DISGRACELAND - Bonus Episode: "Crazy" Artists, Ultraterrestrials, and Arnt Poppy in the Gararge

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

This week in the After Party, Jake talks about the artists who have faced challenges to their mental health and wonders if they actually have a truer perception of reality beyond what the rest of us can see. Jake takes your emails, texts, and voicemails, and explains the origins of his unique accent. Plus, we want to know: who is your favorite female singer from the 21st century, and what makes her great? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod, and come join the After Party.To cop some new merch, head to disgracelandpod.com/merch now!To hear an extended version of the After Party and more from the DISGRACELAND community, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Hey, discos. Need a little more disgrace land in your life? Just a touch to get you through? Yeah, me too. This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome to Disgraceland, the After Party.

Welcome to the Disgraceland bonus episode. A little thing we like to call The After Party. This is the show after the show, the party, after the party, the bridge to get you from one full episode of Disgraceland to the other, the backyard to dig into the dirt. On this bonus episode, we are talking about this week's full episode on Donnie Hathaway,

Amy Winehouse and the greatest female singers of the 20th century, and how we're thinking about choosing episode subjects with you guys going forward. Of course, we've got your voicemails, text, and more, and as always, a whole lot of rosy. All right, this goes, let's get it. So many of our subjects,

the artists, the musicians, the actors, the athletes, they're dismissed as crazy, and it's totally understandable. The behavior, the actions of these people, in a lot of cases, it is straight up bad shit crazy, lunacy, whether it's big lurch, the hip-hop artist, cannibalizing his roommate, which you heard about way back in season one to disgrace in or the abuse, Alfred Hitchcock inflicted upon his starlet to be head run a story you're going to hear about a couple of weeks.

These examples only scratch the surface of crazy. These stories are a certain type, the type where the subject we cover acts in insane ways. Then there is this other type of episode where the subject that we cover the artist is the victim of craziness. John Lennon's assassination at the hands of Mark David Chapman, the endless parade of stalkers who harassed Taylor Swift. However you look at it, crazy is part of the DNA here in disgrace land. Going back to the first promos of the show where I wrote, said the following when describing the podcast. I said, Disgraceland is a new podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly.

Jerry Lee Lewis's fifth wife, dead. Sam Cook, 3 a.m. and a CD motel, dead. Sit and Nancy, dead. Why? Because musicians are crazy. Because insane things happen to them. Because we love them and because we let them get away with it. That's the first disgrace land promo ever written, ever recorded.

I still have fond memories of hearing it for the very first time. And, you know, again, I read it because crazy is the central part. It's a central theme. It's been a central theme of our storytelling from the beginning. And we talk about it still to this day, every single week in one form or another. So so much so that I've become a bit desensitized by it as a concept. And am now grappling with what I'm sure many of you have grappled with in the past. And it's the fact that, of course, crazy is relative. Jerry Lee Lewis, the killer in his actions, you know, he may obviously seem crazy to us, but, you know, to some of those dudes who were hanging out with him and part of that whole first rock and roll pioneer era from down in the

south and on that circuit that they all came up on. I mean, Jerry Lee Lewis was crazy, but he wasn't that crazy, I'm sure, to some of these guys. You know, I've even talked to some people, of course, who have known some of the people that we've covered, known them well, known them intimately. I'm talking about talking to Hell's Angels. I'm talking about talking to Roads, talking to Graham Parsons' famous sidekick Phil Kaufman. And, you know, again, to Phil Kaufman, Graham Parsons did not seem crazy. You know, he seemed a little unhinged, I'm sure, a little hard to handle. But I don't think he would use the term crazy. I talked to a hell's angel, George Christie, who had a lot of experience with Jerry Garcia and a whole bunch of other

artists and I'm sure their actions did not seem crazy to George, okay, who is a hell's angel. So what I'm saying is Jerry Lee Lewis is a different type of crazy than someone who stalks Taylor Swift. All right. I'm not trying to compare the craziness, but there is a different type of craziness. It goes without saying almost. They're both bad shit nuts, of course, but they're different. And they give us different lanes of perspective to tell their stories. Okay?

That's the stuff that we've been dealing with. But then there's the whole mentally ill angle, okay? Those artists that we've covered who have deep-seated issues, to whom being described as crazy is, well, offensive, frankly. We wouldn't call Carrie Fisher crazy. We wouldn't call Sid Barrett from Pink Floyd crazy. We wouldn't call Amy Winehouse crazy for the reasons that I mentioned. Those artists struggled with demons.

They self-medicated. And they all experienced wild rise. through fame and celebrity, and left us with some pretty incredible art in the process. Now, for these types of artists, it's harder to talk about them. In this past week's episode subject, Donnie Hathaway, was for me very hard to talk about. Donnie's issues are well documented,

but still, to this day, they're hard to define and even harder to grapple with as a storyteller, especially considering the chilling way in which he died. In the case of Donnie Hathaway, an incredibly talented musician, his quote-unquote craziness was closer to madness and of course driven by illness,

not by narcissism or sociopathy or drug abuse. So it's not an easy subject to cover. At least it wasn't an easy subject to cover in a unique way. But I think that we found an interesting perspective and it's one that carries over from this Donnie Hathaway episode all the way to the Blink 182 episode

that we've written and recorded but haven't yet released. And it's this idea that mentally ill people, specifically those with multiple personality disorders or those who specifically suffer from hallucinations as the great Donnie Hathaway did, there's this idea that what if they actually aren't hallucinating? What if we just can't see what they see? I know this sounds crazy, but divorce yourself from conventional thinking for the sake of this argument for a minute. what if the mentally ill who hallucinate are seeing into different dimensions that our brains are not

evolved enough to unlock to access okay you have to first believe that there are perhaps multiple dimensions realms here on earth and elsewhere throughout the universe where we're life where energy where it exists beyond this third dimension that we inhabit where perhaps angels and demons roam where, and this is where it gets very interesting for me, where ultra-terrestrials roam. We hit upon this briefly in the Donnie Hathaway story, but uphologists or the folks who study UFOs, many believe that the UFO sightings and encounters that humans have experienced from the beginning of recorded history aren't encounters with beings from elsewhere in the universe, that they're not aliens, that they're not extraterrestrials, but they are instead

beings from right here on earth, from this earthly realm, I should say, beings that exist in another dimension and that they're ultra-terrestrials, not extraterrestrials, ultra-terrestrials. And I'm going to get into this again, like I said, in the Blink 182 episode, and I'm very tempted to get into it here. I'm not going to dive any deeper. But ultimately, what they're talking about are angels and demons, both good and bad, both doing their bids for good and evil here on earth and influencing us, mortals at all times. Ultraterrestrials that occasionally, perhaps by necessity, perhaps by accident, enter into this third dimension, thus explaining the many sightings and encounters that we've had, but for the most part, exist in an extra dimension unseen by us most of the time, okay? Or at least

unseen by most of us. But not unseen by those who can access parts of their minds that we can't crazy people, so-called crazy people, or are they just excessively open-minded people? People whose creativity knows no bounds. People like Donnie Hathaway, okay? I know, I know this sounds crazy, but it's fun to think about. And ultimately, none of us really know because, like I said earlier, crazy is relative. So this is what I took, anyways, from the Donnie Hathaway episode. I hope you guys dug the episode.

One of the reasons I wanted to cover Donnie Hathaway in the first place was because he was a huge influence on Amy Winehouse, an artist that we covered all the way back in 2019 in episode number 31, if you can believe that. Amy Winehouse, of course, name-checked Donnie Hathaway in her song, her great song, Rehab, singing, There's nothing you can teach me that I can't learn from Mr. Hathaway. Which brings me to my question of the week.

Who is your favorite female singer from this? century from the 2000s, the aughts, the 2010s, the 2020s. It's hard for me to find one that I like more or listen to you more than Amy Winehouse, but just like crazy, musical opinions are also subjective. Okay? So who is it? Who's your favorite female singer from this century? And why? I want to know why. Why is my answer, Amy Winehouse? Why might your answer be Amy Winehouse? Why is it Taylor Swift? Why is it Lady Gaga or Casey Musgraze or Courtney Barnett or Adele or Billy Eil or Brandy Carlisle. Why do you love this female singer more than others? And if you are going about from one of these artists, one of these singers, excuse me, I want to know, what should I be listening to? What haven't I

heard to convince me that I really need to consider Adele to be a better singer than Amy Winehouse? Or I really need to be considering, I don't know, Billy Eilish, I don't think you can make that case, but go for it. Tell me what songs I need to be listening to. Who is it? Okay. In honor of Amy Winehouse, vis-a-vis Donnie Hathaway, who is your favorite female artist of the century? Hit me up at Disgraceland Pod on Instagram X, Facebook, TikTok, or you can call me and leave me a voicemail at 617-906-66-6638. And I might just play your message here in next week's after party. In the meantime, I'll be back in a flash.

All right, guys, last week, our Talking Heads episode prompted a discussion and some questions about New York City in 1977 and which eras were best for the country. creation of great music. On that subject, let's hear from a new listener in the 845. Hey, Jake, just listened to my first episode of Disgraceland. I was recommended it by Scott McLean of the Moke Crates and Turntable's podcast, which I contribute to, but I guys got to tell you. Your episode on 1977 in New York was spot on. I was eight years old in 1977. I grew up in New Jersey, 20 miles outside the city. We were afraid to leave the house because we all thought the

son of Sam was in our backyards. It was a crazy time, but my dad would take us to the city once a year for the Christmas show, the Rockettes at Radio City. And I do remember at that time being in the subway, seeing my first crazy man yelling at the world, learning from my dad, how to not pay attention, and that will save you every time. Subways were rough. I remember the smell of urine everywhere. Should be horrible, right? But no. I'll tell you what, the city was magical. And I do believe that New York City in 77 was the greatest fertile ground for music because so many different kinds of music were influenced by it.

You hit the nail on the head when you said hip-hop, you had the talking heads. You just had so much going on. Isn't it funny how a city in shit is appealing? But I do. I do have fond memories. Anyway, keep up the great work. Great show. I am now a subscriber.

and love what you do. Keep it up. Thanks, bud. All right, 845. Thanks for the call. I love that call, actually, because you're perfectly connecting the Talking Heads episode theme of New York City in the 1970s with the theme of quote-unquote crazy people in this week's Donnie Hathaway episode.

Also, I'm stoked that you heard about disgrace land on another podcast. Please thank Scott from the Milk Crate's and Turn Tables podcast. Excellent name and tell him to get in touch. I'd like to meet the dude. Sounds like a great show. All right. on Instagram at Sierra Vince writes in regards to the same question

Seattle in the 90s over New York City in 77 all day, every day. Sierra, I can't get with that. I don't think Seattle in the 90s would have existed if it weren't for New York in 1977. Think about it, New York in 1977 gave us the Ramones. Without the Ramones, Seattle doesn't get mud honey or the Melvins. Without mud honey or the Melvins, Seattle doesn't get Nirvana. Without Nirvana, it's hard to argue for Seattle in the 1990s over New York. 1977 or really anywhere else for that matter. So all due respect Sierra, I think you're wrong.

But that's okay. It's just an opinion, all right? I can't actually be wrong. 909, Texan. Hey, love the pod. It gets me through work every single day. I couldn't pass this up to chime in. As far as the most influential music decade slash city, I have to say, the sweet sound of San Francisco of the late 60s and early 70s is my personal favorite with the likes of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead Big Brother in the holding company. Steve Miller band Sly and the Family Stone, all so good. I'd love to hear a disgrace land pod on Hate and Ashbury in San Francisco. Okay, that's from Samara in the 909.

You got a solid argument there. Those Bay Area bands during that era influenced not only, of course, the music that came after that era, but also huge influence, obviously on culture in general, summer of love, all that stuff. And yeah, you know, an episode on, on Hayd Aspery, that's actually really interesting. I can't believe I hadn't thought about that before,

but thank you. Appreciate the recommendation. More on recommendations coming up later in the pod. On the Talking Heads, the 519 text in, there's no R in Kess Kursay, dude. That's just the whole text, the whole text, excuse me. Of course, that's because I was talking about Psycho Killer, the Talking Head Song,

and I pronounced Kess Kersay with the sound of an R. so clearly there is an R in Kessaray. When I say at 519, I appreciate your diligence around the French language, though. I am aware there's no R, okay? The R is an accent issue of mine, all right? For those of you who don't know, I'm from a small, almost entirely Irish town in central Massachusetts. At least it was almost entirely Irish when I grew up there.

Town is called Clinton, Massachusetts. Shout out to Clown Town. Clinton, those of you are familiar with it, will know it has this strange accent, this little town in central Massachusetts has an accent that is unlike any town around it. And this strange accent, I've always believed, is derived from whatever region of Ireland

that early Clintonians came from. And the accent is one, where it is the opposite of the Boston accent, okay? Instead of dropping our R's, Ka, Bah, havidya, all that crap. And Clinton, for some reason, we double pronounce our R's, as you can tell, all right?

We also inject ours into words that shouldn't be there, but we double pronounce them. As you can tell them, the way I talk, I, you heard, I've gotten shit for this and actual reviews on Apple Podcasts. I've gotten shit for not being able to say the word garage. It's a word that I can't properly say in any other way than the way that you just heard it. Garage. Also, like I said, we add ours where they don't go. Aren't. Okay.

Aren't. Not aunt. Aren't. My aunt Tracy. My aunt Poppy. My aunt Tracy likes red wine. My aunt Poppy likes betting football and horses. aren't my aren't and uncle the extra R.

Kesskersey. Farr, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, all right, I gotta go. 617-906-66-6-6-3-8. I've got to take a break, but you can hit me up via voicemail and text on the question of the week.

And of course, anything else you want to talk to me about, can also hit me up at Discraceland Pod on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok. I'll be responding to more of your questions in the All-Axess members' exclusive portion of this bonus episode. In the meantime, I want to answer this one email from Jeremiah Wilkerson who writes in,

Hey Jake, I just subscribed to the Patreon to get even more of the podcast. Great episode on our Wayland. Can we get a Billy Joe Shaver episode? He was a hero of mine, and one of my favorite curmudgens. Met him several times, and he only got meaner every time.

Until the last time when I met him, first time I took a set list that had blown off the front of the stage and asked him to sign it, and he said, where did you get this? And I told him, I found it on the ground. And he snatched it out of my hands, and he signed it.

I didn't even get a mile from the venue when I rolled my truck window down and it blew out from under the Sunday. I met him again. But this time brought my guitar. I was collecting signatures on and I asked him to sign it and told him the story and how the set list blew out of the window. Expecting a laugh from Billy Joe Shaver I got sounds about right. My last meeting, I pulled out a poster off the wall of the venue where the show was and I decided to go egg him on just for old time's sake and asked him to write something onto the poster and he responded, I don't take requests. I don't remember the line but I quips something back and he said, funny, you should be a comedian. And I said, well, as it turns out, I am a comedian. I actually am in parentheses. That's what it says here. Anyways, Jeremiah goes on to say,

he said, tell me a joke to which I told him, I don't take requests. And that actually got a laugh. I love that old SOB. I miss him. I'm not sure what I expected from a guy who wrote a song. If you don't love Jesus, go to hell.

That is from Jeremiah Wilkerson. And Jeremiah, great email. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I actually met Billy Joe Schaever once. I played a show with him. It was a memorial for a friend of mine, who, ours, I should say, a friend of Billy Joe's as well, who passed away down in Nashville.

And Billy Joe is actually quite a sweet guy at that point. This is very much later on in his career. But this is getting to a deeper point here that I want to make about requests, about episode requests from you guys. And, you know, the answer, I guess, Jeremiah, to your request of if we can do a Billy Joe Shaver episode is, I don't take requests. No, I'm kidding. I'll be back on the other side. You'll hear what I'm talking about. All right, quick break.

All right, guys, I'm trying to figure out how to make the disgrace in All Access Club more valuable for all of you. As it is, if you sign up, you become a member, you get ad-free listening, you know this, you get access to the chat and Patreon with myself and your fellow discos talking back and forth pretty much daily. You get an extended version of these here after-party bonus episodes, and you also get

an extra full episode of Disgraceland per month, and that's all for just. is $5. So to Jeremiah's question earlier, his request actually is request for a Billy Joe Shaver episode. As you guys know, requests are a huge part of the disgrace and community. Part of the fun of the show, I think, has always been thinking about the artists or the musicians or the athletes or actors or actresses, etc., that we can produce full episodes on. We talk about this all the time in some form or another, and since I announced the podcast back in 2018, and every time I've mentioned that I was writing or producing a new season or any time I mentioned new artists,

and I'm researching all along the way. There's been a torrent of requests on who we should cover. And I've always done my best to listen and to try to accommodate as many of your requests as I can. But still, there are a number of requests that were requested years ago that we still haven't gotten to. A lot of subject matter in this area of dark entertainment.

Anyways, I've even gone as far as to change the DNA of the programming of the show based on your request. Okay, this show started out. as being just musicians committing crimes, or that's what it was about anyways. And I altered it to be about crimes being done to musicians as well, so that I could, mainly because I wanted to be able to cover more women, which was an early request that a lot of you had. Turns out that, you know, in the true crime in music space, there weren't a lot of women behaving as badly as men were. There's some badass women, of course, yes, with great stories to tell. But again,

the focus was much narrower back then. This eventually, this change eventually gave us episodes on Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Debbie Harry, a whole bunch of others. Of course, per your request as well, we broadened our scope even further so that we can cover disgraceful subjects from outside of music, actors, athletes, all the folks I was mentioned earlier. And again, this also came from you guys. So I've listened, I've always listened to your request,

but I haven't really figured out a way of soliciting and organizing your requests and therefore better serving them. And one thing I'm contemplating is coming up with a system where you guys pick, you guys yourselves, pick which episodes that we cover in our All Access Club. So it wouldn't just be me being like, hey, here's an extra episode this month on Wayland Jennings, or Lane Staley, or whoever, Hunter Thompson. It would instead be you, me to some extent, your fellow discos, all of us submitting our requests somewhere. discussing them and somehow deciding in some sort of democratic fashion, I guess, what the episodes are that get released exclusively to the, to you guys, to the members.

So in other words, if you're going to pay five bucks a month to get an all-access membership to this restaurant, you're going to get to choose the off-menu meal that the chef is going to make for you. And I guess I'm the chef in the set analogy. I am interested in talking about this more with you guys. I want to know what you think about this. I have by no means completely made up my mind on this issue. but I like it. I like where the thinking is leading. I'm especially, of course, interested

in those who are already paying for an All-Axcess membership. I'm guessing you guys are going to be into this. I'm guessing you're going to have ideas on how we organize it. So hit me up. 617-906-66-36-3-8 to let me know via voicemail or text.

Go ahead and get at me on Instagram, X, Facebook, you know the drill, at disgracelam pod art. This episode is nearing an end, but the after-party continues for our All-access members, which you can easily become by clicking on the link in our show notes to sign up and support us in making this show.

We appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. I will be back in a moment. All right, we are back. So let's recap, shall we? Number one, there's more after party to listen to right now. All you got to do is go to the show notes and click the link to become a member. Number two, right now in your feed this week's brand new episode on Donnie Hathaway.

Number three, coming tomorrow, a special rewind episode from our archive. Number four next week in the disgrace land feed, more discussion in the after party on how we are going to be choosing subjects for this show going forward. Number five, my number is 617-90666-6638. Call me on the telephone or text me, hit me up at Disgraceland Pod, on all the socials. Let me know who the greatest female singer of the 20th century is. And why?

Okay, and send me some examples, songs. All right, number six, remember, no one cares about these stories more than you do, and well, that's a disgrace. And now, in honor of Donnie Hathaway, me reading to you, the billboard charts from the week of Donnie's death back on January 13, 1979.

Number one, too much heaven, beegees. Last week, one. Peak position, one. Weeks on chart, nine. Number two, lay freak, chic. Number three, my life, Billy Joel. Last week, three. Peak position, three.

Weeks on chart, 11. Number four, you don't bring me flowers. Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond. Two, last week, peak position, four, six, position, weeks on chart, one, weeks on chart, number seven, weeks on number five, and hold a line, number two, total, three, last week, last week,

eight, seven, peak position, number five, two weeks on chart, last week's on chart, last week, six, sharing the night together, Dr. Hoffer, last week, six, peak position, six, weeks on chart, quit talking and start mixing, Cut it!