Cop what are you gonna just say, all right now,
put on the some the GI uniform.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Sure, and now Alex probably would be like, I'm the GI.
It probably would have gone back and forth for a
little while. He could have accommodated them. Instead, he was like,
you guys are out, and I don't know that they
had anything to do with the decision to, you know,
mess over Victor Willis, and yet he took his angst
and anger out on them, and I thought that that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, I don't know enough of the story to judge
it because I don't know how they treated him when
he was down and out, So.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Well, that's the best way to judge his story.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I'm gonna just reserve my judgment on this one. I
do think it's a shame that they couldn't get the
original group back together for at least a show, because
when I saw the the what I considered the not
real village people performing online, was like, this isn't right.
And then when I saw Victor Willis and those guys
he got together, I was like, well this isn't right either, right.
(49:02):
You know, Yes, I wanted I wanted all I wanted
a gang back together. I wanted all my gay friends
that I gazed upon and drew and crayon. I wanted
them to reunite.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
I'm with you, you you wouldn't be able to. Unfortunately,
Glenn Hughes died of lung cancer and I think two
thousand or something like that.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah, is he the I believe he's the only one
that passed.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Right, I believe so. But both I think on Reebololo
and Jacques Morelli are both dead. I think Jacques died
of AIDS sadly, and on Riebololo died in like the
late two thousand and tens. I think, I'm not sure what,
but yeah, So there are some village people out there still.
(49:45):
You can go see him touring. You can see the
Victor Willis version at the San Diego County Fair on
July fourth, and if you happen to be in Santiago,
Chile or Bogatah, Columbia, you can see them in May.
All right, Okay, so that's your assignment stuff. You should know, Army.
Go out and see the village people and let us
know what you think. In the meantime, you can sit
(50:09):
there and listen to listener mail.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Oh interesting, I was just making I was trying to
verify really quickly if they were all alive, because that's important.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Sure, and I just saw here that and this is
real time fact, everybody. Alex Briley supposedly that his brother
was thought to be the falling man from the nine
to eleven building.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
No way, wow, nos man, that took a very strange
turn here, that.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Did take And I believe that you're right. I believe that.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I believe that Glenn Hughes is the only one who's
passed away. So the rest of the guys are still
trying to trying to do stuff, is it. Randy Jones,
He's He released a song in twenty seventeen that reached
number forty two on the Billboard Dance Club Song Charts,
So that's not too bad. Randy Jones was the cowboy, Yeah, cowboy.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
So you never answered which one did you identify with
the most, or did you identify with them as a group.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I don't know, Like identify as a is a weird
word because I didn't like identify as and like I wanted,
I think I'm one of those guys. But I think
I thought that the biker was the coolest because like
that leather man that mustache and that chopper, Like, I
thought that was just the.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Dig those chains.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, so I think definitely the biker, you know. I
mean that's the one who I drew with a little
round boobies.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I always saw them pretty much collectively, but if any
of them stood out to me, it was probably the
construction worker.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yeah, you're always a blue collar kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
I think it was this sirp a line jean jacket
that always stood out to me. And then the mirror aviators.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Those Toledo roots. Oh yeah, the aviators.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Right, Okay, now everybody, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I think, well, I don't have a listener because I
thought we could just talk a little bit about our
upcoming live shows. Oh yeah, let's do that as just
sort of an in show announcement because we are hitting
the road. This is a very fun show that you
put together, and we've been getting emails from parents like, hey,
(52:16):
can my kids come? Kids are always welcome at our shows. Sure,
it's kind of a well it's a kid friendly topic
in that it's not, you know, not kid friendly. But
it's not about Barney the Dinosaur, you know.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
It's not terrifying, though, it's pretty funny. If you're cool
with your kids. Here in the S word occasionally you're fine.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, yeah, we have a cussword or two here and there,
but it's not too bad. But we were going to
be We're going to be in Medford, mass On May
twenty ninth, then d C on the thirtieth, and New
York on the thirty first. Then this summer we're going
to hit the road in August on the seventh, eighth,
the ninth to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis for the first time.
(52:56):
Very nice, and then we're going to wind it out
in September on the fifth and seventh than Durham, North Carolina,
and here in Atlanta. Tickets are moving pretty good in
most cities, but we really want to make sure this
first leg gets close to sold out.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, for sure, we would love that. If you would
like to come see us, we would love that too.
And you can get all the info you need. You
can get links to ticket sites and all that kind
of stuff by going to our website stuff you should
know dot Com, clicking on the tour button, or you
can also go to our link tree, link Tree slash
sysk Live and it'll give you all the stuff you
(53:32):
need to come see us, because again, we would love that, right, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
It's a good time.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah yeah. And in the meantime, if you want to
get in touch with this v email, you can send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everyone, do you live in Washington, DC? Are you
sitting around fretting about this upcoming election? Maybe you're even
working on one of these campaigns. Well, we've got a
great stress reliever for you, and that's coming out to
see us on May thirtieth at the Warner Theater for
Stuff you Should Know Live.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, we guarantee zero political jokes, one hundred percent zero
political jokes if you come out and see us. We're
gonna be in Medford, mass on May twenty ninth. The
next night, we'll be in DC on May thirtieth, and
then the night after that we'll be at our old friend,
the Town Hall in Manhattan Town, NYC.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That's right, So check out tickets. You can go to
stuff youshould Know dot com, you can go to the
theater websites themselves, avoid those secondary ticket brokers, or check
out our link tree, right, Josh.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, link tree sysk Live.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. And when you put us
all together, well things get pretty great. How's it going, man.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
It's going great.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I've been listening to The Village People off and on
all day.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, same here and what We're supposed to both come in. Sorry, Chuck,
did you pick this because I cannot imagine that you
weren't a cute little seven year old Village People fan. True,
(01:43):
So which one did you identify with the most?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Well?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I've told this story before because I posted it on
Instagram way back when I talked about it. But I
still have a crayon drawing of the Village People because
I would sit around and play Cruising the record Cruising okay,
(02:08):
their third album, their third album, but the one with
YMCA and I Believe in the Navy and like most
of their big hits outside of my favorite Village People song,
which is of course Macho Man Sure such a good song,
And I would just sit around and listen to Cruising
and stare at that record cover of those guys you
(02:31):
know on the Horse and the most Cycle, the motorcycle
and the Bulldozer, and like I would see them on
American Bandstand and Solid Gold and the early music videos,
and I would just I thought they were the coolest,
most awesome dudes ever in the world. And I would
sit around and draw crayon pictures of them, and I
(02:52):
still have one of them.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Maybe I'll pint it on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I'm sort of always laughed years later that like, who
knows what my peer parents were thinking. And we'll get
into the you know, whether or not village people count
or were in fact a gay band. But I imagine at
the time, in the early to mid seventies, with Southern
Baptist parents, they either weren't aware of that or were
(03:18):
probably pretty like worried about their son when they needn't be,
because either way it would have been fine.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, well put man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
But back in the seventies, in the in the rural,
not rural, but in a suburban, conservative South, I'm I'm
sure if they didn't, if they did know what was
going on, they're probably like, have you seen these Crown pictures?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Like he drew Little counselor got in Touch.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I drew literal like pancake boobies on the biker Guy
because I didn't know how to draw like a bear
chest correctly.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah hey that worked.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, So anyway, I'll either scroll through my Insta or
maybe I'll figure out how to pin stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
But definitely.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
We're talking about village people technically not the village people.
It's just sort of one of those things like Eagles
or hall of Oates, where you just you come to
be known by that name even though that's not your
real name.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yes, like Edith Burkell and New Bohemians.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Oh, is that what it is? It's not the New Bohemians.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah. For some reason, I've always had this memory of
her correcting David Letterman on Letterman. It's funny in like
nineteen ninety or something like that. I don't know why
it stuck with me, but I always she got the
point across.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Sure, And Indigo Girls is the other one. They're not
the Indigo Girls.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. I don't even say that to their face. They
will they will beat you up.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Well, if you say Hall of Notes to Daryl Hall,
he gets pretty salty. He's like, we were.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Not hall of Oates.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
We never were.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Oh really what were they?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Look at the the Hall and now every single album
it's Darryl holland John Oates.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
They were never Hollan Oates.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And it just does he really get salty about that
because they are much much greater things to be upset
about that.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I've seen him a little salty, but I think it's
largely because they don't like each other.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Man, why are you telling me all that?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Sorry?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I want Daryl hall and and John Notes to be
like just the best guys ever.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You want to be like, it's like wow or dare
I say, Josh?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And I'm not participating for the rest of this episode,
but I have to chew on some stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
All right, let's talk Village People.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. Actually, one of the things that stood out to
me is this is like the improved version of our
Milli Vanilli episode, because one thing I didn't realize is
that the Village People were like a manufactured band and
they were the brain child I guess collectively yea of
Jacques morale In Henrie Belolo, who are both Moroccan born
(05:51):
French Minten Yeah, who I guess separately kind of got
into the music industry by their own grit and determination
and didn't really know each other at first. They had
their own I think, starting in the fifties and sixties,
had their own careers that they were trying to build,
and eventually in the seventies they came together. Henri Bololo
(06:13):
was kind of like the brains the producer that kind
of type. Jacques Moraley was more he was a producer
as well, but more the hands on, creative type of producer.
And when they came together, some sparks flew even before
the village people were ever around.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, there's no way to say this without sounding completely
like kind of stuck up.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
But I've been listening to a lot of French music lately.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, there's I mean, if you're in the
right mood there, if you look up like eighties sort
of new wave, but French music, their version, it is
really really awesome stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Nice. I will check that out.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Highly recommended. So yeah, they were, like you said they were,
had made a name for themselves independently, I believe in
nineteen seventy three, Belolo set up Can't Stop Productions a
couple of years later.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That's a great name, by the way. Oh yeah, it's
just stuck out to me all day.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Oh yeah, and I remember seeing that little logo like
Can't Stop the Music. I think that was the name
of the movie, right.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah. I didn't put those two together, actually, don't just know.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
But they eventually met up in the United States and
their first project and release was a real banger. You know,
the song Brazil from the nineteen thirties, the one from
the movie Brazil. They took that and updated it with
a female trio called the Richie Family as a disco song,
(07:42):
and it is, like I said, it's a real banger,
kind of a classic disco song.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Yes, but it was disco before disco actually existed. So
a lot of people kind of credit these two is
really helping lay the foundation for disco. It was that
that period, right before disco became a thing. So it
was a weird transition between like, what's the guy's name, Percy.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Fledge?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Is it Percy Faith in his orchestra? Okay, the transition
between Percy Faith and and John Travolta. This is like
that that slice of music, lots of strings, kind of
salsa based, lots of like chorus and vocals. It was.
It actually was up for the nineteen seventy six Grammy
for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and lost to The Hustle
(08:33):
if that gets it a cross, So like the Hustle
is like proto disco. Yeah, so was this version of Brazil.
And it's right before disco became a thing.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, Like on the matter of months though probably.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Right, Yeah, I would say that, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Mean losing to the hustle. There's no there's no shame.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
There, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So they had this pretty good hit with Brazil again.
I recommend you check it out. It's and listen to
all these songs are all great. Can't Stop Productions was like,
all right, listen, we need we you know, back then
they would just go from thing to thing because it's
not like you can ride out something like the Richie
Family forever, so they're always looking for the next new thing.
(09:10):
In seventy seven, they were hanging out in Greenwich Village,
New York, which then, as it is now, is a
very friendly community for especially gay men. Moraley was gay,
but Belolo was not. But they were hanging out there.
They were going to disco's, they were going to bars
and stuff, and they started to see these guys in
(09:30):
these clubs that were dressed up as these these sort
of macho American stereo types that they grew up watching
on you know, American TV and American movies. And this
is a direct quote from Blolo. Dave is encouraging me
to read it with a French accent. I'm not sure
about that, but I'll try this from Billboard magazine. We
(09:54):
saw different types of characters and bars. That's how we
decided to cleate a group that's will represent different characters
of the American male. As we had the idea in
the village, we decided to call the group the Village People.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Simple.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That was a great pepulo peza.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, that was like they saw these guys in bars
fitting these sort of archetypes or stereotypes of what they
thought like a macho American man was, and they're like, hey,
this is like a concept right here, right in front
of us.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, And actually it's possible that it was one specific guy.
They saw, Philippe Rose, Felipe Rose, who was known as
the Indian, who dressed up as a Native American Indian
around Greenwich Village very flamboyantly because he was a Native
American his father on his father's side, he was Mescalero, Apache, Lakota,
(10:51):
and Cherokee, which is like that's the trifecta, and he
was very proud of it. So he dressed up in
like moccasins and fringe leather vests and all that kind
of thing, and they saw him and that in addition
to going to bars like the mind Shaft, which was
a BDSM gay club, and then seeing other people kind
(11:13):
of dress up. That's where they put the whole thing together.
And Dave made a really good point here that that
whole concept of dressing people up as like stereotypical American male,
macho like image images essentially that an American producer probably
would have been like, that's not a great idea, it's
(11:34):
kind of lame. But these guys were like looking at
America from the outside in, and I think, like you
kind of alluded to, they were exposed to this like
their whole lives. This is like what they were fed
through American movies and TV. So to them, they were like,
this is amazing, what a great idea, Like we want
to celebrate this American macho male and that's where the
(11:55):
village people came from.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that part, but I
respect Dave's opinion. If you agree with.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Him, I do agree with him on that.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I respect you.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I'm going with Dave on this.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I bet they're American producers that are like, oh God,
that's right there in front of my face, can't believe it,
and think.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Of Hey, yeah, in hindsight.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So Moroley started writing songs. You know, like you said,
they were inspired by Felipe Rose. I don't think you said.
He was basically kicked out of his house because he
came out as gay. So he was hanging out in
the village, working in bars and stuff. The Richie family was,
you know, they were trying to eke a little, trying
to ring that thing dry from the Richie family. And
(12:33):
they were getting a new album together. They needed some
backup singers, and someone said, hey, there's this guy. He's
on Broadway right now in the Whiz. His name is
Victor Willis. The guy can really sing, It's got a
lot of personality, can dance a little bit. You should
bring him in here as a backup singer. Roley brought
him into the studio and it was like, dude, you
are a star, so we need to get you to
(12:56):
record these other songs we've written that. There were no
Village people yet, but in nineteen seventy seven he cut
their very first disco hit. And you'll see a lot
of parentheticals because that was the time. But this is
called San Francisco parentheses.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
You got me another good song.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So, yeah, Victor Willis was the first. This is long
before Felipe Rose came along, but after they had seen
Felipe Rose, right, so they were inspired to create the
village people. But Victor Willis was really the only village
person at the time. Everybody else was just studio session
musicians and singers and stuff like that, right, So that
(13:36):
worked fine when they cut that first album, which I
think was like four songs or something like that, and
they had that hit with San Francisco You Really Got Me.
And with that hit, they're like, okay, you got Me
San Francisco. Yeah, which is funny because, as we'll see
later on, Victor Willis would become a fugitive from the
law and he would finally be arrested in San Francisco.
(13:58):
So he was so but he was the village people.
And now that San Francisco Got Me was a hit,
like apparently an international club hit, they needed more people,
and so they started looking for other village people and
the first one they recruited was Felipe Rose, appropriately enough,
because apparently he was unknowingly the inspiration for the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Right, Funny enough, they were San Francisco You Got Me
was big in Australia. As you'll see, that's become a
recurring thing. It seems like Australians love the Village People. Yeah,
so I'm curious to hear from them that if you
look at that first album cover, it is not the
Village People. And I don't even think Victor Willis is
on the cover. It's just it's a bunch of guys.
(14:45):
There is a guy wearing a Native American headdress, but
I don't think it's Felipe Rose, No, none of them.
There's a flannel shirt, hard hat guy, and there is
a biker. But that's it, just those three sort of
village people that we went on to know and love.
Everyone else is just a bunch of guys stand around
(15:06):
in T shirts looking tough with a motorcycle and frame.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. I mean, so they had the concept, they just
didn't have the people yet. So they're slowly starting to
assemble this. Now they have Victor Willis and Felipe Rose.
They've got the first two and they actually put an
ad in the paper, I would guess the Village Voice
looking for gay men, singers and dancers with mustaches to
(15:35):
basically audition for the roles in this band, not like
can you play the bass? Can you? Can you play
the drums? But do you have a mustache? And are
you good looking? And a singer and dancer? And they
got from what I saw like thousands of replies.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, this was They were never a band. It was
always just supposed to be a singing group, and they did.
I believe Felipe or I'm sorry. Glenn Hughes, who was
the biker. He worked at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel collecting tolls,
saw the ad. By his memory, the ad said seeking
gay singers and dancers, very good looking and with mustaches.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Probably wasn't hard to find at that time.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Well, all his friends were like, Glenn, that's you, buddy,
Like you need to get in there.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, So Glenn Hughes became the village people's leather man,
which apparently was not a stretch for him. I think
he was already in the leather at the time, so
he became the leatherman slash biker, right.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
That's right. He was the third. I think.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
The second one to join up was Alex Briley, who
came at Victor Willis's recommendation. He was the original sort
of stereotype for him was he was the athlete, but
then they changed that pretty quickly to the army guy.
He was the gi and also the Navy sailor, so
he kind of crossed over the different arm services, I guess, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And then another guy who responded to the ad was
David Hodo. He had just gotten done with the musical
about the Grand Old Opry and basically went out for
the cowboy. They're like, nope, you're a construction worker. Through
and through, a guy named Randy Jones became the cowboy,
and so you had Victor Willis, Felipe Rose, Alex Bridley,
Randy Jones, David Hodo, and Glenn Hughes, which, by the way,
(17:22):
I realized earlier today that I could rattle off the
names of the original village people now. But that's who
the village people were at first. And I say we
take a break, because now we've got this murderer's row
of mustachioed, generally gay guys ready to hit the disco
scene and they're about to blow up.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
All right, so we're back. We have our village people assembled.
I think we failed to mention earlier that Dick Clark
and American Bandstan American Bandstand. The TV show had already
sort of reached out after they had San Francisco You
Got Me as a hit, but they were like, there
is no village people yet, we can't just you know,
send one guy out there. So they got these other
(18:25):
guys together. In December of nineteen seventy seven, they appeared
for the first time on American Bandstand. I could not,
for the life of me find this exact performance. Oh yeah, no,
I couldn't find it anywhere. I mean they were on
quite a few times, but I never saw the one
from seventy seven somehow. But that was their American you know,
(18:45):
TV debut and debut of the world when they sang
San Francisco or I guess lip SYNCD and and the
song in Hollywood parentheses everybody is a star.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Yep, And you're right, pentheses where a thing back then?
I just died in your arms tonight?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Is that a real one?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I remember we talked about it a few weeks ago,
that cutting crew song.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I just didn't know if you fooled me then or not.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
No, no, no, it's it's legit. Have you been walking around
wondering that?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah for three weeks.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So we're onto your favorite song, Chuck, which I agree.
I think it's the best Village People song. Macho Man. Yeah,
and that was in their second album. So their first album,
like you said, was called Village People. It came out
in nineteen seventy seven. Their second album came out in
nineteen seventy eight, and that was the one. It was.
The album was called Macho Man, and the big single
(19:40):
from it was called Macho Man as well.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Is it okay if we read some of the lyrics
to some of these songs?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yes, I saved them too, Oh you did, Okay? I
think you should sing them.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Not going to sing them, okay, though it might be
hard not to.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And I'm not going to read them all because there's
that intro, that great intro to Macho Man, when they're going,
you know, body, body, and he's going to want to
feel my body, such a thrill, my body, want to
touch my body. That's all that long intro. And then
here here's some of the words to the verse. Every
man wants to be a macho Macho man, to have
(20:14):
the kind of body always in demand, jogging in the mornings,
go man, go, workouts in the health spa, muscles grow,
you can tell a macho man. He has a funky walk.
His Western shirts and leather always looks so boss punky
with his body. He's a king. Call him mister Ego.
Dig his chains. Every man ought to be a macho
(20:37):
macho man to live a life of freedom. MACHOs make
a stand, have your own lifestyle and ideals, possess the
strength of confidence. That's the skill.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
But it's so if you dig into that last bit,
this song goes from essentially just total body worship and
like working out at the spa and all that stuff
and however, but he wants to be a macho man
to essentially like that. The last verse is about gay
liberation and basically coming out of the closet, it sounds.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Have your own lifestyles and ideals possessed the strength of confidence. Yeah,
say exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah. So it really takes like a sudden turn there
because it's like the most superficial vein song of all time,
and then it suddenly like kind of is a shout
out for gay liberation. Yeah, this was like it's kind
of tough to wrap your head around here in twenty
twenty four. Sadly, it's not as tough as it should be,
but it's still tough to wrap your head around just
(21:37):
how big of a deal it was for men to
be like on stage singing songs gay like I'm gay everybody,
There's just no question about it. I'm a gay person.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
That was a big, big deal at the time. And
then to sing about it, yeah, and to sing about
how that was a good thing that was that was
really daring and it was really it's neat that they
did that. Likes it just should not go unnoticed or mentioned,
and it's hard to overstate what a big deal it was.
(22:12):
And then it's even harder to overstate how huge of
a hit Macho Man was for the village people.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, I mean little seven year old Chuck in Stone Mountain,
Georgia dancing around in the shower to that song. Yeah,
Like it truly reached every corner if that was what
was going on. They went out on the road, which
is not something that a lot of disco acts did that.
Disco wasn't known as a great like sort of live
touring thing.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, it was, like we talked about in our Disco episode,
it was a really anonymous type of music, like you
might have never see a picture of the person who
who is your favorite you know, who sang your favorite
song at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, so, you know, there were some package things here
and there, but generally going on the road as a
disco act wasn't a very big thing to do, but
the Village People did it. From the store, Art and
Dave dug up the thing from the Washington Post in
seventy nine that said that their first tour had you know,
usual stage and equipment problems, but also the group was
forced to endure all manner of verbal and physical abuse
(23:13):
from the audience, which means that people were either dragged
there or went there to you know, to boo to
boo like a hate watch.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, which is crazy. It is crazy, But I mean
we're talking nineteen seventy nine, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I guess so, but like to spend your six bucks
or whatever to like, Hey, We're going to go down
to Madison Square Garden and boo the Village people. I
don't know, I guess that was a thing.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, I'm sure that was a thing, but I think
more often than not they were just loved. I read
a quote from Glenn Hughes, the leather Man, who said
he basically had to beat back women, Yeah, who wanted
to sleep with him.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And he's like, he's like, I got a headache.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, he said, I have a headache. So apparently some
people just didn't get it, some people didn't care, other
people did get it. It cared one way or another.
But they were huge. I think for the most part,
people were either not reading into it or just look
like purposefully being obtuse and looking past it. I'm not sure,
but they were enormous. You mentioned Madison Square Garden. They
(24:18):
definitely played Madison Square Garden. They were in the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade in nineteen seventy eight. They were huge.
But if you look back on when they were huge,
it apparently lasted twenty two months, less than two years,
but they were at the top of the heap during
that time.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah, because you know disco and again, like Josh mentioned,
we had one of our favorite episodes is on Disco
many years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
It was you know, not a flash in the pan,
but it was a pretty brief stay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know, I guess we should get into this whole
notion of whether or not village people were you know,
a quote gay group end quote. Because that's always been
a question, Like, you know, when I was a kid,
I believe, you know, people finally started telling me, like,
you know, those guys are all gay, and I don't
know if it was I'm not sure how common knowledge
(25:10):
because pre Internet, any of the real truth was. Back then,
Randy Jones, who was the Cowboy, said, we didn't start
as a gay group, and not everyone in the group
was gay. That's an incorrect notion. So much of our
music was played in black, Latin and gay underground clubs,
though that's where the first Village People album found its
(25:30):
initial audience. Victor Willis, who you know, to a lot
of people, kind of was and is the Village People
because he was the super, super talented Broadway guy. He
was the guy that co wrote a lot of their
big songs. Was not just sort of a backup singer.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
He was the cop.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
He was the cop as the front man, and he
was not gay. He was, in fact, for four years
married to Felicia at the time, Felicia airs Allen, who
would later become Felicia Rashad, the wife on The Cosby Show,
is what she's most well known for. But they were
in the Whiz together on Broadway and then eventually got
together to make music with Moraley. I think they got
(26:11):
together to write a concept album for her called Josephine
Superstar about the life of Josephine Baker, which I haven't heard,
but I'm going to try and find that.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
If it's in French, it's really going to knock your
socks off.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, but so Victor Willis was not gay. He was
the frontman and lyricist, but like they had songs about
Fire Island and San Francisco and Key West, Greenwich Village
and Key West, and if you look at the lyrics,
like it's pretty clear that like this stuff was either
coded for gay or just basically like, if you don't
know what we're talking about, then you're pretty dense.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
But if you were even remotely hip and you read
some of the contemporary or contemporaneous articles on them, like
all the journalists wanted to know, like are you gay? Right?
I read a New Music Express article from like, I
think nineteen seventy eight, and the guy's asking Randy Jones
the Cowboys, like are you a gay group? And apparently
(27:07):
Randy Jones was sick of hearing this at the time. Yeah,
it was barely containing his anger, and he's like, why
does it matter. He's like, we're not a gay group
or a disco group. Right. Over time, they definitely evolved
into a gay group. I think it. I think it
kind of occurred to them, like what a huge impact
they were having just by basically being ambassadors of gayness
(27:29):
to the rest of the world and showing everybody, like,
you like our music, you know, like us too. Yeah,
maybe like the gay dude that you work.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
With exactly, And that's what I think.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Victor Willis says, as the straight lead singer, and this
is touching on YMCA, which we'll get into, but he said,
you know, I wrote those lyrics, so technically it's not
a gay song because I'm not gay and I wrote it,
but I never had any qualms that it was embraced
by the gay community.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, he's like, nothing, there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, basically.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
So on the other hand, the Hodo the construction worker says,
I mean, look at us, we were a gay group.
The song was written to celebrate gay men at the
YMCA was it, Yes, absolutely, and gay people loved it.
YMCA was you know, is the song I think Macho
Man is a much better song, but YMCA is became
(28:23):
part of the cultural zeitgeist, like forever.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, I saw somewhere I couldn't find it, but that's
it's in a time capsule in orbit around Earth right now.
It was included in like a bunch of songs that
was sent out into space.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh yeah, for sure it was.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, it was a huge hit. Like that's just yeah,
it's part of American culture, I guess international culture really.
But the idea behind it is that Randy Jones the Cowboy,
when he moved to New York in nineteen seventy five,
one of the first things he did was join the
YMCA on West twenty third Street in Manhattan, which became
the inspiration for song YMCA because he took Jacques Morale
(29:04):
to the YMCA with him to work out with some
of his buddies, who apparently were gay adult film stars,
and Jacques Moraley was just blown away that there was
this place. Yeah, it's like this secret hidden gay oasis.
I'm the cheap right, Like it costs almost no money
to not only like work out there, but get a
(29:25):
room there.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You'd stay there at the time, So apparently he.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Was just starstruck at the whole idea and loved going
to the YMCA and decided to write a song about it.
So he wrote the Bones of YMCA, and then Victor
Willis came in and wrote kind of the rest of it.
But the whole idea behind YMCA is that it was
an ode to just the gay experience at YMCA. And
(29:49):
Victor Willis, though, he wrote a lyric that I hadn't
noticed until I was listening to it yesterday where he's
talking about how just he arrived in this new city
and he was very unhappy about being there. Huh, he said,
I thought the whole world was so jive. I noticed
(30:09):
so jive, Like he just didn't like anything. He thought
the whole world was drive until he discovered the YMCA
and realized that this place is awesome and amazing, and
the world in term was pretty amazing too. I had
never heard that lyric before noticed it, and when I did,
I was just I just thought that was so great.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That's a great lyric.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
If you look at the original music video, it has
a close up shot of the McBurnie YMCA at the
very beginning there on what's twenty third, and it's basically
just a video of them dancing in the street outside
of it.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
As far as.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The the YMCA hand gestures, they did not create that.
They if you if you look at that video and
basically any performance of them doing it on the Why,
like you know, it builds.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
Up, it's funny and they go they.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Throw their arms up on why. Yeah, And what they're
doing is they were just kind of throwing their arms
up in unison as like a dance move, but it
sort of looked like a why. And as Randy Jones
tells it, that it was a live performance where some
of the audience like just started doing the you know,
the why, and then the MCA and they the audience
sort of started it.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. They so they when they threw their arms up,
the audience mistook that is like the beginning of them
spelling out why with their arms, and they took it
from there. And so some kids on American Bandstand are
the ones who actually came up with the YMCA dance.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, And Hodo said, here's the quote. When I saw
the movements, I thought, wow, this is so stupid. Then
everyone in America started doing it, and I thought, wow,
this is so brilliant.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome, and the YMCA itself apparently, remember
this is not a time where everybody's like, hey, kay
is great. The YMCA was like, you can't use our
name like that, right, it's trademarked, and I guess got
in touch with Cosablanco Records, which was producing The Village
People at the time, and it just petered out. It
just went nowhere. They ultimately decided not to I think
(32:09):
they kind of concluded it was actually way better press
to just leave it as is, and that they risk
getting terrible press for suing the Village People for singing
how great YMCA is. So yeah, they just left it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
I think in the movie version, it will be like
the head of the YMCA is on the phone to
the record company, and right before he goes to tell
them that he wants to cease and desist letter drawn up,
some kid, you know, some low level worker bust in
the room and goes boss and he comes up with
the phone memberships are through the roof, and then it
(32:44):
just you know, never mind, this is all good.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, he's a wrong number.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
So before we break, we'll talk quickly about the fact
that you cannot go to a baseball game anymore. Without
hearing YMCA like a Major League Baseball game, especially the young,
especially the Yankees that all started at spring training in Tampa.
I'm not sure if the Yankees are still there, but
that was their home at least at the time, and
(33:09):
in nineteen ninety six. This did not happen in the seventies.
It was in the mid nineties. Top of the fifth inning,
the grounds crew came out to take care of the
infield like they always do midway through the game, and
they broke into the YMCA, you know, spelling out those
letters as the song played, and everybody thought it was
(33:29):
the best thing ever. And that's how it was born.
It was transferred to the new Yankee Stadium, and then
it just became a thing.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah. You can hear Larry David as Steinbrenner ordering them
to take their YMCA dancers in the grounds crew. Yeah,
but yeah, I saw a video of it from a
Yankees game and they're just out there doing like the
raking like normal, and then YMCA's playing like it's just
playing as a song for the crowd, and then all
of a sudden, when it gets to the YMCA, they
(33:57):
just drop their rakes and start dancing and then when
that's done, they pick up their res and go back
to work. It's pretty great, did it You want to
take that break you promised, Let's do it. Okay, Well
we'll be right back, okay, Chuck. So we've hit Macho Man, Ymca,
(34:35):
I think it's time for in the Navy, which was
their last big hit, their last big single. It came
out in nineteen seventy nine. That was on the album Cruising,
which I guess YMCA.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Was as well, right, Yeah, that was the one that
I had.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
So that was the third album, second album in nineteen
seventy eight. These guys released two albums in one year.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I thought it was all three? Was it just two two?
Speaker 2 (34:57):
No, the first one was nineteen seventy seven Macho Man,
and Cruising came out in nineteen seventy eight, and then
there was whatever the third of Yeah, I guess it
was three. There was no there's three singles, four albums,
so I'm missing an album. But that album came out
in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
The fourth one, Yeah, that last album was Go West.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yes, which, by the way, I always thought that was
a pet Shop Boys song because it was on their
album Vary from the nineties, and I was listening to
Village People and came across that and was like, Oh,
I've never realized it was a Village People's song.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Okay, I actually had this album too, now that I'm
seeing the cover, because it's basically them on a well
clearly a green screen, but like a tropical island setting,
and that had In the Navy on it. So I
think I'm just getting those confused because I had both records.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Sure, but can we read a little bit of in
the Navy?
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yes, all right, here we go, Everybody in the Navy
by Village People.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Where you can find.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Pleasure, search the world for treasure, learn science technology where
you can begin to make your dreams all come true.
On the land or on the sea, where you can
learn to fly, play in sports and skin dive, study oceanography,
sign up for the big band, or sit in the
grandstand where your team and others meet. In the Navy
(36:21):
And that's when it starts that great chorus.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
And then weirdly, at the end of the song, they're
singing like the in the Navy part over and over again,
and Victor Willis is, I guess, singing about how he
doesn't want to join the navy, and at one point
he goes, but I'm afraid of the water. Yeah, And
it's hilarious. It's like purposely funny. And that really kind
(36:45):
of to me captures like what the village people were doing,
Like they were balancing like really good disco music with
high camp, right. I mean, these guys were dressed up
as just macho stereotypes with like like genuinely funny lyrics sometimes,
and I think that really kind of captured it for me.
I saw that in that New Music Express article. The
(37:06):
author said that they were experts at balancing what is
deft and what is daft?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Can I read verse two?
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah? Oh yeah, sorry, I didn't know you were.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Oh no, that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I think it works better to split it up to
people can just fully absorb if you'd like adventure. Don't
you wait to enter the recruiting office fast. Don't you hesitate.
There is no need to wait. They're signing up new
seamen fast. Maybe you're too young to join up today,
but don't you worry about a thing, for I'm sure
there will be always a good navy protecting the land
(37:39):
and sea. And there's another line in the chorus about
you know you can protect the motherland like it is
a legit Navy recruitment song. Yeah, so much so that
the Navy said, you know what, we'd like to actually
use this for recruitment, and in exchange, we will let
you film your music video aboard word like, we'll completely
(38:01):
help you out and not charge you money.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
We'll give you all the.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Navy semen that you want as background actors and stuff,
and you can shoot it above aboard our active ship,
the USS Reasoner. And that's what they did. They said,
all right, great, we got a lot of production value here.
You can use it as an official recruitment song.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah. I mean that's just amazing that, Like, that's just crazy,
but that's what happened. Apparently the Navy, any ship that
had a closed circuit TV system got that video and
I guess would play it over and over again, which
I mean, luckily, it's a good song and it's an
interesting video.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I was at a Dunkin Donuts the other day and
they had the Super Bowl Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez commercial
on loop. Oh boy, and everyone inside we're completely out
of their minds. It was an awful, awful scene, terrible
place to.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Be Yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So what I'm saying is I don't think that would
have happened on board those Navy ships because it was
a pretty good song.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, and I think their they're actual recruitment did like increase,
supposedly while the song was out and being used. I
think the American military was maybe like my parents. They
weren't like, wait a minute, what we what song are
we using and by what band as active recruitment for
our US military?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Right?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
But you know, I'm glad they were daft enough to
not recognize that.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I guess they're right. Well, the other thing about it
is I didn't see a single kind of gay innuendo
lyric in that song. It was more just a gay
group singing about being in the navy, which you know,
coded for There are plenty of like gay dudes in
the Navy secretly at the time, and I'm sure still are,
but I'm sure it's much less secret. So I think
(39:49):
that's more what it was than it being like a
gay song. Sure, it was, like you said, a straight up,
like like promotional song for the Navy.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, it doesn't say in the Navy you can maybe
meet your next husband.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Right right, exactly? That got cut.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, got cut.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So that was, like we said, the last big hit.
It was in nineteen seventy nine. And I alluded earlier.
I think I just said out right, didn't even allude
to it. They had a twenty two month run just
Burned White Phosphorus Hot. During those twenty two months, I
saw that both Madonna and Michael Jackson opened for them
while they were on tour during this time. My guess
(40:29):
would be nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Wow, Michael Jackson surprises me.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, because he was already like famous from the Jackson Five.
But I mean that goes to show you just how
crazy huge the Village people were for a time.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, and this is.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Before Michael Jackson himself was like just the world's biggest star. Yeah,
but yeah, it still says quite a bit. And they
kept it going, they kept trying to go with it,
and they released a movie, as you do said earlier,
it's called Can't Stop the Music, Very bad. I can't
even make it through the trailer. No, it's it's well
(41:07):
known as like one of the worst movies of all time,
just a disco fluffball that keeps hitting you in the
head over and over again. Steve Gutenberg is the star. Yeah.
The whole thing is kind of like a fictitious or
fictionalized version of the story of how the Village People
came to be. So he plays an americanized, fictionalized version
(41:31):
of Jacques Morelli. His name is Jack Morrell in it,
and again he roller skates everywhere and finally puts together
this group that became the Village People. And it was
so bad that apparently it inspired the Razzie Awards.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Right as the story goes, it was helped create the Razzies,
and the inaugural Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay winner in
nineteen eighty was a modest hit, though I do Australia.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I think that's where they made just the tiny amount
of money that they made back, that's where they made it.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Back, I guess.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
So I would love to hear from some Aussies of
a certain age that could testify as to whether or not.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
This is true.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I would love to hear that as well.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, so we'll find out.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, I think the guy, one of the guys who
created the Razzies the Golden Raspberry Awards, which for those
of you who don't know, it's like for the worst
movies of the year. They hand these out. He went
and saw a ninety nine cent double feature of Can't
Stop the Music in Xana Do and wanted his money back.
That's how bad he thought that movie with Xanadu was great.
(42:41):
He clearly was not talking about Xana Do. He must
have just completely been focused on Can't Stop the Music.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
When was the last time he saw Xana Do?
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Not that long ago? Okay, I love it. It's also
got a great soundtrack too.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It does.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
I mean, this was the time when they were making
these big sort of movie musical like pop pop movie
pop music movies.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, it was a strange.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Time, and everyone was on roller skates.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Yeah, you know, none of them had like were the best,
like plotted, you know, and they were just were what
they were, which was can we get someone into the
movie theater that likes this music?
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, and roller skates.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
After Disco Village, people did try their hand at new Wave,
because that's.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
What came next. It did not work out.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Victor Willis left the band in nineteen seventy nine, and
this is where the story gets you know, sad. I
guess sad in one way or just a little confusing
because Victor Willis, who a lot of people say, like,
Victor Willis was Village People as the leader, as the
original singer and songwriter, but he left had many many
run ins with the law, awful drug problems, many warrants
(43:54):
out and you know for like illegal firearms and cocaine
possession and stuff like this kind of over and over
and over, kept getting second chances from sympathetic judges that
were like, hey, listen, you know you got a lot
to offer the world, like can you get yourself clean?
In the meantime, Ray Simpson Sugar Ray Simpson took over
his lead singer and like for thirty years and all
(44:17):
new Village People save Phelipe Rose and Alex Briley as
the Indian and Gi toured and played sold out cruise
ships and county fairs like all over the country in
world for like thirty years without Victor Willis, they would do.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Two hundred and eighty shows a year.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yeah, I mean very successful touring like nostalgia touring group,
but without Victor Willis.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, And Victor Willis was not very happy about that.
So he'd been again. You said, he had huge, huge
self inflicted problems and run ins with the law. He
was on an episode of America's Most Wanted once because
he kept skipping bail. I know he At the same time,
he definitely had and taken advantage of I can't stop
the music productions. Early on, he'd only gotten less than
(45:05):
two grand in album even back in nineteen seventy eight.
That wasn't that much money for something that was just
super megahits. He got one and a half percent of
Village People royalties for the songs that he co wrote,
co wrote, like he wrote significant portions of these songs,
and like you said, to a lot of people, he
was the village People. So there was a point in
(45:26):
time where the Village People were playing the San Mateo
County Fair and a mile away, Victor Willis was in
the San Mateo County Jail. Probably could hear at least
a little bit of it from miss Jail's cell, right,
So it was pretty bad. And apparently the lowest point
came in two thousand and eight when they got a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah, I look this up and apparently they've edited out anything,
because I watched sort of the whole ceremony. But apparently
Willis was in the crowd in that copy uniform, like
yelling and screaming and talking about how it was fake
and caused a disruption. So I don't know if they
just got him out of there and did the ceremony,
or if they edited the thing out. But it is
(46:10):
not in the YouTube video. But what is evident when
you're watching that YouTube video, no disrespect to these guys,
but those aren't the village people. No, when you watch
those guys are like, that's not those aren't the guys.
You know, there's not the guys I drew in crayon.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
It's kind of like if you see a guy dressed
like the Incredible Hulk, you're like, that's not the Hulk.
He represents the spirit of the Hulk, and in the
same way, these people represented the spirit of the village people.
They were there to accept the award in honor of
the village people. I hope they realized that that's what
they were doing.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
They didn't even mention Willis, so like they were listing
off names and no one said Victor Willis's name.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, there were a lot of sour grapes. Yeah, I think,
and so Willis actually took can't stop productions to court,
and in a really rare and usual turn, he he
won big time. As a matter of fact, they went
from giving him one point five percent of royalties to
fifty percent totally. I didn't see did he get back royalties.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
I don't know that. I was really curious about.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
That because he just became probably something close to a
billionaire overnight if they did, and then he this, this
is this to me where I was like, I wish
this hadn't happened. They also gave him full control over
the Village People like name and likeness, the name of
the band, the whole intellectual property that was the Village People.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
You feel bad for the other guys, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
That's so wrong. They kept the thing going for decades.
And what did he do.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Well?
Speaker 1 (47:42):
I mean, he started playing shows as Village People with
you know, an entirely set of new guys behind him.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
He fired them. He fired some of the original Village People,
like you said, I think it was Alex Bridley and
Llebe Rose and Ray. He was not the original, but
he came in so closely after Victor Willis did. He was,
for all intents and purposes, an original, but he was the.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Cop what are you gonna just say, all right now,
put on the some the GI uniform.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Sure, and now Alex probably would be like, I'm the GI.
It probably would have gone back and forth for a
little while. He could have accommodated them. Instead, he was like,
you guys are out, and I don't know that they
had anything to do with the decision to, you know,
mess over Victor Willis, and yet he took his angst
and anger out on them, and I thought that that
was wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, I don't know enough of the story to judge
it because I don't know how they treated him when
he was down and out, So.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Well, that's the best way to judge his story.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I'm gonna just reserve my judgment on this one. I
do think it's a shame that they couldn't get the
original group back together for at least a show, because
when I saw the the what I considered the not
real village people performing online, was like, this isn't right.
And then when I saw Victor Willis and those guys
he got together, I was like, well this isn't right either, right.
(49:02):
You know, Yes, I wanted I wanted all I wanted
a gang back together. I wanted all my gay friends
that I gazed upon and drew and crayon. I wanted
them to reunite.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
I'm with you, you you wouldn't be able to. Unfortunately,
Glenn Hughes died of lung cancer and I think two
thousand or something like that.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah, is he the I believe he's the only one
that passed.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Right, I believe so. But both I think on Reebololo
and Jacques Morelli are both dead. I think Jacques died
of AIDS sadly, and on Riebololo died in like the
late two thousand and tens. I think, I'm not sure what,
but yeah, So there are some village people out there still.
(49:45):
You can go see him touring. You can see the
Victor Willis version at the San Diego County Fair on
July fourth, and if you happen to be in Santiago,
Chile or Bogatah, Columbia, you can see them in May.
All right, Okay, so that's your assignment stuff. You should know, Army.
Go out and see the village people and let us
know what you think. In the meantime, you can sit
(50:09):
there and listen to listener mail.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Oh interesting, I was just making I was trying to
verify really quickly if they were all alive, because that's important.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Sure, and I just saw here that and this is
real time fact, everybody. Alex Briley supposedly that his brother
was thought to be the falling man from the nine
to eleven building.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
No way, wow, nos man, that took a very strange
turn here, that.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Did take And I believe that you're right. I believe that.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I believe that Glenn Hughes is the only one who's
passed away. So the rest of the guys are still
trying to trying to do stuff, is it. Randy Jones,
He's He released a song in twenty seventeen that reached
number forty two on the Billboard Dance Club Song Charts,
So that's not too bad. Randy Jones was the cowboy, Yeah, cowboy.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
So you never answered which one did you identify with
the most, or did you identify with them as a group.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
I don't know, Like identify as a is a weird
word because I didn't like identify as and like I wanted,
I think I'm one of those guys. But I think
I thought that the biker was the coolest because like
that leather man that mustache and that chopper, Like, I
thought that was just the.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Dig those chains.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, so I think definitely the biker, you know. I
mean that's the one who I drew with a little
round boobies.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I always saw them pretty much collectively, but if any
of them stood out to me, it was probably the
construction worker.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yeah, you're always a blue collar kind of guy.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
I think it was this sirp a line jean jacket
that always stood out to me. And then the mirror aviators.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Those Toledo roots. Oh yeah, the aviators.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Right, Okay, now everybody, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I think, well, I don't have a listener because I
thought we could just talk a little bit about our
upcoming live shows. Oh yeah, let's do that as just
sort of an in show announcement because we are hitting
the road. This is a very fun show that you
put together, and we've been getting emails from parents like, hey,
(52:16):
can my kids come? Kids are always welcome at our shows. Sure,
it's kind of a well it's a kid friendly topic
in that it's not, you know, not kid friendly. But
it's not about Barney the Dinosaur, you know.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
It's not terrifying, though, it's pretty funny. If you're cool
with your kids. Here in the S word occasionally you're fine.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, yeah, we have a cussword or two here and there,
but it's not too bad. But we were going to
be We're going to be in Medford, mass On May
twenty ninth, then d C on the thirtieth, and New
York on the thirty first. Then this summer we're going
to hit the road in August on the seventh, eighth,
the ninth to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis for the first time.
(52:56):
Very nice, and then we're going to wind it out
in September on the fifth and seventh than Durham, North Carolina,
and here in Atlanta. Tickets are moving pretty good in
most cities, but we really want to make sure this
first leg gets close to sold out.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, for sure, we would love that. If you would
like to come see us, we would love that too.
And you can get all the info you need. You
can get links to ticket sites and all that kind
of stuff by going to our website stuff you should
know dot Com, clicking on the tour button, or you
can also go to our link tree, link Tree slash
sysk Live and it'll give you all the stuff you
(53:32):
need to come see us, because again, we would love that, right, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
It's a good time.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah yeah. And in the meantime, if you want to
get in touch with this v email, you can send
it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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