March 31, 2026 • 28 mins
A special look at the new artists we’re covering in 2026, along with a peek back at how we got started, where we’re going, and some listener favorites through the years.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Wait any way,
what's happening here? What happened to the melotron? What are
we doing? Why is this sounding different? Well, listen, your
ears are not playing games with you. We are doing
things a little different today. We're bringing you a special
(00:22):
episode a Disgraceland, a sneak peek behind the scenes, a
preview of our upcoming season of episodes for you guys,
the faithful Disgraceland listener, the disco, and a primer on
all things Disgraceland. What this show is, what exactly a
melotron is? For our new listeners, which eight years into
this we are grateful to still be welcoming. So, as
(00:46):
you know this show, Disgraceland, it may have true crime
at its core, but it's also about great music, unlike
that music I've played for you at the top of
the show. That wasn't great music that way, A preset
loop from my melotron called Jerry Lee's Dead Wife MK two.
I played you that loop because I can't afford the
(01:08):
rights to God's Plan by Drake. And why would I
play you that specific slice of North of the Border cheese?
Could I afford it because that was the number one
song in America on February thirteenth, twenty eighteen, and that
was the day that we released the very first episode
of this podcast, the disgrace Land Podcast, an event that
(01:30):
introduced a new concept to the podcasting game, The Chocolate
and the Peanut Butter, the Fire and the Rain, Snoop
and Martha Martin and Lewis Lewis and Clark Kent, State
and state of the Art, State of Mind, State of Grace, Disgrace,
Disgrace Land. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about the
now unfuck withable combo of music and true crime. Because
(01:52):
I'm Jake Brennan, and this, if you haven't been able
to tell, is a special episode of Disgraceland. Okay, I'm
(02:21):
as inspired as I've ever been creatively, guys. And it's
because of the new episodes that we have coming up
in the next few weeks, actually throughout the year, but
in the next few weeks, especially just because I love
the musicians we're covering, these iconic, mythical, legendary artists. That's
not the only reason. It's also because these are some
(02:41):
of the more true crime stories that we've uncracked. The
first two. Specifically, I'm talking about new Disgraceland episodes on
Patti Smith and Grace Jones, and then also a couple
more episodes. One that delves into the insane ascent into superstardom,
followed by an acute descent into addiction with depeche Mode,
(03:02):
followed up by a dive into what really happened the
night Taylor Hawkins died and a look into who Dave
Groll really is. Dudes had a pretty shit couple of years,
that whole baby Mama thing on top of the loss
of Taylor. We get into that story in our Foo
Fighters episode that'll be here soon as well. So to
the discos. You know there will be revealing facts in
(03:23):
these stories, revelatory tidbits unearthed from our research, presented with
edge of your seat storytelling that you just can't get
anywhere else, and all wrapped up in our award winning
sound design and scoring per usual for the new listeners.
If any of this sounds over the top, I assure
you that it's not until it is. Disgrace slams music
and true crime brand of storytelling isn't sensational, but it
(03:46):
is dramatic. Af Everything is based on deep research and
is properly sourced, often from first hand accounts detailed in
the autobiographies of these artists, but that only accounts for
part of the drama. The drama mostly comes from the
true crime aspect of these stories. I've been saying this
(04:06):
for years. Most musicians, most rock stars, hip hop stars,
country artists, so old jazz hads, whatever, punk rock dudes.
Doesn't matter what genre or from what scene they come
or came. Most musicians they're more like feral, narcissistic animals
than they are functioning members of society. And this is
exactly what makes them so damn interesting. I know, because
(04:28):
it used to be one of them, But I'm not anymore.
I'm just a middle aged dad who reads a ton
and hangs out with his wife and kids. But back
to my point, musicians they're not like us. They've seen
and done things we never will, and they've had things
happen to them that, thankfully will never happen to us.
What things you ask crimes true crime? When we look
(04:49):
at the biographies of these rock stars through the lens
of true crime, which is all we do here, through
the lens of both the crimes they've committed and the
crime that have happened to them. Then we get a
peek into just how dramatic and bad shit crazy these
artists their lives are, and it makes for wild storytelling,
(05:11):
storytelling about rock stars with crimes involving not just murder,
but cannibalism, the occult drug trafficking and everything else you
can imagine. But back to the research. Deep research has
always been at the core of disgrace Land, and the
result is often not just bananas stories like the story
of big Lyrich, the hip hop star who ate his roommate,
(05:33):
or revealing facts like the UK crime wave that the
Beastie Boys inadvertently inspired. But a lot of times the
result is truths, hidden truths that are uncovered, Truths that
disrupt the popular narratives about our favorite artists that we've
been forced to accept, but that have been wrong all along.
Michael Hutchins from Inexcess did not die from auto erotic
(05:55):
asphyxiation like we were told. Charles Manson didn't kill because
he was obsessed with the Beatles. In fact, the entire
Helter Skelter true crime saga is mostly BS and Mama
Cass Elliot didn't die from choking on a ham sandwich.
Let's chill on the historical fact shaming. Okay, this age
we're in, this age of artificial intelligence, this torrent of information,
(06:19):
this information war that's going on right now. Part of
what we do here is we try to get to
the truth of the story, or at least to the
most interesting version of the story. And I love it.
I've loved it since the beginning. I've been doing this
for eight years now, and these next stories we got
coming up have me as excited as anything that we've
(06:41):
done today. These stories aren't just true crime there of course,
Like I just said, they're filled with amazing facts that
Disgraceland has come to be known for. Discoes know these facts,
the ones I mentioned earlier about Michael Hutchins and Charles
Manson and Cass Elliott and a bunch of others, and
new listeners every day are learning these facts as well,
because this is the podcast for the musically obsessed and
(07:03):
the true crime heads, the outsiders, the independent thinkers, the
ones who know that the best history is the history
they try to bury, the stories they didn't want told,
and the kind that you're gonna end up telling someone else.
All Right, listen, I'm gonna take a quick break and
i'll be back in a flash with more on our
upcoming Patti Smith episode, a reveal of some of the
other artists that we're going to be covering in twenty
(07:23):
twenty six, and I'll look back into some of the
best stories from our archive of over two hundred and
fifty episodes on different musicians, as well as a little
bit of history from Disgraceland, how we got our start,
how we all came together, and where we're taking this
in the future. I'll be back in a flash. Okay.
(07:55):
So sometime back around twenty seventeen, I was working on
an ad agent. See if you can believe that. As
a music supervisor, basically you know the music that you
hear in commercials, Well, there are people who source and
arrange for that music to be in those commercials. And
I was one of those dudes for a minute sort of.
I say sort of because I was really bad at
(08:16):
my job and I knew that I was going to
get fired and I was thinking about what I was
going to do for work to support my family. This
is a time when I had gotten, like a lot
of people super into podcasts. I was really into what
was sort of the first generation of elevated storytelling in podcasting,
shows like Crimetown and serial s Town, my favorite Murder.
(08:37):
These shows had just launched and I was obsessed. So
I thought I'd make a podcast, and by doing so,
I'd demonstrate that I could work with audio, I could
work in audio, and then maybe someone would hire me
in some capacity to work for them, like maybe I
get a gig making podcasts for some cool company or something.
This thinking happened because at the time I am, when
(09:00):
I knew that I was going to get fired and
I was about to need a job. I asked my
wife and I asked my friend Adam the same question.
If you could hire me to do one job for you,
what would it be, And they both gave me the
same answer. They both said a different version of I'd
pay you to tell me stories. Now, this came as
a surprise because after years of being in bands and
(09:23):
driving around the country in shitty vans with my bandmates
who were telling me the opposite, telling me that I
needed to go get myself kidnapped so that I'd have
some new stories to tell. You know, I was. I
was kind of pumped to learn that there were actually
people interested in what I had to say, even if
it was just my wife and one of my best friends.
And the point is, I got this validation, this sort
(09:43):
of vote of confidence, right as I was becoming a
podcast listener. So naturally I decided to start my own podcast,
and I wanted to start a podcast that I wanted
to listen to, a music podcast. I'd just become a
dad couple of years before this, and I was reading
Leg's McNeil in Gillian McCain's excellent book Please Kill Me,
(10:07):
which is an oral history about the origins of punk rock.
If you haven't read it, you have to read it.
It's great. It's got allways great stories about lou read Aypop,
the Ramones, and I remember thinking, again, this is right
after becoming a dad. You become a dad, become a parent.
I don't know what it's like from moms, but for me,
just a lot of shit changes, prospective shifts. I remember thinking, Wow,
(10:29):
I love the music these people make and I always
have and I always will. But I wouldn't let these
dudes in the same room with my children. That was
an actual thought that I had. I may have been
sleep deprived at the time, but I did have it.
And then I thought about all the music history that
I'd read throughout my life and the stories that I
like to retell, that I like to recount, and they
(10:51):
were always the stories that were most revealing, sure, but
they were the stories that involved crimes that these rock
stars either comemitted or got caught up in. And this
is because as a kid, I was absolutely captivated, owned
actually by the book Helter Skelter, and then about a
year later, I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which,
(11:12):
aside from the Old Testament, is like the first true
crime book. And more on the Old Testament comment in
the Patti Smith episode, You'll know what I'm talking about,
but I digress. True crime books owned me in high school,
and then later as a young adult the historical fiction
of James Elroy that got its claws into me as well.
So I thought, well, I want to make a music
podcast that I want to listen to. I want to
hear the stories from music history that aren't surface level,
(11:37):
that aren't on the rock stars Wikipedia pages, the stories
that oftentimes aren't part of the musician's chosen narrative, the
stories that didn't make it into the cheesy biopics. And
I want these stories told to me like my favorite
directors tell stories with their own point of view and
with dramatic edge of your seat, in your face action
(11:59):
and gripping theater of the mind. All these ideas came
to me and gave me my building blocks for what
this show would become and what it has become. And
I knew that the first story I had to tell
was the story about Jerry Lee Lewis, the story of
the rock and roll pioneer, the one they literally nicknamed
the killer, and how he allegedly got away with murdering
his wife. Now, Jerry le Lewis lived about half an
(12:20):
hour from Elvis Presley's Graceland, But what did they call
Jerry Lee's home? Disgraceland. My first podcast episode gave me
the title of this show. Here's a clip. The first
thing they noticed was the absence of mister Lewis. The
second thing they noticed was how the body of missus
Lewis was situated or placed neatly on a fully made
(12:44):
bed in a guest room, not in her bedroom with
her newlywed husband in a guest room. The EMTs checked
for vitals while Lottie Jackson, Jerry Lee's caretaker of more
than ten years, knocked on his bedroom. Within seconds the
killer emerged. The EMTs quickly noticed the bright red scratches
(13:07):
on the back of jerry Lee's hand, you know, the
kind the kind of looked like scratches your cat would make,
except Jerry Lee didn't own a cat. Blood was also
visible on Jerry Lee's robe and on his slippers. There
was a pile of bloody clothes in the bathroom, a
rivulet of blood on a door, more blood on the carpet.
(13:28):
Broken glass was scattered across the floor Throughout the house.
There was blood on Sean's dead hand, in her hair,
on her clothes and on a bra that was in
another room, Dirt all over her body, bruises on her arms,
on her hip, her fingernails were broken with something that
(13:49):
looked a lot like blood underneath them. All of this
physical evidence on and around a woman lying dead on
top of a neat and made bed that wasn't hers,
in a guest room in her own home, down the
hall from where her newlywed husband slept alone. Stranger than that,
(14:09):
the evidence wouldn't even be reported until after the grand
jury convened. Is it any wonder that they found no
indication of foul play? All right, guys, if you not
disgrace sand if you're one of our longtime listeners, you
know that we've come a long way from that episode
episode one, and I know many of you, most of
you have been here since episode one, and I thank you.
(14:31):
I am so grateful to you guys for your commitment
to this show. It means more than I can possibly express.
And I'm stoked for you to hear where we're taking this.
I'm stoked for the new listeners that are coming into
the show every week. I see you, I see your dms,
I get your emails, the comments on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts.
(14:53):
I want you guys to know that was episode one. Okay.
Our next episode on Patti Smith will be episode number
two hundred and seventy, two hundred and seventy, And the
Patty episode is not about Patti Smith murdering anyone like
that Jerry Lee Lewis episode allegedly, But it's super true
(15:15):
crimey more on that than the other artists that were
covering coming up in the coming months. Right here after
this break in Disgraceland. We'll be right back after this.
We're We're, We're okay. Patty Smith is about as beloved
an artists as you can find, mainly because well, her
(15:37):
music is incredible and she's just a great all around artist,
a multi hyphen artist. She's a writer, a musician, obviously
a poet. She's also a survivor. Now, unlike so many
of the artists that Patti Smith admired, some of them,
like William S Burrows, themselves criminals. Unlike those artists she admired,
(15:58):
and unlike many of the artists that she came up with,
Patti Smith survived, and I argue in this new episode
on Patty that True Crime is the reason that Patti
Smith survived. More specifically, what Pattie Smith learned from True Crime.
It taught her how to avoid being a victim of
a crime, how to avoid being a rock and roll casualty.
(16:20):
Everything from the crime and crime and death that she
was exposed to when she was living at the Chelsea
Hotel with Robert Maplethorpe, to her time in New York
in the late seventies during the forty four Caliber Son
of Sam killings, to her mother's fascination with the first
true crime of the century, the kidnapping and the Limburg Baby.
All that plus Patty getting up close and personal with
(16:41):
seventies New York street hustling pimps, heroin, the bloodstained apartment
walls and chalk outlined sidewalks that she was forced to
live in and around all of it. All of this
true crime taught the quote unquote godmother of punk how
to not become a victim and how to survive, and
to also develop some pretty surprising taste in television. Okay,
(17:02):
this is the most revealing thing to me, serial crime fiction.
Patti Smith, the high Priestess of Art Binging, CSI and
Law and Order. I did not see that coming. Guys.
She's just like us, just like us, Patti Smith. Anyways,
that Patty Smith episode. I'm beyond excited for you to
hear this. It's coming next week. I promise you. You may
know the Patti Smith story, but you're not gonna you
(17:24):
don't know this story. You're not gonna hear it like this. Okay. Now,
before that Patty Smith episode, we're gonna have a bonus
after party episode that's coming up on Thursday. Per usual,
typically for new listeners, Disgrace and releases new stories every Tuesday.
These are the artists centered music and true crimes, scripted
and sound designed episodes that I've been talking about, each
on a different artist and the crime or crimes that
(17:45):
they've been involved with. It being Tuesday when the episode
that you're listening to right now is released. Normally you'd
get a fully scripted, sound designed episode here on an artist,
but we do trailers a couple times a year, and
rather than just dropping a trailer into the feed that
was like three or four minutes long that just had
clips from shows, I figured I'd put a little more
(18:06):
meat on the bone, give a little bit more of
an explanation in here, spend some time discussing, you know,
where Disgrace line's at, where it's been. We blew by
two hundred episodes. We didn't even mention it two hundred
and fifty episodes as well. We're at two hundred and seventy,
so I just felt like it was time. You know,
we're we're gonna wake up in a couple months, we're
gonna be at three hundred episodes, So I just figured
(18:26):
it was time to kind of reset as we share
what's coming up with the discos who have been listening
forever and give the lay of the land to the
new listeners who have come in over the past few months, weeks, days, whatever. Okay,
So that's what we're doing here. So that's the Patti
Smith episode coming up next week. There will be a
bonus after party episode before that, released on Thursday, per usual,
(18:48):
So typically for new listeners here, Disgraceland releases news stories
every Tuesday. These are our artists centered music and true crimes,
scripted and sound designed episodes that I've been talking about.
Now on Thursdays we release bonus chat episodes. The bonus
after party episodes are where I take your calls and
respond to your texts and dms and emails, typically in
(19:11):
relation to questions and comments listeners have on that week's
full episode on the artist we cover. Historically, we've released
our archive episodes, our rewind episodes, episodes from our archive
of over two hundred and sixty stories from different artists
from every genre, Musicians you love, musicians you've never heard
(19:34):
of but are going to love their stories. These archive episodes,
historically we're released on Fridays. They are now going to
be released on Sundays. The reason we release archive episodes
once a week, like think of it like a rerun
on television, is because we get new listeners coming in
all the time, and emails and dms requesting artists, frankly artists,
(19:56):
and in some cases we covered years ago, so we
figured research these artists made sense to give new fans exposure,
you know. Plus, Disgraceland is its evergreen content. You can
re listen to these stories over and over again like
you can rewatch a movie or rebinge a TV series,
et cetera. Okay, now, on all those episodes, those two
(20:17):
hundred and seventy episodes, it's hard for me to pick
out a favorite. But if you're looking for some highlights
from the archive, some of the stories that disco's regularly
talk to me about are the recent Lady Gaga two
part episode that got a lot of heat in the
murder mystery that's at the origin of Gaga's story. The
Grateful Dead unwittingly turning American youth onto LSD after being
(20:40):
manipulated by the CIA that's always gotten a lot of action,
The story about the Norwegian black metal scene and the
church burnings, the murder the cannibalism. There's Sid and Nancy,
Kurt and Courtney, the Stones, the Beatles, Amy Winehouse, that's
another one that gets always gets a lot of a
lot of mentions, a lot of action. And I'm gonna
(21:01):
have my guy Matt here, who's producing this episode. Lay
a clip from the Amy whine House episode in right here.
The cameras there flash the intrusive shouts from members of
the paparazzi and their commands, do this, don't do that?
How's red? When was the last time he saw Blake?
When are we getting new music? To Amy, it was
(21:23):
white noise. As disruptive as it was, she could no
longer register it. She'd walk down the street and affect
her one thousand yard junkie stare. It wasn't difficult. She'd
done her time in the shooting gallery. Even if she
was off smack, and even if she was drunk, she
knew how to project the gaze. Amy would trick herself
into thinking about something else. Music, always music. She'd watch
(21:47):
her voice as if the sound of it was a
physical thing that could be tracked visually. Amy would take
a melody, sometimes one of her own. Something she was
working on. These days. It was usually a classic from
the Torch song Book, from one of the jazz grades
she admired and studied, Saravaon or Tony Bennett, and Amy
would imagine that melody passing over her lips and rising
(22:09):
up into the sky, floating freely without the limitations of
this cruel world. It would move with ease around the
clouds from left to right, slinking and sliding over the
imagined bars of some cosmic scale, a sonic manifestation of
the emotion welling up inside of a heavily mascarret vision board,
like one of those transparent acetate sheets the music school
(22:31):
teachers who place on old viewfoil projectors, layered over the
reality of the unwonted fame that complicated her world, the
same world she tottered through alternately on four inch heels
and in bloody ballerina shoes. All right, that's Amy Winehouse.
I should also probably mention that I was in Texas
(22:52):
a little bit ago, and I ran into a fan
and a musician actually, who brought up our ditty episodes,
which I love, Our Shawn Home episodes. We have two.
We have part one and a part two. But if
we're talking about disgrace slanmed hip hop episodes. The jay
Z episode is my favorite. December one, nineteen ninety nine, Midtown, Manhattan,
(23:19):
the Kitcat Club, the release party for the heavily anticipated
solo debut by q Tip from a tribe called Quest Sean,
Puffy Comb's Little Kim, Busted Rhymes, and the Little Cease
all on the scene. Jay Z rolled up late and
deep with his entourage behind him. At the bar Lance
on Rivera Jay spied him confronted him with a bootlegging allegation.
(23:42):
Fuck that, fuck you, I didn't bootleg shit. Who do
you think you even talked to? Fuck out of my face.
Young Jay headed back to the bar, blinders on rage,
pulsing darkness, closing in that feeling of being fucked with,
losing control, being disrespected, dissed into, dismissed, unacceptable in Jay's
(24:02):
previous occupation, when you were disrespected, and especially if someone
took money out of your pocket, you not only stood
your ground, you let that motherfucker know you were not
to be fucked with by any means necessary. It was survival,
and here, right now in the Kit Kat Club, that
familiar survival instinct kicked in and took over. Jay turned around,
(24:28):
beat the line straight back to a bottle in one hand,
knife in the other. He got up on him quick.
Witnesses say Jay spoke direct a la Michael Corleoni, defredo Lance,
you broke my heart, and then smashed the bottle over
UN's brother's head a quick distraction before plunging the five
inch blade into unsgut. Fuck you, bootleg boy. Let that
(24:48):
be a lesson. All right, that's Jay Z in Disgraceland,
and I'll be back right after this. I know, I know,
I've been saying I'm gonna do this for the last
two breaks, but I'll be back right after this with
a reveal of which new artists we are covering in
the coming months here in Disgraceland. All right, thanks for
(25:20):
hanging out with me today in this special episode of Disgraceland.
Hope you dug the peak behind the curtain, a little
Disgraceland history. But now to the matter at hand, our
new episodes, our new stories next week, our brand new
episode on Patti Smith, which you can tell by now
I'm very excited about. And then after that our new
(25:42):
episode on Grace Jones, who I was surprised to learn
that the iconic eighty Star was basically a walking true crime. Then,
as I mentioned before, Depeche Mode Foo Fighters, and after that,
finally our long requested episode on a real dirtbag, Ian
Watkins from Lost Prophets. The musicians are unspeakable, and if
(26:04):
I'm being honest, guys, I'm not really sure how I'm
even going to tell this story, but I'm up for
the challenge. Then we get into our episode on Stevie
ray Vaughan, followed by a story on Christina Grimy, the
singer from the Voice who became super famous, super quick
and was tragically murdered. After that, we've got episodes check
this out on the following Weezer Adele Blur, Slash Elastica,
(26:27):
George Jones, Fiona Apple, Wendy o' williams. Yes, this goes.
I listened to all the voicemails, read all the texts,
and the emails suggesting Wendy o williams it's coming later
this year. Episodes on t Rex, Alanis Morrissette, Nick Cave,
Maybe still haven't decided on Nick Cave, Slip Knott, Nico
from The Velvet Underground, Slayer, The Alman Brothers, and I
(26:51):
am working my way up and into assuming I can
conjure the appropriate amount of constitutional fortitude to cover Courtney
Love to kick off the fall stringth of Disgraceland episodes.
That's a lot of stories. Okay. I hope it was
worth your hang here, but as always, we need more stories. Okay.
I didn't even get into the twenty twenty six Fall
(27:12):
in Winter episodes aside from mentioning Courtney, So discoes, keep
the recommendations coming. Six one seven, nine oh six sixty
six three eight call and leave me a voicemail, send
me a text or an email at disgracelampod at gmail
dot com, and and and the dms are open at
disgracelam pod, on Instagram, TikTok, sometimes Facebook, and pretty much
never on X but you know, sometimes I guess. Let
(27:34):
me know which rock stars and musicians you want us
to cover in Disgraceland again. Six one seven, nine oh six,
six six three eight, disgracelampod at gmail dot com, at
disgraceland on the socials, and if you want a more
formal say into who we cover. If you want a
larger role in the selection process of artists, become a
(27:56):
Disgraceland All Access member on Patreon or Apple Podcasts, get
access to the Disco community chat, connect with other Disgrace
slamd listeners and music and true crime obsessives, and unlock
exclusive and ad free content by going to Disgrace lampod
dot com to sign up. All Right, Disco's so much gratitude.
I appreciate you, thanks for hanging out with me in
another episode, this one a special episode of Disgraceland. Can't
(28:20):
wait to talk to you all again in the after
party coming up next. And man, I'm so looking forward
to hear what you have to say about this Patti
Smith episode. All Right, it's been real, but now I
get to get out of here and go do some research.
Rock a little, He's an Land
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Wait any way,
what's happening here? What happened to the melotron? What are
we doing? Why is this sounding different? Well, listen, your
ears are not playing games with you. We are doing
things a little different today. We're bringing you a special
(00:22):
episode a Disgraceland, a sneak peek behind the scenes, a
preview of our upcoming season of episodes for you guys,
the faithful Disgraceland listener, the disco, and a primer on
all things Disgraceland. What this show is, what exactly a
melotron is? For our new listeners, which eight years into
this we are grateful to still be welcoming. So, as
(00:46):
you know this show, Disgraceland, it may have true crime
at its core, but it's also about great music, unlike
that music I've played for you at the top of
the show. That wasn't great music that way, A preset
loop from my melotron called Jerry Lee's Dead Wife MK two.
I played you that loop because I can't afford the
(01:08):
rights to God's Plan by Drake. And why would I
play you that specific slice of North of the Border cheese?
Could I afford it because that was the number one
song in America on February thirteenth, twenty eighteen, and that
was the day that we released the very first episode
of this podcast, the disgrace Land Podcast, an event that
(01:30):
introduced a new concept to the podcasting game, The Chocolate
and the Peanut Butter, the Fire and the Rain, Snoop
and Martha Martin and Lewis Lewis and Clark Kent, State
and state of the Art, State of Mind, State of Grace, Disgrace,
Disgrace Land. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about the
now unfuck withable combo of music and true crime. Because
(01:52):
I'm Jake Brennan, and this, if you haven't been able
to tell, is a special episode of Disgraceland. Okay, I'm
(02:21):
as inspired as I've ever been creatively, guys. And it's
because of the new episodes that we have coming up
in the next few weeks, actually throughout the year, but
in the next few weeks, especially just because I love
the musicians we're covering, these iconic, mythical, legendary artists. That's
not the only reason. It's also because these are some
(02:41):
of the more true crime stories that we've uncracked. The
first two. Specifically, I'm talking about new Disgraceland episodes on
Patti Smith and Grace Jones, and then also a couple
more episodes. One that delves into the insane ascent into superstardom,
followed by an acute descent into addiction with depeche Mode,
(03:02):
followed up by a dive into what really happened the
night Taylor Hawkins died and a look into who Dave
Groll really is. Dudes had a pretty shit couple of years,
that whole baby Mama thing on top of the loss
of Taylor. We get into that story in our Foo
Fighters episode that'll be here soon as well. So to
the discos. You know there will be revealing facts in
(03:23):
these stories, revelatory tidbits unearthed from our research, presented with
edge of your seat storytelling that you just can't get
anywhere else, and all wrapped up in our award winning
sound design and scoring per usual for the new listeners.
If any of this sounds over the top, I assure
you that it's not until it is. Disgrace slams music
and true crime brand of storytelling isn't sensational, but it
(03:46):
is dramatic. Af Everything is based on deep research and
is properly sourced, often from first hand accounts detailed in
the autobiographies of these artists, but that only accounts for
part of the drama. The drama mostly comes from the
true crime aspect of these stories. I've been saying this
(04:06):
for years. Most musicians, most rock stars, hip hop stars,
country artists, so old jazz hads, whatever, punk rock dudes.
Doesn't matter what genre or from what scene they come
or came. Most musicians they're more like feral, narcissistic animals
than they are functioning members of society. And this is
exactly what makes them so damn interesting. I know, because
(04:28):
it used to be one of them, But I'm not anymore.
I'm just a middle aged dad who reads a ton
and hangs out with his wife and kids. But back
to my point, musicians they're not like us. They've seen
and done things we never will, and they've had things
happen to them that, thankfully will never happen to us.
What things you ask crimes true crime? When we look
(04:49):
at the biographies of these rock stars through the lens
of true crime, which is all we do here, through
the lens of both the crimes they've committed and the
crime that have happened to them. Then we get a
peek into just how dramatic and bad shit crazy these
artists their lives are, and it makes for wild storytelling,
(05:11):
storytelling about rock stars with crimes involving not just murder,
but cannibalism, the occult drug trafficking and everything else you
can imagine. But back to the research. Deep research has
always been at the core of disgrace Land, and the
result is often not just bananas stories like the story
of big Lyrich, the hip hop star who ate his roommate,
(05:33):
or revealing facts like the UK crime wave that the
Beastie Boys inadvertently inspired. But a lot of times the
result is truths, hidden truths that are uncovered, Truths that
disrupt the popular narratives about our favorite artists that we've
been forced to accept, but that have been wrong all along.
Michael Hutchins from Inexcess did not die from auto erotic
(05:55):
asphyxiation like we were told. Charles Manson didn't kill because
he was obsessed with the Beatles. In fact, the entire
Helter Skelter true crime saga is mostly BS and Mama
Cass Elliot didn't die from choking on a ham sandwich.
Let's chill on the historical fact shaming. Okay, this age
we're in, this age of artificial intelligence, this torrent of information,
(06:19):
this information war that's going on right now. Part of
what we do here is we try to get to
the truth of the story, or at least to the
most interesting version of the story. And I love it.
I've loved it since the beginning. I've been doing this
for eight years now, and these next stories we got
coming up have me as excited as anything that we've
(06:41):
done today. These stories aren't just true crime there of course,
Like I just said, they're filled with amazing facts that
Disgraceland has come to be known for. Discoes know these facts,
the ones I mentioned earlier about Michael Hutchins and Charles
Manson and Cass Elliott and a bunch of others, and
new listeners every day are learning these facts as well,
because this is the podcast for the musically obsessed and
(07:03):
the true crime heads, the outsiders, the independent thinkers, the
ones who know that the best history is the history
they try to bury, the stories they didn't want told,
and the kind that you're gonna end up telling someone else.
All Right, listen, I'm gonna take a quick break and
i'll be back in a flash with more on our
upcoming Patti Smith episode, a reveal of some of the
other artists that we're going to be covering in twenty
(07:23):
twenty six, and I'll look back into some of the
best stories from our archive of over two hundred and
fifty episodes on different musicians, as well as a little
bit of history from Disgraceland, how we got our start,
how we all came together, and where we're taking this
in the future. I'll be back in a flash. Okay.
(07:55):
So sometime back around twenty seventeen, I was working on
an ad agent. See if you can believe that. As
a music supervisor, basically you know the music that you
hear in commercials, Well, there are people who source and
arrange for that music to be in those commercials. And
I was one of those dudes for a minute sort of.
I say sort of because I was really bad at
(08:16):
my job and I knew that I was going to
get fired and I was thinking about what I was
going to do for work to support my family. This
is a time when I had gotten, like a lot
of people super into podcasts. I was really into what
was sort of the first generation of elevated storytelling in podcasting,
shows like Crimetown and serial s Town, my favorite Murder.
(08:37):
These shows had just launched and I was obsessed. So
I thought I'd make a podcast, and by doing so,
I'd demonstrate that I could work with audio, I could
work in audio, and then maybe someone would hire me
in some capacity to work for them, like maybe I
get a gig making podcasts for some cool company or something.
This thinking happened because at the time I am, when
(09:00):
I knew that I was going to get fired and
I was about to need a job. I asked my
wife and I asked my friend Adam the same question.
If you could hire me to do one job for you,
what would it be, And they both gave me the
same answer. They both said a different version of I'd
pay you to tell me stories. Now, this came as
a surprise because after years of being in bands and
(09:23):
driving around the country in shitty vans with my bandmates
who were telling me the opposite, telling me that I
needed to go get myself kidnapped so that I'd have
some new stories to tell. You know, I was. I
was kind of pumped to learn that there were actually
people interested in what I had to say, even if
it was just my wife and one of my best friends.
And the point is, I got this validation, this sort
(09:43):
of vote of confidence, right as I was becoming a
podcast listener. So naturally I decided to start my own podcast,
and I wanted to start a podcast that I wanted
to listen to, a music podcast. I'd just become a
dad couple of years before this, and I was reading
Leg's McNeil in Gillian McCain's excellent book Please Kill Me,
(10:07):
which is an oral history about the origins of punk rock.
If you haven't read it, you have to read it.
It's great. It's got allways great stories about lou read Aypop,
the Ramones, and I remember thinking, again, this is right
after becoming a dad. You become a dad, become a parent.
I don't know what it's like from moms, but for me,
just a lot of shit changes, prospective shifts. I remember thinking, Wow,
(10:29):
I love the music these people make and I always
have and I always will. But I wouldn't let these
dudes in the same room with my children. That was
an actual thought that I had. I may have been
sleep deprived at the time, but I did have it.
And then I thought about all the music history that
I'd read throughout my life and the stories that I
like to retell, that I like to recount, and they
(10:51):
were always the stories that were most revealing, sure, but
they were the stories that involved crimes that these rock
stars either comemitted or got caught up in. And this
is because as a kid, I was absolutely captivated, owned
actually by the book Helter Skelter, and then about a
year later, I read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which,
(11:12):
aside from the Old Testament, is like the first true
crime book. And more on the Old Testament comment in
the Patti Smith episode, You'll know what I'm talking about,
but I digress. True crime books owned me in high school,
and then later as a young adult the historical fiction
of James Elroy that got its claws into me as well.
So I thought, well, I want to make a music
podcast that I want to listen to. I want to
hear the stories from music history that aren't surface level,
(11:37):
that aren't on the rock stars Wikipedia pages, the stories
that oftentimes aren't part of the musician's chosen narrative, the
stories that didn't make it into the cheesy biopics. And
I want these stories told to me like my favorite
directors tell stories with their own point of view and
with dramatic edge of your seat, in your face action
(11:59):
and gripping theater of the mind. All these ideas came
to me and gave me my building blocks for what
this show would become and what it has become. And
I knew that the first story I had to tell
was the story about Jerry Lee Lewis, the story of
the rock and roll pioneer, the one they literally nicknamed
the killer, and how he allegedly got away with murdering
his wife. Now, Jerry le Lewis lived about half an
(12:20):
hour from Elvis Presley's Graceland, But what did they call
Jerry Lee's home? Disgraceland. My first podcast episode gave me
the title of this show. Here's a clip. The first
thing they noticed was the absence of mister Lewis. The
second thing they noticed was how the body of missus
Lewis was situated or placed neatly on a fully made
(12:44):
bed in a guest room, not in her bedroom with
her newlywed husband in a guest room. The EMTs checked
for vitals while Lottie Jackson, Jerry Lee's caretaker of more
than ten years, knocked on his bedroom. Within seconds the
killer emerged. The EMTs quickly noticed the bright red scratches
(13:07):
on the back of jerry Lee's hand, you know, the
kind the kind of looked like scratches your cat would make,
except Jerry Lee didn't own a cat. Blood was also
visible on Jerry Lee's robe and on his slippers. There
was a pile of bloody clothes in the bathroom, a
rivulet of blood on a door, more blood on the carpet.
(13:28):
Broken glass was scattered across the floor Throughout the house.
There was blood on Sean's dead hand, in her hair,
on her clothes and on a bra that was in
another room, Dirt all over her body, bruises on her arms,
on her hip, her fingernails were broken with something that
(13:49):
looked a lot like blood underneath them. All of this
physical evidence on and around a woman lying dead on
top of a neat and made bed that wasn't hers,
in a guest room in her own home, down the
hall from where her newlywed husband slept alone. Stranger than that,
(14:09):
the evidence wouldn't even be reported until after the grand
jury convened. Is it any wonder that they found no
indication of foul play? All right, guys, if you not
disgrace sand if you're one of our longtime listeners, you
know that we've come a long way from that episode
episode one, and I know many of you, most of
you have been here since episode one, and I thank you.
(14:31):
I am so grateful to you guys for your commitment
to this show. It means more than I can possibly express.
And I'm stoked for you to hear where we're taking this.
I'm stoked for the new listeners that are coming into
the show every week. I see you, I see your dms,
I get your emails, the comments on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts.
(14:53):
I want you guys to know that was episode one. Okay.
Our next episode on Patti Smith will be episode number
two hundred and seventy, two hundred and seventy, And the
Patty episode is not about Patti Smith murdering anyone like
that Jerry Lee Lewis episode allegedly, But it's super true
(15:15):
crimey more on that than the other artists that were
covering coming up in the coming months. Right here after
this break in Disgraceland. We'll be right back after this.
We're We're, We're okay. Patty Smith is about as beloved
an artists as you can find, mainly because well, her
(15:37):
music is incredible and she's just a great all around artist,
a multi hyphen artist. She's a writer, a musician, obviously
a poet. She's also a survivor. Now, unlike so many
of the artists that Patti Smith admired, some of them,
like William S Burrows, themselves criminals. Unlike those artists she admired,
(15:58):
and unlike many of the artists that she came up with,
Patti Smith survived, and I argue in this new episode
on Patty that True Crime is the reason that Patti
Smith survived. More specifically, what Pattie Smith learned from True Crime.
It taught her how to avoid being a victim of
a crime, how to avoid being a rock and roll casualty.
(16:20):
Everything from the crime and crime and death that she
was exposed to when she was living at the Chelsea
Hotel with Robert Maplethorpe, to her time in New York
in the late seventies during the forty four Caliber Son
of Sam killings, to her mother's fascination with the first
true crime of the century, the kidnapping and the Limburg Baby.
All that plus Patty getting up close and personal with
(16:41):
seventies New York street hustling pimps, heroin, the bloodstained apartment
walls and chalk outlined sidewalks that she was forced to
live in and around all of it. All of this
true crime taught the quote unquote godmother of punk how
to not become a victim and how to survive, and
to also develop some pretty surprising taste in television. Okay,
(17:02):
this is the most revealing thing to me, serial crime fiction.
Patti Smith, the high Priestess of Art Binging, CSI and
Law and Order. I did not see that coming. Guys.
She's just like us, just like us, Patti Smith. Anyways,
that Patty Smith episode. I'm beyond excited for you to
hear this. It's coming next week. I promise you. You may
know the Patti Smith story, but you're not gonna you
(17:24):
don't know this story. You're not gonna hear it like this. Okay. Now,
before that Patty Smith episode, we're gonna have a bonus
after party episode that's coming up on Thursday. Per usual,
typically for new listeners, Disgrace and releases new stories every Tuesday.
These are the artists centered music and true crimes, scripted
and sound designed episodes that I've been talking about, each
on a different artist and the crime or crimes that
(17:45):
they've been involved with. It being Tuesday when the episode
that you're listening to right now is released. Normally you'd
get a fully scripted, sound designed episode here on an artist,
but we do trailers a couple times a year, and
rather than just dropping a trailer into the feed that
was like three or four minutes long that just had
clips from shows, I figured I'd put a little more
(18:06):
meat on the bone, give a little bit more of
an explanation in here, spend some time discussing, you know,
where Disgrace line's at, where it's been. We blew by
two hundred episodes. We didn't even mention it two hundred
and fifty episodes as well. We're at two hundred and seventy,
so I just felt like it was time. You know,
we're we're gonna wake up in a couple months, we're
gonna be at three hundred episodes, So I just figured
(18:26):
it was time to kind of reset as we share
what's coming up with the discos who have been listening
forever and give the lay of the land to the
new listeners who have come in over the past few months, weeks, days, whatever. Okay,
So that's what we're doing here. So that's the Patti
Smith episode coming up next week. There will be a
bonus after party episode before that, released on Thursday, per usual,
(18:48):
So typically for new listeners here, Disgraceland releases news stories
every Tuesday. These are our artists centered music and true crimes,
scripted and sound designed episodes that I've been talking about.
Now on Thursdays we release bonus chat episodes. The bonus
after party episodes are where I take your calls and
respond to your texts and dms and emails, typically in
(19:11):
relation to questions and comments listeners have on that week's
full episode on the artist we cover. Historically, we've released
our archive episodes, our rewind episodes, episodes from our archive
of over two hundred and sixty stories from different artists
from every genre, Musicians you love, musicians you've never heard
(19:34):
of but are going to love their stories. These archive episodes,
historically we're released on Fridays. They are now going to
be released on Sundays. The reason we release archive episodes
once a week, like think of it like a rerun
on television, is because we get new listeners coming in
all the time, and emails and dms requesting artists, frankly artists,
(19:56):
and in some cases we covered years ago, so we
figured research these artists made sense to give new fans exposure,
you know. Plus, Disgraceland is its evergreen content. You can
re listen to these stories over and over again like
you can rewatch a movie or rebinge a TV series,
et cetera. Okay, now, on all those episodes, those two
(20:17):
hundred and seventy episodes, it's hard for me to pick
out a favorite. But if you're looking for some highlights
from the archive, some of the stories that disco's regularly
talk to me about are the recent Lady Gaga two
part episode that got a lot of heat in the
murder mystery that's at the origin of Gaga's story. The
Grateful Dead unwittingly turning American youth onto LSD after being
(20:40):
manipulated by the CIA that's always gotten a lot of action,
The story about the Norwegian black metal scene and the
church burnings, the murder the cannibalism. There's Sid and Nancy,
Kurt and Courtney, the Stones, the Beatles, Amy Winehouse, that's
another one that gets always gets a lot of a
lot of mentions, a lot of action. And I'm gonna
(21:01):
have my guy Matt here, who's producing this episode. Lay
a clip from the Amy whine House episode in right here.
The cameras there flash the intrusive shouts from members of
the paparazzi and their commands, do this, don't do that?
How's red? When was the last time he saw Blake?
When are we getting new music? To Amy, it was
(21:23):
white noise. As disruptive as it was, she could no
longer register it. She'd walk down the street and affect
her one thousand yard junkie stare. It wasn't difficult. She'd
done her time in the shooting gallery. Even if she
was off smack, and even if she was drunk, she
knew how to project the gaze. Amy would trick herself
into thinking about something else. Music, always music. She'd watch
(21:47):
her voice as if the sound of it was a
physical thing that could be tracked visually. Amy would take
a melody, sometimes one of her own. Something she was
working on. These days. It was usually a classic from
the Torch song Book, from one of the jazz grades
she admired and studied, Saravaon or Tony Bennett, and Amy
would imagine that melody passing over her lips and rising
(22:09):
up into the sky, floating freely without the limitations of
this cruel world. It would move with ease around the
clouds from left to right, slinking and sliding over the
imagined bars of some cosmic scale, a sonic manifestation of
the emotion welling up inside of a heavily mascarret vision board,
like one of those transparent acetate sheets the music school
(22:31):
teachers who place on old viewfoil projectors, layered over the
reality of the unwonted fame that complicated her world, the
same world she tottered through alternately on four inch heels
and in bloody ballerina shoes. All right, that's Amy Winehouse.
I should also probably mention that I was in Texas
(22:52):
a little bit ago, and I ran into a fan
and a musician actually, who brought up our ditty episodes,
which I love, Our Shawn Home episodes. We have two.
We have part one and a part two. But if
we're talking about disgrace slanmed hip hop episodes. The jay
Z episode is my favorite. December one, nineteen ninety nine, Midtown, Manhattan,
(23:19):
the Kitcat Club, the release party for the heavily anticipated
solo debut by q Tip from a tribe called Quest Sean,
Puffy Comb's Little Kim, Busted Rhymes, and the Little Cease
all on the scene. Jay Z rolled up late and
deep with his entourage behind him. At the bar Lance
on Rivera Jay spied him confronted him with a bootlegging allegation.
(23:42):
Fuck that, fuck you, I didn't bootleg shit. Who do
you think you even talked to? Fuck out of my face.
Young Jay headed back to the bar, blinders on rage,
pulsing darkness, closing in that feeling of being fucked with,
losing control, being disrespected, dissed into, dismissed, unacceptable in Jay's
(24:02):
previous occupation, when you were disrespected, and especially if someone
took money out of your pocket, you not only stood
your ground, you let that motherfucker know you were not
to be fucked with by any means necessary. It was survival,
and here, right now in the Kit Kat Club, that
familiar survival instinct kicked in and took over. Jay turned around,
(24:28):
beat the line straight back to a bottle in one hand,
knife in the other. He got up on him quick.
Witnesses say Jay spoke direct a la Michael Corleoni, defredo Lance,
you broke my heart, and then smashed the bottle over
UN's brother's head a quick distraction before plunging the five
inch blade into unsgut. Fuck you, bootleg boy. Let that
(24:48):
be a lesson. All right, that's Jay Z in Disgraceland,
and I'll be back right after this. I know, I know,
I've been saying I'm gonna do this for the last
two breaks, but I'll be back right after this with
a reveal of which new artists we are covering in
the coming months here in Disgraceland. All right, thanks for
(25:20):
hanging out with me today in this special episode of Disgraceland.
Hope you dug the peak behind the curtain, a little
Disgraceland history. But now to the matter at hand, our
new episodes, our new stories next week, our brand new
episode on Patti Smith, which you can tell by now
I'm very excited about. And then after that our new
(25:42):
episode on Grace Jones, who I was surprised to learn
that the iconic eighty Star was basically a walking true crime. Then,
as I mentioned before, Depeche Mode Foo Fighters, and after that,
finally our long requested episode on a real dirtbag, Ian
Watkins from Lost Prophets. The musicians are unspeakable, and if
(26:04):
I'm being honest, guys, I'm not really sure how I'm
even going to tell this story, but I'm up for
the challenge. Then we get into our episode on Stevie
ray Vaughan, followed by a story on Christina Grimy, the
singer from the Voice who became super famous, super quick
and was tragically murdered. After that, we've got episodes check
this out on the following Weezer Adele Blur, Slash Elastica,
(26:27):
George Jones, Fiona Apple, Wendy o' williams. Yes, this goes.
I listened to all the voicemails, read all the texts,
and the emails suggesting Wendy o williams it's coming later
this year. Episodes on t Rex, Alanis Morrissette, Nick Cave,
Maybe still haven't decided on Nick Cave, Slip Knott, Nico
from The Velvet Underground, Slayer, The Alman Brothers, and I
(26:51):
am working my way up and into assuming I can
conjure the appropriate amount of constitutional fortitude to cover Courtney
Love to kick off the fall stringth of Disgraceland episodes.
That's a lot of stories. Okay. I hope it was
worth your hang here, but as always, we need more stories. Okay.
I didn't even get into the twenty twenty six Fall
(27:12):
in Winter episodes aside from mentioning Courtney, So discoes, keep
the recommendations coming. Six one seven, nine oh six sixty
six three eight call and leave me a voicemail, send
me a text or an email at disgracelampod at gmail
dot com, and and and the dms are open at
disgracelam pod, on Instagram, TikTok, sometimes Facebook, and pretty much
never on X but you know, sometimes I guess. Let
(27:34):
me know which rock stars and musicians you want us
to cover in Disgraceland again. Six one seven, nine oh six,
six six three eight, disgracelampod at gmail dot com, at
disgraceland on the socials, and if you want a more
formal say into who we cover. If you want a
larger role in the selection process of artists, become a
(27:56):
Disgraceland All Access member on Patreon or Apple Podcasts, get
access to the Disco community chat, connect with other Disgrace
slamd listeners and music and true crime obsessives, and unlock
exclusive and ad free content by going to Disgrace lampod
dot com to sign up. All Right, Disco's so much gratitude.
I appreciate you, thanks for hanging out with me in
another episode, this one a special episode of Disgraceland. Can't
(28:20):
wait to talk to you all again in the after
party coming up next. And man, I'm so looking forward
to hear what you have to say about this Patti
Smith episode. All Right, it's been real, but now I
get to get out of here and go do some research.
Rock a little, He's an Land
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