DISGRACELAND - Travis Scott and Astroworld: The Devil Went Down to Houston

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Travis Scott’s 2021 Astroworld music festival turned out to be a deadly disaster. Was it greed? Satanism? Or was something even more mysterious and evil behind the events that took the lives of ten concertgoers and injured and traumatized many others? To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.The Astroworld tragedy has Jake thinking about other terrible events in music history - in your opinion, what was music's darkest day? Let us know at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod.Purchase Tickets for Disgraceland's Special Live Stream Event on Oct. 9, 2024:https://www.moment.co/disgraceland/disgraceland-we-are-not-alone-music-wont-save-us-but-tom-delonge-mightTo listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch!Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group 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. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places.

Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like, like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robé, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton.

of our lives. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is the story about a music festival, and not just any music festival. A disastrous music festival led by one of the biggest musical stars in the world, Travis Scott. But this is also a story about, well, hell. And one of the dirtiest of the seven deadly sins, greed. And this is also a story about the devil. and what happens when the devil is in control.

It's the story of a supposed satanic sacrifice, an energy harvest wherein innocent souls were stolen. This is the story about Travis Scott's Astorworld, a festival that contained some great music, unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Barbarian Bolero, M.K. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to easy on me by Adele.

And why would I play you that specific slice of redemptive torch cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 5th, 2021. And that was the day that a music festival organized by a hometown hero in Houston went horribly awry, plunging tens of thousands into what truly felt like hell on earth. On this episode, greed, satanic sacrifices, snatched souls, and Travis Scott's Astorworld. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. That was a word used to describe the COVID-19 pandemic, especially by frontline workers who witnessed the worst of the infectious disease at close range.

Here in the U.S., in January of 2021, just about a year after the first case was recorded in Washington State, cases suddenly surged nationwide. And it's not difficult to understand why. Social distancing, mass, isolation, that type of behavior, it's not normal. Those restrictions, human beings aren't supposed to live with them. We require contact, interaction. We need to be around. other people. Whether it's at the movie theater or a concert venue or a church or a ballpark, shared experiences are crucial to the human experience. Coming out of COVID, what we wanted more than anything was to have those experiences again, to get our lives back, to feel that sense of normalcy, a sense of ourselves in social settings with other people. But we had to relearn it. Months, a year spent in isolation meant we were collectively rusty.

So, we conjured a spell, one we hoped would heal the pain of COVID. But instead, we created a monster. A malevolent entity with a mind of its own. And for those unlucky enough to get in the path of this monster, they found themselves staring down the very thing we all thought we'd escaped from. November 5th, 2021, Houston, Texas, 9 a.m. The crowd outside Energy Park was growing restless. Some fans have been there long before sunrise,

but the gates wouldn't open for another hour. So they were forced to wait. But what they really wanted was to be letting out all that emotion and aggression that they'd stored up during the COVID-19 pandemic in isolation. They wanted to rage. Check that. They were under a directive to rage, per the organizer and headliner of the third annual Astro World Festival, the hip-hop artist Travis Scott.

Raging was Travis Scott's ethos, the kind shared by a hardcore punk audience or Travis's beloved world of professional wrestling. A Travis Scott show implied physical audience participation. Mosh pits, crowd surfing, stage rushing. And while part of the allure of Astero World was the eclectic two-day lineup, with performances by Bad Bunny, Tame Impala, Siza, and Earthwind and Fire, to name a few, Travis Scott was different. He was a hometown boy, made good and all that. Two solo albums that debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart,

Birds in the Trap Sing Goodnight and Astro World. The latter named after the former Six Flags Amusement Park in Houston, that once stood near the music festival's location. A compilation album called Jack Boys, also number one. Number one singles, too. And don't forget the merchandise collaborations with Hot Wheels, with Nike, with Reesies, and most famously with McDonald's, who just one year prior had made Travis the first celebrity

to be featured on their menu since Michael Jordan, way back in 1992. My point is Travis Scott in November of the first. of 2021 was huge. But back home in Houston, Travis Scott was beyond huge. He loomed large, just like that giant statue of him now loomed over the growing crowd of hundreds impatiently waiting for the gates to open and let them into NRG Park and into the Astor World Festival. Once inside, their eyes would be open to a whole new universe, or so promised the promotional posters. See you on the other side, the poster read, next to a single.

sketch of a pair of hands with big eyes stuck in their palms and what looked to be a two-lane road descending down a large tunnel. Above that tunnel was a crude drawing of a figure walking through a doorframe, a whole new universe, the other side, here tonight. The crowd that was assembled outside the gates understood the assignment at hand. To get to that other side, they had to push the party to the edge of total chaos. Only then would the experience be truly transformative. The crowd had done this in 2015 at Lalapalooza in Chicago when Travis Scott encouraged fans to jump the barricades to give any and all security guards the finger and a chant,

We want rage. Travis got the boot just five minutes into his set, but not before a 15-year-old girl was injured in the resulting stampede, for which Travis Scott was charged with reckless conduct and sentenced to one year of court supervision. Two years later, in 2017, Travis was charged with disorderly conduct in order to pay restitution to multiple people who were injured when he once again instructed fans to rush the stage during a show in Arkansas.

In just weeks after that, at a show of Manhattan, Travis Scott on stage at Terminal 5 looked up at a fan dangling from the second floor balcony about to fall into the audience below. I see you, but are you going to do it? Travis asked from the stage. The kid hesitated. They're going to catch you, Travis. said, don't be scared, don't be scared. The kid let go. It was dropped safely into the arms of his fellow concert goers. Not so lucky was the next fan to fall from the same balcony, who did so not under

his own volition, but because he was pushed as the crowd surged against his back. He tumbled over the edge falling fast, hitting the floor with such force that he immediately broke several bones in his vertebrae and was paralyzed. Now, on November 5th, In 2021, at Astero World, those who had been injured and disabled at previous Travis Scott shows were a distant memory. COVID felt like a lifetime ago, a really bad dream that everyone had since woken up from. Here now, it was all about moving forward, onwards and upwards from the past year and through these gates. And so, even before the gates officially opened at 10 a.m., that's what many were doing, crawling under fences, knocking over barricades,

snapping the chain-link fences with bolt cutters, even those who weren't supposed to be there, literally thousands more are showing up beyond the 50,000 ticketed attendees. And when the gates did open for real, it was like a swollen river bursting a dam. No order, no chill, just a swarm of bodies, mostly teenagers and young adults, feet pounding the pavement,

some pushed, some pulled, some falling to the ground, trampled, Entire sections of fencing flattened. They skipped security checkpoints, knocked over metal detectors. The first set by the first artist of the day wasn't for another three hours, but none of that mattered. Time, right now, moved just as unpredictably as it had during the pandemic. But you, you're moving with purpose.

You're trying to get safely past the crush at the gate and get inside, which you do. And the first point of interest you encounter is the merch booth. Hundreds, if not thousands of bodies are running straight forward. The barricades set up to maintain an organized line of commerce are being ignored. Kids are jumping them or just pushing them aside, cutting the line if there was even a line to cut. The crowd grows. The bodies push forward. You're caught in the flow against your will, so you find a way out and take it. And just at that moment, the crowd gets really crazy.

Kids, adults, normal human beings suddenly gone feral. They want what they want and they're going to take it. As you walk away, you watch as people start to pounce on the merch counter, grabbing T-shirts, grabbing for registers full of cash, whatever they can get their hands on. Minutes later, you hear some dude telling his girl that the merch area was shut down after multiple requests for police and medical attention. By this point, you've made your way through the giant whitehead statue of Travis Scott

that leads into the main concert area. It's the same bust of Travis on the cover of his Astor World album. You walk straight through his open mouth, which is kind of rad, but also kind of gross at the same time. And then, right up ahead, you see it, just like it was shown to you on the Astro World posters, that long road descending into a large tunnel. But this road is actually a stage, which looks not unlike an inverted cross. And the large tunnel that this inverted cross sprawls into is actually a circle constructed in layers to create depth. That circle is drilled into an even bigger backdrop, which is shaped like a mountain. Right now, the mountain is black with a tan

outline, non-descript, just another man-made structure in broad daylight. But tonight, at 9 p.m. to be exact. It will change. Everything will change. Because that's when Travis Scott will take the stage. That's when that nondescript man-made structure will become possessed. That's when the monster will take over. And you and every other person here, willingly or not, will be taken, kicking, and screaming to the other side. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, Never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning story I'll be exploring the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.

Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me, want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me.

Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I, I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo. from Stranger Things, Tana M'Ajou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. By 8.30 that evening, the mountain backdrop on the AstorWorld stage was glowing yellow, then orange, and then red. The audience was well beyond capacity. Remember, that's 50,000 people due to all the gay crashers who overwhelm.

Astero World's infrastructure. The incredibly bright collars radiating from the stage cut through the dark Houston night, bleeding all over the fences, staring back. And the layered circles at the center of the mountain began to glow red, too. In the words, Sia on the other side were followed by a timer. It started at 30 minutes and immediately began to count down. Fans had spent the last seven plus hours watching sets by Master P, by Don Tolliver, little baby and others. But they were beyond sight for their hometown hero. Each minute that the timer

counted down was a minute closer to Travis Scott, closer to rage, closer to that other side. 25 minutes, 20, 15. Around the 10 minute mark, in the front left quadrant up near the stage, a huge surge in the crowd came from behind. It was violent and quick, and there was no choice but to be carried along. People were packed in so tight that you either had your arms straight up in the air or straight down by your side. It was like you looked directly into the eyes of Medusa, turned to stone with a snap. Arms pressed against your chest, fists clenched near your neck, your head leaning back, face angled up to the open sky, gasping for a few tiny breaths above the fray. The air of anticipation and excitement, so often present at the start of a show like this,

suddenly blotted out by a feeling of dread. Someone screamed, and then another, war cries and sounds of warning. The blood-red light from the stage intensified. Five minutes. Four, three, two, one. An organ rang out, started low and then building. Ancient history, reanimated, but still rotten. The layered circles in the center of the mountain on stage

began to glow deep red. The monster was alive now, taking shape. It sent forth a messenger to announce its arrival. An image of a bird or a dragon was flapping its wings in a cloud of fire at the top of the mountain, and the organ music became auto-tuned, inverted just like that cross of a stage. Without warning, Travis Scott jumped from out of nowhere,

his feet landing hard, the music hitting even hard. Harder, bass, treble, organ, fire. Huge flame shot into the sky all around him. Travis' first song was called Escape Plan. Ironic, seeing as there was no escape as the crowd once again surged forward. This time, the surge was harder and more forceful than before. Bodies sandwiched into other bodies so tight that you could feel your lungs compressed and the air leak out of you. If you've ever been in a crowd crush before, you need to be.

know how frightening it is. Not just the realization that your oxygen supply has been cut out, or of the adrenaline and the survival instinct that kicks in to save you, but the feeling that you've completely lost control. Thousands of bodies all becoming one, moving as one, ebbing and flowing as one. Your feet literally lift off the ground. You are moved from one spot to another. It's like you're being carried away on a gigantic wave in the ocean. Only the ocean is other just like hell is other people. And make no mistake, hell was here, on Earth at Astero World. The monster's voice was in the base frequencies, so loud that it felt like the ground

was about to split open and swallow everyone whole. The monster's tongue was in the flames that continued to erupt all over the stage. Darkness devoured the light. The mountain was a volcano. The center of the layered circle morphed into a giant eyeball, darting to the left and then to the right, looking at all 50,000 plus people out there, looking directly at you, all seeing, all knowing. The crowd crush swelled again as the inverted church music mixed with an ear-splitting hip-hop beat, and the intended effect

was one of release and catharsis, but in reality, the effect it created was one of pure panic. Some couldn't handle it. They crouched down on one knee, attempting to catch their breath. Instead, Plowed over by the bodies surrounding them, knocked to the ground, stepped on, trampled. Mosh pits were collapsing in on themselves. Broken feet, broken hands, dislocated shoulders. Blood running from the noses and blood pouring out of miles. Eyes rolling into the backs of heads, blue lips, gray skin. A college student, splayed out on the ground, unconscious, maybe dead.

Someone started CPR on her while others screened for a medic. A nine-year-old boy on top of his father's shoulders thrown forward. forward when his dad was caught up in the crowd crush. The boy was launched into a massive arms and legs. One second, he was right there, and the next he was gone. Things were going very, very badly. But not everyone knew it. If you watch videos taken by those in the crowd,

you can hear people screaming, help, and stop the show in between songs. The footage is chilling. You can see people climbing up on risers to get the attention of camera operators. yelling to them that the show had to be stopped, the people were dying. But you can also hear other fans making fun of the whistleblowers, telling them to calm down. The crowd was just too big. The music, the lights, the pyro, all of it was waging a constant, all-out assault on the senses. On stage, Travis Scott was hoisted in the air on a riser of his own.

He looked down on the mass of flesh. He watched one kid escape the crowd and climb up one of the trees there on site. It was like the guy hanging from the balcony in Manhattan all over again. Taking his cue from the kid in the tree, Travis asked, Who wants to rage? Some in the crowd roared their approval while others went hoarse calling for medical attention. Voices of terror mixed in with voices of rapture, no telling the two apart. But then, for a brief moment, it seemed like things would be.

turn around. Travis noticed an ambulance pushing its way through the audience, en route to someone who was passed out and needed medical attention. He stopped the show. He watched silently as the fan was helped. Smartphone video of this moment shows actual concern in Travis Scott's face, but also confusion, almost like he's stuck in a moment, as if he went somewhere else. Slowly, though, he came back. 30 seconds later, he asked everyone who was okay to stick a middle finger in the sky. And the fingers went up. And then, just 60 seconds after he stopped the show, it was back on.

The music blasted. The flames erupted. The ambulance slowly made its way out while Travis was screaming. I want to make this motherfucking ground shake, God damn it. He was the quote-unquote maestro directing the chaos, as the Washington Post once wrote about him. Exhibiting that trademark unhinged leaping, as Rolling Stone magazine put it, when they compared Travis Scott's frantic stage presence to Michael Jackson's iconic moonwalk. But Travis Scott didn't do moonwalks.

He didn't glide on the ground. He shook it. At 9.38 p.m., a little over a half hour into Travis Scott's set, the Houston Fire Department had seen enough. Way too many calls for people being trampled, passing out, in need of CPR and other urgent medical attention. At that moment, 9.38 p.m., Houston Fire officially declared Astor World a mass casualty event. Houston PD informed the festival's promoters that the show had to end right now.

But the show didn't end. The monster wasn't ready to go back in its box. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.

Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out of the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me, want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellow.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tana Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 10 p.m. 22 minutes after the Houston Fire Department

declared Astor World a mass casualty event. Travis Scott continued to perform. And he was doing so now with a surprise guest. The Toronto rapper and singer Drake, who joined Travis on stage to euphoric applause from the crowd below. Meanwhile, in that same crowd, medics made a desperate search for those who needed help. The cries of the wounded and the dying rang out, only to be drowned out by the throng. Bodies were being hauled over barricades and passed over shoulders as if they were crowd-surfing,

but these bodies were limp. And in many cases, the medics on hand were ill-equipped, no defibrillators, no oxygen, just their bare hands. One medic did have a backboard to transport an unconscious woman, but the backboard had no straps. It was a struggle to carry the body through the crowd of people. Many didn't move aside, others were oblivious, too caught up in the sight and sound of Drake and Travis on stage. The medics lost their grip,

and the unconscious woman began to slide out of the backboard with no straps. She hit the ground directly on her head. Elsewhere, another ambulance made of a labored slog through thousands of people. A couple of fans jumped on top of the vehicle and began to dance on it. One concert goer later compared the sight of people trapped in the crowd to pigs in a cage. Others said they were literally in hell. At 10.14 p.m., 14 minutes after Drake's arrival and now over half an hour since the mass casualty event declared, Travis Scott finished the last song of the night.

Astor World was officially over. Just one minute after a 23-year-old attendee, the festival's first fatality died at a nearby hospital. Ten people in total died from injuries sustained at Astorold that night. All of them in their teens or 20s, with the exception of a nine-year-old boy. I told you about him earlier. Ezra Blunt fell off his father's shoulders when the crowd surge,

hit them from behind. His father could not find him and did not find him until much later, when Ezra turned up as a John Doe at the hospital. He was put into a medically induced coma and died shortly thereafter. News of the Astorworld tragedy quickly hit the wires. The next morning, Travis Scott issued a statement that read in part, I'm absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at AstorWorld Festival. On TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, survivors posted videos they had taken during the show that clearly documented the harrowing sequence of events. With those videos came not just outrage and shock from other users online,

but some extremely disturbing interpretations of what was really going on, or so some were saying. The search term, Astero World's Sacrifice, began to trend on TikTok. The so-called interpretations followed. AstroWorld was a satanic ritual. Astro world was a quote-unquote energy harvest, in which Travis Scott put people under a spell and snatched their souls. Just look at the demonic imagery. The flames, the giant eye, the stage that looked like an inverted cross,

the shirt Travis was wearing with cartoon figures walking through a portal and emerging with what seemed to be horns on their head. And this is a sampling of what people were writing on TikTok in Twitter and elsewhere. If you don't believe that there was nothing demonic about the whole concert, you were spiritually blind, and I pray that God opens your eyes. I'm a big fan of Travis Scott,

but this is some demonic-ass shit. In this one, which referred to the fact that AstorWorld attendees were required to have proof of a negative COVID test or a COVID vaccination. Quote, jab plus 5G in frequency at concert equal dead, unquote. Just to reiterate,

The imagery and the video and the first-hand accounts coming out of AstorWorld were so fucked up that people were saying jab plus 5G and frequency at concert equal dead. In other words, that this was some mass conspiracy involving the government and the music industry to kill people at a Travis Scott show. Coming out of the COVID pandemic didn't bring us together. It started to pull us even further apart. Consider this. The very next day, November 6th,

Troy Finner, Houston's chief of police, held a press conference, a portion of which was spent addressing these wild rumors that were circulating online. He reminded people to be respectful of the families of those who have been killed, and to follow the facts and the evidence. He said there were a lot of narratives out there, including one in which AstorWorld had been a targeted attack by an individual who was running around and injecting people with drugs. TMZ was one of the news outlets pedaling this narrative,

saying, a source connected to AstorWorld told him that the crowd crush was due to the panic that ensued when word got around that some crazy person was stabbing people with a needle and shooting them up. At the press conference, Houston's chief of police did not shut down this particular story. Instead, Chief Troy Finner went on to essentially confirm this story. He said that according to medical staff, one of Astorworld security guards, was reaching over to restraints on one in the crowd when he felt a prick in his neck. Immediately he went unconscious. He needed to be revived with Narcan, which, as you probably know, is used to treat narcotic

overdoses. And the medical staff that examined him confirmed that there was a mark on his neck consistent with a needle prick. So here you have the top-ranking official in Houston's police force seemingly confirming one of the wild rumors floating around online and in the press, which, in turn, caused even more panic and even more confusion. panic and confusion. Two things now keeping the monster of Astor World alive. November 10th, 2021. Five days after the tragedy at Astorold and four days since Houston's chief of

police spoke about a festival security guard getting pricked in the neck with a needle. Chief Troy Finner was now giving another press conference, this one, in which he walked back his statement from four days prior. During that time, he had spoken directly to the security guard in question, and what the guy had to say for himself was far less sinister than previously believed. Turns out the security guard was not injected in the neck, but instead hit in the head and knocked unconscious. He woke up shortly afterward in the medical tent, and there was no needle and no Narcan, and no faceless, nameless demon running around the Astor World grounds, shooting up unsuspecting attendees with drugs. Which begs the question, who provided this

targeted attack narrative in the first place. Who was the quote source connected to Astorold, unquote, who provided TMZ with this information in the first place, information which TMZ had since taken down from its website. And speaking of questions, why didn't the show end at 9.38 p.m. that night when the Houston Fire Department declared it a mass casualty event, when the Houston PD told the promoter to shut it down.

Why did Travis Scott keep performing for more than another 30 minutes? There were no clear answers offered to these questions. The cops, the promoters, the security, the county, Travis Scott, everyone involved passed the buck. The Houston PD said they didn't have the proper authority to shut the show down. Security Guard spoke of poor training and worse communication. One Houston City Council member stressed that the event was technically not held on city property, so, you know, not their problem. Of course, no one wants to admit they played a part in creating a monster.

especially one that takes the lives of 10 people. But someone would be held accountable, and the families of victims were going to make sure of it. Two years later, in 2003, Travis Scott sat in a room in Houston, where he was grilled for eight hours during a civil deposition. A Texas grand jury had declined to indict him on criminal charges, but 387 lawsuits were brought against him,

against Live Nation Entertainment, and against various subcontractors. 387 lawsuits representing nearly 2,800 victims and totaling billions of dollars in damages, all rolled into a single legal action. These were in addition to the 10 wrongful death lawsuits filed by families of the deceased. Travis Scott maintained his innocence. He said he didn't know how bad it was out there in the crowd, and he wouldn't know the extent of the carnage until the next morning.

He did admit that someone spoke to him during his performance, shortly before 10 p.m. Right around the time that Drake joined him on stage, a voice that came through his in-ear monitors and said, Not people are getting crushed, stop the show. Not people can't breathe, they're passing out, maybe dying, just it's getting kind of hectic out there. And so, Travis Scott wrapped it up. It just took him another 14 minutes, give or take, to do so. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs were skeptical. They couldn't prove if the voice coming through Travis' in-ear monitors had more explicit

instructions. But there were other things that were hard to write off. Like the fact that if Travis wanted a pocket an additional $4.5 million coming to him from the concert's live stream, he had to finish his complete set as planned. In other words, ending early meant losing a massive payday. It sounds cynical, I know, but attorneys are paid to be. be cynical. So these attorneys filed an emergency motion to obtain Travis Scott's phone records, the thinking being that by doing so, perhaps they could uncover some evidence to prove that he

knew more than he was letting on. There was just one problem. There was no phone. Travis Scott's phone, his cell phone, the one he owned at the time of Astor World in 2021, it was gone, like long gone. And just months after the festival, in January of 2022, While on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, Travis Scott's cell phone fell into the water and sank all the way down into the murky depths below. But a phone wasn't all Travis Scott lost. In May of this year, 2004, it was reported by the Houston Chronicle that all 10 lawsuits filed by the families of the 10 Astor World victims had been settled, including the one on behalf

of 9-year-old Ezra Blunt. Travis, Live Nation, other companies and individuals, they settled those lawsuits for undisclosed sums and under confidential terms. In many cases, just days before the suits were scheduled to go to trial. The news came mere months after the revelation that Astorold organizers miscalculated a state fire code when planning the event. According to that fire code, each person at the show needed seven square feet to prevent overcrowding. So by that math, capacity should have been about 34,500 people.

Instead, the organizers mistakenly settled on five square feet per person, resulting in the 50,000 fans that were ticketed. That's a difference of more than 15,000 people. 15,000 extra people. That's no small detail. But the devil is in the details. That may be true, but for thousands of people on a warm Texas night in November, the devil was that Astorworld, then that was a disgrace.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. All right, guys, thanks for checking out this incredibly dark episode on Travis Scott. Before I get to the question of the week, I want to remind you guys, we're doing this live stream event. I want you to be a part of it.

It's on October 9th. I'm going to be telling the story of Blink 182's Tom DeLong and his work with UFO disclosure. And there's a lot of creepy government cover-up and conspiracy attached to this. Go to moment.com slash disgrace land to get your tickets. That's for October 9th.

You guys can be a part of the show with me. Thank you for checking out this episode on Travis Scott and Astor World, where 10 people died, 10. So, question of the week for you guys is, what is music's darkest day? Was it this disaster? Was it a plane crash? A riot, a murder spree, serial killing.

What was it? There is so much evil in the history of music that the choices here are kind of endless when you think about it. So let me know what day or event was the darkest for music history. 617-906-66-6638. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text, and let me know. You can also reach me at Disgraceland Pod as well on Instagram X and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch.

All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page. disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a disgrace land all-access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now

by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com. slash membership for details. Rate and review the show

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