The Blindboy Podcast - Glass Fascist Gasp

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

I plea for the return of a decapitated corpses head and then Robbie Williams rings me on the phone . I also talk about music, specifically Michael Jackson. Bonus content, the History of the Knights Templar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You are late to Jack Charlton's birthday party you tardy Patrick's. He has chosen not to get a cake for his birthday party but rather a giant replica of a rich tea biscuit. He's a Calvinist and he believes that a traditional birthday cake like a Black Forest Gatot would make everybody think about wanking. So instead, we must all eat a giant rich tea biscuit and to use its blandness to reflect upon our mortality. And there's no knives at Jack Charton's birthday party. Instead, for everybody to eat this giant rich tea biscuit, we must all behave like flies and

use the collective saliva in our mouths to kind of gently lick and spit on the rich the giant rich tea biscuit and then everyone together takes little bites out of it and that's Jack Charton's birthday party

which is also a metaphor for the Blind Boy podcast. Welcome. What is the crack? You tremendous cunts. How are you getting on? Did you have a gentle week? Did you have a lovely week?

The weather's picking up. In Limerick today it was unseasonably warm. You know? It's February 25. February 25. The 25th of February, and it was warm, which, see, because of global warming now, I'm kind of doubting myself, it's this new thing, it's this new dystopian attitude towards the weather that nobody predicted in the science fiction novels like I can't now

truly embrace and enjoy a lovely sunny day because I don't know is that just the alarm bells for the environmental apocalypse do you know what I mean it's like I'm out there today down by Yorty's couch having a run

and i'm going fuck it the first signs of spring you know it's it's warm it's humid isn't this nice this is the first warm day that i've experienced in limerick in about three or four months isn't this lovely and then a voice in the back of my head going but what if it's global warming what if it's supposed to be cold so that's a new a new thing in 2019 that i believe will become a trend where you can't truly appreciate the weather because you're wondering was it this hot when i was a child so anyway great response to last week's podcast i fucking loved making last week's podcast i really enjoyed it it was a a boiling hot take about culture and society and i was glad to get it out of myself um what have we got going on this week, before, obviously last week I advertised a few gigs, I have tons of gigs coming up, live podcasts, March the, I don't know what date it is at March,

it's at the start of March anyway, and it's in Vicar Street, that's sold out, Vicar Street is sold out, however, there are two Vicar Street dates at the start of April I'm gonna say 5th and 6th ok they're not sold out please come to them they're the first one the 5th I think is now almost sold out

there's gigs in Cork there's a gig in Belfast just look up the Blind Boy podcast or go to last week's podcast where I had the list of gigs in front of me and I read them out, there's podcast gigs coming up, and I wish I was better at promoting them, so something mad happened in Dublin this week, and it's something that really pissed me off something that infuriated me there's a place in dublin called saint mickens church right and it's this old protestant church

and what makes saint mickens unique first off it's like a thousand years old it was a church that was it was just built like when the Vikings were fucking off out of Dublin I think it's across the way from Wood Quay like across the way from St Mickens across the river is Wood Quay which was the where the first kind of Viking settlement in Dublin was

and Dublin was a Viking city it was founded by the Vikings in fact the common phrase that we use, if you spend too much on something, and you say to somebody, I paid through the nose, I paid through the nose, this was really expensive.

That's like a 1200 year old expression that has its roots in Dublin. What the Dublin Vikings used to do is they used to tax the native Irish and if you didn't pay the Viking tax in Dublin 1200 years ago they would cut your nose up to your eye and you'd be left with this scar so the people of Dublin would say that person with the scar paid through the nose. They paid a lot more. Instead of just giving the Vikings their money.

But anyway the Vikings. I don't know. The Normans maybe. The Normans fucked their shit up. So St. Mickens Church. Very very old church. In Dublin. And I visit there.

And I have been visiting there for over 10 years, because one of Dublin's best kept secrets, there's a crypt at the bottom of St. Mickens Church with loads of bodies on display. And I'm a lover of history. I fucking adore history, as you know, from listening to this podcast. And I would visit St. Mickicken's church once a year anyway specifically to go and see there's the body of

first that it's how do i explain this there's an 800 year old mummy on display in the basement of St. Mickens Church. Now when I say mummy, you're thinking Egyptian mummy. Mummy simply means mummified. Mummified is a word that means when something dies, the body is somehow preserved. So 800 years ago, a chap died and was buried in saint mickens church too big for the coffin i believe so kind of poking out of the coffin but it's a chap of about six foot four 800 years ago and the thing with the crypt at the bottom of saint mickens church there's many theories but one theory is that a kind of environmental anomaly occurred,

whereby the walls are made out of limestone. So it created this incredibly, strangely dry environment. So the crypt in St. Mickens, I won't say perfectly preserved, but preserved the body of this man who died 800 years ago and it's on display now it doesn't look as cold as an egyptian mummy like you know it's not wrapped in anything this is accidental mummification um as a result of a dry environment essentially like a type of uh like a jerky you know know, where the meat, all the moisture is taken out of it, so it doesn't fully decompose, so this freaky looking fucking skeleton, with kind of brown

skin on it, six foot four, is there in St. Mickens, and you can go and look at it down in the crypt, and they've always been there on display, and some fucking prick went into St. Mickens during the week, vandalised the crypt and stole the head of this mummy that has lain there for fucking 800 years. Robbed the fucking head. Some prick in Dublin has got an 800-year-old head of this mummy. And I find that heartbreaking. I think the saint mickens mummy is one of the best kept secrets in dublin now the head is missing um like i said like you know why

am i talking about a missing head of a fucking mummy in the podcast because i'm passionate about it i'll give you more kind of history around it to just show you how cool and unique it is about it i'll give you more kind of history around it to just show you how cool and unique it is like first off there's natural mummification that's incredibly rare there's a form of mummification that happens in limerick actually when limestone like limerick has a lot of limestone in the soil we've got hard water down here you know it's hard to if you're to wash yourself in limerick you have to use twice as much water to get the soap um foamy because there's so much limestone in the water and in the soil and make shit of our kettles and things like this but an interesting thing that happens in limerick is

sometimes when bodies decompose in limerick the fat from the body when it decomposes it leaches into the soil but the fat then mixes with the limestone and forms a type of soap cake so you get a saponification it's called these bodies in limerick buried underneath the ground that are mummified in their own soap but in Dublin in St Mickens a similar thing happened

but not with skin soap just a jerkiness that occurred on this body whose head is now missing but what also makes this decapitated body interesting he was a Templar knight which is rare as fuck

and the Templars I'll give you now Templars are you know if you watch the Da Vinci Code the Templars I'll give you now Templars are if you watch the Da Vinci Code the Templars were present in it and there's all types of conspiracy theories and whatever surrounding the Templars but the Templars are interesting cunts

the Templars came about in about the 11th century so here was the crack like so in the 11th century. So here was the crack. Like. So in the 11th century. Christianity is.

About a thousand years old. You know it's a thousand years after the fucking birth of Christ. And Christianity for the first thousand years was. Like a hippie cult. Do you know. The church was established. Especially after the fall of Rome. It was actually after the fall of Rome. That the church started to become quite powerful. But was for a thousand years a hippie-ish harmless

cult not a million miles away from buddhism you know it wasn't about power it was about peace and love and it was a cool religion then what happens is the crusades Now the Crusades were kind of a... I don't want to get into who started it but it was a response to the expansion of Islam and Jerusalem and the area that we now call Israel. Christ was born around there right so that became a very holy site. So Christendom, European Christendom, went and took Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was being controlled by Europe, essentially. This Middle Eastern place being controlled by Europe because it's the birthplace of Christ. So what happens in the 11th century, if you are a rich person in england in germany in france

in these christian western countries if you're a rich person you know being devoting yourself to christianity is a very in vogue thing to do this is the early middle ages there's no science i've no doubt people truly believed in religion so if you had a bit of money the most important thing you could do in your life was to make a pilgrimage to jerusalem to the birthplace of christ and where christ was crucified so a lot of very wealthy people in the 11th century after the first crusade would go on a trip to jerusalem but the thing is because it was the 11th century there was no banks didn't exist you know so if you had a lot of money to go from we'll say england to jerusalem you had to travel to Jerusalem, this would have taken six months, you know, by caravan, with horses or whatever, you had to bring with you all your valuables, all your slaves, I suppose,

your entire household, and everybody had to travel at once, and what would happen is, as the Europeans traveled by foot, making their way to Jerusalem it was very dangerous and bandits would wait on the roads along the way and go look at these stupid British, French and German cunts coming over here on foot with all their money we're going to rob the pricks

so pilgrimaging people Christians on pilgrimage were robbed, blind and murdered on their way to Jerusalem. So this organisation sets itself up called the Knights Templar. And what the Knights Templar were, were a type of, they were monks, devout monks but they were warrior monks they were monks that were allowed to kill and murder and christianity up to that point had been very peaceful but some pope i can't remember who it was around the 10th century changed the rules the rules of

christianity were like you can't kill anyone this is a peaceful religion you can't kill anyone and something happened around a thousand years ago where the rules were changed and they said you can kill someone if they're not a christian that caused a lot of shit so the knights templar were created as these warrior monks who would accompany christians on a pilgrimage to protect them on their journey to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be robbed and murdered. And it was a very, like the coolest thing you could be in the 12th century. The most prestige was to be a Knights Templar.

This was just unbelievable. It would be like being a superstar, a rock star. There was no greater honor so what happens is a lot of rich young men from wealthy families decide to become Knights Templar but the thing with being a Knights Templar is if you look at the symbol of what the Knights Templar were if you look at their what would you call it their insignia it's it's the insignia is two monks on a horse two monks on one horse and what this did is that it symbolized poverty it's like the Templar Knights were so poor that they would ride two to a horse because they couldn't even afford two horses because knights at that time you know what the whole chivalry shit knights had fucking servants

they had big armor all of this the templars were not like that they were wealthy young men who gave up their riches and became poor warrior monks and like guaranteed entrance to heaven or whatever but what happens when a young man joins the temple and he's got a lot of money he then gives the money to the fucking church so the church then start to accumulate a fucking massive amount of wealth because all these wealthy young men are giving their money to the church so that they can become poor warrior templar monks right and the most interesting legacy of the knights Templar is they accidentally invented international banking so what would happen is you know 11th century you want to go to Jerusalem you're wealthy so you leave England and then you take all your money with you all the way over to Jerusalem and the

Templars go with you and protect you the Templars figured out a better way to do this as they got more powerful and became international you Templars in France you Templars in fucking Germany in Spain all of this what they would say is because they would have Templar centers in every single country they'd say to the rich person in England instead of taking all your valuables with you to Jerusalem right here's a better way to do it get all your valuables

leave them in the Templar Centre in England then what we'll do is we'll give you a note from our Templar Centre that says you've left

three grand's worth of goods with us then you take this note and if you happen to drop by spain we'll say on your way to jerusalem go into the templar center in spain show them this note and the templars in spain will go oh grand all your shits in england here's the equivalent money and they did this all over Europe and essentially what they were doing there was inventing modern banking you no longer needed like your valuables with you what you had was a piece of paper that said the valuables existed and could be cashed in in any Templar center around the world, so banking was invented,

in the early medieval times, because of these Templars, and they became incredibly wealthy, and then because they became wealthy, people started to borrow from them, and how the Templars ended, they ended in, the 1300s at some point,

I'm eyeballing this history from memory now by the way, they, they ended in the 1300s at some point. I'm eyeballing this history from memory now by the way. They ended in the 1300s because. The king of France. Borrowed a fuck load of money off the Templars. And couldn't pay it back. So what the king of France did. Instead of paying off his debt. He decided to create a rumor.

That the Templars were actually worshiping the devil and that they were wanking onto crucifixes and doing all this crazy deprived shit so the templars were put on trial and they were hung and murdered and all of this this happened on friday the 13th and this is why friday i don't know what year 13 something this is why Friday the 13th is unlucky because it was the day

that the king of France accused the Templars of wanking on crucifixes and worshipping the devil and worshipping a giant owl called Baphomet

and he hung him and burned him all at the stake and Friday the 13th is unlucky since then the Templars then they split off

and I think they merged into the Order of Malta who are if you're looking at a GAA match today and you see that what is it is it the Ambulance of St. John the Order of Malta

they're the direct descendants of the Templars now they're lads who And you see that, what is it, is it the Ambulance of St. John? Or the Order of Malta? They're the direct descendants of the Templars now. They're lads who come onto the pitch if someone's injured at a GAA game. The town of Hospital in Limerick is named after the Order of Malta and the Knights Hospitalia. The Templars also became the Knights Hospitalia, which were were I think they were monks who travelled on the battlefield and helped the wounded or something I'm not sure so anyway

this fucking Knight Templar Knight in St Mickens Church in the basement in Dublin his head was stolen somebody fucking in Dublin knows who stole the head give it back because it's gone now 3 or 4 days

it's perfectly mummified it's rotting on someone's fireplace what do you want with a fucking 800 year old head, what do you want with it do you know give it back, so hand it in to some hipster pub in Stoneybatter or

hang it off the fucking 5 lamps or if you do know where it is and you want to give it back and you want to anonymously give it back I don't know give my give my twitter page at rubber bandits a direct message a private mail and if you have the head of the templar knight give it back and I'll try and help a way whereby you can be repatriated with St. Mickens Church and you can get away with it. I don't know. Am I going too far with making that call? I don't know what the grave robbing is. Maybe it's an issue for the guards. I don't know but let's get the head back. St. Mickens was also vandalised in 1996. Vandals went in there,

St. Mickens was also vandalised in 1996. Vandals went in there, fucked around with 40 corpses, tried to set them on fire, and then robbed the head of a four-month-old child that died in the 1830s and played soccer with it in the graveyard. And, like, I'm not superstitious, but to the person who stole the Templar's head this week, if you're listening,

you've stolen the head, right, of a person who belonged to an organisation that were condemned by the church for For worshipping Satan. And a giant owl. And you know. All this deep shadowy. Hidden fucking knowledge. Like dark dark shit. And that's the head that you have. So.

I'm not superstitious. But if you are superstitious. You are cursed as fuck. That's pure cursed territory like to be going around with that head so I would imagine repatriate that head give it back to St Mickens

I wouldn't like to have that fucking up on my mantelpiece and I'm not even superstitious you pricks okay that was an unsolicited 20 minute fucking rant that I did. I thought I was going to wrap up the Templar thing in about 5 minutes, but it did take 20 minutes.

And it's not even the topic of the podcast this week. So before we do get on to this week's topic, we'll pause for some adverts. The ocarina is still missing. So we're going to have another banjo pause. We're getting a lot of good feedback for the banjo pause. A lot of people feel that the banjo

is a welcome musical interlude for the podcast and that it's a nice change to the ocarina. So here's the banjo pause. You might hear an advert if not you'll just hear the banjo and hopefully this time i won't get any any of the notes wrong it's a queer scale like i have to play the banjo to the piano that's in

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That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Bye. Bollocks. There you go. That's the banjo pause. One wrong note this week. This podcast is sponsored by you, the listener, via the Patreon page. You know, you can become a patron of this podcast for the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. If you like the podcast and you'd like to buy me a pint or a cup of coffee,

you can do it once a month. Go to patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast and please, yeah, give me a few quid but if you can't afford it you don't have to it's a suggested donation it's a model that works on soundness and everyone gets the same podcast you know um as well yeah it's it's because too i just don't get sponsors or advertisers on the podcast and i put out a big plea there on twitter during the week you know because i sometimes like i'm happy with the patreon but sometimes i just i get pissed off that advertisers are at least not even coming to the podcast it just annoys me because it's so

silly it's really silly it's like there's a million listeners to this like this podcast has more listeners than a lot of the biggest radio shows on irish radio and i was talking to a cast a cast of the people who would get me advertisers and they're continually trying to chase Irish companies saying here's the figures you know blind boys got a lot of listeners do you want to advertise and a lot of them just still have cold feet some of it most of it is because I curse all the time which is ridiculous it's like it's on the internet it's a podcast you're all adults you don't mind the cursing it's this really silly attitude the other thing is they're kind of scared of the mental health aspect that bit i can understand i've more understanding for that bit

the cursing bit fuck you grow up jesus. We're all adults. They're just words. And I think as well. Just a lot of advertisers in Ireland. The word podcast just sounds too new. And strange to them. So they don't want to. You're like. It's like the radio.

But it's on the internet. They just don't want to take that risk. The territory is too new. And I just. As well i was mentioning a couple of weeks back the patreon is a fantastic model it's brilliant it pays my fucking bills i love it i have a guaranteed source of income but i don't like having all my eggs in one basket like patreon recently the shareholders of patreon the company were complaining that Patreon isn't making enough money for them which means Patreon are now going to have to make some some changes and whenever

that happens with an online company whenever shareholders start complaining usually the platform goes to shit like Facebook started going to shit when it became focused towards its shareholders you know so I would at least like the option of knowing if advertisers are willing to fucking sponsor or advertise the podcast even just to turn them down because I have had one or two companies come to the podcast and I've just said no because I don't agree with their ethics but surely there has to be some fucking companies out there who are, I agree with their ethics and I'm comfortable

letting them advertise on this so if you are a company and you're interested you can email jennifer.dollard at acast.com and Jennifer is she now, she's only at acast.com and Jennifer is she

now she's only got after getting the job in the past two weeks but she manages all of the ACAST in Ireland because ACAST used to be English based but I think they're expanding so if you're a company give her a fucking email and sponsor the podcast and let me say fuck and don't try and interfere with my

content God bless you so what is this week's podcast about this week's podcast is going to be a music podcast now it won't be we've done a few music podcasts i fucking love doing the music podcast especially the history of music ones we've done a few um there was one on northern seoul uh there's two podcasts on the history of disco and house music there's a history of hip-hop podcast there was that one a couple of weeks ago about drum machines and the influence of japan and music podcasts are like my favorite ones to do especially the history of music and how

culture and politics influence how music sounds there's going to be more this one is a music podcast but it's not a really in-depth look at a genre instead i want to look at just i'm going to give you a couple of examples of just weird origin stories for songs stuff that just they're weird facts i've come across that aren't very well known that when i say them to you you'd go fuck off you're talking out of your arse the type of fact that would make you immediately run to google because i have to be lying because it's so ridiculous so that's what i want to that's what i want to focus this week's podcast on and this this takes a very crazy turn as I get through this a mad thing fucking happens

even madder than when the tomcat interrupted the podcast a couple of weeks ago so anyway I'm gonna play you a little piece of audio a fantastic song that you you definitely know. So, absolute fucking banger. Of course you know it.

That's Blame It On The Boogie by the Jackson 5. 1978. Fucking classic, game changing, disco song, phenomenal song writing, phenomenal pop song writing, that song is perfection, it's, you don't, you know, you can't not love that that a newborn baby will love that someone 90 years of age will love that that is perfect fucking pop it's amazing and the reason i'm playing that song and the reason it's relevant to this podcast is like i've listened to that song for years i've that's one of those songs that i would

have as what you'd call a reference track when i'm producing music you want to have tracks that you consider perfection in terms of how they're produced or mixed or written and when you're learning the craft of production that would be one example of a song that i would play as a reference against something that I'm making we'll say when I was producing horse outside blame it on the buggy would be a song that I would switch over to and I would play horse outside alongside it and see you know is is my song jumping out of the speakers the way that song is and if it's not you go back and change it until it is because that song is perfection so for years and years and years I was going fuck me

that's incredible and what always struck me as well with it being amazing is I used to have that on CD and when I'd have it on CD often what I would do in the olden days of having like an album in your hand, you go to the liner notes, and I'd go to the liner notes of the song when I'm listening to it, because I wouldn't be like, okay, who played saxophone, who was the drummer, who produced it, who wrote it, you'd find all this shit in the liner notes of the song, and what used to strike me was it says song written by Michael Jackson and that always took me back because I was like fuck me that that was the Jackson 5 so Michael must have been 14 and he wrote Blame It On The Buggy a 14 year old wrote that song what a fucking genius do you know

wow and yes it is factually correct that this song was written by Michael Jackson this is a fact so now listen to this song so Blame It On The Buggy Michael Jackson

that I just played you there 1978 listen to this song here So, Blame It On The Buggy, Michael Jackson, that I just played you there, 1978. Listen to this song here, that was written in 1977. So there you have it 1977 Blame It On The Buggy Written by Michael Jackson What if I told you It was written by a different Michael Jackson

Here's the mad thing Michael Jackson Like the famous, massive Michael Jackson like the famous massive Michael Jackson from America he didn't write Blame It On The Buggy an English lad called Michael Jackson wrote Blame It On The Buggy

and he wrote it in 1977 and then the Jackson 5 released this and it's a kind of a really weird, strange thing. Like I said, if you say that to someone, I didn't fucking believe it when I first heard it, because it's too insane, it's too weird, it's too nuts.

But I ended up looking into it further, and it's like, yes, an English lad called Michael Jackson wrote Blame It On The Buggy. I found a little recording of him talking about it, how he wrote it. When we received this album, it says all songs written by the Jacksons. Which is not untrue, because we're called Jackson as well, of course, but they're the sort of things that do hurt your pride a little bit. And my brother Dave, he got this sort of look on his face

that he gets when he has his moments of genius and starts sort of pushing his glasses like that. I mean, he's singing... A bad boogie, a bad, bad boogie, a bad boogie, a bad... And they were just singing Bad, Bad Boogie. And he's singing Bad Boogie and I'm singing... Don't blame it on the sunshine Don't blame it on the moonlight

Don't blame it on the sunshine don't blame it on the moonlight blame it on the good times blame it on the boogie blame it blame it we've got this blame it thing and the bad boogie is going along and quirky little lyrics were appearing and dave was doing one verse i was doing another and we're changing things around but he just slotted in very very quickly the whole thing so how about that for mad um yeah so blame it on the buggy was written by a different michael jackson and they were from the north of england and for me what makes it interesting you know it ties in with the the northern soul thing. English Michael Jackson grew up listening to Northern Soul. He was into soul music. He then graduated towards disco as a songwriter

and ended up writing Blame It On The Boogie. And how it turned into a Michael Jackson song, an American Michael Jackson song, a Jackson 5 song, it's a little bit dodgy in a way in that so when English Michael Jackson wrote and recorded the song there's this conference called Mydom that happens in France and it's like a trade conference for musicians for music management producers so the track before it was released, English Michael Jackson's Blame It On The Boogie before it was released commercially, was being played at this Midam music conference where you'd hear music before it's released. And it was like the hit of the conference in 1977.

Everyone was playing it over and over again. over again but joe jackson who was the jackson fives father and manager happens to be at this conference he hears this disco track and is like fuck me that's the song that's the song that my sons need to be fucking performing as their next single so joe jackson takes out a recorder out of his pocket and records this song clandestinely and then because you don't you don't really have control over who covers your song if someone wants to cover your song they can do that they're entitled to do it so long as they credit you as the writer so the jackson five then released this song but released it in competition with the original

version and they're in the charts at the exact same time and it became known in the British press as the Battle of the Boogie where it was like which is your favourite one and of course fucking you know American Michael Jackson the Jackson 5's version is the one that we remember

but because you know, American Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5's version is the one that we remember, but because the writing credit was Michael Jackson, the British press at the time, they thought that, you know, American Michael Jackson was the one who wrote it, but British Michael Jackson wasn't fucked over, he received his royalties for writing the song but it's just one of those ones it's it's nuts it's strange it's weird and which song is better the Jackson 5 version you know the original British version is an incredibly well-written pop song really catchy but would it have survived in the lexicon of pop I don't know I don't think so the Jackson 5 took that song and through what you'd call in the industry x-factor through American Michael Jackson's X Factor through his incredible performance

the timbre of his voice the soul and funk in American Michael Jackson's voice it took the song to another level on top of the production, the production is brighter it's a little bit faster I think it's in the same key it might be in a key up, I'm not sure I need to go back and check, but the Jackson 5 version is, that's a stone cold classic, that has stood the test of time, that sounds fresh today, the British one, it lacks soul, it just, it lacks that extra thing, the X factor, it lacks the intangible i don't know what you'd call it it's

it's it's that thing in the music industry like i said it's called the x factor but it's that thing that a piece of art has that you can't name it's just there it's almost spiritual like when i walk into a gallery if i'm in London and I walk into the National Portrait Gallery or another gallery when I walk into a room like you're talking about hundreds of paintings but when there's a painting there by one of the true greats like Renoir or Caravaggio or Gauguin

I just know I know I'm in the presence of and it's surrounded by paintings that are technically fucking brilliant, but when you're in the presence of a painting of a master, it glows with an extra level of life, that you can't, you can't put your finger on it, you can't repeat it, you can't copy it, that is, is, true art has an extra spirit to it that can't be pinned down and that's the difference between english michael jackson's version and the jackson five the jackson five has got an intangible soul of brilliance that you could analyze it all day long you wouldn't pin it

down whereas i can analyze the english version and i can know this is a good song because i it's the catchy melody the chords that are used you know what i mean you can't do that when it comes to x factor that's a different vibe and it's rare and american michael jackson had it in fucking droves. So here's the part of the podcast that is going to go a bit strange and a bit odd and a bit unpredictable. What got me thinking about this topic for this week's podcast and what got me thinking about the Mick Jackson because English Michael Jackson

went under the name Mick Jackson sometimes but what got me thinking about that specific example in music I was on Twitter during the week and I tweeted out what I was interested I was interested in in like myths about celebrity certain stories that we hear about celebrities that we don't know if they're true or not. And stories that you hear that you want to believe. And what I've started doing with friends of mine is I've started making up stories that are deliberate lies. But people believe them because we want to believe them. So what I tweeted out is that as an experiment I've been telling people that the actor who played Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad also played Stan in the Eminem video and found and I found that most people would believe that it's true because it's the type of

fact that we want to believe okay so I've been telling people that that Jesse Pinkman was actually Stan in the Eminem video most people go wow I didn't know that you google it and you find out that I'm talking out of my hole but when I was growing up there was all these types of stories and before you could easily google things you just kind of believed them one of them was Marilyn Manson was actually as a child was the nerdy young fella in the wonder years that that was Marilyn Manson as a child and you didn't have google at hand so you just believed it or that showed different strokes that used to be on

in the it was from the 70s but it used to get rerun on television when I was a young fella so there was a rumour that Willis from different strokes

ended up doing animal porn and a chicken died after he stuck his head up his arse I believed that for years I believed that

Prince got a rib removed so he could suck his own dick. Do you know what? These urban myths flew around the place, and when you didn't have the internet, you believed them because you wanted to. And then, you know, I started giving other examples of shit that you could make up that you want to believe.

Said Pierce Brosnan is the reason that packaged salad says wash before use because he got salmonella from lettuce as a child and made a successful claim in court bullshit said that Van Morrison submitted a script for an episode of Mr Bean

and it was broadcast and credited to a pseudonym bullshit not true but then I said here's a true one and this is an urban myth i don't know what you call it an urban myth it's a rumor that has been going around for a long time in ireland and there's an element of truth to it but this version that i tweeted anyway i said this here's a true one robbie william Williams went on the lash in Dublin in 1996

he ended up at a house party the lad whose house party it was had written angels he played it on acoustic at the party and Robbie gave him five grand to sign away all rights to it so that's a story that gets flung around that in 1996, Robbie Williams, you know, famous international superstar, one of them. I think he's the most, is he the most successful British solo artist of all time? I think he might be. He's the most successful solo artist in Latin America who isn't Latin American. Robbie Williams is a superstar. He's massive. in Latin America who isn't Latin American Robbie Williams is a superstar he's massive he was

throughout the late 90s and the 2000s he was a towering behemoth of success huge and a story goes around that when Robbie quit the band Take That that he

went on the lash he went on a bender and this was very much you know the papers were following this at the time Robbie went off the rails he would have been about 25 maybe and he went off the rails because Undertake That who were a clean cut boy band

you know they weren't allowed to have girlfriends they weren't allowed to be seen out drinking they had to have a very clean image for the pop industry so when Robbie left take that he was like well fuck this I want to go out and do a lot of coke and I want to drink and I don't know if this is true but I think once he even held he held a pre-emptive press conference this could be another urban legend but he held a pre-emptive press conference where he just got all the press around and says how are you getting on lads last night i drank loads and had sex with loads of girls and did a lot of coke just letting you know and he told the press before they could even report that

as a scandal um i'd have to check that one again i think i might have heard that in a pub but anyway story goes Robbie went to Dublin in 1996 to go on an absolute bender this is a fact this did happen and he ended up becoming pals with a lad called Ray Heffernan and Ray is from Dublin and he's a singer-songwriter and the story goes is that Robbie Williams' biggest song, the song that really got everyone... When Robbie quit Take That, no one thought he was going to have a solo career. Everyone thought it would be Gary Barlow, if anyone, or maybe Mark Almond. But no one thought Robbie was going to be the one with a solo career. And then he comes out with this song, Angels, which is, it's an anthem, you know, it's overplayed on the radio, and because

of that, it's very hard to listen to the song and truly appreciate it, but, you know, if you take all that away, it's like ABBA, you know what I mean, we listen to ABBA songs, and we've heard them so many times, you think they're shit, but like they're not they're fucking genius, ABBA are incredible Angels is an incredible pop song it's it's brilliant and that's why it's an anthem but it's overplayed so it's hard to

give it the proper cultural respect it deserves and when Robbie released Angels that changed the game, everybody who doubted him had to go, well fuck, here we go, here's Robbie Williams. And he co-wrote the song, holy fuck, he's got talent, we all doubted him. And Robbie became massive and Angels was the breakthrough moment. But the myth goes that Angels was actually written by an unknown songwriter from Dublin called Ray Heffernan

who ended up on the lash with Robbie and that the version I've heard over and over again, they were at a house party, Ray played Angels that he had written Robbie says that's amazing here's a bunch of cash and then kind of ran off with the song

so I tweeted that i tweeted it and this is where the fucking mad thing happens so earlier on today i get a phone call and i look at the phone and it says los angeles so i pick it up i'm going fuck me who's ringing me from Los Angeles, and I pick up the phone, and, an English accent, hi blind boy,

this is Robbie Williams, and he sounded kind of sad, and upset, so, I'm like, freaking out, because like, I'm there in my kitchen,

in Limerick, and I'm looking out the kitchen window and at the back of my my garden like i've got my my two little stray cats there's a few stray cats and then at the back of my garden behind the wall is is a park so i'm staring at a horse and you know yes there is actually a horse outside my gaff but now here's the thing in Limerick

there's horses everywhere this is the weird thing about Limerick for anyone listening who especially if you're outside the country if you're a yank in Limerick

we have horses the way other cities have like stray dogs so behind my gaff there's one or two horses that just the local young lads look after them now

some horses in limerick aren't looked after and are neglected but others are looked after the ones behind my house are looked after and i often throw them carrots and whatever so anyway i'm staring at the horse and i've robbie've Robbie Williams on the fucking phone to me. I don't know how he got my number. I don't even believe it's him. I'm just like, okay, this is odd. This is very fucking strange. It turns out Robbie is a fan of the Rubber Bandits, a fan of the podcast.

Robbie is a fan of the Rubber Bandits, a fan of the podcast, and he saw the tweet on Twitter where I basically said there was a house party in Dublin and Robbie kind of stole the song and paid off Ray Heffernan. And Robbie was very upset and hurt now I'm still kind of taken aback by it not fully believing I'm on the phone to fucking Robbie Robbie the superstar Williams in my kitchen staring at a horse I can't fathom it but after about a couple of minutes that shock dissipates and now I'm just simply talking to an English lad called Robbie who seems incredibly sound and nice and he was absolutely lovely and we spoke for about 40 minutes about several different things but mainly what Robbie wanted to clear up was the version that gets told about that story isn't entirely true specifically the version that I tweeted is not true

and Robbie gets quite hurt over it because he didn't want me, he was ringing me because he's a fan of the bandits and didn't want me thinking that he was a nasty person who steals songs

so it's a weird situation there's there's two sides of the story there's ray heffernan's side of the story and there's robbie's side of the story and there's no way for any of us really to know the full truth it it comes down to who you believe um if you want to hear ray heffernan's full version of what happened in ray's own words of how how did this all happen it did ray heffernan write angels you can go onto google you look up uh the irish songwriters podcast the anatomy of angels look that into google and you've got ray heffernan talking for an hour his side of the story so what ray's end of the story is is yes he met robbie williams in

dublin in 96 they ended up kicking it off becoming good pals and really having a kind of an intense time robbie confirmed this on the phone at me too they are on an incredible lash of drink and drugs okay both of their stories say that they're absolutely off their fucking tits then you know ray starts going well i'm a songwriter and robbie goes fuck me, I'm looking for songs. I'm writing songs too. So they book a studio in Temple Bar and just end up jamming and recording some stuff. Now, this is where it gets kind of hazy because there's drugs involved. There's drink involved, all of this.

involved out of this ray heffernan maintains that ray ray had a girlfriend and the girlfriend had a miscarriage and ray's way of of dealing with the miscarriage was that the child was now an angel it's an irish thing you know when the child dies the child becomes an angel and ray is is loving an angel instead and ray maintains that he wrote that lyric and he brought that lyric to the project and him and robbie sat sat down and that's ray's thing robbie maintains that that isn't the case that robbie wrote the lyrics in his garden and also took some of the lyrics from a poem that his sister had written and it's it's two different sides of the same story and there's no way for us to know there's no way for us to know okay it was a long time ago there was a lot of drinking drugs involved Ray feels that kind of

what happened to as well so they go on the lash and then they ended up I don't know did they have a father now Robbie left anyway for England

and Ray heads on over to England to follow Robbie and arrives at his hall door and knocks on it now Ray has said in

the podcast thing where he spoke about his story he felt that he was on a type of spiritual journey he was also battling addiction issues at the time so he arrives at Robbie's door Ray as well is annoyed Ray doesn't like the story either because he feels that he's been kind of defined by you know the guy in

Dublin who actually wrote Angels Ray doesn't like that because Ray's a singer songwriter and he's a brilliant singer songwriter, I've listened to his stuff he's an incredibly talented man em what we do know is that Ray was paid seven and a half

grand sterling by Robbie Williams and Ray maintains that this was money for you know to essentially buy the song Robbie kind of maintains that this was just kind of money for Ray to just go away, kind of, you know? Ray feels that the story is unfinished. He, to quote Ray in his podcast, he says, I was raised to believe to accept a deal, you shake on a deal and that's the deal. So for Ray, it's like,

okay, I signed away whatever could have been mine. That's what Ray maintains on his podcast. Ray does feel that it's unfinished and he'd like the opportunity to sit down and write another song with Robbie and give the money to Cherry. That's what Ray said on his podcast. The money side of things from Robbie's point of view is there was no way to take this to court.

You can't go to court, it's he said, she said. You're talking about two lads on the utter lash and it comes down to Ray saying that he wrote you know a core central lyric that was the theme of the song and it comes from his personal experience and you've got Robbie saying no this was mine I took it from lyrics I'd written myself and a poem my sister wrote it's

utterly unprovable in court so it's not the type of thing that you take the court so the money that Robbie gave him was like an out-of-court settlement to just kind of let it go here's seven and a half grand Ray said you know at the time Ray was um in rehab I believe for issues he was having with addiction this again this is what he said in his own podcast.

So Ray took the seven and a half grand to pay for that. And. I don't know. It's. I don't want to cast an opinion either way. What I would just want to say is that there's two different stories out there. And you have two people maintaining. Agreeing on 90% of of it but a core thing they both

disagree with what I will say is before Robbie rang me on the phone what I 100% believed was the version of the story that

this is a song from Aladdin Dublin and Robbie Nictus because that's the most interesting version that's 9-11 was an inside job that's a conspiracy theory that's a really interesting fact that makes you go wow that is so interesting I want to believe that and that's what this podcast would have been about I would

have completely ran with that had I not gotten a phone call one thing I'll say regarding like Robbie seemed incredibly sincere he didn't know I was going to do a podcast on it he simply rang me up because he's a fan of the bandits or a fan of the podcast and didn't want me thinking that he was nasty. So like his incentive for ringing me up there is kind of, it's personal and pure, I suppose. And I asked Robbie's permission as well. I said, look, can I tell people that you rang me up because this is too fucking nuts. So he said, yeah, work away. So all I'm going to say to you is you can make

your own mind up Robbie spoke to me he gave me his side of the story Ray's side of the story is there online look it up the Irish songwriters podcast the anatomy of angels it's just nuts

madness it's like that the time fucking Conor McGregor mailed me on Twitter fucking telling me to stop talking shit about him just weird bizarre shit

em then of course I get off the phone my ma had been over earlier and I rang my ma and I said Robbie Williams is after ringing me my ma had been over earlier and i rang my ma and i said robbie williams is after ringing me my ma then doesn't believe me she gets it into her head that uh she says no that's someone

playing a trick on you that's oliver callan she thought it was oliver callan the irish comedian who's incredible at doing impressions she got it into her head that oliver callan was ringing me as a form of sabotage to make a fool out of me and i was like calm down man so it's just one of these things ray accepts that a deal was made um it comes down to whose side of the story that you you truly believe you know and it's it's messy as fuck it's messy as fuck you're talking about 1996 in the middle of a drinking drug binge

and who fucking you know Robbie says it was his version and then he took it to his songwriting partner Guy Chambers and that then turned into what we now know as the song Angels. That's 100% we do know that.

I'm going to leave it with G. I don't want to cast aspersions either way. And it's an interesting thing because. The way songwriting has changed over the years like nowadays the way songs are written like after in 1996

that's when like real money was being made in the music industry from songwriting and radio plays and CD sales there was real money there since the early 2000s the money end has disappeared out of the music industry it's unless you're massive you're not making money from plays you know like we get millions of plays on spotify or youtube you don't really make a lot of money from it you know and

you see now it's it's hard to today, with music being released today, are artists actually writing their own songs. You go to, I'm not going to name names, but anything that's in the charts now, anything that's on the Billboard 100 or a really popular song by popular singers. If you look up the songwriting credits you don't get a situation anymore like in the 60s you would have a pop singer would sing a song

and it's quite clear that they did not write the song they're merely just performing it and the songwriters names are there and the pop singer is performing the song and this was grand in the 60s and 70s because there was so much money to be made like the way royalties break down is that there's publishing now that's the most lucrative publishing is if you actually wrote the song and then there's performance and mechanical royalties and that's a smaller portion of the

pie but that's what you get if you perform the song so in the 60s you'd often find that like you know usually like someone like bob dylan would write a song and you could have five or six cover versions of a bob dylan song in the charts because the people doing the cover versions like dylan yes is cashing in on the publishing money the big chunk of it but so many copies are being bought that the person doing the cover version the mechanical royalties are enough to make them wealthy that's not the case anymore there's so much there's so little money being made now that if your name is not on a record as a songwriter you are not earning money not today forget about it mechanical royalties are we're talking about a small percentage of very little money um so larger artists now what they started doing since about 2003

the artist will make sure that they are contributing to the songwriting somehow and this mightn't necessarily even be in a in a hugely creative or constructive way they might simply make sure that they're present in the room while the song is being written and contribute two or three words you know songwriting is a very specific skill and it's it's a unique gift you can't learn songwriting you can learn how to play instruments you can learn how to perform but when it comes to songwriting that that ability to create a song from nothing from your imagination that's that's a unique and rare talent and a lot of the artists today their names are on the songwriting credits but you don't know you know did they actually

meaningfully help write this song or are they business savvy and they just made sure they were present in the room and they maybe contributed a couple of top line melodies or a couple of words and now their names are on the songwriting credits so they can earn from the publishing and you see that across the board now nobody, no big artist nowadays is simply saying oh someone else wrote this song they're getting stuck into the songwriting

because the pool of money is disappearing but one thing that Robbie did say to me he's incredibly proud of angels that for him he said he's written many many songs since but for him angels is the most important thing and the thing that he's most proud of so for him and his legacy i guess he really wants people to know that angels is his song i'll leave it i'll leave it up to you because i don't want to take any sides in this i don't want it to get messy like that you can listen to both sides and you can make your own your own minds up so that was a that was a mad podcast there wasn't really any hot takes I suppose there was

they just weren't my hot takes I was farming other hot takes quite a diverse podcast I did enjoy making it I hope you enjoyed it I think yeah it's only

I felt like I covered an awful lot in 65 minutes I was very enthused about this week's podcast, so I spoke quite fast. God bless. Have a good time. And come to some of my live podcasts if they're in your town. There's loads of them and I'm going to get killed for not having the list in front of me. And reading them out this week.

Because I'm shit at promoting myself. Okay, yart. I'll talk to you next week Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.