DISGRACELAND - Bonus Episode: Suppressing the Truth, A Brother Under the Bus, and Profit as Virtue

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

This week in the After Party, Jake talks the nefarious nature of social media, the public's denial of obvious horrors, this week's DISGRACELAND episode on R. Kelly, and of course your emails, texts, DMs, and voicemails. Is R. Kelly the most evil villain in music history? Drop a line at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod, and come join the After Party.To hear an extended version of the After Party with a story about R. Kelly attempting to bribe his brother into taking the fall for him, 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, you can listen to an extended version of this after-party episode by becoming a member of Disgraceland All Access. Just go to disgracelandpod.com slash membership for more details and to sign up. Hey, guys, welcome to Disgraceland, which is brought to you by Double Elvis. This week, we have a brand new episode on R. Kelly that's in our disgraceland feed in for our All Access members

and our Patreon and Apple subscription feeds. If you haven't heard our recent episode on Chris Cornell, you can check that out now. That's available for you over there. Make sure you're all signed up for our All Access content, either on Apple Podcasts or on Patreon to hear that episode along with other exclusive episodes and content. And over in the feed for Music Land Stories,

that's the fiction show for kids and families that my company Double Elvis produces in partnership at Starglo Media. we just launched season three, our evergreen season, which takes place in the jungle. Search up Musicland Stories and give that a follow if you have not already. 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 disgrace to the other, the backyard to dig into the dirt. On this bonus episode, we are talking about our brand new episode on R. Kelly, the sources that

we used for this episode, which helped us uncover a wild story about R. Kelly's legal strategy that we were unable to use in this full episode. We're also talking about the truth, why it matters, and how we get to it in this day and age. We're talking about Rick Rubin as well. You're going to want to hear that. And of course, we've got your voicemails, texts, and more. And as always, a whole lot of rosy. All right, discos, let's get into it. All right, guys, I'm writing this week about Tom DeLong from Blink 12, and I'm trying not to think about R. Kelly. I don't want to think about R. Kelly. I don't want to think about Ditty. I got to get my head out of this, out of the abuse, out of the darkness.

The Tom DeLong thing is inspiring in a lot of ways. You'll find out of it. You'll find out of in a couple months when we released this episode, what I'm talking about. One of the things you'll find out, of course, is that he has dedicated his life to finding and delivering the truth at great expense, personal expense, and professional to him. You're also going to find that there are very powerful people

in the world who are dedicated to you, never hearing the truth. In the case of Tom DeLong and disclosure around UFOs and UAPs, the suppression of truth is overt. But in other ways, as I humble, continue my journey, writing and making podcasts and telling stories based on the open source research that me and my team do here, what I'm finding is that there's a much more sinister mechanism of suppressing the truth. It's systemic. When we live in a world where a handful of corporations control our media, it becomes very easy for them to develop mechanisms or systems that

keep certain stories buried and perpetuate narratives, versions of the truth, if you will, that are much more acceptable. And frankly, as a content creator, as a storyteller, it's fucking maddening. Here's what I mean. Instagram or meta, their parent company rather, is hell bent on providing a quote unquote safe platform where everyone feels welcome. Now, on its face, who doesn't want that? It sounds great. However, it's a crock. What they really want is the biggest network possible, with the most amount of people using it for as long as possible so that they can make. maximize their revenue, ad revenue. The safer the platform, the more people use it, the bigger the audience they get, and the more profit they generate. Instagram, YouTube, even X to some extent.

All have some version of this, where they compel you to play by their rules, and when it comes to storytelling, that means coloring within the lines. Again, at face value, this sounds like a good thing, but here's an example of where this quickly goes off the rails. Remember the Garthbrook's episode that we made and released a couple of months ago where we had fun with the conspiracy theory that Garth is a serial killer, where we were obviously tongue-in-cheek about it. In promoting that podcast episode on Instagram, I shared a photo on my stories of Jeffrey Dahmer, not text. There was no context. I was intending to post a series of serial killer mugshots and cheekily end on an image of Garth with a question mark. But as soon as I posted that Jeffrey Dahmer photo,

again, just the mugshot, I was flagged by Instagram within seconds and thrown in quote unquote Instagram jail, which means that none of my posts reach anyone outside of my followers. So if you're not following me on Instagram, you're never going to see anything that I post. It's never going to come up in your feed, which is fucking ridiculous. Part of the reason that I commit to creating content on Instagram, with my own money, by the way, is to reach people who don't yet know about disgrace land. Instagram doesn't pay me. and even if I was monetizing my Instagram content,

another one of the penalties for posting that Dahmer image is demonetization. Now, I remain in Instagram jail because some AI censorship system caught a DOMer image it was prompted to recognize and threw me in the Huskow. This is the second time this has happened to me, and frankly, I should have known better, okay? The last time was in 2020 when I posted an image of Charles Manson to promote the Manson episode of Disgrace in that we released. Now, this instance was worse because it took me about, about a year for me to even realize that I was being shadow banned.

And the explanation that I got from Instagram was that I was promoting a cult by posting an image of Charles Manson to promote my damn podcast. Do you realize how fucking dumb this is? Believe me, I realize how stupid it sounds, and I promise you that I'm not just complaining here, and that I'm leading up to something. And here it is. Here's the point.

Here's the truth of it. Key emphasis on the word truth. Instagram will tell you that it's, out of an abundance of caution that they censor such posts, so that the quote-unquote community remains safe for all, which is utter bullshit. Tell me how mugshot photos of Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer are harmful to the community.

You can't. This is about profit, increasing their profit margin by disguising their efforts as virtue. Now, the result. In my case, in the case of the Manson photo anyway, the result isn't just that I didn't get to post a photo, photo of Charles Manson. The result is that the truth is prevented from coming out. Because in that episode that we produced on Charles Manson, that's exactly what we tell, the truth. Our story

directly refutes the accepted historical narrative put forth by Vincent Bouliosi and Helter Skelter, and our story is based on facts. Not facts that I uncovered. Again, we do open source research here. We are not journalists. We are storytellers. For that episode, our facts came from a among other sources, Tom O'Neill's Chaos, a book he spent decades researching, a book that he quite literally ruined his life while making, because he was making it, a book that provides a detailed account of endless sources that completely disrupt what the public believes to be the truth about Charles Manson and the Tate La Bianca murders. Now, I'm not trying to aggrandize myself or what we do here, but true stories need to be told by as many people as possible

for the public to accept them as being the actual truth, okay? Remember when the majority of Americans believe that John F. Kennedy was killed because of the so-called truth, the single bullet theory? That belief lasted 30-some-odd years. It took Oliver Stone, Jerry Seinfeld, Glenn Danzig, and countless other like-minded subversives to beat the drum of the truth while being called conspiracy theorists the entire time until finally, we've arrived where we are now,

which is that nobody who has paid any attention whatsoever actually believes that Kennedy was killed by a single bullet from a single gunman. So now, when we use systemic censorship that puts profit over the truth, then we as a society are ultimately fucked in the long run. 200 years for now, people will be believing that John F. Kennedy

died of a headache if we aren't careful because showing what happened on Dealey Plaza will be too triggering. Guys, we are living in the corporate media hellscape that the punk rockers in the 1980s warned us about, and no one seems to care. That's not true. I care. You care. That's why you're here. This is what we do.

This is what we are going to continue to do, to bring you the stories that they do not want you to hear. I don't know how, but I'm hell-bent on fighting for it. The truth is just more interesting, And I'm not the only one who thinks that way. And the irony of all ironies, here's Rick Rubin on his podcast, Tetragrammatin, last week talking to Tom O'Neill, author of the book I just mentioned, Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, in the secret history of the 60s. Here's Rick Rubin talking to that Tom O'Neill about disgraceland. Did you hear the Disgracedland podcast episode about Manson?

It's a cool podcast. And there's a story about what was happening at the tape house that's much different than the story that we know. Oh. It involved kind of ritual crazy stuff. What's interesting is, if they're saying that happened when Roman was leasing it, he and Sharon moved in the very last day of February or first week of March. And then by the fourth week of March, he went off to London to begin working on an adaptation of Day of the Dolphin that he wanted to drive. that he wanted to direct. And I do write about,

I wonder how long ago was the podcast like in the last couple of years? The last couple of years. It's really interesting. You'll like it. Oh, no, I'm going to find it, yeah. Mind blowing, okay? I'm not going to get into,

I did this whole thing on Instagram about how this blew my mind. You can check it out. Okay, but since that went up and since I heard about it, I've since spoken to Tom O'Neill about this, about what they're talking about here,

okay? And Tom has since listened to the Manson episode, that Rick is telling him about here, that I was talking about earlier, that same episode. And Tom told me the episode was quote-unquote great stuff. So if me talking about Charles Manson is good enough for Tom O'Neill and Rick Rubin, why isn't it good enough for Instagram? Fuck profit.

Fuck inconvenient facts. We here at Disgraceland are going to continue bringing you the stories. They don't, for whatever reason that they don't want you to hear. The dark stuff, R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, the weird stuff. Tommy James and Gerald Ford. The fun stuff, Iggy Pop and David Bowie and Starsky and fucking hutch. Those true but stranger than fiction stories are what make history so damn entertaining. The dark side of entertainment, disgrace land.

I'll be back in a flash. All right, we are back. I got to tell you guys, if you're hearing this episode on the day that it is released, Thursday, June 6th, if you get it in time, we're doing this little virtual meetup tonight. It's the first meeting of our Disgraceland Book Club. We are discussing the book, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I'm very excited about this.

If you want to join, you're going to be able to find the link in the bio on our Instagram page. If you're on Patreon, I've been talking about it on there. You can get it there in the chat. And it's probably very easy to get to if you just go to my Instagram

at Discracelland Pod right now. You can find that link to sign up and gain access. It's going to be 8.30 Eastern Standard Time. Thursday, June 6th. We're discussing The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. If you haven't read the book, who cares? You just want to get in here and hang out and talk about it.

Maybe you saw the movie. Maybe you're watching the new Ripley on Netflix. You can join as well. I read, I've been reading so much lately. I'm really on this fiction kick. And the book club is, I think it's going to be a mechanism for me to keep my head. in the books that aren't disgrace land research. And that's exciting to me, and I hope you can join, all right?

So please get in here with us. And if you miss it, for whatever reason, we're going to be doing these every month, all right? So that's the disgrace land book club. Now, let's talk about some other books, some other sources that we use for this R. Kelly episode. First of all, there's the official court documents, tons of profiles and interviews from the publications out there that were written as well.

While all this fucked up shit was going down, there's articles in Vive, there's articles in G-Cube, There's a Vibe article for one, which was published back in December of 1994, all the way back in 94, shortly after R. Kelly had entered into the illegal marriage with the underage, Alia. At this time, no one knew that R. Kelly had paid off a state employee to get Alia a fake ID that falsified her birthday and made her appear older. But the rumors were already out there, and this Vibe article gets into those rumors. But the funny thing about the article is, you know, even, you know, when the writer is with R. Kelly, The writer's given strict instructions to not get out her tape recorder, to not take out her pen, her paper, not to write anything down,

not to even ask any questions. Arkellie's having his photos taken for this Vibe magazine profile, and the writer's right there, and she asks Arkelly how he's doing, and no response, and immediately she gets this look from his personal manager that shuts it down. I'm just fucking, I don't know what that tells you, but tells me a lot. The GQ interview, from some years later, 2006, 16, after his acquittal on child pornography charges, and it is a wild interview. It's combative at times.

R. Kelly's whole attitude is like, well, if they said I'm not guilty, then I'm not guilty. Even though the jurors who acquitted him, most of them said that they're pretty sure that was R. Kelly in the tapes at the center of the trial. So there's that. You want to check that GQ article out. Go back. You want to put your head into this stuff even more so you can. It's a wormhole that's hard to get out of.

I'm warning you right now. There's also the Blockbuster BuzzFeed report from 2017, the title of which was, parents told police their daughter is being held against her will in R. Kelly's cult. That article, I remember when that was released, blew the doors open for articles in places like the Washington Post. This is TV special surviving R. Kelly. See, this is exactly what I'm talking about that I was talking about in that other block earlier. You know, you have to have a preponderance of people. of writers saying this is the truth.

This is what happened before it's like it's compounding. And that's what happens here. The BuzzFeed article comes out. Then the Washington Post article comes out. Then the TV special surviving R. Kelly comes out. Okay, people are done turning their blind eye at the official narrative of the time, which was R. Kelly's okay. You know, he beat the rap. He's okay.

Nothing really to see here. Bullshit, okay? I'm talking about record labels, manager. personal assistants, roadies, gophers, runners, entourage, lawyers, okay? All of them. The more the truth comes out, the easier it is for everybody to admit. And that BuzzFeed report was written by Jim Derogodas, once the longtime music critic for the Chicago Sun Times, also wrote an article for that paper way back in 2000 that brought

up the allegations that R. Kelly was having sex with teenage girls' accusations that R. Kelly denied. Jim received anonymous letters and a videotape, which he called the worst thing I have ever had to witness in my life, which he turned into the police. And Jim ended up writing the definitive book about this called Solace, the case against R. Kelly, which he published after 19 years of research.

All of these sources helped us put together this week's episode. I want to hear your thoughts. What did you think about the episode? Is R. Kelly, the most evil villain in the history of music. That's our question for this week. Who is it? Who is the biggest creep in the history

of, not entertainment, but in the history of music? Let's just keep it to music because I don't want to open this up to the Bill Cosby's and the Harvey Weinsteins and all that. Let's keep it to music. Is R. Kelly,

the absolute biggest villain that music history has ever produced for? 617-90666. 638, let me know. Let's do a couple of voicemails and texts right now. 617-90666-6638 is, of course, how you leave me a voicemail, how you call me, how you send me a text, just like Mike and the 508. Thanks for the call, Mike. Mike, I didn't see Dylan back then.

I love that record, though. I love that Time Out of Mind album. I saw Dylan a little earlier than that, actually, and I got the full Dylan treatment. It was rough. It was rough, and I didn't get it. And I have since seen him a couple times. I saw him later. I saw him, I don't know, maybe like 0, 506, something like that,

with the Rackonteurs, Jack White's band opening up at BU. That was fun. I was ready for it then. But yeah, Dylan, confounding. As always, appreciate the voicemail mic in the 508. You guys can text me as well as leave voicemail, 617-906. 66638. We were talking about celebrity myths last week and put it the call out, 617-90666-6-638 for you guys to let me know which, which myths, which storytelling you're calling bullshit on 814 writes in.

I call bullshit on the Richard Gear durable rumor from decades ago. Gosh, I'm not even going to repeat what that is. 612 writes in, hey, Jake, I liked your description of Dylan as an unreliable narrator and is in the joke. Have you seen the Rolling Thunder Review? Great film and Dylan plays it to the hill. It's hilarious. I have seen it. I love it. If you guys don't know what the 612 is talking about, it's a movie that came out on Netflix probably about five, six years ago called The Rolling Thunder Review, and it's about that tour that Dylan did in the 70s. I highly recommend checking that out.

904 writes in, hey Jake Spencer here from the 904. Just going to say, I love the Dylan episode, and I love that you used testimony as a source. It's one of my favorite books ever. I'm a huge Dylan and a huge the band fan, and I reread it about once a year and always catch something I missed before. On the same subject, you should check out the song The Last Hawk by Shovels and Rope. It's sort of an homage to the band,

mainly Garth and Dylan. Also probably too late for good covers, but I heard you talk about Tom Petty, and I also got to see him on the last tour and feel so lucky his cover a cry to me from The Mudcrutch Days is one of my favorite covers. Keep Up the Good Work.

You got it, 617-906-66-36-38. Appreciate the text. Appreciate the calls. Hit me up, guys. This week's question, who's the biggest villain that the music industry has ever produced?

Is it R. Kelly? Is it somebody else? 617-90666-6-36-3-8? I'll be back in a flash. All right, we are back. And as I mentioned, at the top of the show, we got this wild story about one of the legal strategies R. Kelly used, a strategy that nearly

destroyed someone else's life and may have involved some serious bribery. But again, you guys know the drill. You want to hear this story. You're going to have to become a member of disgraceland. access. Here's how it works. Just go to disgrace-sandpod.com slash membership. And for five bucks a month and less, if you sign up for an annual membership, you will get exclusive weekly bonus

content like the extended version of this year after party that I'm talking about right now. Plus, you're going to get an exclusive scripted episode every month, like the Chris Cornell episode that we released at the end of May. And then we've got a Wayland Jennings episode coming in a few weeks. Okay, that's also going to be exclusive only for all access members. You can listen to all of it in every single episode of Disgraceland in our archive, absolutely ad-free. You can sign up either using Apple Podcasts or Patreon. And if you choose Patreon, you're going to get immediate access to our members-only chat,

which is always on to where I'm talking to all you discos, as much as I can, as much as possible. I'm in there every day. That's where these ideas come up like the book club. So get in there, disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Get in here with us. All right. Back in the flash. All right.

Let's recap, shall we? Number one, there's more afterparty to listen to right now. All you've got to do is go to disgracelandpod.com slash membership and sign up to become an all-access member. But if that ain't your bag, the number two, right now in your feed. This week's brand new episode on R. Kelly, number three coming tomorrow, a rewind episode on Lisa left-eye Lopez for next week in the disgrace land feed. A brand new episode on Jose Canseco.

Number five, my number number number six-17-906-66-6-38. Call me on the telephone like Debbie Harry or text me number six. Remember, no one cares about these stories more than you do. And well, that's a disgrace. You know what else is a disgrace? I'm going to tell you what's a disgrace. There's no phone book link in here for me to read for you guys this week. So I can't do it.

So what am I going to do? I got no billboard charts either. I can't read that to you either. So what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I'm just going to wing it here. I'm going to wing it because I don't want to get out of the booth, go on the internet, look some shit up, come back in here.

I'm going to read to you a dead rock stars phone book off the top of my head going right now. here we go. Hendricks, James, Purple Hays Avenue, 6-4578. Cobain, Kurt, Aberdeen, Washington, 7-3256. Redding, Otis, Bottom of the Lake, 543-251, Bonham, John, Alcoholics Anonymous, 7-2-547. Lil Peep, the corner of Emo and Too Many Pills.

5-4-961. Hank. Eronomis. Norwich. 7-2-9-4-4. John Hendrix. All right. Buddy.

7-tac-2. 4-2. And start mixing.